hm, an update. an up-to-date.
I haven't been doing much up-to-dating in here, because I seem to have lost the impetus to do so. But I'm feeling write-y tonight. And I wanted to type instead of ink.
Things change so fast. I feel right now that my life is contingent on some kind of divine coin flip, in most regards. It's amazing how some random person can hold the shape of your future in the path of their pen.
I laud Mike for putting up with my rambling about grad school--for putting up with me in general--and for loving me as unconditionally and absolutely as anyone ever has. I hear him in the kitchen shaking the popcorn pan and I love him, just as I will love him as he lies on the couch in his socks, reading about how to effectively write as a social scientist. Living with someone has taught me how to love the everyday, like making dinner together, or getting high and vacuuming, or navigating the grocery aisles and discovering the best kind of paper towel, or getting busy and not making the bed, or being on top of things and making the bed every day. It is about learning each others strange and/or wonderful habits, how often they floss, how many socks they own. It means getting to a place in your relationship where reading becomes a joyfully tandem activity, and watching a movie can be done on one's own. I've really come to appreciate this sense of 'our' everyday, and walking around knowing that I've got the same cereal in my belly that he does. All in all, I really enjoy it. I do.
Augh. The wait.
Waitlisting is as kind and cruel a thing to do as ever there was one. (That was possibly the most winding and incomprehensible thing as ever I have wroten.) The plain truth is that while I am excited to go back to school, I am also terrified. I have packed away that old feeling of insecurity and incompetence that was pervasive during those two years. And sheesh, if I really do end up at Yale, how will I cope with the performance anxiety? How will I ever speak in class? Just looking at the *topics* of the students' dissertations is intimidating. I am rested and refreshed, but also the third r: rusty. Writing the sample paper this fall was no easy task -- I was insane about it and smoked too much. I get like that when I write.
But I think about that last sentence: when I write. This is, for all of its ups and downs, for its elation and holy-fuck-I-want-to-punch-the-book frustration, what I want to do with my life. The truth is that I am good at it. Working on my self-esteem, I am required to make lists of things that I do well -- well, this is it. There are ways to disclaim it, to dorkify it, to try and make it seem like it's not as wonderful as it really is, but... I am good at this. I like that I know it. I don't like that I need this to be validated from the outside sometimes. Then again, I think that everyone needs a little validation sometimes. And being courted by Jack Selzer is all the validation that my fragile ego needed this week.
And talking with Mike, I realize what a wonderful life this really is. I mean, I get paid to do exactly what I want to do. I have no hours. I report to nobody but myself, really. I work on my own terms and at my own pace. And I have about 4 months off every year. Plus, as far as the "work" work part goes -- teaching -- I'm the one who's in charge. I have no sick days. It's so different than my current work life that it makes me want to poke my boss in the eye. This is the way it should be for everyone. I love that it will become a reality for me. I even choose the poverty of grad student life over life with a boss for a very livable wage.
I'm excited and thrilled and scared and worried and intimidated and freaked out and so in love with it all. And I'm thankful to have support through this.
Holy shit. I'm going to get a PhD.
Things change so fast. I feel right now that my life is contingent on some kind of divine coin flip, in most regards. It's amazing how some random person can hold the shape of your future in the path of their pen.
I laud Mike for putting up with my rambling about grad school--for putting up with me in general--and for loving me as unconditionally and absolutely as anyone ever has. I hear him in the kitchen shaking the popcorn pan and I love him, just as I will love him as he lies on the couch in his socks, reading about how to effectively write as a social scientist. Living with someone has taught me how to love the everyday, like making dinner together, or getting high and vacuuming, or navigating the grocery aisles and discovering the best kind of paper towel, or getting busy and not making the bed, or being on top of things and making the bed every day. It is about learning each others strange and/or wonderful habits, how often they floss, how many socks they own. It means getting to a place in your relationship where reading becomes a joyfully tandem activity, and watching a movie can be done on one's own. I've really come to appreciate this sense of 'our' everyday, and walking around knowing that I've got the same cereal in my belly that he does. All in all, I really enjoy it. I do.
Augh. The wait.
Waitlisting is as kind and cruel a thing to do as ever there was one. (That was possibly the most winding and incomprehensible thing as ever I have wroten.) The plain truth is that while I am excited to go back to school, I am also terrified. I have packed away that old feeling of insecurity and incompetence that was pervasive during those two years. And sheesh, if I really do end up at Yale, how will I cope with the performance anxiety? How will I ever speak in class? Just looking at the *topics* of the students' dissertations is intimidating. I am rested and refreshed, but also the third r: rusty. Writing the sample paper this fall was no easy task -- I was insane about it and smoked too much. I get like that when I write.
But I think about that last sentence: when I write. This is, for all of its ups and downs, for its elation and holy-fuck-I-want-to-punch-the-book frustration, what I want to do with my life. The truth is that I am good at it. Working on my self-esteem, I am required to make lists of things that I do well -- well, this is it. There are ways to disclaim it, to dorkify it, to try and make it seem like it's not as wonderful as it really is, but... I am good at this. I like that I know it. I don't like that I need this to be validated from the outside sometimes. Then again, I think that everyone needs a little validation sometimes. And being courted by Jack Selzer is all the validation that my fragile ego needed this week.
And talking with Mike, I realize what a wonderful life this really is. I mean, I get paid to do exactly what I want to do. I have no hours. I report to nobody but myself, really. I work on my own terms and at my own pace. And I have about 4 months off every year. Plus, as far as the "work" work part goes -- teaching -- I'm the one who's in charge. I have no sick days. It's so different than my current work life that it makes me want to poke my boss in the eye. This is the way it should be for everyone. I love that it will become a reality for me. I even choose the poverty of grad student life over life with a boss for a very livable wage.
I'm excited and thrilled and scared and worried and intimidated and freaked out and so in love with it all. And I'm thankful to have support through this.
Holy shit. I'm going to get a PhD.