Regiment
It's weird being a grad student. Your life is a collection of regimentations that never quite take hold. Here's how that works.
At any given point, if you find yourself with nothing to do...and I mean this, at any given point in your day: when your watching television, in the bathroom, trying to fall asleep, sitting around, whenever. If you find that you don't know what you should be doing, being a grad student always answers that question for you. You should be reading for this. Sometimes "this" is the two classes you have. You have to always be reading because you need to get through two books a week and that can't be done in one go, or even two goes. It must be a continuous process.
Sometimes "this" is the qualifying exam. It's coming up and you have to be able to answer any question anyone asks about twenty five works. So, better get reading. Uh oh, your committee didn't like 8 of the 25 you picked, need to read in order to find 8 more, now you need to read those. You have something to do. No writitng your blog, no playing video games, no watching TV at 3 in the afternoon. Your army will have to wait. Paint those miniatures later. What are you doing? Reading Socrates? What, are you high? That's not on the list. Read from the list. You'll have plenty of time to read after you've read from the list.
Which is a lie...after you've read that list, they give you a new list. After the Qualifying Exam there's a comprehensive exam. After the comprehensive exam, you'll need to figure out what sources you'll be using on your dissertation. There is always something, something very specific that you need to do. You will never find yourself with "free time." The best that you can hope for is that you will have time where you can read all the crap you haven't read that you know you should have read, and that no one has (yet) asked you to read.
..and then, one day, you send a proposal off to your committee and they sit silently not answering that email, and you have nothing to do. After years and years, you are suddenly expected to just make decisions about your own free time and it is...hard. I'm teaching an on-line class right now and while it should take up about 3 hours of my time a week. I'm throwing far too much into it. Because it's something to do that I know I need to do.
Other than that, I find myself inventing projects--vast projects so that I have many many things to think about doing when I need to think about doing something. I'm painting my Tyranid army, I'm stockpiling my scenery, I work a little here, a little there on my dissertation, I write incredibly complex dungeons and dragons plot lines that my gaming group explores 2 1/2 hours at a time and which weekly I re-write.
I'm starting to believe that I can't just not have something to do and I'm trying to figure out whether that's a good or bad thing.
At any given point, if you find yourself with nothing to do...and I mean this, at any given point in your day: when your watching television, in the bathroom, trying to fall asleep, sitting around, whenever. If you find that you don't know what you should be doing, being a grad student always answers that question for you. You should be reading for this. Sometimes "this" is the two classes you have. You have to always be reading because you need to get through two books a week and that can't be done in one go, or even two goes. It must be a continuous process.
Sometimes "this" is the qualifying exam. It's coming up and you have to be able to answer any question anyone asks about twenty five works. So, better get reading. Uh oh, your committee didn't like 8 of the 25 you picked, need to read in order to find 8 more, now you need to read those. You have something to do. No writitng your blog, no playing video games, no watching TV at 3 in the afternoon. Your army will have to wait. Paint those miniatures later. What are you doing? Reading Socrates? What, are you high? That's not on the list. Read from the list. You'll have plenty of time to read after you've read from the list.
Which is a lie...after you've read that list, they give you a new list. After the Qualifying Exam there's a comprehensive exam. After the comprehensive exam, you'll need to figure out what sources you'll be using on your dissertation. There is always something, something very specific that you need to do. You will never find yourself with "free time." The best that you can hope for is that you will have time where you can read all the crap you haven't read that you know you should have read, and that no one has (yet) asked you to read.
..and then, one day, you send a proposal off to your committee and they sit silently not answering that email, and you have nothing to do. After years and years, you are suddenly expected to just make decisions about your own free time and it is...hard. I'm teaching an on-line class right now and while it should take up about 3 hours of my time a week. I'm throwing far too much into it. Because it's something to do that I know I need to do.
Other than that, I find myself inventing projects--vast projects so that I have many many things to think about doing when I need to think about doing something. I'm painting my Tyranid army, I'm stockpiling my scenery, I work a little here, a little there on my dissertation, I write incredibly complex dungeons and dragons plot lines that my gaming group explores 2 1/2 hours at a time and which weekly I re-write.
I'm starting to believe that I can't just not have something to do and I'm trying to figure out whether that's a good or bad thing.
posted by Monstro D. Whale | 9:32 AM
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