The longer answer goes something like this: I was very good at school. I mean, terrifyingly good. So the natural progression from high school to B.A. to M.A. to Ph.D. bopped along like there was never any other way it could be. Published an article, etc. etc. However, comma, about the time I passed prelims (otherwise known as comps or quals depending on the jargon of one's program), I came to a staggeringly unpleasant realization, namely that I did not enjoy teaching, and more or less as a corollary, I wasn't very good at it.
Now, I don't think I was a bad teacher. But I have friends who are gifted, passionate, brilliant teachers, friends who care about their teaching deeply, and I just wasn't like them. It wasn't what I wanted to do.
And about that same time, I'd gotten an agent, started going to cons, started trying to sell short stories.
So I re-evaluated my life (I'm pained to admit that, yes, I was 25, right on schedule for the trendy "quarter-life crisis"), decided to finish the Ph.D.--because I was already so damn close and because I am nothing if not obstinate like a pig--and stopped teaching. Evaluation of my subsequent mood and demeanor suggested that this was in fact the right thing to do.
I ended up teaching again for a semester in the fall of 2005 (the department had an emergency), and while that was a much more positive experience in general (grad students, especially TAs? are in a craptastic position as far as trying to set boundaries goes), it didn't change my mind.
I was writing fiction the whole time (mostly working on Mélusine and The Virtu, as it happens), and the fact that the academic writing didn't kill the fiction writing (as the academic reading did kill the fiction (and nonfiction) reading for quite some time) stands as proof that the writing was the real thing.
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momijizukamori
no subject
Date: 2007-02-26 02:18 am (UTC)The very short answer is, yes, I did.
The longer answer goes something like this: I was very good at school. I mean, terrifyingly good. So the natural progression from high school to B.A. to M.A. to Ph.D. bopped along like there was never any other way it could be. Published an article, etc. etc. However, comma, about the time I passed prelims (otherwise known as comps or quals depending on the jargon of one's program), I came to a staggeringly unpleasant realization, namely that I did not enjoy teaching, and more or less as a corollary, I wasn't very good at it.
Now, I don't think I was a bad teacher. But I have friends who are gifted, passionate, brilliant teachers, friends who care about their teaching deeply, and I just wasn't like them. It wasn't what I wanted to do.
And about that same time, I'd gotten an agent, started going to cons, started trying to sell short stories.
So I re-evaluated my life (I'm pained to admit that, yes, I was 25, right on schedule for the trendy "quarter-life crisis"), decided to finish the Ph.D.--because I was already so damn close and because I am nothing if not obstinate like a pig--and stopped teaching. Evaluation of my subsequent mood and demeanor suggested that this was in fact the right thing to do.
I ended up teaching again for a semester in the fall of 2005 (the department had an emergency), and while that was a much more positive experience in general (grad students, especially TAs? are in a craptastic position as far as trying to set boundaries goes), it didn't change my mind.
I was writing fiction the whole time (mostly working on Mélusine and The Virtu, as it happens), and the fact that the academic writing didn't kill the fiction writing (as the academic reading did kill the fiction (and nonfiction) reading for quite some time) stands as proof that the writing was the real thing.