Deflocked
A pause. A temporary lull between festive diversions and my furtive life. It’s the last weekend before I start the fifth quarter of my graduate program.
It’s been long enough that I am not nervous whatsoever about the coming course load. And long enough for me to feel like I’m not going to accomplish anything notable this quarter. Edging closer to some inevitable department-wide acknowledgement that I’m a good student, and a poor researcher. This PhD feels simultaneously easy and impossible – the work itself is trivial, yet the outcome is unachievable. It’s not for lack of resources, or even an inability to understand my subject. Failure is predicated merely on the fatalistic view of my own trajectory which prevents the fervent spark of inspired research from catching. I’m green wood on a cool evening; building the fire is formulaic, but a achieving a toasty refuge is improbable.
Despite this, I’m looking forward to the return of a regular schedule. I enjoy the somewhat tedious monotony of going to class – the endless reading, the hours of taking notes, and the cathartic final essays. It’s a new year, and it would be disingenuous of me not to admit that the prospect of a fresh beginning doesn’t leave me a little hopeful that this will be the quarter I start making my mark. To be honest, being a mediocre academic is still less disappointing than what I see as my alternative: a completely forgettable woman. This isn’t the note I intended to start this new year on, but fatalism and optimism need not always conflict. I think this is going to be a good year. I have a life I love, with good friends and engaging work. I’m blessed in so many ways. If I could only suppress this feeling of ultimate and unavoidable disappointment, I’d be sitting pretty indeed.