Academic drama
The last two weeks made ripples in water that had lain stagnant for years. It was mainly academic drama, but it got me thinking about my fiction writing as well.
You know those stories where you return exactly where you started but the choices made and growth experienced up to that point make all the difference? Planescape: Torment is a particularly epic example, but you can see it in a lot of "hero's journey" type stories. The hobbits' return to the Shire in The Lord of the Rings comes to mind. I'm sure you can come up with other examples.
That's sort of what happened to me over the past two weeks. I was trying my darnedest to graduate this semester while my advisor thought I wasn't ready yet. I poured everything into proving otherwise, working until 11 or 12 every night trying to put together a thesis that would pass muster.
In the end he decided I still wasn't ready, but he seemed genuinely moved by how hard I was trying and how determined I was. He sat down with me for an hour--on a day when he was teaching nine hours of classes--to give me extremely detailed feedback. I could tell how badly he wanted me to write a really good thesis, one that would make a difference.
"Yes, people can graduate with dissertations that don't really add anything," he told me. "And they get teaching jobs and spend year after year filling their research quotas, never saying anything worth saying and not contributing anything new."
Sounds sweet, I thought. I'm in a fellowship where my pay level depends on my educational attainment, which was why I was pushing so hard to graduate quickly. Honestly, I just wanted a raise and a comfortable, if not rich, life for myself and my family. I never thought of myself as someone who could make a unique contribution--I was just in it for myself, like 90% of people.
He went on: "Your chosen subject is fantastic. It's something everyone in this field wonders about. You can point out a direction in this crucial area and make a difference. Even if you're wrong, you'll start a vital conversation. People are waiting for you to write this thesis, and they don't even know how badly they need it. I want you to do this the right way and not rush through it."
The thing about my professor is, he's usually short-spoken to the point of abruptness. He does everything with brutal swiftness--talking, eating, walking--because everything else is just time taken away from research. I have known him for over 15 years and had never spoken with him this long in one sitting. I had never seen him speak with such passion and detail to anyone.
It dawned on me as I listened to him how lucky I was, to have a teacher who was pushing me to be greater than I thought I could be or even wanted to be, who believed in me more than I believed in myself. He wanted my career to mean something beyond a meal ticket. He thinks I can do much more, and when I hear him talk I find myself wanting to.
Don't get me wrong, I'm still pissed about missing a pay raise for at least a semester, and I think he's so idealistic partly because he hasn't graduated a Ph.D. student yet (gee, I wonder why). You know how they say parents get more laid-back and less perfectionist with second children? It's a truism in academia that the same goes for professors and their Ph.D. students. I'm still not sure if I can fulfill his expectations, and I get dizzy thinking about the heights to which he wants me to soar. I don't have his brilliance or his drive; all I did was choose a subject matter that I thought would be easy and turned out to be more complex and important than I knew.
But still. Even if I try and fail it'll be a heck of a ride, wouldn't it? One of my great fears, and looking back what's been holding me back in life, is the fear of trying and failing. My dad was always a great believer in the idea that people are what they are and can't change. He thinks there are smart people and stupid people, good people and bad people and that's it. Try Googling "fixed mindset," that's him. He pays lip service to the idea of effort, but when push came to shove it's always the fixed personal qualities that came under attack, never "do/don't do this thing" but rather "you are terrible/stupid/not up to snuff." I was always terrified that I could try hard at something and still fail, and that would mean I wasn't good enough. At least if I didn't try I could leave myself room to think I could have done it if I attempted it, and so preserve some space for limited self-esteem. It's a sucky coping mechanism, but it was the one I went with.
I smashed up against that barrier with this thesis fiasco, standing against two of my biggest fears--the displeasure of an authority figure, and trying only to be found wanting. It was why I so often froze up when I needed to be working, and found myself panicked and in tears when I did make myself work. Yet, even though going up against my professor left me reeling and catching my breath and the thought that all this effort might be useless left me suffocating, I kept battering at the wall, trying to smash it or scale it any way I could.
In the end my worst fear was realized: I had done the best I could and still came up short. Somehow, that was okay because for the first time I felt in my bones--not just mouthed it or thought it, but knew--that it was the effort that mattered. Trying and failing didn't mean I was a failure, it meant I tried. My professor respects that about me. I respect myself more for it. I think even my dad would respect that about me when I tell him, because he's a much more complex person than the shards of his voice that he unwittingly left in my wounds.
How does this affect my fiction writing? Well, on two fronts: For one thing, what my professor said about people waiting for my thesis applies to my novel, too. It's a contribution that I and only I can make, at least in the foreseeable future. As I said before, mine is a story that I want told no matter who tells it, and so far as I know I'm the only person who can. I think it's something the world needs without even knowing it, grandiose as that sounds.
Second, I think work stalled out on my novel in part because I was sick of the constant failure. I wrote 100K in one month for this thing and it still wasn't coming together; I had spent countless hours in the library and still had trouble visualizing this world. My thoughts swerve to the characters and world and plot details every spare moment, and there are still more holes than fabric in this thing.
If I put in still more effort and still fail, doesn't that mean I'm not good enough? Isn't it better to leave it a pleasant dream and hang on to the idea that I'll somehow write this thing, someday, without actually working on it?
Well fuck that. I'd rather try and fail rather than leave Shroedinger's breathing space for my ego. If I don't try and never make it that means I didn't try, not that I could have made it in some alternate universe. I have to live in this reality and not the one where I'm good enough to have done something if only I worked at it. It's time to get my feet down to earth and my shoulder to the plow.
Since the schedule for my thesis has gone from "impossible" to merely "grueling," I'm going to go back to writing my novel bit by bit every day. I'm just a happier and healthier person when I write stories, and now that I'm not pushing myself beyond endurance I can give my soul permission to fly for half an hour in a day.
I've also made arrangements to see a therapist. I may have recognized some issues and worked partly through them on my own, but there's still a way to go and I want to find a caring, knowlegeable professional to help me. And that voice that's kept me back all this time, that said I'm not good enough if I can't power through my difficulties without help? That insidious little whisper can go fuck itself, too. Getting help is the responsible thing to do, not only to myself but to the people who depend on me. It's time to be a grownup and take a long hard look at what I need to do to get results, not cling to some fantasy about the perfect self that will finally have Daddy's approval.
I was at a social occasion over the weekend with my professor, who told a colleague that I'm going to be graduating next semester. I like that idea. Maybe I'll make it and maybe I won't, but it sure is worth the effort. If I learned anything over the past two weeks, it's that my dreams are only as good as the sweat I'm willing to pour into them.
Dreamwidth entry URL: http://ljlee.dreamwidth.org/66903.html
You know those stories where you return exactly where you started but the choices made and growth experienced up to that point make all the difference? Planescape: Torment is a particularly epic example, but you can see it in a lot of "hero's journey" type stories. The hobbits' return to the Shire in The Lord of the Rings comes to mind. I'm sure you can come up with other examples.
That's sort of what happened to me over the past two weeks. I was trying my darnedest to graduate this semester while my advisor thought I wasn't ready yet. I poured everything into proving otherwise, working until 11 or 12 every night trying to put together a thesis that would pass muster.
In the end he decided I still wasn't ready, but he seemed genuinely moved by how hard I was trying and how determined I was. He sat down with me for an hour--on a day when he was teaching nine hours of classes--to give me extremely detailed feedback. I could tell how badly he wanted me to write a really good thesis, one that would make a difference.
"Yes, people can graduate with dissertations that don't really add anything," he told me. "And they get teaching jobs and spend year after year filling their research quotas, never saying anything worth saying and not contributing anything new."
Sounds sweet, I thought. I'm in a fellowship where my pay level depends on my educational attainment, which was why I was pushing so hard to graduate quickly. Honestly, I just wanted a raise and a comfortable, if not rich, life for myself and my family. I never thought of myself as someone who could make a unique contribution--I was just in it for myself, like 90% of people.
He went on: "Your chosen subject is fantastic. It's something everyone in this field wonders about. You can point out a direction in this crucial area and make a difference. Even if you're wrong, you'll start a vital conversation. People are waiting for you to write this thesis, and they don't even know how badly they need it. I want you to do this the right way and not rush through it."
The thing about my professor is, he's usually short-spoken to the point of abruptness. He does everything with brutal swiftness--talking, eating, walking--because everything else is just time taken away from research. I have known him for over 15 years and had never spoken with him this long in one sitting. I had never seen him speak with such passion and detail to anyone.
It dawned on me as I listened to him how lucky I was, to have a teacher who was pushing me to be greater than I thought I could be or even wanted to be, who believed in me more than I believed in myself. He wanted my career to mean something beyond a meal ticket. He thinks I can do much more, and when I hear him talk I find myself wanting to.
Don't get me wrong, I'm still pissed about missing a pay raise for at least a semester, and I think he's so idealistic partly because he hasn't graduated a Ph.D. student yet (gee, I wonder why). You know how they say parents get more laid-back and less perfectionist with second children? It's a truism in academia that the same goes for professors and their Ph.D. students. I'm still not sure if I can fulfill his expectations, and I get dizzy thinking about the heights to which he wants me to soar. I don't have his brilliance or his drive; all I did was choose a subject matter that I thought would be easy and turned out to be more complex and important than I knew.
But still. Even if I try and fail it'll be a heck of a ride, wouldn't it? One of my great fears, and looking back what's been holding me back in life, is the fear of trying and failing. My dad was always a great believer in the idea that people are what they are and can't change. He thinks there are smart people and stupid people, good people and bad people and that's it. Try Googling "fixed mindset," that's him. He pays lip service to the idea of effort, but when push came to shove it's always the fixed personal qualities that came under attack, never "do/don't do this thing" but rather "you are terrible/stupid/not up to snuff." I was always terrified that I could try hard at something and still fail, and that would mean I wasn't good enough. At least if I didn't try I could leave myself room to think I could have done it if I attempted it, and so preserve some space for limited self-esteem. It's a sucky coping mechanism, but it was the one I went with.
I smashed up against that barrier with this thesis fiasco, standing against two of my biggest fears--the displeasure of an authority figure, and trying only to be found wanting. It was why I so often froze up when I needed to be working, and found myself panicked and in tears when I did make myself work. Yet, even though going up against my professor left me reeling and catching my breath and the thought that all this effort might be useless left me suffocating, I kept battering at the wall, trying to smash it or scale it any way I could.
In the end my worst fear was realized: I had done the best I could and still came up short. Somehow, that was okay because for the first time I felt in my bones--not just mouthed it or thought it, but knew--that it was the effort that mattered. Trying and failing didn't mean I was a failure, it meant I tried. My professor respects that about me. I respect myself more for it. I think even my dad would respect that about me when I tell him, because he's a much more complex person than the shards of his voice that he unwittingly left in my wounds.
How does this affect my fiction writing? Well, on two fronts: For one thing, what my professor said about people waiting for my thesis applies to my novel, too. It's a contribution that I and only I can make, at least in the foreseeable future. As I said before, mine is a story that I want told no matter who tells it, and so far as I know I'm the only person who can. I think it's something the world needs without even knowing it, grandiose as that sounds.
Second, I think work stalled out on my novel in part because I was sick of the constant failure. I wrote 100K in one month for this thing and it still wasn't coming together; I had spent countless hours in the library and still had trouble visualizing this world. My thoughts swerve to the characters and world and plot details every spare moment, and there are still more holes than fabric in this thing.
If I put in still more effort and still fail, doesn't that mean I'm not good enough? Isn't it better to leave it a pleasant dream and hang on to the idea that I'll somehow write this thing, someday, without actually working on it?
Well fuck that. I'd rather try and fail rather than leave Shroedinger's breathing space for my ego. If I don't try and never make it that means I didn't try, not that I could have made it in some alternate universe. I have to live in this reality and not the one where I'm good enough to have done something if only I worked at it. It's time to get my feet down to earth and my shoulder to the plow.
Since the schedule for my thesis has gone from "impossible" to merely "grueling," I'm going to go back to writing my novel bit by bit every day. I'm just a happier and healthier person when I write stories, and now that I'm not pushing myself beyond endurance I can give my soul permission to fly for half an hour in a day.
I've also made arrangements to see a therapist. I may have recognized some issues and worked partly through them on my own, but there's still a way to go and I want to find a caring, knowlegeable professional to help me. And that voice that's kept me back all this time, that said I'm not good enough if I can't power through my difficulties without help? That insidious little whisper can go fuck itself, too. Getting help is the responsible thing to do, not only to myself but to the people who depend on me. It's time to be a grownup and take a long hard look at what I need to do to get results, not cling to some fantasy about the perfect self that will finally have Daddy's approval.
I was at a social occasion over the weekend with my professor, who told a colleague that I'm going to be graduating next semester. I like that idea. Maybe I'll make it and maybe I won't, but it sure is worth the effort. If I learned anything over the past two weeks, it's that my dreams are only as good as the sweat I'm willing to pour into them.
Dreamwidth entry URL: http://ljlee.dreamwidth.org/66903.html