disaffected

[truepenny]

Finished reading Stephen Greenblatt's Hamlet in Purgatory. Fascinating in bits, interesting in parts, tedious in places. I am, I admit it, a freak for close-reading, and close-reading is not one of Greenblatt's great skills. He's brilliant at the New Historicist gesture he himself coined, the linking of a literary text to a cultural one, but reading the text is not really what he's about.

But he said some very useful things about Hamlet, and I had to read him anyway (because he's Stephen Greenblatt and he's writing about something related to my dissertation topic). So it's good to have that out of the way. Now I just have to integrate him into the Hamlet chapter, and possibly a couple other places.



I'm starting to get worried about that whole when I finish the dissertation idea. I've been working on this thing--or avoiding working on this thing--since 1999. Since 1996 I've been making my way up the ziggurat of my department's degree program. What the fuck am I going to do with myself when I'm done?

On one level, I know the answer to that: I'm going to write. And if I don't get lucky and sell a novel soon, I'm going to have to get some kind of job, as well. But that's not quite what I mean. This dissertation has been a part of how I think about who I am for four years--and the idea of the dissertation has been skulking about the edges of my psyche for years before that. I don't even know how long, because I don't remember exactly when, in my youthful ignorance and naïveté, I decided I wanted to get a Ph.D. It was well before I really knew what it entailed; I know that. It could be as much as fifteen years.

It's been a long, tedious, stressful, sometimes hateful process, but it's there, like the doorframe I walk into maybe twice a month. If the doorframe weren't there, I wouldn't walk into it--but then the house would fall down.

I don't think the house is going to fall down when the doorframe of the Ph.D. is gone, but I do think it may totter a little. I know it's going to feel very weird. It will be the first time in my life since the age of four, when I started kindergarten, when I don't know what the next hoop is I need to jump through. I think one reason I've stayed in school so long is that I'm very good at jumping through hoops, and I'm comfortable with it. That's not a virtue, any more than it's a defect. It's just part of the way I got put together.

I don't want to jump through academic hoops any more. I don't want to jump through hoops at all. But if I'm not going to jump through hoops, if I'm not going to let the lion-tamer's whip motivate me, what do I do with myself aside from sit around and scratch my fleas? Is the writing going to be enough work for my massively over-clocked brain?

I don't know. I guess I'll find out when I finish the dissertation.

Comments

[heleninwales.livejournal.com]

Even though my academic career has been scattered and unorthodox, I understand what you mean. You had a huge goal, and now it's gone. (Or will be very shortly.) Now you have all the rest of your life to do something purposeful with. At various points in my life this has happened to me and my reaction has always been some variant of, "Aaaaaaargh! Heeeeeelp!"

Two things to remember really. Most of life doesn't have nice clear cut goals and is experienced simply by MuddlingThrough^TM. Also you will probably change your job/career several times during your working life, so don't think that you have to have the perfect job immediately on finishing at college (assuming you are and that you don't have a teaching post there or something). You will almost undoubtedly find yourself doing things that seemed like a good idea at the time, but with the benefit of hindsight are really sucky. But don't worry if something doesn't work out as you thought. You don't have to do it for ever. You can always try something else.

However, I have, for a long time, thought that in many ways school and college in no way fits you for what you have to do for the rest of your life. For example the constant moving on to another goal produced in me an inability to do stuff over and over again, which is necessary in most jobs to a greater or lesser extent.

[libskrat]

Dear heart, there is a whole big world out here. Astonishing stuff in it. You've been ignoring it, neglecting it; all you have to do when the diss is done is let it come back to you.

Trust me. You'll pass the time. :)

[rysmiel.livejournal.com]

I don't want to jump through hoops at all. But if I'm not going to jump through hoops, if I'm not going to let the lion-tamer's whip motivate me, what do I do with myself aside from sit around and scratch my fleas? Is the writing going to be enough work for my massively over-clocked brain?

The thought of you sitting around scratching metaphorical fleas for more than the time it takes to get your breath back after finishing something just does not fit within my suspension of disbelief. The writing will expand, or other projects will come to you.

*sigh* since finishing Leonard, I've been feeling mentally very odd, not really able to do anything with writing fiction, and strangely partially blocked on reading in that very intense and intellectually focused material is working, and very lightweight is working - I'm having to stop myself scarfing down every unread Nero Wolfe I own. Am eyeing up The Book of the New Sun for a reread, lots of goodness at different levels there.

I blame this on grant app, which is due by September 15th, and on getting database into a suitable state for reviewers of grant app to read, which will happen by the start of October if at all. It's a five-year grant, and it's five years since I handed in my PhD, which is making me wonder if this is some weird modern value of Teind. Finishing my PhD didn't do anything like this to my reading or writing, but this time isn't screwing up my eating or sleeping patterns; not sure whether that's a net win.

[oursin.livejournal.com]

What everyone has said. The only thing worse than finishing, and finding this enormous space in one's life, and the postpartum depression, and all the other stuff, would be not finishing, and having it dragging around with one like an albatross, begging to be shelved alongside E. Casaubon's Key to All Mythologies.