The Procrastinator, Part II

Spring semester: day fifty-two

I told my students quite frankly on Monday, via email, that this week my office hours would be changed. Normally, they're on Tuesdays from 7-9AM and 1-3PM They're supposed to be 1-4PM -- at least that's what they are on my sign and on the syllabus -- but I'm rarely in there past 3, do my Writing Center hour at 3 instead of 4, and get the hell home before the rush hour traffic hits. Wichita rush hour traffic, while not as bad as some of the other cities I've lived in, is a bitch.

Anyway. I'm getting off track. I told them that my afternoon office hours today would be shifted to Thursday morning from 7-9, as basically every hour I'm on campus this week, I'll be teaching them and doing nothing else so that I can get home and spend the time I need to devote studying for my comps. I also told them (though I told no one else) that I wasn't going to be in my Writing Center hour this week. There are four paid staff members in there when I'm there; even if it's busy, it's not like I'd be missed -- and really, I've had enough problems with the staff there to where I'm really close to just not going back for the last month or so that I'm a student. There are reasons for this that I'd really rather not get into here.

My students understood and didn't blame me one bit (as very few of them have ever come to my office hours -- maybe five, total, over the course of the semester thus far), and wished me luck on my studies. I conducted my workshops in class today and they went well; I got through the vast majority of my students' papers, got in the Monte Carlo at 12:30, and came home, where I summarily ate, talked to Daisy on Skype for an hour or so, and then passed out.

Some of you are probably thinking "but you said it was to study!" And it is. But I also need to properly sleep to recharge for my studies. Getting up at 5AM and being "on," moving my ass and motoring through two classes and two drives (to and from campus, mind you) is not easy on me anymore. I think I'm just getting old. So, while I could have studied all afternoon and evening while I was exhausted and hungry (hence why I ate almost immediately when I came home) it was just easier to go to sleep and get the rest that I couldn't get last night as I had to get up at 5AM. Now, at 1AM, I am awake and can spend the rest of the night (or as long as I want and can focus, into the daytime hours tomorrow if necessary) focusing on what's left of my studies/review list.

"I remembered that your final is this week," my mother told me in an email this morning, "and I am sure that you will do perfectly fine. Then you'll finally be done with all that."

This is, as I must keep reminding myself, a week of endings -- a week of triumph. By the time I come home on Friday afternoon, yes, my brain will probably be fried and I'll be exhausted, but this semester-long nightmare of everything leading up to comps will be over one way or the other. I've come to accept the fact that if I'm asked to "redo" a question, I'll just redo it and get it over with -- but my confidence levels in my studies and knowledge are rapidly reaching their peak, and over the course of the next 36-48 hours, I hope to achieve that zen-like calm I keep talking about before I go into the exam. Again, I know I will reach the point where I'll know all that I can be reasonably asked to know or write about, and after I reach that point, further study or anxiety is worthless. I told Daisy that I want to completely finish my studies and reviews by Thursday afternoon so that I can distance myself from the exam for a good half a day or so, let it seep into and fester within my mind, and be able to go into that testing center on Friday morning refreshed and ready to take it on.

Rae takes the exam on Thursday, and Jay and I take it on Friday. I also plan to ask Rae how it went when she's done, so I can know (at least beyond any true shadow of a doubt) how precisely fucked we may be. I'm almost questioning whether I should, though; it may cause more needless anxiety, or conversely, may lull me into a false sense of security. Rae is a scholar of poetry, as is Jay -- I am, really, not. I read what I have to, and get by on common sense and overall themes. I don't memorize lines and passages, and I don't spend hours trying to explicate one or two small works when I know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that it will be mostly meaningless to do so. That's neither my learning nor my writing style. I can be incredibly articulate in my arguments and overall writings (which, if you've been paying attention, I'm sure you've seen here over the years) and that has served me well in my academic career. While I tend to be laid-back in a lot of my studies, though, I obviously have not been when it comes to comps. I'm sure I've been a bit more laid-back than some people have been, but really, any day that I've not buried myself in books and notes for hours on end, at this point, almost seems shameful to me, whether I'm truly getting anything out of it or not. I spent the whole of Monday studying, from 12:30PM to around 6PM, doing nothing but looking up criticism, analysis, interviews, and taking notes on the poets on my list. I have filled three notebooks (two composition books and one spiral-bound notebook) on everything I've read -- common themes, important lines/passages/styles -- and again, I'm beginning to become more confident that I can go in there and nail that exam to the wall. However, whether I'll truly be able to do that remains to be seen. There are apparently three passing scores given for the exam, from what I've heard -- low pass, pass, and high pass (the latter of which is basically "with high honors"). I don't know how accurate this is, of course, nor do I really care as long as I'm within those parameters. If I do exceptionally well, to me it's the same as if I squeak by. I'll still graduate; it's meaningless to me overall -- the diploma is the goal.

In my mailbox this morning in the department I received the official paperwork for the binding of my thesis/final project; I had to fill out the title, how I want my name to appear on the binding, and list my director and the like, and provide the department with a mailing address so that I will receive my own personal bound copy when it's done. The library does binding of all of our theses/projects for us, which saves us (as students) a lot of money; one of the bound copies is added to the "library" of sorts that's kept in the Writing Center, and the other is mailed to us after graduation as a gift from the department. All we do is provide two copies on acid-free paper to the library by April 15th, once we're given the go-ahead from the MFA director. I have the acid-free paper in my office right now; the chair gave me about half a ream of it, which is much more than I'll actually need (I'll give the rest, when I'm done, to someone else who needs it). My collection is around 50 pages (I don't remember the exact page count right now), so it'll be a fairly thin book. I'm apparently supposed to follow the directions on the instruction sheet the MFA director gave us, which I've done, and once I get that go-ahead, get it printed and over there to the library ASAP. I can do that. I'm just waiting on it right now. I'd imagine those orders will come in sometime over this coming weekend. That would be good, as I need to get it printed and delivered to the library by the 11th at the latest -- I'm not on campus again after that until April 16. Ironically, that is the day I'm actually taking my students over to the library for class. Once comps are finished and I've delivered those copies, I'm done with everything academically-related for my personal graduate school career; all I have left is a month of teaching my students, and then I hit the proverbial bricks.

Because my graduation falls on a weekend, Daisy has rearranged her work schedule so that she can attend it. Her parents do not yet know if they'll be able to make it. I've mentioned both of these facts before. I told her last night that if her parents are able to come, we're going to need confirmation on that within the next week or two, as all of the hotels here will book up quickly for graduation weekend. I would not be opposed to her parents staying here in my house in the least, but her mother is deathly allergic to cats, and well, I have three of them. Everything in my house is coated in a fine layer of cat hair, and no matter how much I vacuum or psychotically clean, it's not going to go away -- so they will unfortunately need a hotel room if they can make it down here. There are a few nice, new/newer hotels in Newton on the east side of town by the interstate (which I told Daisy about); those hotels probably won't fill up as fast as the ones in and around Wichita will as graduation weekend approaches. As graduation falls for me on a Friday afternoon, Daisy and I have also discussed me going back up to Omaha for a few days directly afterward to enjoy some downtime and spend some time with the family again, unencumbered by having to worry about school or money for a short time before I return home and resume looking for post-grad employment. I told her I'd love to do this; the weather will be nice by that time, and as she'll not have to go back to work until the Thursday night after my graduation, I could spend a few days there with the family and decompress after three years of doing nothing but schoolwork and worrying about financial issues. Getting out of Kansas for a few days will be something I desperately need once I finish everything up.

My own parents will probably want me to come home for a visit sometime shortly after graduation as well -- they haven't mentioned anything about that yet, but I also know that they won't be able to make it to Wichita for the ceremony, and I'm sure my mother will want to do something to celebrate my Master's degree -- I know how she is. I'm guessing she'll want to throw a party to celebrate that (as well as my engagement to Daisy) as soon as I'm free to come home for a few days once more. That would also give me the opportunity to receive graduation gifts of money in person from people who would want to give them to me, and money is something I will sorely need once I'm no longer getting paychecks after the end of May/beginning of June or so. The problem is that with Daisy's work schedule, I somehow doubt she'd be able to make that trip with me to meet everyone, especially shortly after requesting several days off for my graduation beforehand.

I'm beginning to realize that once I'm done with school next month, I will be done with school next month. This is a sobering concept. For three years -- three years -- I've been in this insular group of academics who function outside of the real world, not having to worry about anything outside of that little academic bubble. Having that degree will be nice, but it also means I'm stripped away from that society -- or, really, it's stripped from me. I will be, effectively, starting over in life again. Yes, with a higher degree, but the facts remain that I'll be starting over from scratch and will be once more on my own. I've done this three times before -- once after graduating from WVU in 2005, once after moving out here to the midwest in 2006, and once more after moving to Kansas in 2009. I don't tend to land on my feet very well; I struggle, I have a hard time finding work or a reason to keep getting up in the morning. I entered grad school because it was the best option for me to remain employed for three years, because in most other respects (outside of, say, grocery store jobs) I'm basically unemployable. It's hard out there for writers. You can't just sit at home and write things, expecting money to start pouring in -- that's not how it works. Again, I'm on the university's adjuncting list for the fall, but that's a sort of unreliable and/or last-ditch option with no guarantees. It's not like I won't be applying for teaching and/or editing positions in many other places, but again, those are no guarantees either. As I told Daisy, I am perfectly realistic in saying that if I have to take a job at Arby's or Wendy's to pay the bills while I apply for teaching or editing jobs, I will do so until I find someplace which will hire me. I'm not too proud to do that. Again, it's all about survival. I have a car that I have to keep running, I have bills to pay, and I have three cats to feed. To hell with pride; I have to eat.

Daisy is confident that I'll find somewhere to work quickly, and that we as a couple will be able to survive comfortably. She'll make a comfortable living from her new job; it won't be necessarily lavish or luxurious, but it'll be comfortable. She also stresses that I'm planning too independently and not necessarily taking her, or us, into full consideration when I talk about survival, because I neglect the fact that she's along for the ride with me as my fiance. She is right, to a certain extent; I don't want to be dependent on her for the basic life necessities of food and shelter. I've done that before (or rather, I've been forced to be dependent on a significant other in the past) as I floundered to find anywhere which would hire me and pay me a livable wage. I don't want to be that person again. That's not a partnership; that's me being a mooch and waging war on a society that doesn't appreciate or understand my talents and abilities -- and that's an incredibly childish, selfish viewpoint, especially for a man of thirty with a terminal degree in his field. She also wants me to try, at least, to look at the bigger picture and take her into consideration on where I apply for teaching or editing jobs and what I'll do -- and to a certain extent, I can do that, but to another extent there's not a whole lot I can do about that. A lot of it's left up to chance. For example, if I get a very good job offer from somewhere in Michigan, Texas, Alabama, etc. that pays $100k or more a year, I can't let that go simply because she may not want to live/move there. She has to be flexible with me to a large extent, as well. The problem is that I foresee major problems in our relationship forming if something like that happens.

Yes, these are the things I think about in the middle of the night.

On that note, I shall dive back into my studies with newfound vigor. From now until Friday afternoon, it's time to buckle down and stare academia in the face until it blinks first.