BASIC DISPLAYS OF COMPETENCY

I spent a lot of time yesterday working on an abstract and a rationale for a panel I'm putting together. In and of itself, neither task was that difficult (although I was a little concerned at first that there weren't quite as many points of intersection between the three arguments as I'd hoped, in the end I found a solid through-line), which was a happy discovery. It could just be that my mind is looking forward to the readings I've assigned my students for the next few weeks, or it could be that the extended discussion on the purpose and value of scholarly work in class on Monday night is continuing to hum away in my brain, but I kept imagining how writing this abstract and rationale would have gone a year ago, or two years, or five years ago. This is, of course, not the first time I've wondered about such things.

One year ago it would have been difficult--I could have managed it, though I doubt that the finished abstract and rationale would be of the same quality as what I produced yesterday. Two years ago? I'm not sure I was ready to produce the rationale: I think I would have been able to write one, but I'm not convinced I really understood how to make it do what it needs to do (basically, the whole creating a conversation that the papers are each contributing to would have been okay, but getting across any kind of "So what?" or "Who cares?" point was not my greatest skill). Five years ago? Not a chance. Five years ago I'd never even written a conference length paper for an English class. It's shocking now to look back and realize that, but it wasn't until the very end of my third year of undergrad that I wrote a conference length paper for an English class. Most English classes I took required essay exams, not papers.

In a meeting I had with a professor a couple weeks ago, when I mentioned my anxieties re: my lack of publications--specifically, that I'm starting to feel like I'm falling behind the rest of my cohort in that regard--the response I got was "it's not a race." I don't entirely believe it, but I desperately hope it's true. In a lot of ways, I feel like it took me a year of work in my MA program to wind up where the students with whom I'd entered program had started. By the time I'd finished my MA and was ready to start my PhD, I think I'd reached the point at which most people are starting to apply for PhD programs. A year into my PhD program, it seems like I'm where a lot of people were a year ago. Being able to spend a few hours yesterday afternoon and write those two documents seems to me like a good demonstration of some basic PhD student (and perhaps graduate student at any level) skills. If grad school and professional development aren't a race, that's a good thing, because I think I just managed to get my shoes on. If it is a race, well, I was always better in the second half of my races, anyway.

Now, next test: I need to have a paper ready for presentation to the department three weeks from Friday. If this presentation goes well--and if a few people give the new draft of the whole thing (rather than the condensed version I'll present) a thumbs up--this will be the first thing I send out. Fingers very much crossed, here. Of course, one sop to my confidence: I've been made co-organizer of a panel at ACLA (the same one that had been shot down by MLA). If you'll be at ACLA in March, come say hello!

ADVICE, PUBLISHING, ETC.

I've spent a good deal of time during the past few weeks reading the advice posts over at Graham Harman's blog Object-Oriented Philosophy.* They are, I think, incredibly helpful, both in terms of offering useful and immediately applicable practical advice about writing, professionalization, publishing, etc., etc. and in terms of keeping up one's morale, finding happiness in one's work, and avoiding the soul-crushing despair of life as a graduate student. Also, it's just nice to read someone who is knowledgeable about writing discuss how to get better at writing: how to write more effectively, how to write with greater speed, how to remove barriers to writing.

I find the constant encouragement Harman offers to simply do work--and to do it as often as possible--a wonderful spur to productivity. However, what I find most useful are his posts on publishing and the ins and outs of academic writing (minus some of the points focused specifically on the discipline of philosophy). I will be the first to admit I know nothing about publishing. In my MA program, the general approach to the issue was don't think about it, don't worry about, and don't try it (this might have been different from the advice given to the MFA students with whom I shared office space and classes. They seemed to be forever in fear of not sending things out for publication often enough). Even as I made my transition into a PhD program, the advice I left my MA program with was "don't even think of publishing anything before you finish coursework." My advisers suggested I focus on conferences and leave publishing to the advanced stages of my PhD (there was a practical consideration here; as one professor put it, a bad article will never go away, but no one knows about a bad conference paper after you give it).

So there I was, happily entering a PhD program with no worries about having nothing on the horizon in terms of publishing. I hoped to get into a few conferences, but I was generally focused on doing well in my coursework. Of course, once I started the program, I discovered something quite different: everyone was obsessed with publishing and having things ready to send out. Several people I met already had publications (and had not followed the no-publications-during-coursework guideline I'd received); others had things under review or were preparing things to be sent out. I was a little bit confused and a lot scared. What was I to do?

Full disclosure as to the extent of my naivety re: the professional aspects of my discipline: I didn't (still don't exactly, to be honest) even know how to send something to a journal. I didn't know how to find a journal to send something to. I didn't know you had to wait for a decision while your article was under review (I assumed you sent it in, someone read it, and you heard a “yay” or “nay” pretty soon after). Now it can be a painful, embarrassing, and quite scary experience to ask a professor you've just met (and whose approval you desperately want to receive considering your own painful self-doubt re: your abilities, the reasons you were accepted into the program, your relative merits w/r/t those of the other students in the program, etc., etc.) about those kinds of things. Mostly, I didn't ask those kinds of questions. Some answers I managed to pick up by piecing together various remarks from colleagues. Some answers I managed to guess by doing a bit of research. The vast majority of my questions are still unanswered, though, and it's difficult to make myself as vulnerable as I know I will feel when I ask those questions to a professor, so I don't ask them. I remain ignorant of these things (not a good policy, clearly). The advice posts at Object-Oriented Philosophy are answering some of those questions, and the answers are written in such a sympathetic (though not condescending or patronizing) style, even when they are dealing with the harsh realities of life in the academic world, that I'm beginning to feel a little better about things.

Anyway, my reading of these posts is quite timely: one of the posts mentions that presenting a paper at a conference and then not at least attempting to transform that paper into a publishable article is a waste of one's mental energies. Considering I've not looked at the last paper I presented since I read it, I guess it's time to dig that out and take a look at it. I'm actually fairly confident that I can turn it into a decent essay in a relatively short amount of time. I have no idea if anything will come of working on this paper, but I have to think that it would be better than leaving it rotting on my hard drive. Besides, if I don't try and do something with it (and, at this point, I've been working on this paper on and off for over a year), what am I left with? Certainly no prospects for scholarly success. It would be nice to go from zero to two pieces of work to send out in one leap. After all, as the advice posts I've been reading keep saying, going from nothing to something is the hardest step.

Well, it looks like I've just talked myself into another project this summer. My father has asked me to pressure wash and stain the deck he's just finished building when I get home, so I will presumably (after some physical labour) have a nice place to sit and work for a month or so. I've also got some concrete goals to work towards and I look forward to a productive (but enjoyably so, productive on my own terms) summer vacation before school and teaching start up again in August.

*I was introduced to this subject this year in Louisville at a presentation I'd decided to attend on a whim. I don't pretened to understand the real heavy-duty philosophy that Harman (and others in the loose constellation of philosophers working on similar themes and issues), but this is a nice example of how chance encounters can sometimes lead to the most productive new areas of information (a point Harman himself makes over and over again in the advice posts).

FEAR AND LOATHING IN MY APARTMENT: HOW I SPENT MY WEEKEND

I had something of a minor existential crisis over the weekend. While this is not that rare of an occurrence, I'm usually pretty good at getting over any such crises and moving on to more productive things (usually this means the reading or grading I've been busy putting off). This one was more persistent than my standard-issue existential crisis, though, and what is worse, it was just silly. It ruined what was otherwise a nice weeked: sun to enjoy, movies to watch, and books to read.* Unfortunately, I spent more hours than I'd like to admit to feeling sorry for myself in ways that I thought I'd left behind with my teenage years (in all honesty, I'm pretty sure even my teenaged self would have made fun of my moping and pouting). 

Some background to the crisis: I had been feeling a little bit of concern/anxiety (though not a great amount, because it required me to think about the future beyond immediate tasks at hand, which I generally refuse to do) about the fact that the end of my first year of PhD coursework was rapidly approaching and I had yet to produce any piece of writing that anyone had deemed worth working on further and trying to publish. Why was this, I wondered. Did I not have any good ideas? Was my writing not good enough? Was I somehow missing a really important point about the things I write about? I couldn't answer any of these questions. I also didn't feel comfortable talking about them. They come across (at least to me) as so ridiculously self-absorbed and whiny that the idea of discussing them with anyone causes me (even now, in the comfort and privacy of my bedroom) to blush and shake my head.

While browsing through some journals, I came across a call for papers that seemed to fit a paper I was writing for class. Thinking that this might be the best chance I ever get to dip my toe into the bizarre and confidence-destroying world of academic publications, I resolved to revise said paper and send it off for consideration. At about the same time, I received word through the grapevine (read: the social networking websites of which I am a member) of a friend of a friend of a friend who was enjoying quite the streak of academic success lately. I generally am not a jealous and competitive person,** but this streak struck a nerve. I don't know the person in question very well (we've never gone to school together and my experience is limited to mainly social encounters). I've never been impressed by descriptions of the work this person does, though.*** Coupled with the already present anxieties described above, this news caused me to feel just a bit frantic. Now I definitely needed to get something sent out.

I was still convinced that the paper I was in the process of writing was my best bet in terms of producing something that could eventually be sent out. Once I'd turned it in, I waited for the paper to reappear in my mailbox so I could get to work on revising it. The paper never appeared, though, and--as any feedback I can get at this point will be helpful--I sent an e-mail to the professor asking for my paper. I also mentioned that I was hoping to use any comments I received on the paper to revise towards submission for publication. When the response came the next day, I managed to misread the professor's comment ("I made some recommendations about that on the paper for you," essentially) as a pretty firm dismissal of the idea of my pursuing publication of any form of this paper.

Needless to say, I was crushed (this was on Friday afternoon). My anxieties suddenly loomed large. I began to wonder what I was doing in a PhD program if I couldn't produce work that anyone thought was worth publishing. I was angry and disappointed with myself: I knew the paper was good (I'd received an "A" in the class), so the only possible scenario seemed to be that I'd produced yet another paper that was good coming from a student but wasn't the kind of work an actual scholar produced. I wondered if I'd ever be able to be anything other than a good student. I spent Friday night, Saturday, and most of Sunday consumed with disappointment, frustration, and self-loathing. I sulked and pouted. It was all melodramatic to the extreme. I've pined for girls in less embarrassing ways.

I knew my paper was going to be dropped off in my mailbox at some point today, so I came to campus early (I didn't have class until 5, but I got to the office at around 11) in the hopes of catching the professor and explaining why I thought the paper was worth working on further and sending out for consideration. I did not manage to do this: despite sitting in the office all day, the paper appeared when I wasn't looking and without the professor ever materializing. Once I had the paper, I looked at the comments. I will quote the second sentence of the comments, as I think it most accurately explains both how terribly I misread the e-mail I received from the professor and what a waste of time my existential crisis was:

"I highly recommend you submit some iteration of this work for publication."

Whoops. I guess I called that one wrong. I went back to reread the e-mail I'd received on Friday. What had seemed like a dismissal now was revealed to be a simple note about the content of the comments: the professor wanted me to know I was not alone in thinking this paper had merit and should be pursued further.

Anyway, I feel slightly ridiculous now about wasting my weekend over all this. Life as a graduate student is already full of crushing blows to one's self-confidence without manufacturing further crises. I still feel incredibly anxious re: the whole publication issue when I let myself think about it (which I try to avoid doing as much as possible), but at least now I know I can produce stuff that I could conceivably send out.


*I finally finished The King in the Tree by Steven Milhauser this weekend. All three novellas in that book are excellent. More on this later.

**At least with my friends and academic work. I like helping my friends, and I enjoy celebrating with them when they reap the rewards their hard work deserves. I am, however, extremely competitive in other areas, especially the board game Risk. While playing Risk, I once managed to cause a former girlfriend to say she hated me (on my birthday, no less) because of my cutthroat approach to the game.

***I should probably come out and admit that I have a less than charitable view of this person's scholarly abilities based on the conversations we've had. Yes, I am a bad person. I am trying to rectify this.