Senioritis??

choosing to stay & noticing change

I’ve been meaning to post something here since the end of the summer. I’ve got five incomplete drafts all written in such different places (physically and states of being) that feel too far gone— maybe I’ll do something with them… maybe I won’t.

I’m writing this now at 9:15pm on a Wednesday because I caught myself struck with a tinder of grief while sending an email to update one of my mentors from undergrad about my semester and why I wouldn’t be needing recommendation letters from her after all.

I can only describe the feeling like senioritis— when you just can’t wait to finish the chapter you’re in because you’ve been going, going, going and you’ve been dreaming and you’re ready to just get on with it, but then you realize that when it’s all over that means its over and you don’t get to get this moment, these feelings, these challenges, these people, etc back. At least, not ever in same way, and probably not ever at the same time.

I was writing to my undergrad mentor that I’d begrudgingly decided to listen to my gut: that staying in my PhD program— despite its frustrations, challenges, and the lingering spillage from my own mess-ups— is the right choice. At least for right now.

I described it as choosing to see light at the end of the tunnel. Choosing to move forward instead of some combination of back and sideways. There were lots of ways I qualified the obvious setbacks and new challenges that I would face with choosing to leave my current program. I didn’t want to succumb to sunk cost fallacy and I’m only 24 (I had a birthday since my last blog!), so there’s really no such thing as *losing* time.

The PhD is a long journey, but after this semester, I’ll be 75% done with my coursework. I’ll only have two semester left of TAing. After this summer, I will have completed my MA paper (I’ll have two masters!), and I’ll be one major milestone away from being all-but-dissertation’d (ABD.) And when I put it like that… the light at the tunnel appears bright. (And when things feel really tough I count how many weeks are left in the semester and I tell myself, “You can do anything for [x amount of] weeks.” )

This semester I started TAing. I don’t have to teach, but I do support students throughout the class and grade their work. My undergrad classes at a small boutique liberal arts college never had TA’s, so it’s been a process of learning by doing… and sometimes making mistakes. I will get to TA with three different professors over the next few semesters, so I’ll be interested to watch their pedagogy in practice and action and think about how I might want to structure my syllabi, classes, and other pedagogical choices.

This is the first time I’m in a class and I’m not a student. I’ve struggled in the past year taking classes alongside undergrads where I felt like there were covert power dynamics that meant I couldn’t participate as fully as I might’ve as just a normal student in a class— already I felt my position morphing into something unfamiliar, and now it’s much more clear as I sit in the classroom in an in-between role of power.

In some ways, I think it is more challenging because of this soft line between me as a student (how I’ve seen and understood myself forever) and me now as a PhD student/TA/someone just a little older than everyone else in the room, but not the oldest. To students, I probably look just like them. For weeks, I was mistaken as another student in the class even as I’d been introduced as a TA. But I’m reminded frequently, especially as I am learning to work within a structure I did not create with material that I am just learning for the first time: working a job. I learn the material alongside the students so I can support their learning, grade their work fairly, and give them well structured feedback. And it’s harder than it sounds and looks.

But I miss the buzzing sensation I felt in a good class debate in undergrad. I miss how intellectually stimulated I felt asking challenging questions to my professors and my peers. I miss how that was normal, encouraged, and expected. I am frequently reminded at my current school that even with the adoption of the ethos of liberal arts, the experience you get at a boutique liberal arts college just can’t be matched at a mid-sized R1. There’s plenty to appreciate about mid-sized R1s, buuut… *gazes outside window and twirls strand of hair*

I’ve spent so much time thinking about my near future— the next milestone, the next chapter, my next big dream— that I haven’t been fully appreciating the gifts of the present. I feel like I say this a lot across all my blogs structured by various storylines of drama in my life. This time: it sounds so silly, but when I remind myself that I’ve only got three more classes where I get to be a student and just a student, it’s an immediate shot of the depre$$o senioritis.

My boyfriend came to visit me over fall break this past week— we met in a class at WashU in his last semester as a senior and in my first year in the PhD. (We’re only a year and a half apart in age, I feel like I have to clarify— lol.) It was his first time back since graduating and he wanted to take a lap around the campus. We walked by his old class buildings, his apartment, the grassy spot where we had our first kiss. He said it was hard to wrap his head around how quickly things had changed— that his life wasn’t still here. I remember asking him how he felt about the end of his college career in the last weeks before graduation and he’d said he didn’t feel any particular way— he was ready to move on. And now, five months and a grown-up job in California, he kind of missed it. Even the little annoying things.

That’s how it happens though. Over and over again. Why are we such aspirational, dream-ridden, grass-is-always-greener creatures? Even when we know what’s happening as it’s happening.

So, we’re 8 weeks into the semester and we’ve got 8 left. The weather is cooling down and everything is starting to look like the beginning scenes of Coraline. I’ve been complaining about how hot its been and how I just want to wear my sweaters and leggings and coats (because honestly, my winter wardrobe is much cuter than any other season), but I know soon I’ll be shivering and complaining that I can see three streets down through the trees.

That’s how it goes.

We don’t have very many older students in my PhD program— we just got our first students who have passed their qualifying exams and are “ABD”— but one of them said the other day when asked about how things were going: things don’t necessarily get easier, they just get different.

I think most of us laughed because it came across as a non-answer. But it’s not a non-answer— it’s truthful. As I catch myself rushing or dreaming as a distraction or a form of procrastination, I hear that line from the older grad student. So I might as well try to enjoy where I’m at and what I’ve got while I can, because things will be different before I know it. They already are.

My Pothos, Jay, that my grandma bought me as a move-in gift when I started my PhD. My other grandma named it after my grandpa. It is a surprisingly easy-going plant (just like my grandpa) and even survived being left with no water over the entirety of winter break (whoops.) I had my friend Holly plant-sit for me while I was gone this summer and she took great care of him (even with the few leaf chomps her cat took)— since returning home, Jay has sprouted up an insane amount of new little arms. A year ago it was just a few little sprouts and now it’s all sprawling. Everything’s a little different. :)