My life feels like it has been one long trajectory along The Breakfast Club plot line — except that I’m outside of the outsiders, beyond the recluse. High school was definitely like this. Even my undergraduate life was like this. I was never a traditional student. I worked full-time while attending school and had to often quit classes when work required me to be more focused on it than school. It took me a lot longer to get my undergraduate degree than most people because of this, making me even more different than those I went to school with.

During my Master’s degree, I again worked full-time, but I was working at a University. My supervisors, wonderful people that they are, allowed me to take time off to go to classes when the classes weren’t offered online. But I didn’t teach, as many other grad students did, and I didn’t engage with the students outside of class. I was much too busy to do that.

My doctoral degree has been different. For the first time in my life, education has been the main focus. It came first. I was being paid to make it come first. I got to teach classes. I got to be a part of a department. But maybe because of my past, I never quite fit in. There are definite cliques in the program of which I’m not a part. I rarely see anyone from my department, nor do I socialize much at all. I see photos of them getting together, the connections they’ve all made, and the ways they’ve become integral parts of one another’s lives. I’ve heard that one of the most important parts of getting your doctorate is the relationships you make while doing it — because those people have persevered with you throughout, that they will be lifelong friends. I didn’t or haven’t made those kinds of connections. I doubt many of the people I’ve gone to school with here will have much to do with me after I leave (they don’t now, so it’s safe to assume they won’t after).

I’m not a lonely person – just the opposite. I’m quite happy being alone. And I have a hard time being comfortable around others, so I tend to turn to my family because they are safe and will forgive my foibles. But every once in a while, especially when I see photos posted on Facebook or Twitter, I wonder what I’ve missed out on and if, when I go into the next stage of my life, it will be any different.

Or will I still be watching from outside the library as the brain, the beauty, the jock, the rebel, and the recluse find ways to connect and integrate themselves with one another?

It is time to move. The banging from neighbors above and beside me has nearly driven me to madness, and I fear that it is overwhelming me. It’s all I think about. I have submitted complaints to the management, but it has not changed. Perhaps it is me, needing peace and quiet. Since the writing stage of my dissertation is getting closer, I want to move before I embark on it.

I’m looking for a July 1 – July 15 move date. I have family coming to visit in late July/early August and would like to be moved by then.

My preferences:

• It must be in the Twin Cities area, preferably on the St. Paul side.
• It must be safe for a single woman (this means certain neighborhoods are out)
• It must have a garage.
• I prefer two bedrooms — so I can have an office in which to do my work.
• I prefer a cottage home, small home, duplex, or the like — NO apartments. I just can’t deal with the noise of apartments.

I think that’s it.

My needs aren’t great. I mostly need the quiet. I find it very hard to sleep or work with so much noise.

If you have any leads, please let me know.

One of the problems with studying rhetorical theory is that it makes you question everything. I mean EVERYTHING. What is right and wrong? What is up and down? What is black and white? Are there any of these things or everything?

Sounds a little convoluted, doesn’t it? Then, like so many scholars in the social sciences and medicines, you start to apply it to yourself, that intern syndrome — that you have every disease you study about, or are afflicted with every type of psychological diagnosis.

Who am I? Am I virtuous? Am I good? Would Plato or Aristotle or even Quintilian approve of me? Does being a woman preclude that? Are my ideas valid? What are my ideas exactly?

Am I a good student? Should I even be an academic? Do I belong here? Am I too lazy to be a “good” academic, or even too lazy to be a “good” citizen?

Who am I?

I think. And I think. And I think some more. And sometimes I don’t like what I think, but other times I want to share what I think, because there are others doing the very same thing. They are smart, interesting people, and I want to contemplate these thoughts with them.

If Socrates wanted us to examine our lives, we are doing it. In so many ways.

There have been moments in-between. The moments where I feel the most lucid, where my head isn’t filled with theory, or concepts, or longing for family and Arizona and sunshine, or any of the millions of things that fill my head so much that it hurts constantly.

Those moments are precious.

This morning I looked out the big window in my living. I love this window. It’s what keeps me sane sometimes. Right now, it looks over green grass, bird feeders, a line of trees, and, ultimately, a little pond. Today the grass was a beautiful new spring green. The trees are starting to fill with budding leaves. The sky, since the window faces the west, was tinged with pinks and blues from the sunrise, but mostly overcast. It was an odd color that brought out the greens in a really amazing way.

And in those moments, I love Minnesota. I love the way it embraces life after a long cold winter (and truth be told, I LOVED the winter here — loved it).

I was complaining to my brother a few days ago that we seemed to have bypassed spring. We went straight from winter (below 30F) and straight into summer (getting into the 70sF). I wondered where those 40F and 50F days were, the ones that get you excited about the warming weather. He told me that’s what I get for living so far north.

We took a slight turn and came back to those spring days. We are getting the gorgeous spring rain showers and thunderstorms that herald in new life.

Nature, I find, gives me the moments in-between. It reminds me, as it did in Arizona, that everything is cyclical, that it all works out, provides, and replenishes eventually. I’m filled with moments of peace when I watch the large male turkey during the winter, the beautiful robins in the spring, and the way the sun ripples across the water and ice in all seasons.

These moments, these in-between moments, encourage me and give me hope.

I was reading Wil Wheaton’s post on a problematic issue he has with people associating him with the character he played on television while he was a teenager. One of the things he said was

Imagine having something you’ve worked so hard to create being dismissed out of hand, because of completely unrelated work you did when you were a teenager – work that you had no control over – and you may understand why this is so upsetting to me.

There are people in my life who have only known me as a teenager (isn’t Facebook grand?). And there are people in my life who still talk to me or treat me like a little girl or a teenager. I don’t even remember that time in my life, let alone still act like that person (or look like that person — I looked so young and cute, and my hair was still very red!). Life has ensued. I have changed (for the better, I hope).

I don’t think Wheaton is alone in this desire, although he may have to face it in an ongoing and more public way than most of us do. We reach a point where we want to be known for who we are now, the accomplishments we’ve had over our lifetimes, and the people we’ve grown into.

Which, I suppose, is a nice segue into my next item. I’ve been thinking about how, even as a teenager, I was never interested in the typical guy: the football captain, the all-round jock, or even the student body president. I was interested in those who were a little on the edge like I was — not quite in the center of things, but not quite outside of it all, either. I hung out with the popular kids, but was never quite one of them, and the men I liked were very similar.

I was speaking with someone on Friday about a friend. I said that being single might be a good thing when you’re working on your doctorate — there is so little time for much else. The person I was talking to looked at me and said he thought I should date men who have been working on their own dissertations or projects, locked away in labs and socially inept. I laughed. I’m attracted to geeky men, so it struck me as a funny comment.

But then I started thinking about it (or over-thinking about it, as the case may be). What did he mean by that? Did he mean that only socially-inept men would find me attractive? Did he mean that, like them, I’m socially inept so we’d fit together? Or did he mean that I’d be good for someone socially-inept? I have a feeling he meant the former two, and not necessarily the last. Hrumph.

I’m still attracted to geeky men. They are smart and fun and interesting. Who wouldn’t find that appealing?

I’ve been reticent to write. I think that I’m afraid that if I write about things, then it will all blow up and the dream will dissipate. It’s more than the very real imposter syndrome that so many academics feel. It is the knowledge that I actually don’t belong here. They’ve made a mistake. I don’t fit.

That’s not to say that I don’t want to be here. I do. I actually like it (despite the feelings of claustrophobia because I’m surrounded by people living on top of me, across from me, and on both sides of me, and the ribbons of asphalt and cars and people that seem never ending, and because I miss my mountain views and my wide-open property that gave me breathing room when I felt overwhelmed). There are lots of things to do, my fellow students are amazing, and the faculty have been supportive. It is a beautiful place, and my apartment has come together. But I don’t fit.

Pshaw, you’re saying.  I can hear it. Really.

I’m not saying I’m leaving. I’m not saying I’m not going through with it. I’m just realizing that I am different, that there are reasons why I’ve never felt like I belonged in academia, and why it has always been a struggle. I’m reading an amazing book, Those Winter Sundays: Female Academics and Their Working-Class Parents, and I’ve really begun to realize that all of these feelings of inadequacy, of difference, of an “otherness,” has not been imagined, and I’m not alone in feeling it.

We don’t talk about class issues much in the United States. We (as in the American society) like to pride ourselves in being a classless society. We’re not. It’s clear to those of us who have had to deal with issues of poverty, homelessness, unemployment, and the fears that come with these issues that there is a definite class divide in the United States.

Nowhere is it more apparent than in higher education. This is the realm of the priviledged. For those of us who come from working-class families and who manage to make it into college and who, by some miracle or unnatural act, actually make it into graduate school, the university systems of the United States are filled with the perils of trying to fit in, trying to blend, trying to not be noticed for the interlopers we are. We’re not supposed to be here. Not only do our classmates not understand us and make snide remarks regarding the working class (or even worse, those who have been homeless or who are unemployed), but faculty rarely understand the pressures that accompany a non-traditional student and the struggles that go along with trying to beat the odds to be a part of the academy.

Oftentimes, family and friends don’t even understand this need to get an education (And it’s a need for me. No one struggles for twenty years to get a bachelor’s degree and three years for a master’s degree, works full-time during the entire process, and moves 1600 miles away from everyone they love to pursue something they don’t need. That would be insanity (and maybe that’s really what it is).). We don’t push through the comments made by people who love us (and worry about us), even when they hurt us, for something we don’t need. “It’s only an AA (Associate of Arts) degree.” “Now s/he thinks that s/he is smarter than the rest of us.” “I’m not stupid. I can understand what your research is about.”

I struggle to straddle the fence between my working-class upbringing where few people have more than a high school education, but who are amazing, inspirational, supportive people and the world of academia where most of my classmates have been supported financially and emotionally to attain their degrees, but who speak a different language and understand a different world than those of the working-class.

I don’t think of myself as better or smarter than anyone. If anything, perhaps I’m the one that is lost. My working-class family and friends have a path and understand it. They know what they want and they work hard for it. They are diligent. They are, for the most part, happy with their lives. My academic family can be defined in exactly the same way. Me — I’m the one who spends hours crying over a thesis because it’s not working out right, or who wonders if I’m doing the right thing, or who has given up a very good paying job to move thousands of miles to be unemployed (at least until the semester starts and I begin teaching).

In the next few days, I’m going to be writing a bit about this struggle. I want to talk about my experiences, the people who have inspired me, where I come from, and what I think my upbringing and struggles can do to make me a better educator, a better researcher, and a better person. One reason I’m doing this is because my brother, Shadow, and I have discussed writing a book about these issues (once I get my doctorate — not before). If I start putting down the foundations here, while I’m thinking about them, it will help me in the long run. However, another reason I want to talk about it is because class seems to be a taboo subject in our society generally, and in academia specifically. Oh, sure, we talk about it. We theorize and discuss it ad nauseum. But most people don’t really understand it and make judgments based on theory and not on actual encounters in class struggle. If there is another student out there who is struggling with these issues, or another person who is considering pursuing any degree but is stopping her or himself because of class issues, and my words can help, then this will all be worthwhile.