Week Five: In Which I Take the "Dead" Out of "Deadline"

This week has been a tale of two states of mind.

On Sunday, I was freaking out about as hard as I ever freak out. I was consumed with the thought that after three consecutive semesters of success, I could no longer manage teaching full-time and going to school. I was in danger of becoming a crappy teacher. I was threatening to become a sloppy student.

Much of this worry stemmed from some conversations I’d had with classmates who given me information about our grad program that I was hearing for the first time.

“Yeah, if you’re planning on graduating in spring, you should already have your committee formed by now.”

“There’s so much paperwork that you have to fill out and so many professors that you have to chase down that you might be better off just postponing your graduation to summer semester.”

“You’re screwed, dude.”

And that’s why, after hearing all these rumors of war, Wednesday’s night 8001 class was the most valuable that we’ve had this semester. I felt that, for the first time ever (not even at orientation), I was receiving information about hard deadlines. Not necessarily the date of these deadlines, but the fact that hard deadlines did actually exist, hypothetically.

As is obvious to everyone by now, the emailing en masse to Ms. Brooks brought us some quick clarity. Sometimes all you gotta do is ask a question.

So, the easy part is over now. The assumptions that I’ve made about deadlines in the master’s program were incorrect. I have to hustle. I have to find an advisor, assemble a committee, do a hell of a lot more research, write a proposal, and make sure that all of this happens soon.

I was under the impression that I had seven more months to write my thesis; I have five. But all of this disillusionment is a good thing. I know what’s up. I know what I have to do and by when it needs to be done. I have an enormous amount of work to accomplish in much less time than I figured, and for some reason, I feel more self-assured than I have in months.

Week Four: God and Other Problems

After spending about two and a half months working myself up into a good (and wildly frustrated) lather over my thesis, figuratively banging my head against walls, and trying to figure out how I can tie in H. P. Lovecraft with queer theory, I think that I’m giving up. The other night in Dr. Thomas’ theory class, it occurred to me – in the same way it suddenly occurs to you that you’ve had a splitting headache for the past two hours – that I was uncomfortable with my pursuit. I still love Lovecraft, and I’m still intrigued with queer theory, but I find myself wanting to return to more familiar grounds.

I read a biography of T.S. Eliot when I was a senior in high school, and I remember one particular passage. Eliot was discussing his Christian upbringing in relation to the period in his young adulthood when participated in other religions. He said something like this: “I’m seeing what the world has to say about the matter of spirituality, and I’m participating in those global rituals, but I know that at the end of my life, when death and possible salvation lie near, I’ll return to kiss the cross.” Of course, Eliot died an Anglican.

Well, here, I’m about to kiss the cross again.

My undergraduate degree was in Religious Studies, and every time I read a text, I unintentionally focus on how religiosity and sex operate in work.

But religion trumps sex. I want to draw upon my experience as an undergrad, and I can do that more easily writing about religion than I can sexuality.

The question now becomes what to focus on. A week ago, I was happy to examine late Victorian texts, but now that I’ve broadened my focus to include religious studies, I think about studying Thomas Pynchon or Herman Melville or James Joyce or Simone Weil or Hart Crane or a bunch of other writers who smack of mystical influence.

For the first time in a while, I’m feeling inspired. Why do I feel so horrible about ditching an unproductive thesis topic?

Week Three: Academic Manscaping

I conceived the idea for my thesis last semester after writing a paper for Dr. Galchinsky’s Victorian Lit class. My essay addressed a pair of short stories, one by Oscar Wilde, and the other by his contemporary (and confederate), Vernon Lee. I claimed that the supernatural events in Lee and Wilde’s work were a representation of repressed “queerness,” the stories’ characters closeted reflections of their creators’ outsider status. While working on my paper, I was reminded of a few short stories from the same period – Algernon Blackwood’s “The Willows” and Arthur Machen’s “The Great God Pan” – stories that lent themselves to queer analysis, stories that pivoted upon premises of the supernatural. Once I made that connection, I became excited about drawing parallels between (what H.P. Lovecraft deemed) “weird” fiction and fiction with “queer” inflections. I was off to the races.

But here’s the problem: as fascinated as I am with the intersection of the “queer” and the “weird,” my search for scholarship is coming up goose eggs.

I spoke with Dr. Galchinsky a few days ago, and while he validated many of my ideas, he also pointed me in several new directions. Any scholarship on Blackwood and Machen is scarce, but queer scholarship on other writers of the period is bountiful. Thomas Hardy, William James, J. S. LeFanu and other Victorian authors have been subjects of countless efforts of queer scholarship. Galchinsky’s suggestion: perhaps discuss one of these established authors before drawing parallels to the esoteric writers I intend to address.

Later that night, in the library, I found myself unsteady beneath a wobbling tower of books, each one contributing to the “introduction” of my thesis argument. I began researching James, Doyle, Hardy, and the like, but I soon felt discouraged and overwhelmed.

I was reminded of the episode of Seinfeld in which George Costanza decides to trim his chest hair. He confesses to Jerry that he’s totally depilated his body; once he began the trimming process, he couldn’t figure out where to stop. I have a terrible feeling that I’m going to find myself like George, unable to locate an appropriate stopping point, denuding myself of sanity.

Week Two: I Am a Rock. That's All. Just a Rock.

After Wednesday night’s class (and our discussion of the Robbins article), the importance of the “so what” question began to weigh on me. The class was edifying, but a little discouraging. I feel pretty ignorant and egotistical, actually.

Originally, the justification for my own research was self-serving – and that felt adequate. Screw the fill-in-the-blank exercises, I would have said a semester ago. I am researching my thesis topic because it’s compelling to me. Isn’t that enough? If you need a more academic justification for my work, then I’ll whip one up, but (shhhh – don’t tell anyone) I’ll confess this: my justification, while believable and defensible, will be arbitrary.

I’m not thinking that way anymore.

I can’t fake my way through the dance steps. In becomes increasingly apparent to me that I can’t retrofit my research to my justification. I have to figure out what my desire to complete this specific thesis means. Until now, my attitude towards my degree has been entirely too insular; this is what Robbins has taught me. My work, regardless of my intent, has political repercussions.

Like a messed-up Russian doll, my personal academic interests lie at the core of my work, but enveloping those interests is the politics of the English department. Encompassing that, I have to be concerned with the politics of English within the greater context of the humanities. Once I decide that my ideas deserve to be brought to life through research, my work has to continue to fight for existence in progressively vast fields of knowledge. I find that prospect terribly intimidating.

My answer to the “so what” question cannot be satisfactory only to myself, but must struggle to thrive among a host of people whom I never even knew were my audience. Even academics who never come in contact with my work (or anything approaching it) will participate in this “game,” this cycle of tension and release between the disparate fields vying for funding. I do not exist at the center of an academic universe; I am an insignificant rock among millions.

This is the most recent in a series of dark epiphanies.