Being sick is a drag, particularly when you’re trying to be lucid and productive and reasonably energetic. I few weeks ago a friend of mine invited me out to celebrate an accomplishment of his. When I bailed on his little soiree after an hour, he made some guilt-provoking comment about my failure to party adequately. My response was something like this:
“I’m in grad school. I don’t have time to not be in my right mind.”
The same goes for being sick. I have spent so much time focusing on the all of the formal requirements of this degree that I sometimes forget what a balancing act the rest of my life has become. The cold I've acquired this week and the time I've spent trying to restfully squelch it has caused me a little worry. What if I get a big-ass cold?
This is my regular schedule: I wake up around 5:45 during the week, arrive at my job by 7:00, begin teaching at 8:10 and stop around 3:10. Mondays, Tuesdays, and Wednesdays, I have class in the afternoons and evenings, so I typically don’t get home until 9:00 or after. The downtime – whatever that is – I spend doing homework, grading papers, researching, doing assignments. Occasionally, I get to exercise or cook dinner.
I’m not complaining, mind you. I signed up for this haul, and I’d much rather have too much to do than too little. I know that several of my classmates have families and babies. I do not. I have cats and a voluminous record collection, neither of which beg for tremendous amounts of attention.
I’m working on my first assignment for Dr. Thomas’ theory class – a presentation on Beckett. Originally, I had the idea to examine the language of the ineffable in Beckett’s work, the good ol’ mystical via negativa. I’d done a good deal of research and was beginning an outline when I started feeling under the weather the other day. That’s when the idea to multitask struck me. I don’t know why I’d never thought of it before.
Historically, when I take a number of classes at once, I allow myself to become pulled in several directions at once. I simply don’t have the time to be pulled like that (or to be sick). So, I fell back on the books I’m using for my thesis, my examination of the sublime in Gravity’s Rainbow. It’s a simple switch; I can even use some of the material from the original Beckett presentation. The epiphany is that I can allow other assignments to contribute to the development of my thesis, either in composition or research.
Perhaps it’s not the biggest deal in the world, but it gives me time to have a sore throat when my throat insists on being sore. I can take cold medicine without guilt or panic.
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