What a grueling week! I gave a conference talk on Friday and another early this morning, and then came home sick and utterly drained. Luckily my partner went out and got some Korean oxtail soup –a rich white broth that you season with salt and fresh sliced green onions. I felt much better after downing some.
Irony. For the first time, I felt really good about my talks. Even though the audiences were small, because, let’s face it, labor studies is rather un-hip in my discipline. I met a nice group of colleagues from all over the English speaking world. Realized, for the umpteenth time, that I’ve been trying to fit into the wrong part of the academic scene. I love urban studies, but somehow I’ve never been able to connect with the researchers in that part of my discipline, or their theoretical preoccupations. Yet in all the labor conferences and sessions I’ve attended, I really felt like I was sharing in an esprit de corps in terms of research interest and political commitment.
Friday I had coffee with a prospective employer who runs a great organization in Oakland, who happened to be on the same panel with me. Don’t want to count my chickens before they’re hatched… but I’m excited about the possibility of doing really meaningful research and policy work, connected to grassroots mobilization and material improvements in working people’s lives. I know that if this doesn’t pan out, I’ll still have lots of options.
All in all, it was great to feel recognized, to feel that I have something to show for all these years in grad school. But it also makes me feel sad to come to this, just as I’m about to leave academia.
To be honest, the majority of my Ph.D. years — except for a few worthwhile “side” projects– was like a living death. After earning an M.A., I came in with strong self confidence and a clear sense of my identity. I did pick up some additional skills and credentials as a doctoral student, but your sense of self-worth can get completely unmoored as you judge yourself by the institution’s values and lose track of your own. Class, race and gender all tie into this, because so much of success in grad school isn’t about being smart and intellectual, but about projecting a certain persona. I knew all this going in, but didn’t realize what it meant until I experienced it first hand.
At the conference I ran into an old colleague/friend who now has a tenure track position at a major university. I began to measure myself against her–happens a lot at purely academic conferences. Then I stopped myself and realized, This is the last time I am going to feel this way; in fact I am done with this. Maybe that’s why my talks got such a good response.
“…so much of success in grad school isn’t about being smart and intellectual, but about projecting a certain persona”
that is so true. it is in fact one of the reasons why i had to stop school altogether. it just burned me out. now i’m transferring to another school and major, so hopefully i can start with a clean slate. but for a person with a feisty temper and rebellious nature, the persona deal is tough. now i see my old classmates doing well, and i still get a pang, that that should be me, that i am better prepared then most of them, but don’t have their people skills, and it is just unfair. but at the same time, my not have people skills is what makes me wrong for the job, because today, to be an artist, you have to be a good con artist as well…
it sucks, but that’s the way it is. so i gracefully (yeah right) take myself out of the game, and go on to greener pastures, which is what i believe you mean to do as well. that’s good. academia tends to kill people very, very slowly…
What a painfully elequent description of grad school. The melancholy of my living death is only lifted those precious moments I hold yarn and actually make something; something creative, something spontaneous, something orange. Congratulations on getting out!
Oh, that’s hilarious. I had the same oxtail soup (from Seoul Gomtang, right?) after MY presentation, too. And fried chicken from Merritt Bakery the night after that.
I hear you about the insecurities, uncertainties, anxieties, etc. I find the AAG particularly alienating and demoralizing, especially because I feel like I’m the only one who feels that way. it would have been nice to commiserate with you!