The "Shit Board" Theory

Spring semester: day fifty-nine

I have not been feeling well the past few days. I have been feeling a near-constant anger and frustration at nearly everyone and everything. At the world, so to speak. I have no patience, I have no empathy or understanding, and I have no time nor desire to deal with anyone's bullshit. I am bored of, and angry with, even my daily routine of things that I used to enjoy, things that I spent hours doing to decompress -- such as listening to my podcasts while I play a video game or clean the house. I am restless. I am irritable. I am not happy. And yet, I can look at it from an outside perspective because nothing should be making me feel this way -- but I do.

Brandon, you're probably saying, you have a wonderful fiancee and you have just finished basically everything you need to do for your master's degree. Aside from paying your bills and grading papers, you have absolutely zero responsibility for anything over the course of the next month or so when you graduate. Why are you so angry/frustrated/depressed? 

I honestly can't tell you. But I am.

As you folks know at this point, I am not a patient person -- for anything. I try to be when the situation absolutely requires me to be, and I have many levels of patience and tolerance when I have to exhibit it in certain social or professional situations, but outside those situations, I am patient for nothing and no one. For example, when I say I want something done, I want it done now; when I give an order, I expect it to be followed, and when I say something, surprise, I mean it. Despite this, I am not an unpleasant person; I am a kind and loving person, and a very nice guy -- as many, many of my friends and family would attest to. But I am, unfortunately for some people, a very inflexible person; I don't take orders well unless I agree with them, and I do not respond to, nor will I follow, ultimatums. If you give me an ultimatum about something, believe me, I will fire one back at you that is ten times worse for all parties involved simply out of spite. And unlike most, I'll mean it and I will follow through with it. I don't like being put in a box; I don't like rules, and I don't like needless bullshit-monkey we're doing this because that's the way it's always been done sort of edicts -- again, for example, why I was, and am, so diametrically opposed to things like comprehensive exams for graduate students.

I went to campus yesterday morning as per the usual to find that I did not have my results for comps yet; I later found out from a colleague that Jay didn't get his either, and that he just said he did. It has now been a full week and we've yet to receive word on our results -- and as far as I know, nobody in our group of hopeful graduates (eight or nine of us this semester) has found out yet. Because of this, I had a dilemma to face. I needed to get in contact with my director and the MFA director as well to find out just what in the hell I could do with the two freshly-printed, on acid-free 25% cotton paper, copies of my thesis that needed to be over at the library by Monday -- one of three days of any given five-day week that I am not on campus.

As I mentioned before, I emailed my director to ask him, basically, "has my project been totally approved or not? Because nobody in this department will tell us anything unless we specifically ask and badger the hell out of people" in more formal, less-assholish wording, of course. He replied and told me that yes, my project had been approved and that I should be able to take it over to the library to drop it off for binding, but to get the go-ahead from the overall MFA director first.

I am on good terms with the overall MFA director -- she's always been very sweet to me, and likewise I have always been very sweet and respectful to her. I've never given her any shit, and she's always been incredibly helpful to me if I've had any questions about anything, or if I've had any problems (such as at the beginning of the semester with my student loan issues). I also usually see her on the mornings I teach, as most of the time she's there early taking care of business stuff. Yesterday, however, I did not see her, so ten minutes before I went to teach my classes, I sent her an email asking if it would be okay to drop those copies off yesterday afternoon, as I had been told by my director everything had been approved and that I wouldn't be on campus today or Monday. She replied to me between my classes and said that it was fine, that my first two readers had approved it, and then later replied again that she also got word from my third reader (the department chair) that everything had been approved and was good-to-go. I replied and gave her my utmost thanks, and reiterated that I was always sorry to bug her or bother her about little things like this when I know how busy she is (and she is, believe me). I dropped the copies off at the library yesterday afternoon with the appropriate people, and came home.

Everything worked itself out, yes, but the point of telling you this story is that none of it should have been this needlessly complicated -- and it's stuff like this that frustrates and angers me to no end. This is just a small example of it. When I talked to a colleague later who had also gone through this process ages ago here, said colleague told me that this process is apparently much, much less transparent now than it was even seven or eight years ago. Back then, when your thesis had been approved, you were told immediately, and back then, you were able to get your comps results almost just as immediately after you'd taken them -- within three or four days. It's now been a full week (or more, for those people who took them last Thursday) and we've heard nothing -- and, if I hadn't basically badgered both directors into telling me, I would still not know anything about the approval of my thesis.

Mind you, neither my director nor my MFA director would have told me to take my copies over to the library for binding if I had not passed my comps, because that would mean that I wouldn't graduate and thus wouldn't be finished. But, again, there's still no transparency or reassurances one way or the other about this stuff, and that's what drives me crazy -- while I love the people I work with, especially those in administrative roles here, and have gotten a lot out of my graduate school education at the university, my only big gripe about my grad school experience is that it's like pulling teeth to get any kind of pertinent information out of anyone about anything, whether that anything directly affects us or otherwise. It is something that, with my own students, I've always done the exact opposite of -- I always make sure that my students know the deadlines for their assignments and papers, I always make sure they know what is coming up in class via timeline handouts and postings on Blackboard, and if they have any questions about anything I always make sure to take the time to fully answer them -- but, unless they're not paying attention, they don't, because I make everything crystal clear as much as I possibly can. This is why, generally, I have the highest evaluation ratings possible throughout the entire department of GTAs (or at least I did for a long time running; I've had my evals from last semester since the first week of classes back in January, and I've never even looked at them).

It is, really, the little things that do drive, and have driven, me nuts. And most of those things are out of my control -- I can't do anything about them to make them work or make them happen, and being forced to deal with their bullshit on a daily basis just makes me more frustrated and angry with not only those things, but everything and everyone around me. I call this the "Shit Board" Theory of life, and this is how I'm going to relate that theory to everything else.

Most of you who are on Facebook have probably played, or at least seen or have heard of a very popular game on there called "Candy Crush Saga." Candy Crush Saga is a puzzle game, similar to Columns or Tetris, where you arrange candies on the board in groups of three or more of the same color to make them disappear and make the columns move to complete an objective. Most of the time there are limits on the levels -- solve the puzzle within a timeframe of two minutes, solve it in X amount of moves, solve it in X amount of moves and clear the objective at hand (such as bringing certain items to the bottom of the board), etc. I am stuck on a level there; it is a level where you must bring all "ingredients" to the bottom and clear them within 55 moves. The bottom is bound up by wires, which you have to clear by matching up candies which are caught within the wires before you can clear them -- an extra step.

I just took this screenshot a few moments ago. Now look at that board. This is the beginning of the game; no moves have been made, and there is not a single candy connecting to any of the ones within the wires which can be removed. This is what I call a "Shit Board." The game requires you to move around a bunch of candies above, in vain, in hopes of being able to line up some near the bottom to clear that wire and bring down the ingredients (note the chestnut in the upper right hand corner). This essentially means that for the first half of this level, you'll end up wasting a ton of moves just to clear the shit off the board and hope that, by the time you can, you'll still have enough moves left to be able to bring down those ingredients to clear the level.

I've been playing this level easily fifteen times a day for three days, and there is one thing I can tell you with absolute certainty -- it's all up to luck. If you're given a lucky board with a lot of matches at the beginning of a level like this, you'll be able to complete it easily and within a few minutes. If you're given a shit board, like the one in the picture above, it's fucking impossible, and you'll be forced to replay the level over and over again until you get lucky and something works to help you complete it...if anything ever does. The game is made purposely difficult and purposely unlucky most of the time so that the company can goad you into getting so frustrated that you will spend real money on Facebook purchasing "power ups" for the game from them in order to be able to complete the level and move on. Can't do it with skill or luck? Throw some money at it.

This is, in a nutshell, life. Or, at the very least, it's my life right now. I've been given a shit board that I'm forced to waste moves on and/or replay over and over, getting more frustrated and angry each time because, halfway through it, I can see that there is no possible way for me to win and that I'm wasting my time -- it's all up to chance and total, blind luck, and it's out of my control. It's also a microcosm for how I'm feeling in general. Each setback, each little piece of bullshit that I have to deal with on a daily basis angers and frustrates me more, and makes me more withdrawn and less likely to put myself in a situation where I have to continually deal with it. Everything that irritates me is out of my control; they may all be little things, but when all of them are tied together and thrust upon me at once -- and, probably most importantly, when they're not taken care of by those outside forces in a reasonably timely manner -- my patience disappears and I become fed up with anything and everything, to the point where any tiny little thing, or dealing with people in general, crazily irritates me. To the point where I'm yelling at inanimate objects around the house. To the point where I have a continual frown on my face and am just angry -- at nothing in particular, really, just angry and dissatisfied with everything. For example, I was yelling at my washing machine two nights ago because it wasn't washing my blanket (which Pete vomited on) quickly enough, and all I wanted to do was throw it into the dryer and go back upstairs.

Again, I have no patience anymore, for anything. I'm sick of waiting on things. I'm sick of not being in control of the things that are important to me, the things that I desperately need control or resolution of -- or things that just need to work correctly. The weather is a good example of this. Spring needs to work correctly, meaning no fucking ice storms and low temperatures in the 20s in mid-April. No, it's mid-April, which means that it needs to be 75 degrees every day, and about 50 at night and in the mornings, so that I don't have to wear three layers every day just to be able to stay warm and prevent my fingers and toes from going numb. Again, something out of my control, something little, but something that adds to the continually-growing ball of irritation.

To these ends, I have basically isolated myself from everything and everyone I know for the time being. I need time to decompress. I need that time more now than I have for the better part of the past year or so. I don't want to be bothered, I don't want to be asked "Brandon, why are you so angry and irritable?" or "why won't you talk to me?" over and over. I just, desperately so, need some time to myself. I need time where I don't have to put on a happy mask and act like I'm feeling normal all the time. I need time to where I don't have to get up in the morning or afternoon because of some social or professional obligation hanging over my head, because trying to "sleep this off" isn't enough. I need time to be able to ignore the rest of the world and let everything that needs to fall into place to actually fucking do it. I even told Daisy that I desperately need a few days alone, a few days where I can just be me without repercussions or her worrying about why I'm not spending every waking, available second talking to her. I need space, on all fronts; I need all of the daily irritating bullshit that I have to deal with to just stop or go away for a while to let me completely detach from it, because it feels like this semester has been nothing but one task after the next continually pounding me into the ground, like a hammer hitting a nail. First my thesis, then the basement flooding over and over, then comps studying, then comps, then taxes, then everything surrounding the lack of information about my binding copies, then waiting for comps results (which I'm still doing), then the continually shitty weather, my allergies going nuts, the house being a mess, the credit card bill which I have still not received, and -- let's not forget -- the stack of fifty student papers that I just collected yesterday and need to grade. Stop. Everything, seriously, right yourselves and just stop. World, please unfuck yourself. World, please straighten out and unfuck my life so that I can actually relax without having something hanging over my head to continually stress, get frustrated, or be angry about. All I want right now is peace and quiet. Anything or anyone else intruding into that little bubble that needs to stay intact in order to keep me sane is going to make me start screaming. Yeah, I know. Life is hard. But all I want is a few days where I can decompress enough to deal with it. I have enough shit to do, and enough shit to worry about, already. All I want is a few days of relative peace. Why this has to be so difficult to achieve when I have so few relative responsibilities is beyond me.

Wealth and Taxes

Spring semester: day fifty-seven

My taxes are done; they took a little under two hours to complete earlier this afternoon, and I sealed them in their respective envelopes and stuck them in the mail. Mostly everything was the same as it always is; I got paid a little more last year since I taught during the summer, and because I made a bit more money from my online stores than I usually do, but my refunds balanced out to be about the same -- a little less on both counts, but eh. It's still a good chunk of very useful cash that will roll in around the end of the semester or so, along with any graduation money I get.

With the taxes being done, I have a newfound wealth of time to relax and sleep, finally. Well, sort of. Comparatively speaking, anyways. I have papers to grade between now and next week, and I'll get a lot more of them tomorrow. I have to go out and do some grocery shopping, and I have to figure out what's going on with my thesis and graduation -- meaning, I have to print my archival copies as well as venture over to the bookstore at some point to purchase my cap and gown, etc. However, I can't do any of those latter things until I head one. little. thing.

That would be that I passed my comps. Which I have not heard yet.

Again, I'm not worried, but being forced to wait holds everything else up, things that I need to be doing on a timeframe set by the graduate school, not by me or by the department. In addition, I've not yet heard back on whether my project has been approved either, even though this afternoon I sent an email to my director to get some sort of clarification on that. I'm also not worried about the status of the project's acceptance; I know that's not going to be brought into question, but I want someone to tell me something.

Jay found out this afternoon that he passed his comps just fine, and as you know, he took them at the same time I did, and has the same director I do. I don't know how they let him know, but if they're notifying folks via email, I haven't gotten anything yet about mine, nor have I gotten a reply on the status of my project, either. At this point, this leaves me no real choice -- I must print out the copies of my thesis here at the house, tonight, and take them with me to campus tomorrow. If Jay got notified via a letter in his mailbox at the school, then if I've been notified the same way, I'll have a letter in the morning. Also, I don't live in town and won't be on campus on Friday or Monday, which means if I don't know anything by tomorrow afternoon, I'm going to have to start asking lots of questions that by all rights, I shouldn't have to be asking, because all of this stuff shouldn't be running down to the wire at the very last second (or, really, the last two or three days, even) before the deadlines hit. I'm going to be very angry if I'm forced to waste time and gas to drive back down to campus on Friday or Monday just to drop off an envelope at the library and come back home because nobody could tell me anything beforehand -- especially for the project copies I have to drop off for binding. My three readers have had them since March 7. I know they're done at this point.

Regardless, if Jay found out today, I'm guessing I will find out in the morning, and all of this frustration may be for naught.

The ice storm that hit last night was a crippling one. Everything here in Newton -- tree, vehicle, house, grass, power lines, every structure in general -- is coated in ice. Thick ice. Ice so thick that it's weighing down tree branches and making them snap off to crash to the ground. It's 32 right now, and hasn't gotten above that all day. Plus, it's windy, which is shaking these ice-coated trees and making them break. I am quite glad that I put my car in the garage last night when I came home; the ice isn't on the roads (the roads are just wet or are dry in most places), but it looks like Mr. Freeze went happy with his freeze ray last night while I slept. I knew it was raining ice, hard, when I went to bed, so this was sort of expected. I am amazed I have not lost power or internet throughout this whole ordeal. But, again, I'll remind you that it was almost 70 yesterday morning when I drove to school to teach, and I wore shorts and sandals. Tomorrow I'll have to wear a coat and layers again.

I can't tell you how sick both I and my allergies are of this shitty, flip-flopping weather. Pick a season and stick with it, Kansas. Seriously. I'm tired of being able to enjoy the outdoors one day to freezing my balls off and dealing with ice storms the next -- sometimes within a twelve-hour timespan. Knock it off. It's supposed to gradually warm up again throughout the rest of the week and weekend, and it's supposed to be 75 again by Sunday, but who knows how long that will stick around. I wouldn't necessarily be as irritated about this if I knew anything else about what was going on with school, either.

On that note, I'm going to bed early tonight. I need the rest, and I need to be able to clear my head.

Iced

Spring semester: day fifty-seven

The severe weather threat from yesterday and the overnight tonight amounted to little here; it rained and rumbled a bit early this evening, and the temperature dropped by thirty degrees very quickly, but I assumed that nothing was going to happen and that the weather forecasters were, I dunno, high on something.

I told my students in both classes this morning that I would be in the Writing Center for my office hours this afternoon to make up the hour I skipped last week while pathologically and nervously studying for comps, and that after that I would be getting out of town before the storms hit. At 2:45 PM, I left campus -- it was really dark north towards Newton, and I'd already heard reports that Hutchinson (the big, state-fair-holding city thirty miles to the west of my house) was getting some pretty strong storms. Halfway up I-135, I noticed the temperature drop like a stone, as I had my windows down. It went from being about 70 outside to around 50-55. I realized that I had driven through the cold front that had brought these storms, and that it was so strong that I could distinctly feel it. This is never a good sign.

By the time I got home, it was really dark here and already starting to rain a bit. I immediately put the car in the garage where it would be safe, as basically -- depending on how this storm system tracked -- we could get anything from tornadoes to a horrific ice storm...or both. I came upstairs and cooked some dinner, and watched some of the extras on the Red Dwarf X set I had before coming back into my room to talk to Daisy for a bit. Daisy had just gotten up; she still has to keep her normal sleep schedule even on her days off, lest she not be able to stay awake on the nights she does have to work. Around 6:30 or so, I decided to go to bed, as I was really tired and just wanted to get some rest. So, I did. I passed out rather quickly, with my kitties laying with/on me.

When I awoke, it was night, but I didn't know what time it was. I heard it raining against the windows in the bedroom, and heard a few rumbles of thunder off in the distance. I rolled over and looked at the clock -- it was a little past 10PM. Oh, I thought, NOW we get the storms they said were supposed to start at like, 5PM. I'd not been asleep for a long time, but it felt like it. I got comfortable again, Pete came up and laid across my shoulder/chest, and I fell back asleep.

The next thing I knew, I was awakened violently by thunder so loud the cats freaked out and jumped up, thunder so loud that it rattled my windows and bed -- followed by lots of really bright lightning and rain so loud it sounded like a TV displaying static turned up to full volume. Basically all at once, too. Sadie was so freaked out that she tried to climb on top of my face/head/neck area so that I could protect her. I looked at the clock again -- 10:30. It wasn't getting any lighter, either; as the minutes ticked on, the storm got stronger. I was wide awake.

I began thinking as I laid there in bed. Hm, this could just be a thunderstorm, or this could be one of those storms in a line of them that precedes a tornado, microburst, downburst, or something else. I can either lay here and see if it blows over, and see if I can get back to sleep, or I can get up and go check the weather upstairs to see if it's going to get any worse.

I mulled it over for a few minutes; I was still incredibly tired, but I was also wide awake, and even if the storm ended at that moment, I knew I wouldn't be able to fall back asleep for some time. Like it or not, I was basically awake for a while, after only having really gotten a short nap (I'd planned to sleep most of the night, if not all of it). As it was only getting stronger and louder, I got up and decided to come upstairs to see what was hitting us, and if it was going to get worse. If there was the possibility for tornadoes, like hell I wanted to go back to sleep; I wanted to be able to get up, ready the cat carriers, and be able to hunker down in the basement bathroom -- the most secure place in the house, underground and against the back foundation.

The radar showed the storms hitting here; they weren't severe, but damn did they sound like it. It was raining really hard, the wind was whipping, the lightning was frequent and beautiful, etc. But behind that was what was troubling -- a massive pink swath of ice. Ice.

It was almost seventy degrees this morning when I got up to go to campus. I wore shorts and sandals to teach in today. By 11PM it was 34 degrees and there was ice coming our way.

Again, welcome to Kansas.

Once the storm moved off, we were treated to a delightful downpour of sleet and ice for a little while before it cleared out. It's 1:03 AM, and there's another large wave of it on its way to hit here soon. I'm glad the car is in the garage. The electricity has already been flickering, and my internet has slowed down considerably and is being a bit spotty at times.

I do plan to go back to bed within the next hour or two at the latest; I have to get up in the morning (or early afternoon) to do my taxes. I just downloaded all the forms from the IRS website, and can fill them in/print them here at home now. I don't think it will take an incredibly long time to do and calculate, but I absolutely need to get it done and mailed off -- I haven't waited this long to do my taxes since I've been in graduate school, but everything has snowballed over the course of the spring semester, and therefore I've been swamped with not only all of the comps stuff, but my own lack-of-sleep/time issues as well. Upon looking at the forms, it looks like I'll be able to do them over the span of an hour or two tomorrow -- at least the federal ones, anyhow. Should be pretty painless. I basically fill out the same stuff every year; I always have to fill out a Schedule C-EZ for my online businesses, but that's the only extra thing I ever have to worry about, and it's never enough to push me over the edge into owing taxes on anything (I make +/-$200 or so per year from them, roughly). I always get so stressed about doing my taxes when, in reality, it tends to go pretty quickly and I usually get a decent refund from both the state and the feds.

I brought home the acid-free paper ream I needed to print out the final copy of my thesis for delivering to the library for binding, as if that's going to get over there by Monday, I'll either have to deliver it on Thursday or get extra permission from the library person to deliver it on Tuesday morning when I take my students over there. A few of us have already gotten approval/the go-ahead from our readers, and while I know my second reader (read: super-famous poet professor) has approved it, I have heard nothing from my director or the chair, my other two readers, nor have I heard anything from the MFA director about its approval. I meant to stop by and ask her about that today, but she was not in her office when I was on campus this afternoon. This means that I'll have to bug her via email (even though I don't want to) in order to get a bit more clarification, and/or to ask what the deal is with the comps scores and the dates given for that, as that must be some sort of typo (as I mentioned before).

On that note, I'm going back to bed and plan to deal with all of this stuff in the morning. I'm tired and because of that damned storm, my sleep schedule is now totally thrown off again.

Confusions

Spring semester: day fifty-five 

I received this email about an hour ago, and found it...well, sort of confusing. I have edited it slightly, of course, to remove any sort of real details:

I have given your comp exams to your first readers today. 

Expect to receive a letter from me about April 22 with the results of your comprehensive exam and your MFA Final Project committee’s vote.

Once I let you know that your committee has approved your project, bring 2 copies to the library, as I wrote you earlier.

Also, could you please fill out the address label and return it to me?  I only have one from Brandon.

That's right, because I'm on the ball about that stuff.

Ahem. Anyway.

I'm curious as to whether "April 22" is a typo for "April 11," because of several reasons -- the first and major one being that we must have our project copies to the library by April 15th. Again, as I mentioned in my last post, that's a week from today. The 22nd is a full week after that deadline for printing/binding. The second is that it never takes three weeks to get comps results back, ever. Ever ever. Most folks I've known who have graduated in the past three years have gotten their results back very quickly, within a few days. Even if I don't get those results and the approval until the 11th, which would be Thursday, I'll have to print my copies with my acid-free paper and ready them before that; I'm not on campus on the 15th. I may, MAY be able to email the library person in charge of them and ask if I can deliver them on the 16th, a week from tomorrow, when I will take my students over there or their "library day," but that's about the latest I could do it and still keep everything on schedule as pertaining to what the graduate school deadlines are. Honestly, though, I'd like my approval to be before that if at all possible so that I can print them and get them delivered sometime over the course of the next three days. This email MUST have some sort of a typo in that date -- that's way too late for everything to happen. If I see the director tomorrow while I'm in the department, I'll ask her about it -- I really don't want to bug her over email -- but of course, whether I see her or not depends heavily on the weather.

As you folks know, I am a weather nerd -- at least when I have time to be and can focus on it. Tomorrow and tomorrow afternoon/evening, we're supposed to get our first big "strike" of spring storm season. This means strong/severe thunderstorms with possible and/or probable tornadic activity. I've already emailed my students to tell them that while my morning office hours will be in session as usual (because, well, I'll have to be there to teach them), if it gets nasty or is going to get nasty, I am getting my ass back up to Newton in order to be able to get my car in the garage and protect the cats, and advised them to take the same sort of precautionary measures in their own lives as well. No, you can't predict where or when a tornado is going to hit, but you can be damned sure that in Kansas, when the weather people say that they're possible and conditions are ripe for them, at least a few of them will pop up -- especially when words like "outbreak" are being thrown around a lot in their forecasts. Part of it is that I'd rather be home when these storms hit, and part of it is also that in the parking lot on campus, everyone parks out in the wide open -- there's no protection for any of our cars whatsoever. If golf-ball-size hail rolls through because there's a tornado a few miles away, the campus parking lots are like a shooting gallery, and my car's already falling apart; the last thing it needs is hail damage to the body or glass. My car is my livelihood, as you know, and I need it on a pretty daily basis for at least another month. I'd rather not put another several hundred dollars into it to replace the windshield and back glass if I can avoid it. Wichita will have tornadoes roll through the city and its suburbs once in a while -- there were a few last spring that did some crazy damage a few miles from campus -- but Newton, even though it's flatter and more spread out, hasn't had anything substantial up here since several years before I moved here. And here, I have a garage. That's a definite plus. Two definite pluses, actually.

Now that I've said that, of course...

Anyway.

Today I am incredibly tired. I don't know why. I slept until almost 2PM, which means I will more than likely have trouble getting back to sleep tonight. I told Daisy last night before she went to work that I think my body and stress levels from before comps are catching up with me, and not in all the good ways -- my body is super-tired; I'm frequently exhausted both mentally and physically, and I am always at least a little bit hungry when I'm at home. I'm going to cook dinner in a little while, and then if I'm tired enough, I'll go back to bed. I didn't even think of looking at my taxes today until a little while ago, mainly because of that whole "being exhausted" factor. Wednesday, I suppose. Wednesday I'll take care of everything I can, everything I have to do. Mind you, I don't want to wait that long, but I'm just tired.

Calculations

Spring semester: day fifty-five

A little rain sprayed through the area a bit earlier, and the forecasters are calling for storms -- some possibly severe -- to pop up from tonight all the way through Wednesday or so. In order to avoid the Monte Carlo getting pelted by hail, I moved her into the garage -- where I also refilled her coolant tank and gave her another quart of oil. Preventative maintenance, you know. I haven't checked or added any new fluids to her engine since the huge double-snowstorms in February, which was the last time I had her inside the garage for any stretch of time.

This is the most truly productive thing I've done all day, and that alone makes me feel marvelous. Even if it means that yes, I'll just have to take the car back out of the garage again on Tuesday morning.

It feels incredibly good to be done with comps and studying for them, as you know, and that alone has removed a ton of stress from me. I've been trying to decompress this weekend and do as little substantial work as possible. I did, however, have to take care of some chores around the house yesterday and today. I took care of all of my laundry yesterday and last night, and this morning when I awoke, I ran the dishwasher. I also went out late last night and did my grocery shopping at Walmart, this time remembering to pick up a lot of the stuff I'd previously forgotten on other trips, as I was so frazzled during said trips that I didn't want to mess with anything other than the basics for survival. These items included Bisquick (which I've forgotten the past five or six times I've gone to Walmart), new pens to grade with, and a new electronic cigarette, amongst other small things that have plagued me every time I come home without them. I also got some actual food to cook over the next week or two as well, so that I don't have to subsist on sandwiches and crackers because I am no longer too busy or tired to do some shopping.

I slept a very long time. I got up, I cooked lunch (yes, cooked a meal) and watched the rest of Red Dwarf X. Tonight, I switched out my wardrobes from winter to summer clothing. I was excited. Well, sort of excited. Believe me, mundane chores like this are much more exciting than reading thousands of pages of poetry or hundreds of pages of notes again and again.

I have not yet received my comps results; I would imagine their grading is taking place over this weekend. Yesterday afternoon was the graduate MFA reading on campus. Yeah, didn't go to that either. Again, as I wrote here a few weeks ago, poor planning/scheduling there. I would have been more than happy to attend and participate if it was on a day I would be on campus. As it stands, I was at least half-correct in my predictions: I wasn't conscious. I claimed that I planned to be neither conscious nor sober during the time of the reading. In reality, even though I feel like I should be celebrating, I haven't even had a beer since I finished my comps. As you folks know, I very rarely drink, even in celebration. I do love beer, but there are very, very few situations in which I imbibe in any sort of alcohol anymore -- and living alone more than twenty miles from most of my drinking friends and colleagues is not usually one of those situations unless I am ungodly depressed. Parker wanted me to go out to watch the basketball game on Saturday night, but I woke up too late to be able to go do anything with my group of friends who went out to watch it.

Today is Monday -- it is one of only two free days I really have for the next week, the other being Wednesday. This is because I teach on Tuesday and Thursday, as you know, and on Thursday I collect my students' next big batch of papers. This means two important things; first, it means that if I want to avoid coming to campus on an extra day this week or next (such as next Friday or next Monday), I must get the go-ahead, ASAP, to print out the two copies of my thesis to deliver to the library, since the day it's due is a week from today, Monday the 15th. Second, since Monday is indeed the 15th, I must do my taxes sometime this week. I have everything for them, and it takes a few hours to do them, but I need to get them done and mailed. I've already paid all the bills I have as well, and will need to get stamps beforehand, so I have to make a run to the post office on one of my days off. Next weekend not only will I be completely swamped with student paper grading, but I just won't have the time to do them and mail them out. That means I either do them today (once I sleep and get up again) or I do them on Wednesday.

I don't like taxes. I don't like math. There's a reason I have an English degree (and am in the process of getting a second); I'm bad at math. I'm bad at taxes, too; frequently I'll get a letter telling me there's been an adjustment made to my forms and that I'll be getting more or less than I calculated myself due to some sort of weird ass loophole I missed. Daisy says to file my taxes online, but I never trust that. The one time I did, because I did it the quick and dirty way, I ended up owing the feds $48 or something like that. And, in Kansas, the state charges you money to file your state tax return online (or at least they have in the past). The past few years, though -- at least for 2010 and 2011 -- I was able to get everything filled out relatively quickly and correctly, which is a trend I hope to be able to continue this year. It's just the matter of doing it -- and it stresses me out. I've had enough stress over the course of the past few months, so going through more doesn't necessarily make me happy.

I told Daisy I was concerned about one of my credit card bills, for the Citi card I used to purchase her work clothing for her last month, as it has not yet arrived in the mail. Mind you, all I've used said card for was that clothing, but still -- I should have gotten a bill by now.

"Why haven't you set up an online account with them?" she asked me. "You should be able to see what your balance is anytime, just like your bank account."

I've not done this because I rarely use my Citi card. For a long time, it was my "emergency" card, the one only to be used when I had no other option. Because I never use it, the last thing I put on it was my car insurance in December. It was the card that I used most of the summer to be able to get groceries and eat. Now, I have my Discover card for "emergency" use, as it has a massive limit and the Citi card doesn't, and occasionally I'll use the Citi card for once-in-a-while things (like Daisy's clothes) and will continually keep it paid off. When it's paid off and I don't have a balance on it, I don't get a monthly statement. Remember this, as it is important.

As I've been wondering why this bill hasn't come in yet, since Daisy's been working her job for a while now and I haven't seen nor heard anything from Citi, I began doing calculations and looking stuff up. I took Daisy out for her clothes shopping one month ago today, on March 8 -- the last weekend she was here. On February 17, I paid the last Citi bill, paying off the card completely. That billing period went from the beginning of January to the beginning of February, and the bill was due on March 3. They cashed that payment sometime before I took Daisy shopping on the 8th, so I began thinking.

Okay, so if I paid it before it was due in March, that means that I didn't have a balance going into March. The billing period ran from 1/8 to 2/7, which means that the next one would logically run 2/8 to 3/9 or something along those lines, maybe longer because February is a shorter month, and it would have been due on 4/3 or thereabouts. I paid the last one before the due date, which meant that when the billing period flipped over, I had nothing on my balance. I didn't get Daisy's clothing until 3/8, and it wouldn't have been processed or on my records until the next day even if it ended at midnight 3/8...which means that I basically skipped a month of billing periods, which is why I haven't received a statement in over a month. That means that this latest billing period just ended or ends within a day or two from now, and it's on that where I've bought Daisy's clothing...so I should be getting a bill soon.

I had to think about this pretty hard, because (as you know) I am meticulous about paying all of my bills ASAP once they come in. I tried to set up an online account with them tonight in order to double-check things, but they wouldn't let me -- apparently I needed some sort of code that they sent me in an email well over a year ago, and I don't have that code anymore, so it says that my info doesn't match what's in their system. Sigh. This sort of bullshit is why I don't do any sort of monetary stuff online -- bill pay, etc -- unless I have no other choice.  I'd rather just write a check and mail it than be forced to jump through all sorts of hoops. I can track checks physically.

Regardless, I'm not really concerned now that I think I've figured it out. When it comes in, I'll pay it, and if I don't get it this week I'll call them and see what's up, though I'm guessing it's what I surmised. They send out their bills/statements at weird times anyhow, usually with a ton of time in between to pay the bill.

Daisy asked me last night if she's going to get to come down here again before I graduate, and I told her probably not; her work schedule is so contradictory to my own that if she did, she'd only be able to come down very briefly and would have to turn around and go back home within a day or so, and while she was here I would barely be able to get any time with her because I'd be on my work/sleep/school schedule. We both want to spend some time together because, as you know if you've been paying attention, it's been a month -- but it doesn't look like it's going to happen before I graduate. I have too much to do in the end of the semester with my students (basically, every weekend from now until finals week I'll be grading something else of theirs), and she works Thursday through Sunday nights (read: the entire time I'm off). This means that while she'd be able to go to bed and get up on Monday afternoon to drive down here, she'd arrive on Monday night (probably late-night) and would be wired when I would be forced to sleep in order to be able to teach on Tuesday morning. She'd sleep all day on Tuesday while I was at school, and we'd only get part of Wednesday together before she would have to go back home to work again on Thursday night, as I teach again Thursday. And, of course, that's barring anything I would have to do on Wednesday as well, a day where I don't necessarily have to go to campus, but a day on which I do take care of work for my students and/or stuff around the house that needs done. Basically, even if she came down on her days off, because of my own schedule, we'd get less true quality time together than the amount of time it takes her to drive here and back. That's not even worth it. As much as I love her and want to see her, it's a waste of her time and gas money if we'll barely be able to interact, and there's no point to it. Once I graduate next month (ahem, if I do), this will no longer be a problem, as I'll be done and will not have to worry about money for at least a few months -- but right now it's a major pain in the ass, and neither of us can do anything about it. We just have to wait. To even be able to take off the weekend to come down here for my graduation, she had to pull major strings and basically set up her schedule to work the four days in a row preceding it, which means that while yes, she'll be here, she'll also be exhausted.

My mother sent me a message asking how I did on the comps. I told her I thought I did fine, though I wouldn't know the actual scores until later. She said she texted me as well, but it's not like I've gotten any texts since my phone has been turned off for weeks. I turn on my phone maybe twice a month, and any text messages sent to me more than 24 hours before I turn the phone on, as it's a prepaid phone and always has been, I never get. They vanish into cyberspace, or phone space, or what-have-you. I don't know if I'm charged to receive them if I never get them or not. I've never asked because, really, I've never cared. I hate the telephone. I avoid using it whenever possible. I don't want to own one -- I don't like being accessible. Daisy wants to upgrade me to a smartphone and add me to her plan, but I have no use for a smartphone, nor a want of one.

"You say that now," she said, "but once you have one you'll wonder how you ever lived without one."

"I sincerely doubt that," I replied.

It's not just about the capabilities of smartphones; it's the principle of I don't want to be accessible. I don't want people to contact me unless I ask them to. I want the ability to contact others, if necessary, but only when necessary -- that's why I still carry my phone with me every day, even though it's always off. It's not about making myself "reachable." I don't want to be reachable. I want to be in reach of someone else if I have to be, in the event that my car blows up halfway to school or if I've survived a tornado and need to call family to tell them I'm okay. Anything else? Fuck it; there's Facebook and Twitter -- I barely even check my email, except for my school email (which I have to check as students contact me frequently).

On that note, I'm going to bed -- I have a long day/week ahead of me, and even though comps may be over, that doesn't mean everything else stops. Fare thee well, friends.

Done

It's done. Comps are over.

The past two months of madness, studying, and stressing is all over.

I say "all over" because I'm pretty sure I did well. Pretty sure meaning "eh, 90% sure" or something along those lines. If I were to grade all three of my questions and average the scores together, I'd give myself in the realm of an 87-92%, which is in the B+/A- range. No, I didn't go in there and say "psh, this is cake," but I did admirably. I'll put it in the words of one of my friends who took the comps with me, in reference to his own performance: "I'm sure there are many people who did much worse than me who passed with no problems." That's how I feel. I'm confident I passed just fine, really.

So, now that I've said that, here's the story.

I awoke Thursday night, as you know, around 11. Something like that. I don't remember the exact time, but I was awake. I talked to Daisy on Facebook while she was at work in the middle of the night, I wrote the previous post here, and I reviewed my notes again -- twice. I knew it wouldn't do much good, and that I wouldn't magically acquire any more real knowledge from them, but I wanted to refresh myself; I wanted to be as confident as I could be.

I should have, in hindsight, forced myself to go back to sleep in any way possible for at least a few more hours in the overnight. I was tired. By 5AM, 5:30-ish, I was feeling it. I told Daisy how tired I was, how much I just wanted to go back to sleep, how much I just wanted to curl up with the cats downstairs on the bed with the electric blanket, and pass back out. I now know this was more than likely my subconscious nerves fucking around with me, because I was about to do something that I absolutely did not want to do. Yet, on some level, I did want to do it -- I wanted to get it over with so that I could spend the next month or so relatively stress-free.

At 6:15, I left the house early to go get gas in the car. The car's running fine, though the rapid ups-and-downs in temperature and humidity levels is messing with her a bit, and I can tell -- she's a little growly, a little sluggish at times, burns more or less oil depending on the day (because when your car is as old as mine is and burns oil, you can smell it faintly) and I'd run the gas tank down a little farther than I normally do before filling up, which always makes her a bit cranky. So, as preventative maintenance (read: once every month or so), I put a bottle of fuel-injector/engine cleaner into her when I filled up. She took almost 11 full gallons of gas (it was 10.92 or something like that) and she'd been driven 208 miles since my previous fill up, which means she's getting a little over 19 miles to the gallon. That's a little less than normal, as she usually averages about 20-22, so I wanted to put that bottle of stuff into her anyway to see if I could knock out some of the kinks. I filled up, I got back into the car, and I turned the key.

Nothing.

What? You've got to be shitting me, right? On the most important morning of my graduate school career, my car won't start in the parking lot of the gas station.

I took the key out and looked at it. The key was fine, I was putting it in the right way, nothing was wrong. She'd fired up just fine less than five minutes before when I drove her to the gas station. I put the key back in and turned it again.

I had to hold it in "start" position for about ten seconds before she finally fired up, the starter whirring and trying desperately to turn over until that point. When she did, I revved the engine a few times, tapping the gas pedal to get everything flowing. She sounded just fine. Hm. That's interesting, I thought. It wasn't cold this morning, or at least not as cold as it has been on most mornings -- it was about 40. I also know that my battery is just fine; I bought the car in June 2011, and the day before I bought it, the battery had been replaced. Occasionally she does this -- she has her moments where I call her "whiny" and she doesn't want to work correctly. Once I got on the interstate, she was fine, and for my drive home in the afternoon she fired up strongly and ran just fine as well. I really think she doesn't like abrupt temperature or humidity changes, really. It's been cold most of this week -- hell, on Monday when I got up it was snowing like crazy -- but for the past two days or so, it's warmed up quite a bit, even though it's been chilly in the mornings. Yesterday afternoon when I finished and came home, it was well above 60. Right now, at 5:32 PM on Saturday evening, it's 75.

Anyway.

Before I went to campus, I sent Jay a message that I'd be in my office around 7 if he wanted to come up and get some coffee before we had to head over there for the exam. Four of us were taking it -- me, Jay, and two fiction guys. I know one of the fiction guys pretty well (and he's even read this blog on occasion) but the other no longer teaches and has not been an active member, per se, of the department for over a year. Jay arrived around 8 or so, and we had coffee, nervously chatting about what lay ahead of us.

"Here's what I'm unsure of," I said. "Is [Director] going to give us easy, lowball questions just so we can get it over with and pass easily, or is he going to rake us over the coals and really test us on our reading lists? Because if he goes the latter route and discusses the people that I really don't 'get' or know a whole lot about, like Wordsworth, Auden, Keats, etc -- I'm pretty fucked."

I studied as much of those three poets as I possibly could understand or get from their writing, but much of it, even after repeated views of their works and my notes, still remained lost to me. As mentioned before, I don't connect that well with the pre-modern poets, or even with some/most of the modernists, such as Eliot and Yeats. I could, however, if asked, write a lot about Eliot and Yeats, but most of it would be putting it into a historical or modernist/stylistic perspective.

Jay and I looked up a bit on Keats' "Hyperion" to refresh ourselves -- he knows a lot about Keats; apparently he wrote a twenty-page paper on Keats for one of his classes here, so he was on his reading list too. As for me? I barely read anything of Keats that was substantial, even for the comps -- again, I just don't connect with or "get" it. I really didn't research a lot of my poets, especially the older/classical ones, for my reading list -- it was more of a "oh, him. I've heard of him, let's put him on there" sort of exercise. Not to mention that a fair amount of them were basically picked for me by my director, as he was like "nah, take that person off, put this one on" for several of them. My thoughts on this were along the lines of well, whatever, their works are all public domain and you're writing the questions anyway, so... My classics/pre-modern selections were Dickinson, Whitman, Wordsworth, Keats, and Shakespeare (specifically his sonnets, and Hamlet only if necessary).

At about 8:30 we went downstairs. We were supposed to be over at the testing center -- which is right next door to our building -- by 8:45.


"I won't lie," I said. "I'm a little nervous about this. It could be easy or it could be really, really hard, depending on the questions."

I felt like I was repeating myself, but it's what was on my mind. It was a thought that surprisingly had not occurred to me until this morning -- the possibility that, because it is comps, that he could make the questions either incredibly easy and open-ended or ball-smashingly hard and specific. I'd almost rather take a short-answer or multiple choice test of 500 questions than deal with an essay that I may not know how to write effectively.

Anyway, we went up to the testing center early, and since all of us were there, we were allowed to start early. The testing center, at least for our purposes, is a small room with cubicles and tables in it. Three of the four of us, including myself, were testing on computers. My computer setup was less than ideal; the keyboard was too low, the monitor was too high, and I couldn't move things around because the cables were strung in such a fashion as to where they were immobile. It was pretty uncomfortable. We were led into the room and each handed envelopes containing our first question. The lady running the center set the clock, and said "okay, you have ninety minutes...starting now." And we tore into our envelopes.

Inside my envelope, my worst fear was realized: the first exam question (as we have the ability to pick from one of two options on each one) was not. pleasant. Both options were at least ten lines long in their instructions, and neither one was incredibly ideal to write on. I picked the latter of the two options, a question asking me how Whitman's writing influenced at least two others on my reading list who, in a sense, carried on his traditions in relation to subject matter and style. That's what it boiled down to, anyway. I chose Allen Ginsberg (for obvious reasons, if you've ever read him; he's like Whitman reincarnated 100 years later), but had definite trouble coming up with a second author on my list to use. I eventually, with maybe twenty minutes left, brought in C.K. Williams -- who, I argued, used Whitman's long-lined, explanatory style as well as seemed to bring in a lot of the stream-of-consciousness stuff Whitman excelled at as well, and made references to Williams' wonderment at our place in society and his snapshots of people and how those people interact with one another as well as the world. All of it was pretty basic stuff, and given maybe three hours for that question I could have gone into much greater detail, but part of it was that I was so shaken by a choice of questions that difficult (even though, in hindsight, it doesn't seem incredibly difficult now). I finished it with maybe two minutes to spare before time was called.

By the way, the other option to that question was to write a conversation of sorts between Keats and Shakespeare on how they would view the more contemporary poets' works on my list, such as that of Anne Carson, Sexton, O'Hara, etc. I read that and was like you've got to be fucking kidding me, right?

"Verily, my friend John, this poetry doth suck. O, why hath these fools abandoned metered verse?"

Etc.

I understand that was my director's attempt to put a bit of creativity into an option for a comps question to possibly make it a bit more amusing to complete, if chosen, but nobody in their right mind is going to attempt to answer a question like that unless they're very, very well-versed in Shakespeare or Keats, or both. Aside from his sonnets, I haven't read anything by Shakespeare in over ten years -- my last Shakespeare class was in 2002. And, while I enjoyed it, it's not like I was ever going to remember anything major from it. Aside from Hamlet, we didn't even read any of the major plays -- it was more the historical ones. Coriolanus, Henry IV, Henry V, Richard II, Richard III, etc.



Ahem. Anyway.

The first question jarred me. I was more confident in my writing in it by the end, once I'd been able to put everything together, but still, it was a bit rough. I was hoping that all three of them wouldn't be like that, that the other two would be relatively painless in comparison.

I sort of got my wish.

I opened the second question (after our fifteen-minute break) to find a fairly straightforward explanatory question that was something along the lines of "you have many contemporary 'confessional' poets on your list; choose three of them and write about their confessional styles, themes, motives, etc." I chose Sharon Olds, Anne Sexton, and Michael McGriff. In that order. And made a detailed five-body essay out of it. By the end of the ninety minutes, I had written four pages singlespaced and in as excruciating detail as possible, bringing up examples and even paraphrases/references to some of the poets' lines and larger body of work within the collection, such as Olds' reference to her newborn child, in one of her poems, as a "glistening verb" (something that stuck with me), and references to Sexton's lines about how the undertaker was already making her coffin, etc. I tried to be as specific as possible, and in the end thought that I'd pretty much nailed that question. I don't remember what the other option was for the second question; I was laser-focused on answering that one.

After the second question, we got a lunch break of a bit over an hour -- they told us to be back in the testing center at 1:20, and let us go. All of us went over to the student union to eat. I had nothing, for I knew that if I ate anything before I was done, my blood sugar would spike and then crash (I hadn't consumed anything but coffee and cigarettes, in order to stay focused); if I eat when I'm tired, I very quickly pass out afterwards. It's just how my metabolism works, and as I know that, this is why I rarely eat anything while at school, and why I generally only eat one meal a day. It's how I keep my girlish figure.

Now, to put all of this into perspective, we'd had two questions at this point -- and not one mention of any of the four poems we gave our director to include on the exam. Sure, the authors of some of those poems had come up as examples to draw from in questions, but the poems themselves had not been included in our packets for the exams thus far. This led Jay and I to believe that the third question, the final question, would have to be the example/explication poems question. My four poems were Ben Lerner's "Reading is Important," Anne Sexton's "Buying the Whore," Frank O'Hara's "My Heart," and Bob Hicok's "After the procedure." For all four of these poems I drafted out explication answers in my notes, answers which would address anything that our director could come up with in reference to those poems, and I studied them meticulously. By the end of my studying, I could have basically quoted to you the vast majority of the draft explications for any of those poems. So, really, I was ready for it. I was hoping to get O'Hara or Lerner, as I'd not written anything about either of them yet in the exam, and I'd covered Sexton in as much detail as I probably could have in the previous question. Hicok was the wild card; I had a lot to say about Hicok, but with O'Hara I could've drawn in his manifesto of Personism, and with Lerner I could've drawn in the numerous pop-culture, advertising, and 1980s references he made in his book Angle of Yaw, which the poem was taken from.

Upon getting in there, I found that the last question was indeed the example poems question, and for the most part, to answer it would require explication and dissection of the poem itself in reference to its themes, language, line breaks/stanza breaks, as well as any differing use of syntax or other tropes in reference to the poet's overall body of work (or the body of work we knew which was included in the collection we'd read/had taken the poem from). Okay, fair enough, I could do all of that. I looked at the poems he was letting me choose from: Sexton and Hicok. Fuck. No Lerner or O'Hara. Oh well. He also added "feel free to pull in anything from your criticism books that may be of use as well, though do not feel as if that is absolutely required" or something to that effect.

On one level, I was actually delighted that he'd chosen the Hicok poem -- in my studies before bed on Thursday, hypnotically, I'd re-read through the entire book of Hicok that I'd taken that poem from, Words for Empty and Words for Full, and had enjoyed it immensely. It also gave me a good sense of his overall style and how he uses language, switching the order of words, switching letters to make nonsense, etc. Having already written on Sexton and not wanting to drive down that depressing path again, I chose the Hicok poem and completely dismantled it almost on a line-by-line basis, explicating what it meant and how Hicok went about bringing that meaning to the poem. I talked about the duality of objects and images within the poem. I talked about the poem in reference to Hicok's other works in the book. I talked about Hicok's syntactical and lyrical style, and how it differs in this poem than many of his others. I talked about wordplay and how the switching of letters or the order of words in the poem helped to demonstrate certain effects. I talked about how the way his stanzas, even, lent themselves to a particular way of reading the poem. I had this question by the balls, and proverbially nailed it to the wall. When I came to what could've been a logical finish, there was still 20-25 minutes left, so I channeled Eliot's On Poetry and Poets and some of the major themes in that book of criticism, slinging them in and attaching them to Hicok's poem like I was Obi-Eliot Kenobi. When the time was up, I had typed up over four pages, singlespaced, and had written over 2,100 words (oh yes, I looked at the word count) on that one, solitary poem.

"So, this concludes your exam," the lady running the place told us, adding cheerfully, "I hope all of you did well!"

"So do we," I added just as cheerfully. And we left.

It wasn't until afterwards, when Jay and I were preparing to go home, that I was able to come down a little bit and relax, and realize the bullets I'd dodged in that exam. Wordsworth, Dickinson, Shakespeare, Keats, Frost, Levine, Lowell, Carson, Dean Young, and William Carlos Williams were all mentioned, though briefly and in passing. Major poets who I was sure would be included in a question or two, such as Auden, Yeats, e.e. cummings, and T.S. Eliot were not mentioned or brought up in any question at all. Our director is even teaching an Eliot class this semester. Also going unmentioned were the surrealist manifestoes and poetry of Andre Breton, who my director specifically requested I add to my reading list, and someone he'd asked me about last week via email. I don't know; perhaps maybe he thought I knew enough about Breton and surrealism already.

So, really, I realized that I could have studied about 1/4 of what I'd actually ended up studying, and would have been able to take the same exam with the same results.

Again, as I mentioned I wouldn't be, I'm not even mad. I'm not. I don't care. It's done now. I may have been a little shaky on the first question, but if I were grading that question myself I would give it a 75-80% or so if it were an essay one of my students turned in. Well, none of my students would be writing anything that literary, but you get my meaning. Again, I am not at all concerned that I won't pass the comps; depending on how well they think I did on my latter two questions, I may get a "high pass," though I doubt it.

I came home and called Daisy, updated my Facebook, and sent a message to Parker to tell him how I did. Then, I ate and passed the hell out. For many, many hours. When I awoke, of course, I got on here and began writing to tell you folks the good news. As for the results of the exam, I don't know exactly when I'll get them. It could be as early as Monday, or it could be sometime later next week. All I know is that for the rest of this weekend, I shall relax and try to decompress; I told Daisy that sometime soon, I plan to order pizza (because I'm still too tired and worn-down to go shopping, and like hell if I'm going to go shopping at Walmart during the daytime on a Saturday) and that I'm going to try to catch up on all of the lost sleep from the past several weeks, sleep that I've lost in studying and in forcing myself to awaken so that I can study more. I also feel very isolationist-like; I don't want anyone to bother me, and likewise I don't want to bother anyone. I want to get some me-time, to myself, so that I can properly recover and begin to, y'know, like life again. Because, for the past several weeks/months, I have wholly hated my life, as it's consisted of getting no real sleep or relaxation and studying/reading thousands of pages of books (most of which ultimately turned out to be meaningless) and little else -- as you know if you've been paying attention to this blog at all during that time.

To those ends, I haven't a lot to do over the rest of the weekend. I have one student's rewrite to grade, and aside from that, I think I'll catch up on all of the video games and household chores I've neglected over the time since I've been studying many hours every day. Last night, when I woke up, I did a ton of laundry -- laundry that I'm still working through even now, since I've been putting it off for the past two or three weeks. My hamper was not only stuffed full, but it probably weighed forty pounds when I dragged it downstairs. I still haven't slept since I got up last night; I spent my day watching most of Red Dwarf X (which I purchased off Amazon last week specifically to reward myself after comps were done) and, for some reason, I got the urge to watch Pearl Harbor again, so I did that too. I plan to do several more things before bed as well -- I want to go do my aforementioned grocery shopping, I want to run the dishwasher, and if I'm alert and/or energetic enough, I'd really like to switch out my wardrobe for summer -- again, it's 75 outside right now, even as the sun is setting, and I doubt we have to worry about any more cold days for the rest of the spring. Hell, they're predicting severe/tornadic thunderstorms on Tuesday (oh, goody, can't you just feel my excitement for that?) so I'm guessing warmer weather is here to stay for the foreseeable future. Time to break out the tie-dyes, shorts, and flip-flops again. Yeah buddy. At least if the tornadoes get me, I'll be stylishly dressed for the season.

So yeah, that's the comps story. Could've been better, but could've been much, much worse. More than anything else, I am very, very thankful that they are over, and that I can once again relax and continue my life.

Downtime

Spring semester: day fifty-four
The zero hour
The day of reckoning
The moment of truth
The end-all, be-all

At 11PM, I found myself lying in bed wide awake. Brandon, you have to try to get more sleep, I thought to myself. You must. It's not really an option.

I had spent the last 6.5 hours sleeping; I went downstairs around 3PM, taking all my notes with me, and read through them again until I was too tired to read any more (which, yes, did raise my confidence levels a bit more) around 4:30, at which point -- cats on top of me, scattered about the blanket -- I passed out.

When I awoke, it was dark and I saw that it was shortly before 11. I was hoping that it would have been closer to 2 or 3.

It was around this point where I began rationalizing with myself. Okay, so go upstairs if you can't sleep any more. Decompress. Play a game, or something. Then read through your notes again, and if you're tired enough, go back downstairs and sleep until you'd normally get up at 5, and you'll be fine. 

If you've been reading this blog for any length of time you know that I do occasionally suffer from insomnia. It's not necessarily stress-related; it's more related to the fact that for the past, oh, seven or eight years, I've had trouble managing my sleep schedules. My mind is more active at night; it just is, and I've never been one of those people who can regulate their sleep based on what they have to do on any given day or week. Sometimes I'll have insomnia where I'm just wired to stay awake for 24 hours straight or more, where my body is tired and achy but my mind is firing on all cylinders. Sometimes I'll have hypersomnia, where I'll need to sleep for 12 to 14 hours straight, only getting up to pee or drink a glass of water or something. Nothing really helps either situation -- it's just something I've been forced to deal with for the better part of my adult life.

After being awake for an hour or two, I realized that there was no way I was going to be able to go back to sleep before I have to go to campus in the morning and take my comps. No way. There's just no time for it, nor do I have the ability to make myself pass out (without the aid of melatonin or some other sleep-drug) and be able to get up again and function at 5AM. It takes me a while to go through a wake-up-and-get-moving process. I'm not one of those people who can "get up 'n go"; as you know, I have my morning routine (which is why I get up at 5AM) which requires that I get up, smoke, make/drink coffee, and use my computer to get my brain wired for the day. That can, depending on the day, take up to two hours if I'm really worn out/worn down, or haven't slept much. 6.5 hours of sleep is basically a normal night of sleep for me during the semester anyway, and I've accomplished amazing things on much less sleep without the ability to come straight home and go to bed directly afterwards if I so choose. So, I postulate that I'll be just fine.

My plans for the rest of the overnight hours are to once more go through my notes, trying to memorize everything that I haven't completely memorized already and catalogued into my mind, and then leave for campus a little earlier than usual so I can put gas into the car first. It's supposed to be nice today, supposed to be warm. It's a pity I must spend the majority of the day inside on a computer writing answers to essay questions.

Rae took her exam yesterday, as I wrote yesterday afternoon. She thinks she "rocked it," which gives me hope. Mind you, she doesn't have the same director I do, but it still gives me hope.

"What if you get in there in the morning and the questions are so easy that you'll feel like you've wasted the past two months studying for them?" one of my students asked me after class yesterday.

"Honestly? I won't even be mad," I said. "Actually, that would be the best possible scenario."

Do I think that will happen? No, and that's why I study, why I prepare methodically, pathologically, and (at times) a bit psychotically. I want to walk in there in the morning with the best grasp on the knowledge I have at hand.

"You shouldn't have to 'redo' a question," one of my colleagues, much older than me, told me yesterday morning, as she waved away my fears there. "You're intelligent. You know what you're doing. As long as you make a defensible argument on the subject and back it up with what you say, you can't really go wrong."

"Here's the problem with that, though," I said, "...[Director] is one of those guys who, if you don't agree with or share his opinion on something, you're wrong. And he's the one writing the questions."

He, along with my second reader, is also the one grading them, I might add, with the chair (my third reader) to be brought in only in a tiebreaker sort of scenario -- as I covered here before. Neither the chair nor my second reader want to "fail" me for anything -- they know how intelligent and well-versed I am, and know how well I've done over the course of my graduate career here. They also know that I can put together an argument and can write well, as both of them have seen my writing. Hell, if nothing else, my way-overboard, explication/experimentation with poetry project in my director's surrealism class last semester, hopefully, curried much more favor with the man than I had before -- I will say that he did tell me several times that he enjoyed my work on that. And I thought aside from my actual exercises in that, the writing was mostly shit (because I basically had to pull it together and tack it on in post-production, to borrow a phrase).

Still, my colleague is right -- there's no reason I should be asked to redo a question or "fail" a question because of differing opinions on a particular poem or poet, especially if I have a strong argument and any facts I bring in (if applicable) are correct. If that's what it comes down to, you can bet your ass that I'll fight it and take it to whoever it needs to be taken to. All I want is to be done and to be able to get that diploma I've worked so hard over the past three years to procure, and if I have to, I will fight tooth-and-nail, fight dirty and burn some bridges to get it. I don't necessarily care; my true graduate school education ends at 3PM today -- everything else (such as teaching for the next month and going through the graduation ceremonies/printing my thesis for the library, etc) is all tying up loose ends since there's a month left in the semester. Technically, once you pass the comps and your project is approved, you have already graduated -- you just wait for the actual ceremony.

As for the exam itself, even as it comes nearer with each passing minute, I am not wholly concerned. I am confident I'll do fine, for the most part. It's all about getting in there and actually doing it at this point. As I've written before, I have time, statistics, knowledge, and allies within the department on my side. I doubt it will be little more than me going in there and answering some questions with some essays, then packing up and driving back home. I probably am, and have been, freaking out about it too much. Again, it's down to acceptance at this point. I am confident in what I know, and know I can write about a wide array of subjects and poets at length. I also know that the exam probably won't be as hard as I'm expecting it to be, but I do think it will be an intellectual challenge. As long as I'm alert and focused, my cognitive and argumentative skills should be okay. Good enough, as they say.

While I was sleeping earlier tonight, Daisy sent me this message:

You are going to do wonderful on your comps. I'll be around when you're done if you want to tell me about them, but if you just want to crash you can always tell me about them when you wake up.

But, regardless of how you do on them I still am completely in love with you and think you're wonderful.

That gives me hope. Her love and support instills a ton of confidence in me, as well as lets me know that no matter what, she's there for me. She's at work tonight, as she will be every overnight until Monday, yet she still made the time to send me that message of support. It's for reasons like this why I'm going to marry this woman, and why I love her so much more with each passing day.

So, folks, it's once more into the breach -- notes again, and then the moment of truth today. I will be sure to update all of you, once I am again conscious and the exam is over, on how everything went -- more than likely in excruciating detail, good or bad. I'll try to write about that over the weekend, as I do picture myself coming home this afternoon to crash for some time. Wish me luck, as I will probably need it.

Giving Up, Part II

Spring semester: day fifty-three

After a semi-psychotic half-breakdown yesterday (as evidenced by a large chunk of my last post) I am...well, I suppose I'm ready. I'm really about as ready as I'm going to be. On the combined advice of both Daisy and Rae (Rae, actually, is taking her comps right now, as I type this) as well as several other friends and colleagues, I am going to look over my notes twice more -- once before I go to sleep this afternoon/evening and once again whenever I get up -- and then I will be as confident as I can possibly be before going into this exam in the morning.

I've noticed that each time I read through my notes in detail instead of just scanning them, I become a little more confident in my knowledge. It's not all going to stick perfectly, but I get a bit more confident. I'm sure at this point that reviewing them twice more over the course of the next 18 hours or so will finally push me over that edge into "I can do this, it'll be fine" mode.

And really, I'm almost there now.

This is not the zen-like calm I keep referring to, which would only come from the total mastery of all knowledge at my disposal in regards to my reading list, but it is indeed a confidence and a lessening of stress. It's sort of like the five stages of grief -- I've finally gotten to the level of acceptance. Come what may, tomorrow morning I will get up, I will dress myself, I will drive to campus, and I will take that exam. For better or for worse. I've accepted the inevitability of all possible outcomes and the insecurities that will arise in awaiting my knowledge of those outcomes, and have mentally processed them as well as I possibly can. It is what it is. It is an exam, not the end of the world. Life will still go on whether I do well or do poorly, and I will find some way to survive if the latter occurs. Getting it done and getting through it is what's important.

The testing center is located right next to my building; I will get there with enough time to make an extra-strong pot of coffee (as I normally do anyway on regular days I'm on campus) and I will try to decompress, to meditate somewhat on my knowledge, to focus myself a bit more. Breathing exercises and all that, relaxation techniques if I am a ball of nerves. And then I will take the exam. For six hours.

"Don't do anything you wouldn't normally do to prepare for it," one of my colleagues told me when I mentioned casually that I was seriously considering stopping to get a 4-pack of Red Bull on the way to campus. "Keep your normal routine; you don't want anything that's going to throw you off."

Indeed, this is true. While I need mental clarity, I figure my normal amount of coffee and nicotine will keep me perfectly balanced enough to go in there and perform my best work. No reason to overdo it or to artificially pump myself up any more than normal.

Will I be nervous? Sure. At least a bit, anyway. That's probably good -- it'll get my adrenaline pumping a bit. Perhaps my thoughts will come more quickly, more succinctly, and I'll be able to drill those questions. I certainly appreciate a challenge, as long as it's surmountable. But, regardless, even if the exam weren't tomorrow, I've done just about all I can do for it to prepare. The notes are basically refreshers, to keep the material sloshing about my mind. Every time I've awakened in the middle of the night or when my alarm goes off in the morning, I've awakened from dreams which are about how to answer questions on the exam -- my mind is running monologues with itself, thinking about wording and processes and facts which, even in my subconscious, are turning over and over like greased gears. My confidence is building. The nerves are there, but my confidence (for the moment) is overriding them. It's a confidence that I'll do well, it's a confidence that I can and will go in there being able to answer the vast majority of what that exam might throw at me. And then, once I do, I'm done. It's over. I've got time to relax, time to sleep, focus on my students, and enjoy the fact that I am basically finished with graduate school.

I told Daisy that I may, however, be nervous all weekend about the results; I don't yet know when I'll get them, of course, but I will be nervous if I end up being "iffy" on how I've answered a question, two, or all three of them. I'm also hoping that my exhilaration at being done will override those nerves as well, not to mention my confidence in how I've answered them in the first place. I can already foresee it being difficult to turn off my brain even after I've finished with everything. That's why I plan to return home tomorrow after the exam and more than likely go to bed within half an hour of getting back here. If I can do that, hopefully I'll be able to "reset" myself and awaken refreshed and at calm. Maybe that zen-like calm will come after all -- it just may come after the exam is over and I've recharged my proverbial batteries.

For now, though? All I can do is study, sleep, and refresh myself a bit more upon waking. The time for judgment is at hand. Let's hope the scales tip in my favor.

Giving Up

I have, finally, come to my breaking point.

I have been studying almost every day, for hours on end almost every day, for almost two months straight. It has gotten to the point where I am not absorbing and cannot willingly absorb any more. And when I say willingly, I mean that my studies over and over seem like I'm throwing things at a wall, hoping they'll stick, and they're not. I'm proverbially throwing books into my brain, pages upon pages of poems and notes and criticism and interviews and and and....and none of it is sticking anymore. In fact, I believe that I'm starting to lose some of the stuff I started with when I began studying those many weeks ago. Key concepts, even. People whose collected works I've read and taken notes on, yet I could not tell you one, solitary, single thing about if asked.

I spent two hours leafing through my five criticism books this afternoon. Of them, only two provided any real use to my studies (the others were, really, almost completely non-applicable as they covered poets not on my reading list). Yet, even though I read Eliot's On Poetry and Poets, and took good notes on his concepts and found them fascinating at the time, could I list any of them off to you right now? No, not really. And I did this reading and note-taking less than three hours ago.

My brain is full, and I think it's leaking.


Everything else in my life has basically been put on hiatus until comps are done and over with. I can't focus on those things, I can't worry about those things until I can be just. fucking. done. Everyone is encouraging me. Everyone is telling me I'll do fine and that I shouldn't be so preoccupied and so worried. Yet I still have this immense fear that I will go in there on Friday morning and completely bomb that exam. I can study all I want, I can pump myself full of knowledge, and I can go in there as confident as I can be, but it will mean little if I'm given a set of questions that I can't answer, or they're a set of questions for which the required knowledge has already leaked out of my brain. And it is for that exact reason that the zen-like calm I need will never manifest itself.

I told Daisy last night (at 4AM, mind you) that there are some poets that I just don't get, and will never, ever get. I can't make sense of Wordsworth, Keats, or half of Auden, no matter how I try. I cannot grasp it. I cannot grasp the language, the subject matter, the styles, or what any of them are trying to say, really. Do I know their themes? I guess. Somewhat. Maybe. W.B. Yeats, while some of his stuff I do like, the rest of it is much the same. And you try making sense of Eliot's "The Waste Land" without knowing about every little reference he makes in the poem. It's maddening. It's stuff like that. Then there are poets on the list that, while I like and/or understand them, I have no clue what I could be asked about them or how I'd answer questions on them. This includes people like Robert Frost, Robert Lowell, William Carlos Williams, C.K. Williams, etc. I adore their writings, I do, but I have no clue what I'd say about them in a question. William Carlos Williams likes water. He likes people. C.K. Williams writes a lot about Detroit and the blue-collar lifestyle. Frost and Lowell really like God, and like William Carlos Williams, Frost writes a lot about nature and pastoral settings in rather plain language. Okay. Whoop-dee-doo. That's not going to be good enough for a comps question. I'd rather be given random poems from a given poet's body of work and be told to explicate them with knowledge of their larger body of work and common themes. That I could do, or at least bullshit, relatively well. Remembering minute details and/or huge themes without the poems in front of me for reference is going to prove damned near fruitless. That's not how I write, study, think, or operate at all in my head.

Because of these issues, I have decided to give up. I am going through my notes twice more -- once tonight, and once more tomorrow afternoon when I return home from campus after teaching, and I will be done. I'm giving up. I'm not truly going to learn or instill in my brain anything more than I already know, nor will I be able to retain anything more than I already know. That zen-like calm will not arrive, nor do I (or will I) have total confidence in my abilities because a large amount of what happens is left up to luck and chance -- the luck and chance that I get questions on that exam which I can answer. Yes, failing my comps is a real and frightening possibility, and it is a possibility which I cannot take lightly. Having to redo a question, if I must, is one thing, and not a huge issue, but failing all three of them is something else entirely, and something that sadly, is out of my control past a certain point. There is only so much that I can reasonably be expected to know and/or recall. This isn't like studying for a unit test in a single class, where one can study everything in a matter of hours; this is, inherently, an unfair exam from the get go -- we are creative writers being expected to study and recall a large amount of historical literature for which we are not majoring in. It's akin to telling a computer programmer to go study electrical engineering for a semester or two, because he'll be tested on it, and that test will determine whether or not he gets his degree in computer programming. While yes, they're sort of in the same field, they're completely different ballparks. I didn't go into grad school for my MFA to study more literature; I did it to work on my own literature.

I can't tell you how frustrated I am trying to get this stuff to "stick" in my head and having it just not take. I desperately wish I could memorize everything I've read, every note I've written, and be able to recall it at a whim. But I can't. It is too much to process. My brain can't keep it all in there. I could read through my notes ten more times tonight and not get any further. It really does feel like my brain is just full, and that it won't take, or retain, any more. This is the definition of psychosis. This is the definition of "studying psychotically" -- repeating the same action again and again and expecting a different result. I can only study so much, and can only look on the same material with "fresh eyes" so many times. Each time my eyes become a little less fresh.

Throughout all of this, I'm pretty sure I'll do fine. It's the law of averages, both with the poets on my reading list as well as the number of students who take their comps every semester and pass just fine, no big deal, in and out. I have also been known to be able to pull some insanely good writing out of thin air in pressure-cooker situations such as timed tests. Perhaps the knowledge is in there somewhere, buried deep under the surface, inaccessible until I must call upon its arcane power.

Or something.

Regardless, I'm pretty sure that zen-like calm isn't going to arrive. All I can do is study what I have and cross my proverbial fingers, hoping for the best. And I'm just so tired. I can sleep for twelve hours and it doesn't feel like enough. I can read everything I have over and over and still feel like it won't matter. And that's why I'm giving up. I am not a Jedi Master. But here's hoping that I can fake being one for a six-hour stretch on Friday.

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.