Some People Are Master's Students AND PhD Students: Get Over It

As I sit in the computer lab, attempting to tune out the incessant noise of 2 illegal phone conversations, I'm left to ponder my status. I officially started my PhD on Sept. 1st of this year. I started PhD classes and my first PhD practicum. But I haven't defended my Master's thesis. This leaves me in a kind of graduate purgatory from which I soon hope to escape. But first I have to get through, what is it? seven circles of hell? Or risk becoming the dreaded MA year 3. NO one wants that. Not me, not Dr. Supervisor, not Mr. Husband, nobody.

In order to help me finish this hellish task, I have enlisted the help of minions. I have two, very perky, slightly professional undergraduates working away at my behest to qualitatively code a giant pile of data. They claim to be virtually done, and I will meet with them soon to go over their work and resolve their reliability (statistical) issues. I would be excited about this if I had actually slept more than 3 hours at a time in the past week.

Yeah... apparently sleep isn't something that happens easily in graduate purgatory. This is likely a combination of things all stemming from various forms of stress. New school year. New profs. New responsibilities. New practicum. New schedule. Old anxiety disorder, old family dysfunction, old pillow. Now, the pillow I replaced as soon as I realized it was a problem. But I'm not convinced it is the right size or shape for the bizzare curvature of my poor widdle neck. I went for xrays the other day and discovered, lo and behold! that not only is the space for nerves to flow through C3 rather diminished, but I have also lost pretty much all of the curvature in my cervical spine. (Huh, huh. Cervical.) Doc says it's a problem. Great. He sees a lot of this with Dentists and lifetime academics. So get your computer screen up at eye level, get an erganomic chair, practice good wrist and spine posture. I'll get right on it.

Also contibuting to my nocturnal remission is the anxiety caused by concern over my family. I have a real love-hate relationship with these bastards. But when one of them has two strokes in a row (father), another one tells you that they foolishly drove themselves to financial ruin (mother), and another one has worse anxiety than you do and finally decided to open up to you about it after 35 years of bullying the shit out of you (brother) -- well... you feel conflicted. At this point, I have such an intense mixture of genuine concern and cow-combusting anger that I'm surprised I have not held hostage an innocent passerby, demanding that I be given an airplane and directions to Belize lest I remove piece of them and mail them home to mother.

I suppose the fact that I am shutting down by not sleeping is better than shutting down by sticking my head in the toilet or in a bottle of scotch (OMG, SCOTCH! Why didn't I think of that?)

Do you want to know what is keeping me going right now? It is a beautiful memory I have tatooed on my brain, of an absolutely essential 24 hour getaway I took to visit an old dear friend at the end of the summer. It's just past dusk, there is sand a lake so dark our voices disappear into it as we shout across the water. In the background, rolling hills, deep green with trees pointing upwards at the invading stars. It is water that at first is freezing, then warms one deeper than the skin. The converstation is familiar, heartfelt, and joyful. Hearts are as bouyant as the dock and this time sits on top of them staring out into the night.

While I pull myself out of this hell here, my mind is in heaven there.

I keep asking myself why I am here. I know that there is a reason. I just can't think of it right now.

So it's off to a meditation class tonight, to try to keep me sane. I feel ike I need this thesis OUT OF THE WAY before I can feel refreshed. That's fine. Come minions...

Back To It, Whatever The Hell IT is.

Clearly a lot of time has passed since I last wrote to you. This was due to the fact that I just SHUT DOWN for about 3-4 weeks. I turned off my laptop and cellphone and let what hell come as may.

Hoooooo-Nelly! Did it ever come. And it's name is PhD year 1.

What kind of world do we live in where a scholarship application is due on the first day of class? And what kind of world do we live in where one's supervisor can submit your reference letter to said scholarship application's website 11.5 hours AFTER you asked her to get it in because you knew ahead of time that you wouldn't have time to work on the website's formatting because you were running a mini-conference on that aforementioned first day of school?

I ask you.

I'll tell you what kind of world it is. It's a world wherein all of your classmates and colleagues have annoying up-speak accents or valleygirl-vegan patois. It's a world wherein giggling and saying, "Whoops! I'm so stupid!" when you make a totally idiotic mistake eases your professors' insecurities that you are somehow going to overshadow them. It is a world wherein you have to pay up to $20 a day to park on fucking campus. THAT is what kind of freakin' world it is!

I've been back to school for less than four days and have already clocked one major panic attack (see scholarship application, above). The rock garden has reinstated itself between my shoulder blades, and I'm considering deliberately cultivating alcoholism.

Maybe I just have to get used to the water temperature... because it's not the heat that'll kill you, it's the stupidity.