A Quiet Life (as a PhD student)

I completed (survived) my first week.
There were a couple of things that struck me this week, and as I think about it today, they all revolve around my quiet life.

In one of my classes, the professor discussed the job market, and how (though unfair) hiring committees looked at whether or not you were single/married, pregnant/had kids as pluses or minuses in hiring you. That even though they're not supposed to ask, visual cues often make it so they don't have to, and that fair or not, these things influence their decision on whether or not to hire you.
All I could think about was my profile description for this blog- "I don't have a husband or children, I have Nehi and students".
Furthermore, this week, I overheard a lot of conversations from other graduate students about having to work in their office, as there was no way to work at home, or people talking about working in diners, or coffee shops, or other places, because again, they couldn't work from home. I am lucky. I have an office AT home. It's perfectly conducive to working, has all my books, a nice, bright space, and has the added bonus that no one can bitch if I smoke.

Another comment made this week was the problem with juggling classes, work, class prep, and still have time for family. The tone was somewhere along the lines of "If you don't take time for family, and only work, there's something soulless about you". It instantly pissed me off. I am not somehow lesser because I've chosen to have THIS life, and not THAT one. In fact, I'm pretty sure that in the long run, it makes me a better candidate for the job market.
You see, I have a quiet life. I don't go out, I don't spend money on lots of things, I don't have multiple things crying for my attention. I have work, and I have Nehi. Nehi is perfectly happy so long as she gets her two walks a day, hanging out in the yard while I read, and I remember to feed her. And funny enough, I'm satisfied with the same. We don't need much.
But something else started to hit me this week- the divide between being a grad student at 22, and being one at 37. You see, I've had a "real" job. I've had people yell at me, and be rude, and make every day of going to work a living hell. In addition to that job, I've worked two others. I average that for the last several years, I've worked upwards of seventy hours a week. In addition to that I've still managed to present papers at conferences, write a book chapter, outline my thesis, and write for numerous online entities, including 8 Days a Geek as a reviewer, Infinite Earths for Billy Proctor, while also writing book reviews for academic journals, and this blog, in addition to the scholarly blog I write that chronicles my research. I still spent time with Nehi (and my Dad), still read lots of popular fiction, still went to movies. In other words, I still had a life. It just wasn't YOUR life. These were all things I cared about, so I made sure I did them. It helps that I'm disgustingly organized, but it's not a superpower- I have as many hours in the day to do things as anyone else, I just choose to focus my time on different things.
And the last couple of years, juggling all of these things, has prepped me for returning to grad school. In fact, THIS is all I've been working towards for the last three years. And in some ways, I think it gives me a leg up. Because I'm not being thrown into the deep end, I've been swimming there for a long time.
I admit, that there are several advantages that come with my background.

• I'm not worried about teaching, I could do it in my sleep after 12 years. Because I know material and concepts, lesson planning if fairly effortless, as is making materials. And I'm certainly not worried about how to reach my students, or how to break down concepts.
• So far, I'm not hampered by my TA fellowship and pay because I am continuing to teach online, and I cashed out my retirement, so there's a nest egg. I don't have to worry about paying bills, or buying books I want. I'm not going on a spending spree anytime soon (because I'm as anal about money as I am about everything else) but financial worries aren't keeping me up at night.
• I've done more, with less, for years. When you live two hours from the nearest city, and have no access to academic libraries or research, your life as an academic is hard. Yet I still managed to do the things I did. All of a sudden, I have access to a library, and online journals. Easier can't help but be better.

So, people can keep their judgements to themselves about how not having a family somehow makes me lesser than others.
I for one, will enjoy my quiet life. And maybe, just maybe, my quiet life will prove to be a better, faster track to the tenure track job I want. If not, it's still the life that makes me happy. And in the end, that's what you want.

TA Orientation and (almost) the First Day of School

I had an epic fail today. I'd spent all week in TA orientation, so had decided to skip this morning's Graduate School Introductions in order to get settled in my office. It was a crap day from the start-

• my key doesn't work
• the lock shop, which could fix/replace my key is closed on Fridays
• turns out that my office has three desks, and four people share it
• The stuff I wanted to put up, I left at home, in my TA folder that I took out this morning, trying to lighten my load

 So, I was in my office for a grand total of one hour before heading home in defeat.

 So, today was not so great.

The week was, well, a week of orientation. No one likes meetings. No one especially likes meetings that aren't divided by skill level. However, I was excited to see an old professor, who is teaching a class on folklore and horror that I'm going to try and sit in on since that's the type of course I hope to teach myself, and I want to see how he does it. It was also nice to meet most of my professors, and the Rhet/Comp guys are all nice, and very helpful.
I got one snarky comment about how I shouldn't have let people know I was a tech geek, to which I calmly responded that I didn't mind helping people. One person was short with me and hurt my feelings, and one person was nasty about me having my work done. I say law of averages, that in a week of meeting 100+ new people, three negative experiences still put me on the plus side.
I didn't get to meet my Old Norse professor, because she's emeritus, or the professor I'm already eyeing for chair of my thesis committee (she wasn't there this week).

Faculty stalking will come later in the week I guess.

My biggest thing is that I want to get going. I want to get started with teaching, and my classes, and figure it all out from there. Because even though my first six weeks are planned out (ENG 101 runs on a pre-scripted first unit) and even though my first week's lessons are finished, and my Blackboard shell is up and running, those are all treading water things. Valuable for keeping you afloat, but not really exciting.

I do have to say that part of my anxiety about this is that I don't do well without my routines, and right now, I don't know what my daily and weekly routines are, so that makes me anxious. Perfect example- it took everything in my power today not to have a meltdown about that stupid door sign. And then, when I came home to work, I realized that switching to a planner different than the one I've used for over a decade was making me nuts. The one I always use is Jim Burke's Teacher Day Planner, which has everything- planning space and a yearly calendar (which runs August to July, so handy). I originally went with a separate ward planner, and At-A-Glance calendar  because I thought the Burke planner would label me as too high school (already got the vibe that I should shut up about my teaching experience).
But as I sat at my desk at home this afternoon, trying to label with Post-Its, and color code, shuffling between different things, I realized that I just couldn't make it work. So I gave in and ordered the Burke. And paid extra money to get it here as soon as possible.
I know that seems like a silly, trivial thing, but it is the collection of all of those silly things that help me create a protective shell. I am nigh on bullet proof if I have my organizer, and color coded Post-Its. But without? I can't process new information, I forget things, I feel tense, and anxious.

I'm looking forward to my first day of class, and definitely looking forward to being able to plan my own lessons, although I certainly understand why they require new TAs to teach the same thing for six weeks.
So far, I'm excited about the accessibility of the staff, and the office staff has all been great. I've learned my way about campus, and things are starting to look familiar.
I guess too, after so many years of workings TOWARDS this, I just want to go ahead and get started. Because once I start, it's just a long check list of things to do to earn my PhD and get out and get a job. And I want to start feeling like I'm making progress.

So, I'm going to take a deep breath, embrace the routines I have (trying not to clutch them to my chest like Duckie), and figure it out.

To my anxiety I say:

Devil as Image and Icon

I see things in patterns- how colors, forms, and lines come together. When I take notes in a book, it is the pattern my highlighting and notes form that are what I learn and reference, and that make it easy to find references, not the individual words on the page.
So, perhaps it makes perfect sense as I begin to think more and more on my thesis, and the introduction, that it is the images that keep popping up in my mind.

To start, if you're going to write your dissertation on Satan, it's hard to miss the imagery. If you're going to trace his history in a way that hasn't been done before, the art, the images, the icon, becomes part of the story that gets told.
It's also probably no surprise to anyone who knows that my research interests also lie with popular culture, that the image below is how I see this unfolding. Large, gigantic images on a screen, that appear one way to the audience, and then come to appear in a completely different way upon examination.

Depending on your background, you may recognize the classical artistic interpretations of Satan first. But perhaps recognize is not the word. You may not recognize the context, or the artist, but you KNOW who the figure is.
Maybe the Satan of popular culture is more familiar to you- Al Pacina, Robert DeNiro, Peter Stormare, Viggo Mortensen. Perhaps less with these than the classical art, but you probably recognize the character they play, even if you haven't seen the movie they play it in. While the imagery of Satan has changed, and evolved over the years, he is still a character you KNOW.




So HOW do you know? What is it that allows this character to be recognizable across so many different generations, platforms, and backgrounds?
Is it that religion is so prevalent in everyone's every day lives? I would argue not.
Is it that he's remained static, and therefore it's the icon people recognize and not the character? Again, I would argue not, as the brief slideshow above demonstrates.
Is it instead that WHO this character is, WHAT he represents is so much a part of our common knowledge, that we are able to KNOW him, even if we can't place the details? Yes. It is this folkloric trait, this characteristic of Satan that has not been explored, and which I plan on illustrating in depth.

Fall Classes: "Always Be Closing"

Well, it's almost here. The thing I've worked towards for the past few years- my PhD program.
Classes start in little over a week, and I find this quote/scene going through my head.

"Always Be Closing".

If you're going to work towards something, something you want, then it only makes sense that everything you do be done to reach that goal.
 
One of the required books for one of my classes is Graduate Study for the 21st Century. I enjoyed it, even if a lot of the advice is advice I've encountered online and in blogs the last few years.  One thing in particular that struck me was the advice to have a plan, from the first day of class, on how each class you took could help you write your dissertation, and that each class should be chosen with that purpose in mind.
Now, I realize that for someone entering having just finished undergraduate, in a combined MA/PhD program, this may seem unrealistic. But with someone with a Masters in Education, and one in English literature, this seems perfectly reasonable.


So, my class schedule:

	Monday	Tuesday	Wednesday	Thursday	Friday
8	NCVPS Office Hours
9
10
11
12	12-1250 ENG 101	1230-145 ENGL 500 Introduction to the Professional Study of English	12-1250 ENG 101	1230-145 ENGL 500 Introduction to the Professional Study of English	12-1250 ENG 101
1
2	2-315 ENG 551 Old Norse		2-315 ENG 551 Old Norse
3
4	4-630 ENG 537 Teaching Composition		4-630 ENG 537 Teaching Composition	4-630 ENG 551 Uppity Medieval Women
5
6
7

• ENGL 500: Introduction to the Professional Study of English
• ENGL 537: Teaching Composition
• ENGL 551: Uppity Medieval Women
• ENGL 551/LING 590: Old Norse Language and Literature

 I am starting this experience knowing exactly what I want to write my dissertation on.

How Milton's Satan in Paradise Lost is our modern concept and tracing the history of this character from its folkloric representation, beginning with Old Norse mythology and Loki, to Milton's incarnation.

I've been researching, and framing, and revising this idea for three years (four years ago it began to niggle in my brain with a Milton class I took, three years ago it took shape under another class). Since then, I've been using conference presentations, and blogs to refine it.

So I chose my classes carefully (well, the two I could choose, the first two are mandatory for all incoming students. Having three years experience presenting at conferences, and twelve years of teaching experience, I'm interested to learn about the school's culture and norms through these classes).
I took the Uppity Medieval Women class because the professor is a medievalist (obviously) and I'm thinking that with so much of my research being 700-1500, that a medievalist will be able to help the most with advice. Also, the idea of how women of the medieval age viewed devils, and the Devil, is one that I haven't encountered in my research. (So that's a gap I need to address, and if I can't address, point out this strange gap).
I took the Old Norse, because for me, my argument starts with Loki and Old Norse mythology, migrating over to England with the Anglo-Saxons and influencing English folklore. I had to take it as a linguistics course (it's listed as both) because it is also listed ENGL 551, and the computerized registration wouldn't let me register for the same extension, but different courses.

I'm not ashamed to say that from day one I plan on looking for people that can help me write my dissertation. That I'm looking for an adviser, and for classes that will add chapters to it. Another great piece of advice in Graduate Study for the 21st Century is that you should start fleshing out your dissertation AS you're taking these classes (from day 1) while the research and notes are all fresh in your head, instead of returning to it two or three years in when it's just a stack of paper. That each class should be part of a chapter, or a chapter by itself. 
This makes perfect sense to me, so that's the plan.
I was also able last week to pull together the last couple of years of notes and such and come up with a working outline, which I'm hoping will be helpful in selecting an adviser, showing exactly where I want to go.

Thesis Prospectus Outline

Introduction:

• Current scholarship
• polemic
• heretical tendencies
• Forsyth, sources
• Russell, devil character
• function as epic/hero
• Gaps
• type of character versus history of character and/or sources Milton used
• What this ISN’T
• examination of demons/devils

Chapter 1: Satan’s Personality in Different Works and What it Reveals (Loki)

Chapter 2: Physicality

• precedents
• physical characteristics
• how it changes through time
• what these changes represent
• images

Chapter 3: Actions

• Old Norse myths
• medieval morality plays
• Jacobean plays
• Shakespeare

Chapter 4: How Satan is Reflection on National Identity

• Anglo-Saxons
• Heroic myths
• English folklore
• German folklore/fairy tales → Anglo-Saxons?

Chapter 5/6/8: How the Character has been used by factions

• Church →  sermons
• Malleus Maleficarum
• Polemics
• King James → Demonologie

Chapter 6: Church Use

*Combine with 5? See if there's enough research to warrant breaking this up

Chapter 7: Representation of Knowledge (Blake, Bible, References)

• Doctor Faustus

Chapter 8: Polemic Use

*see previous note

Chapter 9: Milton’s National Epic

• by using the folkloric representation, and not the literary one, Milton references his own original intent to create a national epic

Chapter 10: Looking Forward

• Whole new set of questions

And trust me, most of me knows that the uber-planning is part of my nervous energy as I wait for orientation and then classes to start. But I figure, if I have the time, and the ideas, I might as well make good use of them, right?