In which I emo some

So the dissertation is still frozen in time, although this is not the fault of playing Farmville of facebook. It's just me and my performance anxiety/self-fulfilling-prophecy-fear-of-failure type thing. I probably can do this damn thing. So I should get on that so that it's done. So that I can stop grinding my teeth at night - my jaw hurts all the damn time. So does my back.

The novel is fairly well frozen in time at the moment as well, but not quite for the same reason as the dissertation. I've spent a fair bit of time with the novel docs open on my computer. I've mentally rehashed a particular character, and need to do the rewrites on that. Mostly I'm just stuck, however: like I've gotten it to a certain place and I know the other really major event that needs to be worked through, and then it needs to end... but I'm not entirely sure exactly how it ends and so have spent a lot of time mulling it over. A LOT of time mulling it over. Often while playing endless games of 4 suite Spider Solitaire (w00t 8% won!) and listening to whatever music seems helpful for whatever chunk of writing I'm trying to think about. There are so many ways this whole novel fits together in my head, but they feel blocked right now. We're supposed to get a Snowpocalypse this weekend, so mayhaps I'll spend probably-snowed-in-Caturday slathered in BPAL Block Buster and see if that has any discernable effect.

I'm having a hard time believing it's February already - I know I spent half of January out in KS but it still feels to me like it should be January. Or really, last October maybe. I know that I'm in mid-SAD for the year and that this is probably contributing to my general sense of nothing (nothing in the sense that nothing really affects me anymore, in that I'm already feeling just down and blank and whatever). I don't feel like I can think at all right now, like my brain knows it has a job (several, really) to do but isn't up to the task(s). This round of SAD is less self-involved and introspective than usual. I assume this is due to Brownie's ongoing job/dissertation stress, which has so overtaken his life that I feel mostly unable to live my own; keeping him even half-functional lately has been above and beyond my emotional capabilities. I don't blame him for this, really - I do think it's 99% how obnoxious and awful the whole academic job search thing is. I'm hoping he hears something soon so that we can even attempt to make some sort of near-future life plans. He did finally say (and seemed truly to mean it) that if the job stuff doesn't work out this year, we can pick a city, move there, and see what happens. I kind of adore this idea, but I'm not holding my breath.

So I do think that most of the lack of introspection during my current depressive funk is due to everything I just mentioned, but I also wonder if part of it is just that I've basically figured most of my shit out for the moment, but lack the energy or motivation to actually DO anything about any of those issues (i.e., classic depressive problem). I just wish I could get excited about something again, anything really, because I don't remember the last time I actually was excited. My basic range of emotions is this: genuine concern/care for family/friends, and blah. Like I'm turning 30 in 2.5 weeks. My thoughts on this are not OMGFREAKOUT, nor are they YAY (which is actually what I was expecting - my 20's are something I'm glad to leave behind me), nor are they anything at all other than "oh, I have to teach that day." Brownie has something big planned, but I haven't been able to get excited about that either. I've told him I am, and I very much want to mean it. It's just that finding the energy to be excited seems beyond me right now.

I think the depression is bigger than seasonal affective, because it's been going on way too long (erm, for at least the last two years). I've never had any luck with antidepressants, so I'm really resistant to going on them again. I hope to Ceiling Cat that leaving grad school behind will help - I've pinned my hopes for my sanity on that event.

I'll sign off for now. If I get really ambitious, I'll try and post every day until I turn 30 so as to chronicle the last few weeks of my 20's.

I know it just won a Golden Globe and all

...but I still refuse to see "Dances With Smurfs."
Okay, maybe it's technically brilliant and I gather it's so flipping beautiful that it depresses people to see our own world or whatever (seriously - CNN said so), but my fucking FSM I NEED A PLOT IN MY FILMS. OR AT LEAST PLAUSIBLE CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT. Honestly, Up in the Air was excellent, and The Hurt Locker should have won for director (which in the interest of staying honest I will admit here to having not seen yet - I've been waiting for dvd and Netflix so that I can watch it with whatever breaks I need to take to be able to deal with it). At least Glee won, so I can deal with that. And Robert Downey Jr's speech was perfect.

In reality: classes start tomorrow. I managed to do better than I have some semesters in dealing with this problem. My syllabus is already photocopied, even - two years ago I managed to photocopy my syllabus five minutes before class began. I'd have been fucked proper if the copy machine hadn't been working. So this semester the syllabus is done (finished mostly last night around 1am - such a fantastically fail way to spend a Saturday night), I've got everything that I could find online up on Blackboard already and a list of the last few articles/books I need to request from the library ready to go on my laptop for some point in the next day or two when I feel like bothering the folks at the ILL desk. My nails are polished in a fairly non-professional yet course appropriate black-with-red-shimmer and I know exactly what BPAL I'm wearing tomorrow but am still stumped on actual clothing (aka, the only part of my appearance other than my hair that my students are likely to notice in the slightest). Story of my life - the details are all put together but I'm missing a few of the major pieces.

As far as it being the start of my last semester of grad school, I keep thinking I should have some deep or profound thoughts about it, but I don't. I don't even really have a "yippee" type feeling about it. I just want it to end. I'm hoping the class goes well (it generally does - this is my third go-round with the syllabus), but beyond that I just want it over and I want to move on with my life.

I started reading some of the novel last night because I felt like working on it but wasn't being particularly productive in the writing sense of things. And. It's not awful. I wasn't embarassed for myself when I read it. So that's a bonus, because embarassment was pretty much what I was expecting to feel. What I read needs fucktons of work before I'd show it to anyone else (at which point it would need fucktons more work, I'm sure, because that's how these things go), but at least for the moment I'm not feeling bad about it (definite bonus, as I've got this irritating won't-go-away guilt about working on novel stuff when I "should" be working on my dissertation... it maybe time to return to old attempts to rid myself of "should," as "should" never leads to good feelings).

A propos of nothing, I made an apricot-pine nut tart from a Lidia Bastianich recipe, and it was AWESOME. I'll post the pictures and stuff when I figure out how to post pictures here (read: when I bother uploading them from my camera).

I'll just end it here by reiterating that I'm surprised that I'm greeting my last semester of grad school so... blandly. I'm much calmer than I would have thought I'd be.

Also good for calm: The Flaming Lips' "Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots."

In which I ramble for a time

Got back home from being home tonight, if that makes any degree of sense. I'm sitting now in my office in my apartment with Nunkin curled up against my leg and purring and Piggy bathing herself six inches away. It's a warm and cuddly feeling to know my kitties missed me.

We haven't put away the Christmas tree yet - I kinda meant to do that before we left, but ran out of time, so it's still up on its little table and will have to be taken down tomorrow in between bouts of syllabus finishing.

Otherwise, being home means two things:
- I have to get prepared for my FINAL (YAY) semester of grad school (done or not)
- I really do have to email Good Advisor so we can talk about me finishing my stupid dissertation, the thought of which (the dissertation moreso than the email) makes me nauseous, so I'm going to stop thinking about it.

While still back in KC, Brownie and I went out with my brother, his best friend (whom I'll nickname Romeo for the moment because it's terribly inappropriate both in general and specifically in relation to this person, who is as snarky and solipsistic as they come - he's hysterical) and best friend's sister, who is awesome. Awesome enough that I'll just nickname her Awesome for the time being. Anyway, Awesome will be graduating from college this year with an English major and spent most of the fall semester angsting over grad school. So she was telling me this last night and then told me about a conversation she had with her advisor, who pointed out to her that if grad school was already stressing her out, she didn't have to go (italics hers, in speech, I swear. They were audible.). And apparently that idea hadn't actually occurred to her before. So she's decided not to apply, even if that means spending two years working at a Panera before she comes up with something better. Brownie and I both traded fist bumps with her and congratulated her on her decision to keep her body and soul united together. In return, she announced that she was going to come crash on our sofa for a year while figuring out the rest of her life. I've been told to make sure we have cider on hand for her, as she's not much into beer. I am absolutely all for a visit from Awesome, but not sure I'd be able to help her on the non-grad school-career front. I'm about to the point of asking little kids what they want to do when they grow up just so I can steal their ideas. Except that I don't think I want to be an astronaut. Or a fireman. Hrm.

And at this point, it's 1am, and I'm tired. Purring kitties or not, I think it's bedtime. I'll deal with the "thoughts on the last semester's commencement" or whatnot as soon as I have some.

Odds and Ends

We got digital cable today. A+ for that. We also got a modem upgrade, so that the modem no longer DIALS UP. FFS, if I ever have to hear that noise again, it'll be too soon.

I'm obsessed with the song "1901" by Phoenix. You've heard it. It's in a commercial for I think a cell phone. And I feel like a total loser for loving a song that has been blessed by giant corporations and which they are using to make me think that something is ZOMG cool. At the same time, that's not the song's fault, and it is a good song. And I feel like a wanker for even worrying about it for a moment. It's a good song. Just enjoy the song and stop making it difficult, self.

I'm sort of stuck in a couple of places with NaNo. Mostly I've realized that MC is a giant PITA self-obsessed whiner, and I'm trying to figure out how to change that. So I'm finding myself revising certain chunks, adding in more conversation, etc. I also feel like some of the problem is the situation she's in, and when I finally let her get out of it (and when I have scenes that are not involved with the main situation I've been writing lately) she'll get better and less whiny and less self-reflective and maybe remember to pay attention to everything around her. But as a writer it's like I've gotten so stuck trying to figure my way through her thought pattern in the current situation that I'm not paying attention to anything else, including the characters she's interacting with. So that's a major problem that I'm glad I've figured out at least so that I can address it from here on out and then fix more later. I've got to stop with the revisions though, since that is NOT helping my word count. I need to get about 2000 in today to make sure I'm staying up to speed, which is do-able, but I'd like to try and get ahead over this week/weekend so that when Sparklefest hits next weekend, I'll be able to take a few days off.

Finally, I'm meeting with awesome non-hosebeast advisor to meet her kid today. I'm hoping hosebeast advisor does not come up because I just don't want to talk about her. At all. And I don't really want to have to explain why I haven't talked to hosebeast since January, since I'm perfectly aware that not talking to her has been hugely unprofessional on my part, but hosebeast makes me feel like horseshit and the very act of trying to talk *about* her has a tendency to reduce me to tears. So I'm going to try and avoid the topic. We'll see if that works.

Harvard Magazine's "The Ph.D. Problem"

One of my old professors linked to this article on his facebook. I read it and promptly stuck it up on mine. They bring up a couple of issues with getting a Ph.D. in the humanities:
- the median time to degree is 9 years
- 50% drop out before they finish the program
- of the 50% who complete, only half ever get a tenure-track job
- humanities doctoral programs are admitting more and graduating more students every year
- the within-the-academy humanities job market is miserably bad
- spending so much time working on such specialized knowledge often eliminates outside-the-university job opportunities (which are obviously badly needed)
- the dissertation process does not produce particularly good research or research that is necessarily something that will help broaden our knowledge
- it takes longer to do a dissertation in the humanities than it does in the social or hard sciences because despite the lack of experimentation or much archival research, there is so much pressure to find a way to say something new or different about the same texts (i.e., to spin something in a new way, basically) that dissertations become even more difficult
- universities like having grad students around to teach their courses (i.e., cheap labor)
- the system seems built to produce ABDs rather than full-fledged Ph.D.s
- these problems deter many potential students, so that the only students who end up even starting grad school are exact duplicates of the professoriate, leading to very little in the way of new or challenging thought

So in general, yes to all. The stats are dire and have been for a good fifteen years at this point. The article points out it's really been this bad since the 70's.

Basically, I've been thinking about the article in terms of my own 6+ years of graduate school experience. I do tend to agree that the system works to produce ABDs. I am one. Getting through coursework was relatively simple and made sense. The process stopped making quite so much sense when I got to exams, but I got there and got through them. I've been ABD now for 2+ years. I was stymied and left without any real guidance or mentorship when it came to my dissertation proposal. It started out badly with my disclosure to my advisors of my ADHD - they responded both by telling me in essence it was just something I was going to have to get over because "adult scholars don't need deadlines" and then proceeding to give me zero helpful advice on what I should do to craft a workable proposal until mid-December, when the advisor I generally like sat me down and went through everything with me in detail, helped me understand what she didn't think was working and so on. The next draft passed no problem. Since then, nice advisor hasn't been particularly available (sabbatical followed by pregnancy/accompanying family leave) and hosebeast advisor has done everything in her power (from "I get the sense that this project is going to take a LONG TIME" to "I really don't think you're doing this right" without then telling me what she thinks would be right) to make me feel inadequate and unable to finish. I think this is mostly my fault: apparently I shouldn't have told them about the ADHD, but more I should be better about being my own advocate and in asking them point blank what the hell it is they're looking for since I seem unable to read their minds (particularly the mind of hosebeast). Add in the complete and total lack of departmental support, and things aren't going well for me or for the other students in my department that I've talked through this all with. Brownie aside, most people I've talked to don't seem to have a clue how to finish their dissertations because they keep getting drafts back marked "been said before." Well, yes - when there's 4 shelves full of books in our pitifully understocked library on a particular text, it's damned difficult to find anything new to say.

Ultimately, I think I'm angry that I had no idea about how dire things were for graduated Ph.D.s before I began my doctorate - I'm not entirely sure I would have even started it. And it sucks watching a bunch of intelligent, articulate, thoughtful people falling apart because the dissertation isn't working out right, or rotting away in graduate school when they could be doing something that gives them a better work/life balance, etc.

Perversely, I'm still not convinced I can quit without having the dissertation finished. And I think if I do, I'll probably end up being an asshole to people who are considering starting, and wearing my "grad school dropout" badge with too much "I'm covering up for my insecurities" type pride. You know, the type of pride that tends to create douchebags. So if I end up doing this, I can only hope my friends like me enough to tell me.