It's really surprising how quickly any given week flies by -- one of my colleagues told me this morning that even though he's only halfway through his graduate school career, this semester is going very, very quickly thus far, and I agreed. As I mentioned in my last post, this is a bad thing, as time is quickly burning by for me to buckle down and read/study heavily for my comprehensive exams.
This morning, so that I could say I had done some previous preparation of sorts before my meeting with my thesis director, I went out and downloaded PDFs of several authors' complete works, as they're in the public domain -- T.S. Eliot, William Wordsworth, John Keats, and Walt Whitman, for starters -- and felt rather proud of myself. Suddenly, I had a ton of literature on my reading list at my disposal in electronic form.
And then I looked at the Whitman PDF.
Anyone have any clue how much Walt Whitman wrote? Anyone?
Apparently 567 pages, poems alone.
Fuck.
In undergrad, I always hated Walt Whitman, yet today a lot of my own poetry -- at least its overall themes and relative wordiness at times -- owes a lot to him, if subconsciously. Truthfully, there's not a whole lot of poets on my reading list who have inspired me, so to speak, over the years. I have poets I like on there, but few who have really inspired me. I like Emily Dickinson, but I write nothing like her. And here's a nice bit of party trivia for you -- every one of her poems can be sang to the tune of the Gilligan's Island theme song.
Don't believe me? Try it yourself:
I heard a fly buzz when I died;
The stillness round my form
Was like the stillness in the air
Between the heaves of storm.
The eyes beside had wrung them dry,
And breaths were gathering sure
For that last onset, when the king
Be witnessed in his power.
I willed my keepsakes, signed away
What portion of me I
Could make assignable,-and then
There interposed a fly,
With blue, uncertain, stumbling buzz,
Between the light and me;
And then the windows failed, and then
I could not see to see.
Now try to read any other Dickinson poem without singing it to that tune. You can't. Believe me, I've tried. What has been learned cannot be unlearned.
That was actually one of the major points of the lecture I gave my students today, to be honest with you -- how what we learn can never be unlearned. We covered an article in which a proposed relinquishment of certain technologies (genetic engineering, nanotechnology, and high-level robotics) would be a feasible solution to the possible future problem of impending technology-driven doom for the human species.
Because, yeah, that's the class I teach. No, I'm not kidding. See why I like it so much now?
The answer, by the way, is that there's really no right answer. The knowledge we have now cannot be unlearned, and what we uncover via research tomorrow will be the same, good or bad. There's also the problem that if we as a society decide to relinquish development of certain technologies for a heretofore undefined "greater good," there will always be a faction of outsiders who will choose to continue to develop it for possible, and/or probable, sinister uses. Those sinister goals may be overt, or they may end up being unseen or accidental, so what we have in regards to certain technologies right now is really a double-edged sword.
Again, yeah, totally love my job.
I digress, however.
The rest of the day was mainly treading water of sorts, killing time until I could have my meeting with my thesis director at 3:30. I wasn't in the best of moods; the storms from last night hit right around the time I was actually falling asleep (which, of course, I expected/predicted here in my last post), and subsided after about an hour or so. I slept fitfully again -- it's hard for me to go to sleep these days knowing that I have to get up at a certain hour for a certain function, in this case being that I need to awaken in order to drive to campus and teach. That doesn't mesh well with my circadian rhythms. I know, for example, that I probably won't wake up until around noon tomorrow -- and you know what? I'm so totally perfectly fine with that.
I was also treading water today in a literal sense as well -- around 6AM, half an hour before I leave the house in the morning, it began pouring rain. Like, heavy rain, for an extended period of time. Those of you who know me well know that I absolutely love rainy weather, especially the kind of rainy weather we had this morning (because it was warm, muggy, and comfortable). However, rainy weather -- especially during morning "rush hour" traffic in the Wichita area, is a bad, bad thing. People in Kansas can't drive. I've mentioned this many times here in the blog, but they can't. Kansans have a mentality of "I'm the only one on the road, and therefore you need to get out of my way" quite a bit. They're arrogant and reckless, and in rain that mentality amplifies with dangerous results. In the dark, in the rain, in heavy traffic, you can't see more than a few car lengths in front of you, especially if it's foggy. My car doesn't have the best headlights in the world -- it's seventeen years old. I don't have those newfangled halogen lights or blue lights you see on cars now. I have plain old whitish-yellow headlamps, and my wiper blades are the four-dollar Walmart special. My car is also a very heavy, cumbersome bucket of bolts similar to the Millennium Falcon, on which anything could go wrong at any given time.
Hear me, baby? Hold together.
Therefore, aside from an ice storm, there is no worse weather for me to drive through than pouring rain in heavy morning traffic. It's not me, and it's not my nerves -- I'm safe, I'm a good driver, and I go below the speed limit when it's raining hard -- it's everyone else who I have to look out for, because they're stupid. I must reiterate again that this is not an exaggeration. Kansas has the worst drivers of any state I've lived or driven in, period. There was one fairly bad accident I saw this morning on my way to campus, one that backed up the interstate for about 1/4 mile or so while the tow truck pulled the mangled SUV involved off to the side of the road.
The rain screwed up my hair as well; when my hair is long, it gets wavy and feathered. It does this on its own, naturally, giving me a Leif Garrett-like look once it gets to a certain length.
I keep it well-conditioned and properly styled -- after all, I don't want to look like a hobo, and I do have a professional image to uphold as a college instructor. When it gets wet, though, I am unable to do much with it but comb it straight back to slick it down, or otherwise as it dries I will get weird, goofy-looking curls that will pop out from the back and sides for no apparent reason. As my hair is also naturally a bit oily as well, I end up looking like an extra from Grease or like a mob hitman. With a big, burly beard. Trust me, it's not a good look on me. I don't like the "constantly looks like he just got out of the shower" look.
Daisy likes it. "You look very nice," she told me earlier. "It looks clean."
"It's not," I said. "It's because I got caught in the rain and it stayed combed back in that position all day because I have naturally oily hair and it's all I can do. I hate it."
Mind you, it's fine once it gets long enough to tie back into a ponytail, but I doubt it'll be that long again unless I let it grow for another six or seven months. It has to grow for more than a full year before I can tie it back without looking ridiculous -- yet another reason why I continuously, meticulously condition it. Otherwise it looks like hell.
Anyway. I've spent too much time writing about my hair. Let's get on with my day.
I met with my thesis director at 3:30 as planned. He just won a big award for some of his poetry -- one that apparently doesn't carry a lot of status, but one which he implied involved a rather nice cash prize. Any extra money is good for those of us working in academia; I get the impression that we GTAs aren't the only ones who are paid but a pittance for the work we do.
My thesis itself, while it could be done now as-is, I really see as about 90% done. I want to make some final cuts, edits, and additions between now and March 15, which is the cutoff date by which I must get my copy of it to him. After that, I have until April 15 to get two copies of it on acid-free paper (which I'll probably have to special-order myself) to the library for binding. One of the bound copies stays in the library, and the other goes back to the department for archival purposes. I do take pride, on some level, that future students -- if they decide to, of course -- will be able to go to the library and pick up a book of my collected poems. But, after all, it's not the project itself that I'm worried about -- it's the comps.
"I need to know what I should be focusing on the most," I told him. "You write the questions. I have some idea of what you like and how these poets' works flow into one another and influence not only one another, but some of the others on the list. Basically, I need to know what you'll be looking for -- obviously I'm not asking you 'hey, what are my comps questions going to be,' but I'm looking for a path to follow when it comes to my studying."
This is, I think, a completely valid way of -- in a roundabout way -- actually asking hey, what are my comps questions going to be?
I never said I wasn't a sneaky bastard.
I was given several different areas to focus on, based around groups of poets on the list. It was also implied that because some poets on the reading list are so different than some of the others that there's no way they can possibly be incorporated into any of the questions he'll come up with. Which, if you may recall, is precisely the reason I included some of said poets -- it narrows my focus. It saves me work. It is a sneaky, somewhat underhanded way of saving me work, but in the end it does save me work. I was also told that I really don't have to worry about the "critical" texts on the reading list, aside from a sweeping overall viewpoint that may or may not be very lightly incorporated into one question. This is slightly ironic as the critical texts are the only ones I've actually purchased and read through a few sections of at this point.
The meeting lasted about an hour, and was probably the best one we've had thus far -- I was able to exit it with a "plan of attack," so to speak, and know beyond a shadow of a doubt the gist of most of what the questions will entail. This was furthered later when I received an email from our MFA advisor detailing the processes for comps questions, and it goes like this:
1. There are three questions.
2. We have an "A" and a "B" option for each one.
3. We have ninety minutes to write an essay response for each question. Only ninety.
4. We have to answer all three questions. It's not a "three questions, pick two" thing.
5. It can be handwritten or typed; for a typed exam you need director permission.
6. The exam is either given on April 4 or April 5; you're assigned a date based on availability of times. The 4th is a Thursday, the 5th a Friday.
It all sounds so deceptively simple. Show up, bang out a few essays, go home. I've had friends take comps who freaked out over them in the weeks and days leading up to them only to be surprised how "easy" they were, and I've also had friends who didn't put enough time or effort into preparation who were overwhelmed with them. It's a flip of the coin, really. I already know mine will be relatively difficult -- even though I have a baseline idea of what'll be on it, I also know that I picked the more difficult (from what I've heard) choice for my thesis director, and it's he who writes the questions. That leaves little left but to read and study, and to soak in some of the themes and concepts of the poets I'll be working with.
Honestly, though, I think the entire concept of comprehensive exams is a bit outdated. There's no need for them. All of us, whether MA or MFA, prove to the department and the graduate school that we are competent enough to earn our degrees simply with the grades we receive in the graduate-level classes we take. When I filled out my plan of study about two weeks ago, I had straight A's (two of those were A-minuses, but that still counts as A's in my book). Most other colleagues of mine are in the same situation -- nary a B or C to be found, anywhere. In grad school, a B is a black mark, and a C even blacker. Most people who get a C as a final grade in a class in graduate school are checked to see if they have a pulse after the final grades are tallied. You have to try to get a C in graduate school, at least in my experience. So, since all of us are proving we are competent, intelligent, and have pulses, there's no real reason for comps anymore. At the very least, if you have above, say, a 3.80 GPA, you should be exempted from them. That's not too much leeway, I don't think. My GPA is a 3.86, 3.88, something like that, only because I've had those two A-minuses.
I don't have to be perfect, just mostly perfect.
Yes, I realize "mostly perfect" is an oxymoron. Shudduppa yo mouth.
It's still frustrating. I can at least understand comps for MA students, as they're getting what amounts to a literature degree, but they also have an actual thesis and oral defense to complete as well.
So, really, my week is over now. This weekend will be spent grading near-incessantly; I say this because I've already started, and it took me four hours to get through twelve papers. Take from that what you will, but that's only about a quarter of my total number of students this semester. My "spring cleaning" also continues; I've now boxed up two small boxes of extra kitchen utensils and silverware that I never use, have cleaned out the drawers in the kitchen, and have packed away my old crock pot that my ex left here (since my parents got me a new one for Christmas, which I should get in the mail soon). I still have to go through the lower kitchen cabinets and the bathroom cabinet upstairs before this part of the house is done, and one thing has become abundantly clear in my cleaning and packing -- I'm going to need a fuckload more boxes. And big ones, too. Or tubs, or totes, or something along those lines. I am rapidly running out of boxes and box-like things, to the point where once I do, my productivity will come screeching to a halt.
On that note, my weekend begins.
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