A post-traumatic update
We are still not sure about our apartment. We were for a while, but now we are not sure once more.
It's a silly roundabout explanation - involving dropped emails, car bombs, deja vu, and the last four digits of your social security number. The short version is - instead of having no renter and a place ready for us with a deposit on, we now have a renter and possibly no place with a deposit on. We're waiting to hear back from so-and-so and so-and-so to be sure that everything will go according to plan. Otherwise, looks like we'll be scrounging for refrigerator boxes so we can set up camp on University Pkwy.
I've actually been quite productive lately; I'm nearly caught up with grading and hours to be spent on my thesis. I presented part 1 of my thesis two weekends in a row; once at an 18th-century conference in Salt Lake City, once at a graduate student conference on campus. The first few pages are clean and clear; I feel happy about them. The rest is complete academic drivel. I'm no scholar, really, but the thesis forces me to articulate ideas that actually hold up against scrutiny; I may have this thing finished within the next fourteen years.
Well, I'm actually feeling better about the thesis than I have since its inception. Each week when I meet with my thesis chair, I feel validated. I have come to realize that this is totally backward in graduate school land, that I should feel good about my ideas until I present them, and then feel like an utter academic failure thereafter. I tend to feel immensely anxious about all my ideas and writing all week until that half-hour meeting with my thesis chair - then he says, 'this is actually good' and I simmer down for an hour or two.
This week I was accepted to the MFA program here at BYU. I am excited about this; I had zero idea as to how I measured up to other creative writers (I've only taken a scant few undergraduate creative writing courses and never really published a darn thing). It's also a bit of job security for me; I can teach while I take classes, and therefore will be able to fund not only my expensive writing habit, but also my apartment and my meals and the upbringing of my infant child (which, of course, the husband will fund as well, but part-timers/entry-levelers only make so much, yes?)
So life, so growing up, so all these things. These are not the things I really want to write about, but I need to somehow. It's as though I need to show myself that, yes, I am worried about all these different responsibilities - enough to write all about them. Then I have gained my own permission to stop worrying. But I don't really take advantage of that permission.
And, now that life is shooed out of my cluttered consciousness, I have to get back to work. I still need to log away two hours of thesis time (me and you, thesis baby - tonight it's just me and you) and somehow bring about the daily event that is known as dinner. I need to grade (the perpetual stack has just grown today).
I find that I feel tired. Feeling tired makes me feel so old.
And so, with something a little more than faith and a little less than insanity, I have decided that I don't care that I may not have a place to live in at the end of this month. I don't care about my growing stack of papers and I really don't care about dinner (happy meals all around!) I'm writing a list of things to do this week that will keep me from getting old.
The first thing I shall do is have a private Read-In. I'll pull out my stacks of unfinished books and camp out in my pajamas eating chips and salsa and skittles. I will send the husband off to school and I will refuse to leave before my Read-In is done.
I am so excited for this child to come. Sometime soon we'll be able to forget all this adultishness and really, seriously play.
It's a silly roundabout explanation - involving dropped emails, car bombs, deja vu, and the last four digits of your social security number. The short version is - instead of having no renter and a place ready for us with a deposit on, we now have a renter and possibly no place with a deposit on. We're waiting to hear back from so-and-so and so-and-so to be sure that everything will go according to plan. Otherwise, looks like we'll be scrounging for refrigerator boxes so we can set up camp on University Pkwy.
I've actually been quite productive lately; I'm nearly caught up with grading and hours to be spent on my thesis. I presented part 1 of my thesis two weekends in a row; once at an 18th-century conference in Salt Lake City, once at a graduate student conference on campus. The first few pages are clean and clear; I feel happy about them. The rest is complete academic drivel. I'm no scholar, really, but the thesis forces me to articulate ideas that actually hold up against scrutiny; I may have this thing finished within the next fourteen years.
Well, I'm actually feeling better about the thesis than I have since its inception. Each week when I meet with my thesis chair, I feel validated. I have come to realize that this is totally backward in graduate school land, that I should feel good about my ideas until I present them, and then feel like an utter academic failure thereafter. I tend to feel immensely anxious about all my ideas and writing all week until that half-hour meeting with my thesis chair - then he says, 'this is actually good' and I simmer down for an hour or two.
This week I was accepted to the MFA program here at BYU. I am excited about this; I had zero idea as to how I measured up to other creative writers (I've only taken a scant few undergraduate creative writing courses and never really published a darn thing). It's also a bit of job security for me; I can teach while I take classes, and therefore will be able to fund not only my expensive writing habit, but also my apartment and my meals and the upbringing of my infant child (which, of course, the husband will fund as well, but part-timers/entry-levelers only make so much, yes?)
So life, so growing up, so all these things. These are not the things I really want to write about, but I need to somehow. It's as though I need to show myself that, yes, I am worried about all these different responsibilities - enough to write all about them. Then I have gained my own permission to stop worrying. But I don't really take advantage of that permission.
And, now that life is shooed out of my cluttered consciousness, I have to get back to work. I still need to log away two hours of thesis time (me and you, thesis baby - tonight it's just me and you) and somehow bring about the daily event that is known as dinner. I need to grade (the perpetual stack has just grown today).
I find that I feel tired. Feeling tired makes me feel so old.
And so, with something a little more than faith and a little less than insanity, I have decided that I don't care that I may not have a place to live in at the end of this month. I don't care about my growing stack of papers and I really don't care about dinner (happy meals all around!) I'm writing a list of things to do this week that will keep me from getting old.
The first thing I shall do is have a private Read-In. I'll pull out my stacks of unfinished books and camp out in my pajamas eating chips and salsa and skittles. I will send the husband off to school and I will refuse to leave before my Read-In is done.
I am so excited for this child to come. Sometime soon we'll be able to forget all this adultishness and really, seriously play.