Dissertations are a very special thing. In many ways, they're like being held in a pre-birthing state, in labor, ad continuum, ad nauseam, until you either manage to complete the damn thing or you drop out. This blog is my attempt to chart what I hope will be the last months of dissertation writing and editing before finally completing my doctoral work. Maybe part of me hopes that writing in any shape and form will inspire more prose of the academic sort. Maybe I'm just full of shit and want a distraction. Since this is my first post, it's really hard to tell at this point.
So what is this blog about, you ask? Well, I guess I'm hoping it will be something that's entertaining to read (that's the most important for me). But I also am hoping that it will discuss things that perhaps people don't always address when they're going through graduate school and working. Things people don't mention in a world that's competitive and often times stressful and frustrating. I'm an adjunct professor at two colleges, a mother of four lovely children (note some sarcasm there), a PhD and Masters student (I'll explain that in a bit), and someone who will hope to be a writer in the academic arena.
Life, as you might have guessed, is messy, complicated, frustrating, annoying, maddening, wonderful, enjoyable, shitty, and, maybe in some moments, awesomely rewarding. Everyday there are decisions to be made, and, although I may not choose another's decision, they may think me a dumbass for making the ones that I have over the years. I will never claim or even elude to any notion of perfection. I am neither perfect (as in flawless) nor complete, as in the original Latin perfectus sense. But for me, and I may be going on a limb here, I don't want to be. Perfection is not how to live one's life. Striving for accomplishments, achieving long-sought goals, working towards something meaningful---yes, those are all solid motivations in life, but perfection? That's for suckers because it doesn't really exist in the broader sense. If beauty is in the eye of the beholder, perfection most certainly falls in that category as well. For some, it's relative to others or what they've already created or accomplished. Others would argue it is a work that has no flaws and is complete (i.e. lacking nothing; probably better expressed that they feel as if they have thought of every possible angle and they themselves have perfected that task, rather than the thing itself). For me, perfection is a fleeting and rather fruitless notion. One moment I may feel incredible about an essay or potential article, but if I return to that work the next day, a month later or years later, I won't necessarily view it with the same set of eyes or perspective. But that is, in my humble opinion, where the beauty lies. The ever-changing, developing persons that we are and can be, means that you can continue to learn and, as you may have guessed, I've already bought the lifetime membership to the learner's club.
Why blather on about perfection? The answer is simple. The strive for perfection can be the best friend and enemy of writing and the dissertation. The academic job market kind of sucks monkey pootang. Let's not try to mask the reality of this fact. There's increasing numbers of PhDs every year without comparable PhD positions to hire those people and get them the hell off the market before I need a job. I'm kidding. And not. Writing a dissertation is not intellectually difficult. You spend years working on seminar papers of various lengths, perhaps presenting at conferences, and discussing your ideas with peers and professors. Then you complete your doctoral exam, and then, you find yourself in a void, or at least I did. I knew my general topic. I've had a weird almost obsession-driven interest in thirteenth-century religious women since the early 2000s. I had some basic questions, but it wasn't the same as having a dissertation topic, one that I knew I could finish in X number of years and still feel as if I was contributing someone valuable to the profession.
I thought I had prepared, but then I realized I had a hole in my training: theory. I'd consider myself a philologist. I love languages in their many dialectal and temporal forms, as well as the literature that corresponds to those periods and languages. My strengths tend to lie in the close reading of texts and etymology of words and usage within texts. When I began the process of researching and reading for dissertation writing my biggest mistake was that I did a lot of reading and note-taking, but I wasn't writing. I look back at how I approached my dissertation and it makes me want to claw my eyes out or drink a ginormous Irish creme on ice.
Getting into writing and taking chances can be the most hindering aspect of dissertation writing. To be honest, I don't feel that smart, despite all that I've read and the number of hours I've spent on X, Y, Z and countless other things. I think in the end, which took me admittedly a lot longer to realize than I'd like to admit, is that the process of writing a dissertation is not about creating some original piece of research. That's merely a side product of the endeavor. The challenge is the transformation from being a lowly graduate student--eager to learn and willing to eat, breathe and sleep at the temple of knowledge in whatever subject you so desire--to a scholar in the field. For some that metamorphosis is a gradual yet fairly expedient one. In my case, it was like Willow trying to turn the old witch back into her human form (if you don't know this movie, you should watch it, google it, or just move along because, as a child of the 1980s, I will make pop culture references that may seem fossilized to younger folk). I'd turn into a lion, a lamb, a donkey or mouse, but I just couldn't seem to get the spell right to shift back into a human form. I don't know that I've yet accomplished that feat.
As so it begins. This blog I mean, not some epic war near the lands of Mordor. Hopefully this blog won't be that dark nor have any sort of overpowering ring that causes a shit ton of problems. But speaking of writing and dissertations, I probably should get back to that...
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