doctoral candidate in rhetoric and scientific and technical communication
school
defense over
0 
I defended my thesis today. The defense went really well. The conversation afterward was awesome. We really had some good ideas bouncing around.
Then I had to leave for a bit while they talked about what they want to have happen with the thesis. Then I was asked back in.
The gist of it is that I’m not quite done. I was told to take a few months to do some fixes that they want done. The idea is that we want to make a really great piece of work that will be the foundation for a dissertation. The consideration is that I will be using this work for conferences, journal submissions, and my doctoral work.
This is all good stuff. I know that they care about my work and about how I look to the programs and colleagues who see my work.
It’s also exhausting. I was hoping to be nearly done (within the next few weeks). I’m tired. I need a break before I dig into a doctorate.
I know, though, that this is going to be a piece of work that I’m so proud of when I walk out of the program. I know that it will open doors for me. I know that these three professors have my best interests at heart.
Some really phenomenal things came out of today. My adviser told me that she met one of the program chairs at one of the campuses I visited this year. She said that the chair had nothing but good things to say about me and that she really wanted me at her school. That made me feel good.
The committee told me that they think this is really cutting edge research and they are interested to see where it goes. I wasn’t sure if it really was cutting edge. I was starting to feel like I was status quo and it was relatively boring. Not so, says my committee.
trippin’
0The video is worth watching. I’m not ashamed to say it made me cry (but then, if you know anything about me, you know I’m a sap).
I subscribe to the PostSecret feed. Sometimes I cry when I read other peoples’ postcards. I think I see too much of me in them. Or I think how it could be me if not for one twist of fate or one decision that I made that turned my life in a different direction.I haven’t been writing much here, I know. I’m trying to finish up my thesis. I’m trying to check out doctoral programs. I’m making plans to visit. I’m emailing people in programs that interest me and am trying to find out more.
In September, I’ve scheduled trips to both the University of Minnesota and the University of Arizona. As soon as I hear back from two schools in North Carolina, I will make those travel plans as well (hopefully September or October).
I have applications to get done. I have a thesis to finish. By the end of December, I’ll be able to relax…for six months…until I start the doctoral program (wherever I end up going).
Who knew that getting in to the right school would be so stressful? It’s exhilarating and stressful all at once. I’m excited to begin a new part of my life but I’m also so worried that no one will want me. That my style of research isn’t desired. Or worse, that I’m not good enough. It’s that thing about being on the outside looking in and wanting to belong. I don’t belong yet and I really, really want to. And I want someone (some program) to want me to belong.
And they do. I shouldn’t worry. They do. But I wonder if it’s because I talk a good talk or because I’m really worthy of that. You know? I’m not sure that I’m good enough.
Then there is this…the whole dating thing. You meet someone you think is worth your time. But you doubt they would move away to begin a new journey with you and you doubt they’d want to keep up a long distance kind of thing. So, I keep my distance because not one person I’ve met so far has given an indication that what I’m doing is important enough yet. What I mean by this is that I think about changing my life to accommodate someone else…but I don’t think that anyone else so far has considered doing the same.
That’s my flaw, I know. My brothers keep telling me that I have to think about me…that I have to do this for me…that if someone is the right person, he will support me in that, move with me, or keep up a long-distance relationship. But I don’t know. See, I’m not sure I’m good enough.
Argh.
This whole doctoral program process has brought out some of my deepest insecurities in both my academic and personal life. It has made me question my viability as a student and a partner.
That irritates me. I was doing so much better with my insecurities before, and now everything is up in the air.
some thoughts on graduating
0
I know, I know. I may kill this dead horse. As much as I say it’s not a big deal, it is.
I work among people who have their Master’s and Doctorates. Every single day, I’m around people who have higher degrees. So I often belittle my acquisition of one because I think — well, it’s no big deal. Everyone else around me has one.
But you know what? It is.
Several people in my life have pointed out that I came from a place where getting a Master’s degree probably wouldn’t have been attainable for many other people. I joked in one class that I’ve lived a life of trauma: poverty, homelessness, domestic violence, and rape. People aren’t supposed to bounce back from those kinds of things and do better than anyone expects them to.
I have. And I’m pushing myself further.
But I think that I push myself for that validation. I *am* someone. I am someone who is motivated and intelligent and worthy of that validation.
And then things happen that cause me to question myself. My mother, of course, didn’t come to my graduation (or my brother’s, for that matter). Our own mother couldn’t come out of her house to join in our celebration. Yes, she sent a card and a gift to each of us. But those are things. She lives in the same town and couldn’t even come — even though my Dad and all of my siblings came.
We had a party and not one of the people I invited came. While I work around a lot of introverts and I’m probably the worst of them, it still hurt. I understand it logically. I totally get it. But it hurt my feelings that none of them came. So this big celebration that was for both my brother and me became more about him because all of his guests showed up and few of them realized that I got my degree, as well.
He told me, though, that in the end, the people that really matter were there: my brothers and their families, my sister and her family, and my dad. And he was right.
I’ve accomplished something. I know I shouldn’t look outside of myself for validation but sometimes — just sometimes — it’s nice.  You know?
graduation
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Whew. I’m exhausted. It has been a very long semester. Seriously.
I walked through my graduation process today. I still need to finish up and defend my thesis but that is all. I will be completely done by this summer.
The ceremony was funny. I was text messaging through it with my siblings and sister-in-law. They were sending me silly things. I don’t think I’ve ever been at such a short ceremony. They pushed us through like cattle.
Moooooo.
I’m proud of my brother. He has worked very hard to get his doctorate and he is hooded at graduation tomorrow. He already is a doctor but tomorrow is the ceremony to celebrate that.
Then we’re having a party. :-)
final stretch
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I’ve finished one class and have two more official classes to go — which ultimately means two papers. Those will be done by next Tuesday.
I still have my thesis to finish up but one of the papers for another class is the precursor to that.
I walk through my graduation on Friday, May 11th. Yay!
I am looking at several doctoral programs for fall 2008:
Michigan State
Clemson
North Carolina State
Rensselaer
Miami University – Ohio
University of Arizona
University of Minnesota
If you have any information about any of these programs, I’d love your feedback. I have talked to someone at most of these universities and they all sound good. I’m going to try to visit them in the early fall and then send in my applications during the fall.
connections
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I have finished my incompletes. I’m waiting to upload one class (I have to have permissions to get into the class to do so and I have requested them) and have finished all of the rest.
There is still much work to do — ongoing classes and thesis. But the worst of it is over, I hope. :-) So, while I may not post every day like before, I will be posting more frequently. After I’m done, I’ll be able to post daily again.
This last weekend I went to San Diego for my great-aunt’s 90th birthday. It was so much fun. I saw family that I hadn’t seen in years and they welcomed us in as if they had seen us yesterday.
It was like being surrounded by a big cocoon of love. Seriously. Corny, I know, but that’s how it felt.
My favorite cousin told me that she had felt the same way about me and it was good to put my arms around her and hug her close.
I got to hug my grandma and tell her I love her. That meant the world to me. I have always enjoyed being around her and it was so good to see her.
I’ve promised myself to go there more often. I think we all need that kind of rejuvenation now and again.
coming clean
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So, this is the thing. I need to be honest with what is going on.
I screwed up. Big time.
I was spending so much time on my blogs and taking photographs that I got behind in my classes. Not just a little behind. Oh, no. I don’t do things small. I got WAY behind. I had incompletes from last spring.
Altogether, I had 5 incompletes that have required a lot of work. I’m down to 3 but I’m still working at them.
In addition, I am working on my thesis and for those of you who have done that kind of work, you know it takes a LOT of time.
So, please be patient and stick with me for a bit more. I will get done and then we can all celebrate! :-)
in the now
05 years ago
Today in my autobiography class, a classmate quoted a professor from one of her other classes, a creative nonfiction course. She said that her professor said that if you are in the now of grief (or supplement this with any other strong emotion), you shouldn’t write about it. She said that this professor said that the information you write about would not be reliable, not objective enough.
I have to disagree. I’m not sure autobiography is ever objective. It is our own perspective on life. It is our own truth. Whether that truth is coming from the center of emotion or from years of distance, it is still subjective to our perspective.
If I write about my cancer now, a year and a half after my last surgery, it is clinical. It will give you a lot of information about my particular cancer and about the procedures I had to endure. It will not, however, give you as much information about how I was feeling at that time, how it was affecting me on a daily basis, and how sad and at a loss I was – feeling like piece of me were stolen from me by an invisible force. I can’t replicate those feelings. I’m not in the same place.
Each is valid. Each is worthy of the time I would put in to write it – if I know my audience well and understand what they desire when they read my writings. But that, really, is the key. I have to understand what you want to read and be willing to share that. Without our symbiosis, there is really no reason to write in a public forum.
Sometimes I like writing in the now. I’m able to shed anxiety and stress and sadness and pain by writing in the now. It gives me a safe place to purge.
Sometimes I like writing from memory. No matter how painful, the memories are still sweet. They make me who I am today. They have accumulated to create a library of stories that can be funny or sad or elaborate or sparse depending on how and how much I choose to share with you.
Sometimes I like mixing them together, weaving in and out of the now into the past and back again. They give you depth in a story. They give you relativity and understanding of how the now is affected by the then — and, perhaps, why I view the then in the ways I do.
One professor may say that I shouldn’t write in the now of heightened emotion. But I say that writing is every bit as valid as any other writing.
It’s all about perspective.
i am different
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Rousseau, in discussing his particular confessional style of memoir writing, writes, “I am commencing an undertaking, hitherto without precendent, and which will never find an imitator…I am not made like any of those I have seen; I venture to believe that I am not made like any of those who are in existence. If I am not better, at least I am different.”
I have been blogging (or something akin to it online) for nearly 10 years. Before blogs were blogs, I was putting my thoughts on message boards and inviting comments there. I didn’t start this off as a confessional. I didn’t create it to become a subject of history or to become, like Samuel Pepys in his autobiographical style, an accumulative subject. I didn’t start a blog to write about my marginalized life. And yet, here I am – confessing, being a subject of history and an accumulative subject. I write about the ways I feel marginalized in today’s society.
I began this journey to have somewhere safe and free to write. I began this as a place to get those writing energies out, somewhere, anywhere. I write because I need to write. It fulfills me in ways that photography doesn’t. My words paint the pictures. It can be more blatant or more subtle depending on what I do with the words.
I’m working on my master’s thesis. I’m looking inward, at myself. I’m beginning to wonder if I’m self-absorbed, writing these past 10 years. I’m looking at my words, my photos, and determining what type of audience I’ve been writing for, what my voice has been, what type of identity I have created, and if I’m believable to anyone but myself.
I think I am. I mean, this is me – the real me – here on these pages. I tell the truth as I know it. I share my world as I see it, warts and all. But is it believable? Does it resonate? Does it matter?
This is me without the filters of big publication machinery. Without an editor. Without a publisher. My autobiography. My accounting of my life – here, right in front of you. My sorrows, my joys, my fears, my triumphs. All right here. In technicolor. For the world to see immediately.
Me.
different
05 years ago
One of the things I’ve found out while I’ve been in grad school is that many of us feel like we’re frauds — that we feel like we don’t know half of what we’re supposed to know. I thought I was alone in this until I talked to a friend and my brother about it. Both said they knew what that was like and that most grad students feel that way. We’re supposed to be knowledgeable in our fields, right? We’re supposed to have it down. But the more I learn, the more I realize I don’t know anything.
This all got me thinking about why I thought I was so different from other grad students. I work full time. Most of my fellow grad students work part-time in the English department or don’t work at all (have partners and spouses who put them through school). I don’t know most of the other grad students as well as they all know one another. Part of that is because I’m not around them much – my office is not in the English department and part of it is that I am in a different place in my life.
I don’t know what they feel or how they think. I don’t feel like I connect with most of them at all.
But am I really so different?
I don’t know. I do know that many of them are not interested in pursuing their doctorates. I know that many have no idea what they want to do after they graduate – let alone hold down a full-time job. In fact, one young woman recently told me she was going to take six months off to relax after finals in May. Does my jealousy show? I wish I could just take some time off to be able to do my homework. But someone has to pay the bills and that happens to be me.
I’m not as old as some of my classmates but I’m not as young as some of them, either. I tend to fall in the middle and there aren’t many people my age. Many of my classmates are much older (10-20 years older) and many are much younger (10-15 years younger). Most of the older people have had families and decided to go back to school to do something different with their lives. The younger students haven’t had jobs or families yet and are just embarking on their journeys. I’m somewhere in the middle — no family but have lived life too much (or that’s how it feels at times).
I don’t seem to think like them. In every single class, I’m the dissenting voice. One classmate told me that it’s because I’m brilliant (her word, not mine) and I think outside of the box. Another told me that when I’m gone, they really miss my perspective because it gives them things to think about. Whatever it is, it ends up putting me in a different place. I have to defend my position (and I do so willingly because I won’t say something if I can’t back it up). But it can also be lonely. And then I start to question myself wondering if I’m just screwed up and why can’t I see the world like others see it? Why can’t I read a book the same way and get the same things out of it? Why do I see different messages or different themes than everyone else? I’m not trying to be that person. I’d like to be like others sometimes. I would. I try to fit in.
I keep coming back to the question, though, am I really different or do I just think I am?
I don’t know. I know most people feel this way at one time or another. But me — I feel this way all of the time. I always feel like I’m just outside of “normal” — whatever that is. That pane is just a little smudged where I’m looking in and the world inside is just a little distorted.
I’m ok with that. I’d just like to understand why. What makes me see the world in a way that is not typical? What makes me just a little off from everyone else?