Burnout and Crash, Part I

Fall semester: day nine

I'd like to think that, eventually, I'll get used to the lack of sleep I accrue over a week's time, and that getting up at 5AM will no longer affect me in the way it does now. I'd like to think that, eventually, it won't be over 90 degrees outside when I go to bed at night, or over 80 still when I get up in the morning a few short hours later.

My work week doesn't appear to be long to a lot of you, as I'm only on campus three days a week, but over those three days I've realized that I spend a total of about 30-32 hours either in class, in my own office at work, or teaching class. Roughly estimated, of course. That can be bumped up to 35 hours if you count the time spent in the car driving back and forth from Newton.

When all of us second-years started grad school last fall, our director told us never to actually do the math and count up the time spent on campus and/or doing school-related tasks to compare to our stipend as GTAs to see exactly what we'd make "per hour" as if it were an hourly job. Doing so, he told us, would be excruciatingly depressing and demoralizing.

Because I've never wanted to be depressed, I've never been curious enough to crunch the numbers myself. I will tell you, however, that when I worked at Cash Register Hell / New Hell -- the setting of my recently-released book -- I made more than double than what I make as a GTA every year. More than double. This, ladies and gentlemen, is why for people like myself, student loans are a dire necessity if one wants to survive, eat, and pay bills. It's not a pleasant necessity, but unless you're independently wealthy otherwise, it's a necessity.

I'm beginning to get to know a few of the new recruits a bit better, albeit slowly. Most of them have schedules that don't really mesh well with mine (shocking, I know, considering how much I'm there), and therefore, during the many hours per week I'm in town and/or otherwise on campus, most of the department tends to be empty. Apparently, I have a fairly unique schedule. This week, a lot of the students up there are celebrating a five-day weekend, as they have a Monday-through-Wednesday class/teaching schedule -- which means they not only have today off, but they have our normal Friday off as well as Labor Day. Still, in what little free time I have, I've been hanging out with a few of the new people who have the time, and they seem really friendly.

"Seems we have a really friendly group this year," the director told me yesterday afternoon when he and I were discussing the semester.

"I think so too," I said. "some of them certainly seem to be more social than some of us were when we started."

I would later learn that the director knows that the former girlfriend and I broke up, though he didn't want to bring it up before out of respect for both of us and our working environment there in the department. He mentioned that in his years there, he'd seen many relationships begin and end between graduate students, and that it was good at least that ours ended amicably. I gave him the brief rundown, as I've given pretty much anyone in the department who was curious about what happened -- though I did not, of course, tell him about this blog, and completely forgot to tell him about the book. He has two books of his own and is always working on another, so I didn't want to make him think I was trying to get money/publicity/etc. from him or anyone else by mentioning it.

I've been slowly gaining readers to this blog; it seems now that about 80-90% of my colleagues and fellow grad students -- even a few of the new recruits -- at least know about it, if not read it regularly. Many of them have found it through my Twitter (as most of us with Twitter tend to follow one another), while others have found it via Rae's site, tracing my comments on her posts back here. There are a few people I didn't expect to be reading it, but as almost all of my unique hits now come from Wichita or the surrounding area, I can tell that I have a growing following and fanbase, which is both something to be proud of as well as something humbling. If I thought my life was an open book before, it's now even more open. I'm fine with that, though; it's not like I have any secrets to hide.

I have been mostly unsuccessful in trying to find something to do this weekend, though it's not for lack of trying. One of the things I've found about being single is that my confidence, as shaky as it was to begin with, is starting to come back -- and therefore, I don't feel apprehensive or nervous, really, about asking people (especially women) "Hey, have any plans for the weekend? Want to do something?" It may come as a shock to a lot of you that I've ever had any confidence issues at all, as laid back/open and blunt I am in casual conversation, but it's true -- throughout my high school and undergraduate years, I was a very quiet, brooding, perpetually shy person with very little self-esteem.

Fast forward 5-10 years or so and you'll find that I now perceive myself to be awesome and want everyone to know it. It's like a night-and-day switch, isn't it?

Regardless, I have not yet made plans of any sort for the weekend. The EGSA is doing some sort of get-together on Saturday afternoon that all of us have been invited to, but (of course) it entails going out to a bar of some kind, from what I can tell, and at this point you folks should know what I think of that sort of activity.

On that note, I'll continue this later, as now I have to hop in the car for that delightful morning jaunt to Wichita, not returning home until well after 10PM. It can't come soon enough.