Wednesday, August 15, 2012

I Just Can't Take It Anymore


Entering my fourth year of graduate school, I just don’t know if I can do it anymore.  I look at the draft of research questions I wrote for my project, and the lines mean nothing to me. I stare at words on the page and they stare right back at me.  They seem to have discovered the secret invisibility of ink so boring you won’t notice it is there.

“What am I doing?” I think to myself.  Why am I still here?

I’ve wanted to drop out of graduate school since I arrived.  My first day of class I was late, and showed up unprepared having not done the reading.  To be fair, it was a surprise.  My department likes to start classes before the official start date of the semester, tacking on an extra session because “a semester is just too short to get it all done.”  I thought I was coming for orientation, but got a surprise lecture on epistemology instead. (Side Note: surprise epistemology, episiotomy, why are the words and their meanings in that context both so painful?)

I’ve always been the reluctant graduate student.  Maybe that should tell me something.