... and now, he might reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life, and eat, and live forever" - therefore the Lord God sent him forth from the garden of Eden, to till the ground from which he was taken."
Where is Eve in all of this? Doesn't she become like one of them, too? Can't she reach out her hand every once in a while and take also from the tree of life? After all, wasn't she the one with the gumption to talk to the serpent in the first place? There she is, merrily driving the plot along, tra la la, with precious little help from Adam, thank you very much. She even gets a name and a dressmaker for Chrissakes. And then bam! suddenly, she's invisible. That's some crappy narration right there, I tell you what. You don't just drop the most dazzling character right in the middle of the story. That's just plain out bad storytelling. Ask anybody. Hell, even Hollywood knows that.
But I'm getting sidetracked. I didn't intend for this to be a narrative analysis of biblical characterizations of Eve. I'll save that for the dissertation. Which I am currently not working on. But let's not talk about that, either. That way lies intestinal disorder and anxiety.
I was talking to a friend last night, and something hit me. I'm going to be finished soon. Done. My dissertation will be finished, printed, submitted, defended, revised, and submitted again. And then I'll walk across that stage, a fluffy velour beret perched on my cute little bob, and I will be done.
Now, normally, this would fill me with panic. Change is scary. And I've been a student for twelve years. In fact, I have been a student my entire adult life. I'm not sure I know how to be a grown up without being a student. Some of my grad school colleagues have begun making that transition to adulthood while still in school - getting married, buying houses, having kids, investing in RRSPs. Not me. I still live like a student. I have a grad student apartment, grad student furniture, no savings to speak of, no car, no husband, no kids, no life insurance. I am free to spend my spare cash entirely on shoes. Why, this very afternoon, I'm going out to buy myself some new red boots. Why? Well, I had a dream last night that I had red boots. It's that carefree, laissez-faire, devil take me where he may attitude of someone who is still a student. My actual age doesn't matter. I'm a student, not a grown up, and I don't have to make grown up choices.
Yet.
See, that "yet" should scare me. Yets have a tendency to become nows in time, and all those yets that have been nipping at my heels are, quite suddenly, on top of me. But I'm not scared, and that's the confusing part.
Liminal periods are crazy, wonky, redefining times. I've never been a fan of redefinition. Ask anyone. I hate the unpredictable. Comfortable, complacent, patterned, predictable, known - these are things I can get behind. But unstructured upheaval? Change? Not so much. And yet, here I am, excited about the whole damn thing. I'm about to move out of the garden, to assume an entirely new identity, and I can't wait to redecorate. Anything could happen. I can become anybody now.
All hell is about to break loose. Fortunately, I've developed some sympathy for the devil. Hopefully, he'll take that into account when he starts playing his tricksy games with me.
Sunday, April 5, 2009
Wednesday, February 25, 2009
Then the eyes of both were opened...
.... and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together and made loincloths for themselves.
I figured, after twelve years of university, that I knew what it meant to be "a scholar."
I had no idea. Not the slightest clue. Hell, I was so blind, I didn't even realize that there were people out there who could see.
Well, that's not entirely true. There were little clues. The frustration of banging my head against a brick wall in my term papers. The sense that I was just repackaging others' ideas into nifty little categories with witty little catchphrases. The dim knowledge that there was some ineffable difference between the papers I was presenting at conferences, and the papers presented by other academics. But I didn't know what all those little clues meant.
Last year, I taught a few courses in the English Lit department at my alma mater. The faculty invited me to sit in on a meeting to discuss the direction of one of the intro courses. And at one point, one of the senior faculty members looked at me and said that she thought that courses like the Theories and Methods course could easily be taught by someone like me. I got all bug-eyed and incredulous. Why, no! I wasn't prepared to teach a course like that! "I haven't been tested and accepted into the academy yet." Such a cop out. I must have known that something was missing, that there was some key bit that I hadn't quite figured out yet. But I didn't know what it was.
Well, I do now.
All the academic work I've done to date has been little more than a series of literature reviews. All of it. Even my Masters thesis. My favourite modus operandi has been to take two or three scholars or schools of thought, and pit them against each other in a show of strength. A Punch and Judy puppet show, really. I've also been really big on categorization, and have become quite adept at putting theories and methods into neat little boxes. A heuristic device, I call it. "Oh, this? It's just a heuristic device. My own little thing." I even renamed the ecofeminist critique of the eroticized environmentalist. I called it "Erin Brockovich Syndrome." Catchy, no?
I might also throw in some creative examples to illustrate my points, and call that "scholarship." Those little illustrations? Those were my "original contributions" to the discipline. I'd long since given up the dream of being a ground-breaking scholar, so these miniatures drawn on my little bit of ivory were satisfying enough.
All that criticism of others' work, all that time I spent dissecting the minutiae of this theory vs that theory, this method vs that method, taking it apart and putting it back together in different ways - I did all of this without ever really having put any of those theories or methods into practice myself. Don't get me wrong - I think that all this grappling in the mud has been necessary. It's what has prepared me to do the work I intend to do from now on. Learning is a process, and this has been part of that process. But somehow, I thought that what I was already doing was The Thing Itself. Instead, I've been like a sports commentator or a fashion magazine editor, criticizing from the sidelines. Sure, maybe I'd played extramural softball in junior high school, or put together a smashing outfit from bits I'd picked up at the mall. But these are a far cry from actually doing the thing itself.
It's a whole other world to be creating something. This must be why so many artists disdain critics.
As it turns out, writing a dissertation isn't so much a test as a process. I'm reinventing myself, quite literally. Moving from student to scholar. I had absolutely no idea.
I figured, after twelve years of university, that I knew what it meant to be "a scholar."
I had no idea. Not the slightest clue. Hell, I was so blind, I didn't even realize that there were people out there who could see.
Well, that's not entirely true. There were little clues. The frustration of banging my head against a brick wall in my term papers. The sense that I was just repackaging others' ideas into nifty little categories with witty little catchphrases. The dim knowledge that there was some ineffable difference between the papers I was presenting at conferences, and the papers presented by other academics. But I didn't know what all those little clues meant.
Last year, I taught a few courses in the English Lit department at my alma mater. The faculty invited me to sit in on a meeting to discuss the direction of one of the intro courses. And at one point, one of the senior faculty members looked at me and said that she thought that courses like the Theories and Methods course could easily be taught by someone like me. I got all bug-eyed and incredulous. Why, no! I wasn't prepared to teach a course like that! "I haven't been tested and accepted into the academy yet." Such a cop out. I must have known that something was missing, that there was some key bit that I hadn't quite figured out yet. But I didn't know what it was.
Well, I do now.
All the academic work I've done to date has been little more than a series of literature reviews. All of it. Even my Masters thesis. My favourite modus operandi has been to take two or three scholars or schools of thought, and pit them against each other in a show of strength. A Punch and Judy puppet show, really. I've also been really big on categorization, and have become quite adept at putting theories and methods into neat little boxes. A heuristic device, I call it. "Oh, this? It's just a heuristic device. My own little thing." I even renamed the ecofeminist critique of the eroticized environmentalist. I called it "Erin Brockovich Syndrome." Catchy, no?
I might also throw in some creative examples to illustrate my points, and call that "scholarship." Those little illustrations? Those were my "original contributions" to the discipline. I'd long since given up the dream of being a ground-breaking scholar, so these miniatures drawn on my little bit of ivory were satisfying enough.
All that criticism of others' work, all that time I spent dissecting the minutiae of this theory vs that theory, this method vs that method, taking it apart and putting it back together in different ways - I did all of this without ever really having put any of those theories or methods into practice myself. Don't get me wrong - I think that all this grappling in the mud has been necessary. It's what has prepared me to do the work I intend to do from now on. Learning is a process, and this has been part of that process. But somehow, I thought that what I was already doing was The Thing Itself. Instead, I've been like a sports commentator or a fashion magazine editor, criticizing from the sidelines. Sure, maybe I'd played extramural softball in junior high school, or put together a smashing outfit from bits I'd picked up at the mall. But these are a far cry from actually doing the thing itself.
It's a whole other world to be creating something. This must be why so many artists disdain critics.
As it turns out, writing a dissertation isn't so much a test as a process. I'm reinventing myself, quite literally. Moving from student to scholar. I had absolutely no idea.
Wednesday, February 4, 2009
And when the woman saw
... that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat...
I should be writing my dissertation. My funding runs out in exactly 6 months and 27 days.
What was I thinking?
There I was, 28 years old, an idealistic undergrad, getting an English degree, of all things. And I wanted to go to grad school. But no, no, no, not in English Lit. Why, that would just be foolish. Everyone knows that the English Lit job market is abysmal. So I chose instead to do graduate work in my secondary major, Religious Studies. Because that is infinitely more practical.
I bit the apple. I drank the Kool Aid. I was mesmerized by the fantasy of being a professor in a black turtleneck and a beret, delighting the classroom by day and uncovering philosophical wonders by the glow of candlelight at night.
And now, here I am: 35 years old, ostensibly finishing a PhD in Religious Studies, twelve years of postsecondary education under my belt, 80K in student loans, and zero job prospects in sight.
Do I regret it? Meh, not really. Although writing this dang-blam dissertation is like pulling teeth most days, I actually enjoy my research. It's sexy and exciting. And I love teaching. I would just like the opportunity to continue doing it. I've taught, and I've researched, and I'm no longer under the spell of my romantic visions of what it means to be A Professor. It's not glamorous. It's not exotic. And not every professor gets to be Indiana Jones. And you know what? I still want it.
Well, that's me in a nutshell. Welcome to my world.
I should be writing my dissertation. My funding runs out in exactly 6 months and 27 days.
What was I thinking?
There I was, 28 years old, an idealistic undergrad, getting an English degree, of all things. And I wanted to go to grad school. But no, no, no, not in English Lit. Why, that would just be foolish. Everyone knows that the English Lit job market is abysmal. So I chose instead to do graduate work in my secondary major, Religious Studies. Because that is infinitely more practical.
I bit the apple. I drank the Kool Aid. I was mesmerized by the fantasy of being a professor in a black turtleneck and a beret, delighting the classroom by day and uncovering philosophical wonders by the glow of candlelight at night.
And now, here I am: 35 years old, ostensibly finishing a PhD in Religious Studies, twelve years of postsecondary education under my belt, 80K in student loans, and zero job prospects in sight.
Do I regret it? Meh, not really. Although writing this dang-blam dissertation is like pulling teeth most days, I actually enjoy my research. It's sexy and exciting. And I love teaching. I would just like the opportunity to continue doing it. I've taught, and I've researched, and I'm no longer under the spell of my romantic visions of what it means to be A Professor. It's not glamorous. It's not exotic. And not every professor gets to be Indiana Jones. And you know what? I still want it.
Well, that's me in a nutshell. Welcome to my world.
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