PhD Candidacy and Three Salzarac Cocktails

After my successful defense on Monday, I spent most of the week in celebration with various comrades and old roommates, taking the time to reflect on the months when I started my PhD--mono-laden, depressed, uninspired by a gray, landlocked city of passive-aggressive communicators, extreme racialized poverty, and the wasteful wealth of a suburbs that are a direct result of capitalist headquarters. I never thought I would make it, mostly because of my geography. There was also an outdated course requirement taught by a woman who doesn't keep up on her field, a language requirement facilitated by a department that still thinks flash-card memorization is actual learning, and thousands of dollars in student loans taken out to cover health insurance and my partner's on-and-off unemployment due to the city's devastated nonprofit and service industries. My first six months working on my PhD I thought for sure, I wouldn't make it.

And then the morning of the oral exam arrives. I've bought a new shirt, I'm wearing my uncle's tie for good luck. My slacks are ironed. In fact, to wear down the aggressive anxiety that arrived on Sunday afternoon, I began ironing everything in my closet. Then I rearranged the closet. Then I rearranged the living room. And I did my taxes.

So the morning of the exam: there's nothing to do but review some notes in the library, a mostly-superficial attention on my part reviewing key arguments and terminology, outlines for the exam questions I didn't answer (in each of our fields, we chose one of two) all the while wondering if I should have worn a blazer.

When I arrive at the exam room, it has been double-booked. There is a scrambling for a new location. There is an awkward convergence of my exam team in the hall, pats on my shoulder as we settle into our new room. I give my introduction, a summary of how my fields fit together, written out carefully in three brief pages that I have been told should be summarized even more briefly. So I don't look at the pages. I summarize my summary impromptu. There are questions. There is me interpreting the question. Answering. Reinterpreting. Re-answering. Providing anecdotes. Looking in the eyes of my four committee members, wondering what they are wondering.

Three minutes before the end of my two hours, they ask me to leave the room so they can discuss. They let me back in. I have only had time for a quick run to the bathroom, the bottle of water I brought in with me drained now, my throat still dry. They usher me to the end of the table. "Congratulations." No expression. "You've passed. You're ABD." No expression. "Really?" I might cry. Because I'm not sure why they aren't more excited. Everyone, almost simultaneously, releases themselves from the table by pushing their arms out, gripping the oak edge, and wheeling backwards, a silent glide of wheels across institutional carpet. "Let's go do the paperwork."

I'm exhausted. The process itself has been a great physical challenge of waking, reading, writing. Day in and day out for months.

Later, my advisor takes me out. I drink three sazarac cocktails. She keeps pace.

And then my old roommate, a colleague from my MA program in Boston--she struggled with me as we read Foucault for the first time, witnessed my gut reactions as I heard of the deaths of my uncle and later my grandfather, and poured me beer the evening my MA advisor told me to write one third of my thesis over, two weeks before my defense-- arrived, wheeling her suitcase stuffed with air mattress behind her. She held out her arms, smiled, and said, without my saying anything, "And of course, you passed."

And I think, "Not of course."

But my mouth sweetened by New Orleans rye and bitters and two hours of conversation with my advisor, I am feeling the beginnings of elation. But it will take days for it to settle in.

What's this Blog About??? Oh right....balance.

So I began this blog just about six months ago in celebration of my 28th birthday. My goal was to use the blog as motivation/support/dialogue in my quest to find some balance in my life. My partner was about to move to Chicago to begin her own graduate program. I was in need to losing some weight. I was mid-stream in reading for my comprehensive exams (the things that "prove" I "know" enough to begin my own independent research for my PhD), hence making the weight-loss damn near impossible (I sit for a living, folks). But I think my purpose is a bit bigger than finding balance in my own life; for those maybe unfamiliar with the stereotype, in academia, we're kind of told that academics is everything. Like a lot of professions, if you want to be good, you have to give up your life. I think my purpose with this blog is about figuring out how to transform what we think of as valuable sorts of living. And how academics play into capitalist evaluations of lives.

Let me explain by way of an anecdote.

An old student of mine asked to meet with me to talk about graduate school so a few days ago, we met up for coffee. After a brief catching up (after my Women's Health class, she changed her major to Health Sciences with a minor in Women's Studies!) she asked me to explain the process of applying to graduate school. "My parents can't help me," she said, "and I gave up on applications this past fall when I realized how expensive it was to apply." So we talked. I told her about tuition fee waivers. I told her I thought it was totally fine to take a year or two to re-group between undergrad and grad school. I told her the Americorps application she started to fill out seemed like a great option for developing professional skills (I did two years myself and in the end, despite a few gripes, I think I did some good work). After a long discussion, she asked, "Do you ever, like, get frustrated by people that have so much? By people that don't have to worry when their car breaks down?"

"All the time." Then I paused. Took a breath. I tried to summon some of the wisdom I received from my own mentor in my Masters program. "But I try to remember that money isn't everything. That despite class, we can find things in common with people. But I think that anger is important. It's not fair. And graduate school will be harder for you."

We talked through things like financial aid and loan consolidation. I gave her some resources I have found helpful in my own life. I told her about the miracles of income-based repayment. "Don't apply to graduate school because your desperate and worried about paying off loans," I said, adding, "But don't not apply to graduate school because your desperate and worried about loans." She smiled. I asked her to put together a resume and email me in a few weeks. That we would work on this together. It was just a matter of getting started.

And here's a fact: Graduate School will be harder for her. It's difficult to work 12 hour days when you don't have someone rewarding you with a decompression spring break vacation (this is actually more common than you might think among graduate school colleagues I've met, both at my public university and the private one my partner attends). Its hard to focus on writing awesome term papers when, at the end of the term, you know you will be scrambling to find something--anything--that will help you pay a few months of rent before your teaching stipend is renewed. It feels like defeat when you have to turn down conference presentations because you couldn't come up with the credit cards to pay for the plane ticket (graduate programs don't fund conferences like they used to, now that it seems like every humanities department in every university is facing recession-era funding cuts). But this is why finding balance is important.

Because you can't put all of your energy into building your grad school resume. Because there will always be someone wealthier than you pushing themselves harder. And I'm finding out that's okay.

Because getting here and reading and creatively composing ideas is what life is about, right? And graduate school gives us the intense privilege to do just that. And I worry about universities being businesses. I worry about the legitimacy of ideas being based on the length of your c.v. (and idea I have subscribed to myself). I worry that students with good work and drive are being discouraged because of class politics. And here's how this relates to balance: defeating hierarchical class systems means not playing into twelve hour work days (would you want someone at a chemical plant to have to work 12 hours?), not buying the argument that the more you do, the better life you've lived.

So maybe this is a bit buddhist.

But I feel it's important to encourage more diversity in academia. And doing that means understanding that not everyone will produce a lengthy resume and c.v. (for socioeconomic reasons, for dis/ability reasons, for choosing-to-have-a-life reasons) but their ideas and politics and teaching are better for the balance.