« Witnessed Oral Sex @ Ross Dress For Less | Main | Sad »
February 22, 2006
Excerpt From Letter Recently Sent To Thesis Advisor In Which I Seek His Advice On A Number Of Topics, Including Grad School
. . . Since 'leaving' my job, I had a streak of astoundingly awful luck: my boyfriend broke up with me and then I crashed my car. It was really a pretty awful time. I expressed my feelings by not showering or washing dishes, which probably did not help me feel any better, either, but then, I suppose that was part of the point. However, I'm doing so much better now, although I still very much miss my car. I'm even seeing this new guy who likes Scrabble and Gravity's Rainbow! Just like I do! Brett, my old boyfriend, is my friend again, which is excellent, and we mean to start up a Finnegan's Wake reading group with our friends like we had been planning before we split, and also I can borrow his car to go driving since the insurance wouldn't pay to fix mine!
I really miss being a student. I have fantasies about grad school, but I feel like I'm just getting my bearings in SF, and I don't want to leave yet. I wouldn't know where to call for Chinese, and I'd have to make all new friends-- that's very stressful, you know, just the thought of it is making me tense. And where would I go? It's true I'm not really writing piles of fiction so much these days, but I still like to think that I could, if I wanted to, even though I really probably can't, but either way, the idea of attending an MFA program is entirely unappealing, and attending an MFA program seems like the one reasonable thing I can do to be serious about fiction writing. And its probably a bad thing that I'm so put off by MFA-y situations anyway. It probably means I hate myself or want to sabotage myself because I can't stand other people who do what I am or want to be doing, which is writing, but to be fair, I was unfairly encouraged to believe that half the appeal of writing was that it could be done totally away from other people.
I also had the thought: Master's of Library Science! I'd be such an awesome librarian! I love libraries! That was when I was working at my job that I hated and I was trying to think of some kind of job that would give me health insurance that wouldn't make me want to kill myself. I came up with librarian. Useful, interesting and I could totally make it work with my fantasy life as a writer by working part-time at a library, getting benefits, and writing my books on the side. Maybe I'd even have to shelve my own book, who knows? Crazier things have happened!
But now I'm back to my original grad school fantasy, which is a reg'lar old PhD program in lit. That's what I miss. That's what I see myself enjoying the most. It's also the hardest to justify, since I don't feel strongly committed to going into academia once it's over. I feel strongly committed to living in San Francisco or New York, which I don't see changing unless I undergo a radical transformation brought on by trauma to the skull, or something of that nature. So I'd be putting in this enormous investment and then end up, six years later, in pretty much the same position I'm in now: underemployed, sending out (or not, as the case may be) resumes for jobs that, if I think about them, make me want to mash out my eyes with some kind of eye-sized mashing implement.
But then, if I'm just going to end up in the same place, is grad school such a terrible place to spend six or seven years of my life? A lot of people say, Yes! But I wonder-- are those people really as nerdy as me? Really? Maybe. I just don't know. I feel like I shouldn't want to go back to school so soon: I felt really ready for college to be over by the time it ended. Of course, it really wasn't that I was sick of academics as much as I was sick of being on a suburban campus as an undergraduate in a group living situation, no pets allowed, when the only kind of life I've ever wanted involves being left to myself in a studio apartment with books and a cat in a big city with good delivery.
I also feel a little guilty because I am not so successful at the non-school world. Even aside from the first job incident. Maybe this sounds silly seeing as how it's only been eight months since graduation, but I imagine myself, not going back to grad school, trudging through kind of mediocre jobs, just being kind of loserish for the rest of my life and dashing the promise my high school teachers said I was full of. Just kidding. No, but the mediocre jobs bit is true. The work that is available to me is not interesting. Most work, it seems, isn't interesting. Or at least, I don't find it interesting. I have zero interest in getting a job in publishing or advertising or whatever other industry English majors end up working in. I don't see myself having that kind of job ever, frankly. Not for me. I love writing the book reviews. I mean, I love writing fiction, but I'm also reasonable enough to recognize that I'll never be writing fiction for money. But I'm not too shabby at the book reviews. I plan on submitting reviews to more publications. I think I might have a fighting chance of eventually eking out some of the moneys with the writing the nonfiction and the book reviews. And that would be swell.
But I don't know, maybe grad school isn't incompatible with that kind of writing career. In fact, I was wondering actually if it might not help-- or at least provide me with several years of funding with more spare time than I'd otherwise have. I'm just rattling this stuff off out of my ass now-- I have no idea how the world works-- but I'm thinking maybe there's some kind of para-academic life I could make for myself more easily with a PhD than without. Like, you know what I want to do? Read little essays I wrote on NPR. And, like, write the kind of book reviews they print in the NYRB where you read a bunch of books and then think about them. Thinkedy think think. And then write an essay about some topic that the books deal with but that doesn't even begin to review the books until, like, the penultimate column. And maybe there are teachy things I could do that aren't as limiting lifestyle/ location-wise as being, you know, a serious University professor. I don't know I'm just making this stuff up I could be totally wrong! I know about how insanely difficult it is for English PhDs to get jobs, etc. But what if what I want to get into is magazine writing with maybe a somewhat academicky background? And if I had to work work in addition to writing, would a PhD be helpful? Could I teach, like, community college classes or adult education, part time? I imagine you still need a degree to teach those classes. Are those jobs still so difficult to get?
I suspect that if I could get into grad school, that's that kind of thing that I could, potentially, maybe, if squeeze my brain really really hard, and re-read everything twice, actually be pretty good at. I don't know that that's really the best reason to pursue literary studies, but last week my biggest accomplishment, which made my mother "so proud" that I've "come so far" was that I learned how to clean the bathroom . . .
Posted by hissycat at February 22, 2006 06:37 PM