Thursday, November 16, 2006
remember when
i was so excited about twin pleasures becoming one?
i was wrong. they don't combine to make Fun, they combine to make crack. i cannot stop. i search obsessively. and i do not have time to be doing this. two 20 page papers due in mid december and graduate school applications for which i must have a stellar statement of purpose (which, as its being described to me, is basically a dissertation abstract, which might normally take me months to get straight) and a writing sample that is one of those mid december papers because i have no other samples longer than seven pages except for the undergraduate thesis which failed to get me into PhD programs last year.
the answer is not to freak out, the answer is to continue calmly placing one foot in front of the other. but yikes. as if this weren't enough, i'm hitting a serious stretch of dunce-cap wearing. class discussion does not make sense to me. it's like that scene (no spoiler) in six feet under when nate gets too high and everyone else's talking turns to gibberish and, anguished, he belts out I can't understand what you're saying!
i'm not an actual dunce, but my big fear is that i can't play this game well enough, or speak the language with enough fluency to fool people. it is possible that everyone else is thinking the same thing, and this has been pointed out to me, but that doesn't really assuage my terror that i have given my all to career #2 only to eat mud puddle in the academic rat race.
so last night as i basted in my worry and ate hershey's kisses and trolled the internet like a nocturnal beastie with OCD while trying not to think of my non-existent thesis on queer relationality, i thought: five more years of this, huh?
i was wrong. they don't combine to make Fun, they combine to make crack. i cannot stop. i search obsessively. and i do not have time to be doing this. two 20 page papers due in mid december and graduate school applications for which i must have a stellar statement of purpose (which, as its being described to me, is basically a dissertation abstract, which might normally take me months to get straight) and a writing sample that is one of those mid december papers because i have no other samples longer than seven pages except for the undergraduate thesis which failed to get me into PhD programs last year.
the answer is not to freak out, the answer is to continue calmly placing one foot in front of the other. but yikes. as if this weren't enough, i'm hitting a serious stretch of dunce-cap wearing. class discussion does not make sense to me. it's like that scene (no spoiler) in six feet under when nate gets too high and everyone else's talking turns to gibberish and, anguished, he belts out I can't understand what you're saying!
i'm not an actual dunce, but my big fear is that i can't play this game well enough, or speak the language with enough fluency to fool people. it is possible that everyone else is thinking the same thing, and this has been pointed out to me, but that doesn't really assuage my terror that i have given my all to career #2 only to eat mud puddle in the academic rat race.
so last night as i basted in my worry and ate hershey's kisses and trolled the internet like a nocturnal beastie with OCD while trying not to think of my non-existent thesis on queer relationality, i thought: five more years of this, huh?
