Radio Silence, Part III

Spring semester: day forty

This is technically the first real day of "spring break," though for me it's been ongoing since Thursday night when I came home and closed myself off from the world. This is, technically, still the weekend for me -- I always have Mondays off anyway.

Leaves of Grass is over five hundred pages long. I read it in two sittings over the course of about nine hours, focusing on the important sections a bit more and skimming some of the others which were rather inconsequential, as my director had instructed me. I'll probably have to review it a bit more between now and the actual exams. Following Whitman, I read through an E.E. Cummings collection I have (there's no way I could read his entire collected works, as he wrote over 2,000 poems), which took about another four hours or so, and then powered through 185 pages of Anne Sexton poems (damn that woman is depressing -- hauntingly beautiful in her writing, but depressing) and Allen Ginsberg's collection, including Howl, which I read yet again for probably the fiftieth time. I made the note in my notebook (which I keep in one hand, while the book is in the other) that Ginsberg is the 20th century reincarnation of Walt Whitman -- he's what Whitman would have been had Whitman been born 100 years later, and much of Ginsberg's writing reads like continuations of Whitman, picking up the torch, carrying it forward.

I guarantee you there is going to be a question on the comps about the similarities and differences of Ginsberg and Whitman. Guaranteed. When those two are on a reading list, one cannot help but ask that question. And I'm prepared to answer it now.

Aside from how time-consuming it is and how much I'd rather not be doing it most of the time, the reading/studying is going well enough. I've tried to balance my time devoted to it, tried to meter out when and how long at any given time I can work on it. About half of the texts are here on my computer in PDF, and the other half are actual physical books on my coffee table. I'm still reading about 300 pages a day, roughly, sometimes a little more, sometimes a little less. On Saturday, for example, I read about 800 pages. No, that's not a joke. Yesterday, about 400. Today it'll be about 400 as well, roughly -- I've got Frank O'Hara, John Keats, and W.H. Auden on the docket for today. O'Hara and Auden should go rather quickly -- two hours or so on each, but on Keats...ugh. Keats has a lot of poems to wade through. I have O'Hara's collected works and Auden's selected stuff out of several anthologies. Tomorrow it's Yeats, Frost, and Lowell.

I'm not getting completely burned out yet, but that's probably because of how I tend to manage my time. I get myself in "study mode" and don't emerge from it until I'm done with a particular author, take a short break (to eat, shower, get up and move around, etc) and then re-enter it. I spend about 12 hours studying every day, roughly. I think that's a decent number. When I reach (or get close to) that 12-hour point, I stop for the day and decompress -- whether that's with podcasts, chores around the house, talking to Daisy for a bit, etc. If I finish before that? Even better -- it means I get a bit more of a break for that day. Sometimes I break it up into two six-hour sessions or three four-hour sessions, but it always hovers around 12 hours per day. This is a schedule I'd like and/or need to keep from now until I've gotten through the big bulk of readings I have, which will end around Thursday (after that it's individual collections by poets, 100-200 pages each, that I'll have to read through). As next weekend approaches, the bulk of my readings will be done, and I may actually get a little of that spring break everyone's talking about and enjoying but me.

I have noticed, however, that because of my studying I am increasingly more tired and run-down with each passing day. On Saturday, I slept until 1PM. Yesterday, almost 3. Today, almost 4. The more I read and study, the more sleep I need to recover my brain, apparently. I still go to bed at roughly the same time every night (read: 4-5, after reading until 2 or 3), but am so exhausted that I don't generally wake up before mid or late afternoon. I am glad that I'm getting this taken care of now, as to do it during normal class sessions would be a nightmare (and I'd never be able to sleep or concentrate at all.)

There's not been a whole lot else going on in my world, really; I've sent a few emails to the higher-ups in the department to see if I can figure out what exact day my comps will take place on -- they're scheduled for April 4th or 5th. The 4th is a Thursday, so if I have to take them that day I need to know ASAP so that I can pre-emptively cancel my classes that I teach and schedule everything around that date within those classes. This is a question, apparently, that's difficult to answer. This week, the director of the MFA program is apparently going to sit down and schedule the actual days, however, so that should be solved soon enough. As for all of my other deadlines and paperwork, they are in and taken care of at this point, and I even got a ream of acid-free, archival paper from the department chair so that I can print two copies of my thesis for the library when I'm given the go-ahead to do so (I have to wait on that too, it seems).

All of my bills at the moment have been paid and mailed; I got my latest credit card bill (my Amazon card) and paid it, the cable bill has been paid (even though said bill went up by three dollars between last month and this month), I've bought groceries and the like to get me through most of this week, and most of the laundry has been done. I still have to wash the sheets and blankets, but need enough free time to pay attention to those while doing so (in case the drain downstairs overflows again). My parents have also, according to my mother, mailed my second box of Christmas stuff to me as of this morning, so I should be expecting that by the end of the week as well. It's like a second Christmas, a reward for doing little else but studying, and my Stephen Crane collection has also shipped. By taking care of most of my extant responsibilities, I've freed up the rest of my week to do nothing but take care of the comps reading and do my taxes (whenever I have the time to do that, of course).

Yesterday my reading would've finished much faster had I not been forced to spend the course of almost three hours calculating midterm grades, grading quizzes, and posting everything on Blackboard and Banner for my students. I did do this, however, and that's another big weight off my shoulders; I have nothing else to worry about in that department until the 26th, at least. I did shave off my beard, too, on Friday night -- I left a thin goatee to grow back in so that I'm not completely clean shaven (which I hate) and by the time classes resume next week, I should have a good covering of stubble and hair again without all of it being too thick or thin. At some point soon I'm going to have to switch out my wardrobe for summer, too -- it's getting warmer every day, and I no longer need to wear layers every day that I leave the house. It was 83 on Thursday, and I taught in shorts for the first time this semester. It was wonderful. I am also desperate to break out my flip-flops and sandals again to wear every day -- I hate wearing shoes and socks if I can avoid doing so, and as this may be my last few months where I can dress so casually for anywhere I'd work, it's even more important to me that the weather get warm and stay warm soon.

Of course, now that I've said that, we're supposed to get rain/sleet/snow here on Wednesday and Thursday. At the end of March. My parents are dealing with some sort of small storm like that back east right now, actually. This has actually been a sort of shitty winter for the most part -- snowstorms, school cancellations, cold winds, getting stuck in West Virginia after Christmas due to a snowstorm, etc. It reminds me of living back home, when winter weather started in October and didn't end until April. This time last year, I was back home for Spring Break, and it was in the 60s and 70s there every day. Oh, how things change.

On that note, I'm going to bury myself in my reading and attempt to get as much done as possible today. I'm not exactly in the mood for it, so I have to force myself to do it.