This Isn’t Helping
If writing a blog about your troubles writing actually worked then all bloggers would probably be Booker winners by now. I know this isn’t the case. I have an ex-girlfriend who writes a pathetic blog about how badly she wants to be a writer and about writing exercizes (she spells it like that?) that she would like to do to stimulate her creativity. Finally she had a baby and now she can post pictures of it and write meaningfully about being a mother. Blogs are great for this.
I’m a humanities grad student at a Canadian university. I’m entering year five and starting to panic that the work I have done in the past three years since my comprehensive exams is all shit and that I’ll be brutally humiliated when I finally go to my defense. Although, a defense is a distant dream at this point. I am currently bogged down in a draft of the first three chapters that my supervisor hated. Since reading them he has largely withdrawn all affectionate camaraderie that we built up over the years that I showed a lot of promise. Other students tell me this is in my head, but I tell them it doesn’t matter if it is.
Right now I don’t have to write the dissertation, I just need to complete two conference papers I have stupidly agreed to deliver this summer. Both are based on the failed chapter drafts which makes revising and condensing them an absolutely brutal task. But I have been a student my entire twenties and pretty good at pulling things from the fire just in time to avoid disaster. Each crisis feels different though – they all feel like the final and most humiliating defeat is just around the corner. I’m about to be revealed for a total fraud. I knew this day was coming.
But. To push it back by a few more months, I’ll try to get everything done in time. Meanwhile, my home life is starting to show cracks from the mental strain. Being a grad student, you feed on the little successes – like five dollar top-ups on the gas tank of your first car. At least this is how I feel. For now, just waiting for the next sighting of a gas station and keeping my eye on the “empty” line.
