I Went Galumphing Back

The largest tax on one in graduate school appears to be of one's time. I've been cultivating the habit of saying "no" this semester, and yet, I find myself back in some old yea-saying habits. My time is lacking. I don't have time to turn around. In fact, this morning I slept past my alarm and missed the first half of my class on adult psychodiagnostic issues... BECAUSE I was up until 1am working on a scholarship application (that I won't get) that is due today. I should have said no to the application. But I didn't. I went, reluctantly galumphing back to my old habits of applying for whatever I'm told to and taking on more work than will pay off.

Why am I such an idiot, you may ask?

Well, it's a bit like an addiction. Like a roulette game, the more numbers you play, the more likely you are, statistically speaking, to actually win anything. In the end, when you tally up your hours, it was hardly worth your time... but there you are with all the other slithy toves. I gyre and gimble in the wabe of hope that something will pay off with sustaining moohlah.

And mostly it is the sustinence funding that drives me. Opportunities to get a chunk of cash, for what at first appears to be "no work" is utterly tempting. Who are you to resist it, angh? But then, when you figure that each application takes about 35-40 hours including writing, editing, fact checking, lit reviews, and most of all tracking down your bloodly references who don't bother to submit anything until the last bloomin' second... and let's say you do 5 of these stupid things... Well, you start to realize that $15,000 from the provinicial government was what you earned at $75/hour. Now don't get me wrong, $75/hourX200hours is pretty awesome. But not if all of those 200 hours are worked in a single 3 week period. And you're also working your part time job of being a graduate student!

Am I whinging? If you've never stepped through the brillig doors of higher academia, you'll likely think so. The fact is that I do all that work without ANY guarantee of getting a dime. That's the roullette part.

There is also a tulgey wood of grad student subservience that I whiffle through to the best of my ability. Sometimes your supervisor, or one of the many glorified administrative assistants of your supervisor, will "ask" you do something that you get a kind of frumious feeling about. Something tells you that although this request was posed in the form of a question, that there is no room for saying "no." You have to do it, no matter how time consuming or bizzare the request. I mean, unless you have two family members who have recently suffered strokes and have cancer of varying degrees of severity AND are suddenly thown into taking over your parents' finances (bingo!) you canNOT say "no."

So why didn't I?

Ungh... why the fucking hell hell hellish hell didn't I say no? I owe backtaxes to Father Time and I still went galumphing back to my "Sure I'll Do That Thing Everyone Else Is Too Smart To Do." So I'm getting up at 5am on Friday to drive many many miles to a school rally for Bullying Awareness Week on Friday, THEN cancelling my nice, easy PAID shift at The Org on Sunday so that I can fly to our nation's most quaint island province for another rally on Monday morning.

For the love of DOG, what the hell is the matter with me?

I do have hypotheses other than I'm just an idiot.

1. I need to get away. Even if it is for work, things are just way too stressful and serious on the home front and physically getting away will give me some much-needed psychological distance from my problems.

2. I want some alone time and the best way to get it is in transit.

3. Doing public speaking events taps into an area of brain that has been starved for oxegen since my theatre MA.

4. It gives me something else to think about in a crisis mode other than cancer and money.

5. I'm punishing myself for not being something-enough. Smart enough to win internationally acclaimed scholarships. Thin enough to fit in with the "girls" in my program. On top of it enough to have prevented the financial downfall of my parents. Medical enough to manage their care and prevent them from getting life-threatening diseases.

Breaking free and saying "no" requires constant reevaluation and reaffirmation that you are doing the right thing by leaving your yes-man life behind. It means valuing your own measures of whether or not your life is successful more than other people's, even if those people are instrumental in your day-to-day life or upbringing. Like gambling, it is a monkey that is very difficult to get off of one's back.

C'mon red 75.

So I'll take my vorpal blade in hand... and hopefully something other than me will go snicker-snack.