Now that I have starting moving toward the exit, I find it harder and harder to focus on the work I need to finish up. Realizing you have no passion for the majority of what you do makes it difficult to keep slogging forward. There's one project on my plate that I took on when I still thought I wanted to go the research route, and I am actively avoiding it. Today I cleared my schedule to work on it, and I just can't concentrate.
Part of the challenge is that I spent all day yesterday grading undergraduate essays. That kills both brain cells and soul cells--it's all I can do to mark margins in an exercise I no longer believe in. More and more my comments veer toward: 1) general, useful writing advice that will carry students beyond a course assignment (two page paragraphs, really?); 2) elaborate drawing illustrating my comments, such as "hit me over the head with your argument," complete with stick figure and mallet (will my point get through?). This can't be my only creative outlet.
Things got so bad regarding my inability to concentrate on grading that I resorted to writing my essential self a letter:
Dear Essential Self,
I hear you loud and clear--and I totally GET IT! You hate school, and you want out. While I facilitate our exit (escape?), please have some patience. We really need to finish this damn grading! We need to walk away from school into gainful employment, not slink off with a box full of our office belongs and a big fat FIRED stamped across future references. Health insurance remains a valuable tool to access all those mental health services we need!
You have been squelched for so long, I understand that you think I am trying to shove you back into some deep dark box hidden so deeply inside me that I cannot hear your tortured screams of pain. Rest assured, you just need to numb out for a few hours while I grade the last 35 remaining (and horrendous) essays on a topic that would make a book fart dust. Please? I promise you can come out and read Rilke tomorrow!
K, thanks.
Graduate school is tremendously generative of all kinds of crazy coping mechanisms that I will (probably) have to unlearn in the coming years. Some of the various ones I have devised freaked out therapists who don't know whether to applaud my creativity, or underscore how unhealthy my current situation is. As crazy as it seems to write a letter to the angry, pissed off part of you that doesn't want to grind away at odious tasks, it totally works!
No comments:
Post a Comment