Soooo Sleeeepeee

Have I mentioned how glad I am to be done with graduate school?

I think all the MA's graduating with me this semester are about as through with it as I am. Speaking for myself, I feel a bit like a soldier in the field who is "short," whose term is almost up. It's all I can do to keep from checking out completely. I haven't checked out of teaching yet, but I'm certainly checking out of the classroom. My own classes seem really, incredibly dull to me. And they shouldn't be. I picked what I thought would be exciting subjects. I don't really think it's the profs' fault. I think I'm just sick of discussing theory and am ready to get back to actually doing something.

It doesn't help that this semester is the most complicated. I have to write something on Moby Dick from an environmentally critical point of view very soon. Which means I have to finish reading the damned thing. Because I'm also a glutton for punishment, I'm going through Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations again for my seminar paper, also from an environmentally critical point of view, which means I have to provide an economic historical background to it as well. I think I'm working on ideas of first nature and second nature (nature after humans have had something to do with it) and that Smith's work is the point where land begins to merge with the idea of capital, turning exclusively into second nature rather than primary nature, causing a shift in ideology with the capitalist triad of land/capital/labor....ah fuck it. It's normally the kind of thing I should be excited about. This paper represents the merging of both my interests: literary culture and economics. Ironically, the last time I wrote a significant paper on Adam Smith was for my undergraduate senior economic capstone project, where I also merged literary culture and Adam Smith, although this time with the book Tom Jones. When my 70-year-old prof said to me outside of class, "You know, I've always wished that someone would come along and do a reading of Tom Jones using Adam Smith; but literary people and business people don't often move in the same circles." Well, how the hell do you pass THAT up? Looks like Adam Smith is riding in to see me out of the university again.

But yeah, the sleepy gets in the way. I hate not being able to read the books I want. I've got a stack of what I want to do. But I have to wait ten more weeks to get to them. I had to cancel my subscription to the London Financial Times a long time ago because I simply didn't have any spare reading time. I miss The Economist. I miss being able to read about African politics (don't ask me why I'm interested, I don't know; just always have been). I can't read any Dawkins. I hardly have time to even read to my son, certainly not to the length that I want.

Here's my rant about the situation (as if the previous spleen wasn't a rant). The university encourages and attracts specialists. Very rarely will you get a well-rounded intellectual. I'm not saying specialists aren't smart. They're very smart--about their own niche. I hate when graduate students preface their comments with, "Of course, this isn't in my field..." because it implies that it's OK not to be fully informed. There's no way a person could know everything, of course. But I don't really think the university system as it stands really promotes integrated critical thinking; it's up to you to piece it all together. Maybe that's as it should be. But it would do a world of good if we had to take history classes along with literature classes, for instance. Or economics (the user-friendly kind!) along with discourse on slave narratives. Or if maybe a few good books on history were thrown into the syllabus as background readings. One of the best classes I ever had was as an undergraduate in medieval history; the guy was a visiting prof from Harvard, and he loaded us up accordingly. We had a couple of background history books and I would say five or six pieces of literature. You read the history, you read the literature, you talked about both in class. It was awesome.

I want my newspapers back, and my African politics and the sudoku puzzle. I want to read Ian Fleming novels and Edith Wharton without having to use her as background in a "publishable" essay. I want to get back to my short story collection. I want my nights and weekends back.

It's not that I didn't learn things; I learned a lot. And it's not that I didn't enjoy my classes, because I did. I'm grateful for the expanded education. But I've also learned that the university's version and my version of the "life of the mind" greatly conflict. I've learned that what is more important to me is to be doing, rather than theorizing. Doers need good theories. But I prefer to be testing those theories myself. I think that's why I like teaching, out of all the experiences of grad school. My secret dream is to be the sort of person who both does and writes, like Barbara Ehrenreich. An activist writer, if you will, where economics and culture and social concerns all crash in together (and maybe even African politics!). Who knows? Things in life are beginning to point that way. And I'm experienced enough now to know that the things you get the most pleasure and fullfilment in life from take a while to present themselves to you. You have to actively be thinking about these things, reflexive, to borrow a grad school term.

And so, while I put aside the idea of a PhD that I had thought was the next step for the past few years, I set it aside without any reservations; I think if I were a less secure person, the concept of floating in my own ideas for a while would give me a great fear of being "aimless." For once in my life, the transitionary period doesn't scare me to death; and I'm pretty proud of that.

-- Virgil