(no subject)
So I'm kind of depressed. It's not because it's almost ten after two in the morning when I write this. Honestly, the fact that I'm as tired as I am is a good sign. Yesterday was the first day I've gotten to bed to really sleep before 4 in a week, and even that was only by about 10 minutes.
I don't know why I'm depressed. Part of it is probably boredom. But as this vacation comes to a close, I'm finding that I don't feel the way I expect to. I'm not excited to go back. I'm not looking forward to my classes.
I'm kind of scared to go back to it all. Maybe I just got used to being at home. Maybe I feel this way every semester, and usually ignore it. Maybe it's something else that's bothering me, something stupid and petty. I don't know.
I do know that looking at this semester I feel like an old man who just staggered over the last rise in a desert only to find that, while there was water and he wasn't going to die, he still had dozens of miles before he'd find civilization. I don't think school is going to kill me. Last semester didn't, and it was the hardest semester of school I can remember having. But courses are kind of annoying.
I want to be a PhD candidate officially, which I'm told requires me to finish course work, pass exams, and write/defend a dissertation prospectus. What I see in front of me is mostly just hoops.
At the end of last semester, I took a take home exam similar to the big preliminary exams. I did it because I wanted to practice, and if I get another chance, I'll do it again. I ended up writing a 10 page paper in about 12 hours, and it was surprisingly good. It was easy enough to do; I knew the material.
Part of it is that I feel like I've taken enough fucking classes already. I took 34 classes as an undergrad, 10 for my first MA, 10 for my second, and three last semester. That's 57. Or, in credit hours, it's 171 hours. That's a lot of fucking classes. And I still have three semesters. Which probably translates to another 6 classes, bringing my grand total to 189 hours of coursework. Can't I be done already?
But that's only part of it. The rest of it is a nagging fear. You see, the reason I don't want to take courses, aside from being tired of them, is that I want time to do my own work. To do my own research and to write my own stuff. If I'm reading 1000 pages a week for classes, I'm not reading anything for myself. But if I didn't have classes, I could just work on my own stuff, put together a dissertation, and be done with it.
Here's the fear: I've had 5 weeks off. I have spent exactly one of those days doing ANY work for school. Yes, I added about 5 pages to a paper and sent it off for publication, but that's all I did. I had time where I COULD do my own work, where no one was telling me what to do. And what did I do with it? I played video games.
So what I'm worried about is that when these training wheels come off, when I'm not jumping through hoops anymore, will I be able to find the motivation to do my own work? Or will I be pining for back when I had deadlines and people telling me what to do? Is the grass always greener?
I don't know why I'm depressed. Part of it is probably boredom. But as this vacation comes to a close, I'm finding that I don't feel the way I expect to. I'm not excited to go back. I'm not looking forward to my classes.
I'm kind of scared to go back to it all. Maybe I just got used to being at home. Maybe I feel this way every semester, and usually ignore it. Maybe it's something else that's bothering me, something stupid and petty. I don't know.
I do know that looking at this semester I feel like an old man who just staggered over the last rise in a desert only to find that, while there was water and he wasn't going to die, he still had dozens of miles before he'd find civilization. I don't think school is going to kill me. Last semester didn't, and it was the hardest semester of school I can remember having. But courses are kind of annoying.
I want to be a PhD candidate officially, which I'm told requires me to finish course work, pass exams, and write/defend a dissertation prospectus. What I see in front of me is mostly just hoops.
At the end of last semester, I took a take home exam similar to the big preliminary exams. I did it because I wanted to practice, and if I get another chance, I'll do it again. I ended up writing a 10 page paper in about 12 hours, and it was surprisingly good. It was easy enough to do; I knew the material.
Part of it is that I feel like I've taken enough fucking classes already. I took 34 classes as an undergrad, 10 for my first MA, 10 for my second, and three last semester. That's 57. Or, in credit hours, it's 171 hours. That's a lot of fucking classes. And I still have three semesters. Which probably translates to another 6 classes, bringing my grand total to 189 hours of coursework. Can't I be done already?
But that's only part of it. The rest of it is a nagging fear. You see, the reason I don't want to take courses, aside from being tired of them, is that I want time to do my own work. To do my own research and to write my own stuff. If I'm reading 1000 pages a week for classes, I'm not reading anything for myself. But if I didn't have classes, I could just work on my own stuff, put together a dissertation, and be done with it.
Here's the fear: I've had 5 weeks off. I have spent exactly one of those days doing ANY work for school. Yes, I added about 5 pages to a paper and sent it off for publication, but that's all I did. I had time where I COULD do my own work, where no one was telling me what to do. And what did I do with it? I played video games.
So what I'm worried about is that when these training wheels come off, when I'm not jumping through hoops anymore, will I be able to find the motivation to do my own work? Or will I be pining for back when I had deadlines and people telling me what to do? Is the grass always greener?