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page. Subject: OT and LONG: Grad school burnout Since you folks are a well-educated and kindly group, I am going to presume on your indulgence long enough to vent and to ask for your thoughts. As the subject line indicates, I have finally faced up to my *extreme* case of graduate school burnout. This is not a vague rumbling. This is not a spot of the blues. This is major, debilitating (in the academic sense), frustrating-beyond-belief CRASH-AND-BURNOUT. I can't work. I can't study. I can't look prelims in the face -- and I'd better, if I want to stay; they're scheduled for January. I can't even think about going on without crying. I simply don't want to be here, don't want to be doing what I'm doing, and can't face what it will lead to. There is essentially one thing keeping me in graduate school right now: the fear of being (and being called) a quitter. I know damned well that if I walk out of this department now, I will *never* set foot in it again. I haven't quit often in my life. Zarquon knows I've wanted to a few times, though *never* like this. I'm not sure how to react to wanting this badly to quit, to wipe the dust of that goddamned graduate school off my shoes for-bloody-ever. But that's *it*. That's all that's holding me. Everything else is screaming to leave. I can explain, but it'll take a while. If you care to, quit reading now and speak up -- especially if you've been where I am. I need badly to hear from some people who have been there. I have enjoyed most of the classes I've taken in graduate school. To a fair extent, I also enjoyed teaching -- it certainly had its great times. *Everything else* about graduate school has sucked large boulders. I can't stay clear of the bureaucracy. I can't keep my big mouth shut when opening it won't change anything. I can't stay out of trouble -- and for me, that is *definitely* a new experience; I can honestly say I'd never been in serious trouble until I hit grad school. I realized tonight that I can't call a single person in the department a friend (caveat: being an introvert, I have a fairly high threshold of friendship, which not everyone shares with me; there are certainly people in the department I like, but I'm not close to anybody there). I've been in this department *four fucking years*, and I haven't a single decent interpersonal relationship to show for it. I haven't much good work to show for it, either. I've done a few things, sure. I'm not terribly impressed with them. I'm certainly sure that a lot of it isn't stuff I want to keep doing, and what I *do* want to keep doing I can do just as well now, at the educational level I've already attained, as later. Rather more easily, as a matter of fact. If I had my academia druthers, I'd do paleography and translation, and teach linguistics. Maybe I'd go into manuscript conservation, if I had half a chance. As I'm going now, I won't get that. What I'll get is research I don't want to do which I'll do so I can keep up in the academic rat race (which looks down its nose at paleography and translation), and I'll be teaching basic Spanish for the rest of my life, heavens help me. I've seen someone go through that -- my father. All he ever got out of his academic career was hernias, heart disease, and heartache. I do *not* want to end up like him. The professors I have admired in my life have generally been mavericks -- but the way they *got* to be mavericks was by playing the Academia Waltz until they were tenured and respected enough that they could do whatever the hell they wanted. I don't think I can play the AW long enough for that, and I also realize it's a dicey proposition; I bet a lot of would-be mavericks simply never make it that far, and end up like my father. And I'm not sure where the rewards are. I've taken about all the good classes I can take here (and the ones I really want to take, I can't take! Because I haven't passed prelims, I have to take bullshit time- serving courses in my department instead of studying Arabic, which I've wanted to do for many a year now). From now on, it's a matter of jumping through hoops -- French knowledge exam, prelims, picking dissertation topic, defending dissertation topic, writing dissertation, defending dissertation -- in order to get the credentials. And after I have the credentials? What then? I know myself well enough to know that I *will* burn out on teaching. Some people are cut out for teaching, just like some are cut out to be childfree. I'm not a born teacher. Moreover, I don't like the atmosphere of professional academia -- don't like conferences, don't like writing papers, don't like politics, don't like lectures (either giving or listening to), don't like the silly stilted excuse for a "social life". I simply cringe at the academic rat race, and always have. I have no particular need for the "recognition of my fellow scholars" -- they don't give a damn about the things I like to do, and in all honesty, a goodly percentage of the "recognition" I've seen is either ass-kissing or thinly disguised jealousy. I also have some basic, fundamental philosophical differences with the way academia is practiced today. I think the tenure system sucks. I think the publishing system sucks. I think the publish-or-perish atmosphere positively *kills* scholarly cooperation, long-term work, and what I will call "coloring outside the lines" -- you know what I mean. The thought of forcing myself, year after year, to conform to this amazingly flawed system in hopes of someday finally being able to set myself free of it -- well, it doesn't wash. It just doesn't wash. My husband, who's just been hired at the place where he was temping, 'lows as how if I submitted my resume to the place he works, I'd more than likely have a $35K job in no time flat. *Damn* that looks attractive, after spending a year teaching for $250 a month first semester and $670 a month second (the pay system changed; long story). We could buy a house, and I could quit pretending that I like living in a one-bedroom apartment with a ridiculous kitchen that's busting at the seams from all the bookshelves. What's even more attractive is the thought of having a life again. I haven't had one of those (except briefly, this summer) since I got into grad school -- no lie; while I was on fellowship I had to go to summer school, every goddamn summer; this is the first summer in four I haven't had to. I could start playing music again, or singing, or acting. I could get off my lazy butt and volunteer. I could go to library school, which has been tempting me. I could put my husband through a master's in linguistics, which I think he's genuinely beginning to want. Most of all, I could have a job where I left work at work. I think all the grad students and former grad students here will understand me when I say it's all but impossible to leave grad school at grad school. Right now, that's the straw that's breaking this camel's back. I need to study for prelims, if I'm going to pass them. That's stark reality. At this point, I'd rather eat a rat. Raw. Furthermore, I can *never have studied enough* for prelims. There's always umpteen more authors I haven't read, and umpteen more theories I don't know about (and don't care, either, which is worse). If it were a project I could do, and finish, and have it over with, I could handle it. This kind of open-ended, never-finished, unfocused mandate is driving me batty. (Prolly has something to do with that J part of the IXTJ.) I'm not talking out my hat, either; I went through something very similar to this with the master's exam, which was a hellish experience with no redeeming value whatsoever (even in hindsight). When I remember the shaking, half-mad banshee I was before and during those exams, and when I realize I'm turning into that again -- I find I can't fathom why I'm doing this to myself. And, of course, one point of philosophical difference between me and every graduate department in creation is that I DO NOT SEE THE POINT OF ALL THESE GODDAMN TESTS! If I'm a crappy student, surely four years of classes is long enough to realize that! It's not like those tests *prepare* you for anything you'll ever have to do in academia; once you're past prelims, you'll never have to take another written test again. So I can't even justify this torture by telling myself it's *good* for me! I have a candle burning now, which I burned at my wedding, for the sake of a man who would have been there if he could. He was a professor, mentor, and friend of mine while I was an undergraduate. He died suddenly my last semester in college. I miss him right now more than I can express, because I could always talk to him, and he always gave good advice. The thing is, I can't even imagine *him* telling me to stay, and he always had the fullest and freest confidence in my academic ability, he liked academia (in a maverick sort of fashion which was always fully aware of how much The System sucked), and he firmly believed I would go a long way in academia. I think he would be disappointed in me right now -- and that hurts -- but he was a very wise man and he would probably admit that I don't have much to gain by staying. So. Stay or go? If I stay, how do I even begin to pick up the shards of my confidence in academia and my academic future? Dorothea Subject: OT: Ex-gradding In article <#pv7hK$C#GA.318@nih2naaa.prod2.compuserve.com>, "nails" <jdupaski@compuserve.com> wrote: > I know I shouldn't ask this because it's probably already been discussed, I burned out. Completely and utterly. I got to the point where I was sleeping one night in seven (sleeping at *all*, I mean!), eating twice what I should have been with the fond hope it would keep me going despite no sleep, feeling rotten... I could not study, could not read, could not relax, could not work, could not play, could not cook... It was too much. So I'm leaving, getting OUT OUT OUT OUT *OUT* before I go any crazier. I withdrew from my last class today. Earlier in the semester, I had withdrawn from an independent study which I had taken on in the first place because of a lie from the department ("you need six credits or we won't let you teach", they said -- well, they don't have ONE GODDAMN WORD IN WRITING that supports that). A few weeks ago, I got a thoroughly rude and nasty letter from my advisor asking me how I dared do such a thing without consulting him (among other things not germane to this story). Well, that decided me then and there that I wasn't going to suffer through prelims, and I wasn't going to pretend any longer that I had intentions of going on. So I told them that. Apparently nobody cares; nobody has responded to the letter, including my advisor. Fine. If they don't care, NEITHER DO I, DAMMIT. Last weekend, I got a reassessed fee in the mail. The Bursar apparently still thinks I am taking six credits, and they think I owe them fifty bucks for some reason I *still* do not understand. I went to the Bursar today to try to straighten this out. After much window-hopping, I was told "Nothing we can do. Go talk to the Graduate School." Fuck that, I said to myself, and I went back to my office and withdrew from the university via touchtone (wasn't sure I could do that, but apparently I could, 'cuz I have!). If they want their fifty bucks, they can sue me. I am not going to fight with them any more. They don't fight fair, and never have. I wasn't actually doing the work in my one remaining seminar anyway, so it's just as well. And it was amazing, the lift withdrawing gave me -- I practically danced into my first class (I'm still teaching, of course) because I felt FREE for the first time in freakin' years. I am currently jobhunting. Last Tuesday, at the county personnel office, I clocked in at a blistering 96 words per minute, so I expect the county will be able to find a place for me. They pay pretty well for entry-level clerical; $12+ to start, and quickly up to $14. I'm also sending resumes hither and yon, and have gotten a nibble or two. Y la universidad puede besarme el culo. Dorothea |