The View From Kalamazoo

So I met with P, one of my letter-writers (was also a member of my committee), last week to discuss my Unhappy Grad School Situation. I’ll have the opportunity to see G next month at Congress, have already briefly chatted here and there with PESz.

P boiled it down to 3 choices: 1. go to KY (sans funding) this year, find some magical way to pay for it 2. try to defer (hoping for funding next year). go to KY next year. consider looking at other schools as well 3. consider this an opportunity to reconsider my long-made future plans before I’m “trapped” in the system/a program – cited difficulty of Ph.D. process, no guarantee of job after, noted existence of my yet-small progeny If I were to settle on #2, he suggested I work on something towards my goal this year…languages, or take a PTG seminar here (with someone new – which wouldn’t be hard since most of the people I worked with during my degrees are dead, retired, or otherwise gone) or ND that would result in a paper for a new writing sample. I pointed out conference participation, but P said that it’s largely unimportant and while it does no harm on a CV, it does no good, either. (“HHHHMMMmmmm” was my reply to that bit of news)

#1 is damn near impossible. I wish it weren’t, and I do peruse the KY website looking for staff positions for myself or Bri., but I don’t see it happening. I think I could with partial funding (say, a full tuition wavier but no stipend), but even if I only paid in-state rates it would be a no-go.

#2 is the way I think I have to go. I’ll write for reading list suggestions from faculty there, figure out something else in addition to that. I still want to bug PESz more on a part-time teaching position in the fall – I really miss teaching.

#3 is just too depressing. I have been bombarded by (well meaning) people tossing “Maybe this is the way things are supposed to be,” “Maybe someone is trying to tell you ‘something’,” “Do you believe in fate?” platitudes around. If I hadn’t been accepted anywhere I would have to wonder if it’s just me, but that’s not the case.

I have a hard time just rolling over and playing dead on this one – this is something I have worked toward, worked through and past some serious roadblocks for, taken on outstanding amounts of personal debt for, and exercised vast amounts of patience with myself and others just to make it through all of the hoops to reach. Do I give it all up because I’ve bred? It’s would sure be a lot easier and less stressful in the short run to give it up, sure, and maybe Bri. would prefer it. Is that what I use for decision making – what’s easiest? what rocks the family boat least? what requires the least work and stress and money? If these had ever been my dominant methods for life-impacting-decision-making I wouldn’t have left the art program for history, wouldn’t have gone on for an MA, wouldn’t have married…

I realize that P brought this option up in all seriousness (and I can’t help but wonder if this was a way he was trying to tell me he doesn’t think I can hack it, am I paranoid?) because it’s an important internal (and hey, external) dialogue to have and perhaps there are a lot of people who left (or didn’t leave) Ph.D. programs who wished they would have had this dialogue before starting. This isn’t a whim, this isn’t a fly-by-night crackpot idea I just came up with yesterday – I’ve been thinking and thinking and thinking (and obsessing) about it for so many years, worked so long and hard that I can’t help but feel a little insulted that it’s even brought up. What am I doing wrong that keeps leaving people with the impression that I’m not serious? Good God Damn – if this is hopeless would someone please tell me to quit wasting my time?!?!!!!! Yeah, some days I just want to give up – but it’s wanting to give up because I get so tired of fighting against that sort of attitude (because I have kids? because I’m female? because I’m in my mid-30s? because I’ve done things on my own time-line and have a “real job”?), it’s not wanting to not do the work, not write the papers, not do the research, not slog my way through the system.

Yeah, it would be easier to just decide to stay here, yoked to my student loan debt, trying to figure out a way to buy a house. Bri. would prefer it, since he’s so attached to his job and hates to move, anyway. Is easier better? You know, the one thing I would really like is to be able to stop worrying about this, to stop planning forward and looking forward and always living for some time in the distant future – I’d like to know where I’ll be living in September (now 2005). I’d like to know what I’ll be doing. I’m so sick of speaking in future tense using hopeful language, I’d like to talk about definites, concrete realities, certainties. I’m sick of, as Emma puts it, “I’m gon’!” I just want to DO, not GON’ DO. As for what may have been wrong with my dossier, other than extremely large (therefore competitive) pools or funding issues…he wasn’t thrilled with my SOP (hey, neither was I, which is why I went to so many people for advice, damnit!), he suggested my interests are easy to perceive as marginal by anyone outside of medieval history (and even some inside), and there’s the big, unspoken issue of whether programs are unwilling to take on students with families (or, as I less delicately but IMO more accurately put it, women with kids).

I don’t know…but have heard from a few of the schools that turned me down regarding my request for feedback from graduate admissions coordinators. Snarky reply from VA (which I rather expected, they do have a reputation for thinking very highly of themselves and very little of anything outside of themselves), replies from ND and SLU citing numbers of applicants and amount of funding available and not offering any sort of negative feedback on my application. I have come to the conclusion that Northwestern is a screaming mess and was a waste of my time and money to even think they wouldn’t somehow screw my file up (note: again). No reply from MI, IN. Don’t expect one from MI…IN I rather did, but whatever. Hey, I think have a right to ask for feedback and they have a right to not offer any. I’d rather get something honest back from a couple of schools than horsepucky from all of them.

I just wish Bri. would stop asking “So now what?” I’m still looking for that big bridge to leap from in tortured glory, ok? I have to write a paper for that June conference. I don’t get to look forward to trips overseas to do research, Leeds, or anything. I should go to Nashville in Nov. to meet my new neice/nephew. It’s too painful to try to plan ahead anymore since nothing I plan for and work towards seems to ever work out. I don’t want to be held accountable for anything beyond next month. (crossposted to my lj)