Productivity is for suckers.

In the past couple months, I've done a lot of mom-time, a fair bit of cooking, insufficient amounts of laundry, a little social branching-out, and, um, World of Warcraft.  Again.

Shortly after the latest expansion was released, I managed to get my main leveled from 80 to 85.  Then I was back at the fruitless pursuit of grade-completion.  Once I left grad school, I briefly returned to the WoW, but it was short-lived against the onslaught of Real World Issues:  My husband still had to complete a major paper himself, he was teaching two nights a week, doing research with his advisor one morning a week while working on programming at least 10-15 hours a week at home, and as a result, raiding with long-time friends three nights a week for about 8.5 hours total (which, with the workload, I fully understood and supported, albeit a little resentfully).  On top of that, we spent a month in potential massive debt limbo, wondering whether we'd be left holding the bag for $126k in NICU bills for our son (we weren't, mostly because we had a witness in the hospital financial services dept. who heard a CSR confirm our coverage for well more than that).

Once my husband finished his paper, returning to good standing with his department, I suddenly felt much less stress, enabling me to handle a live game environment while watching the kiddo, rather than endless rounds of *cough* Mahjong Titans.  I also got a new computer, since my previous one had a rather disheartening tendency towards restart roulette and general start-up anxiety.  I have yet to install Civ IV or Civ V on here, and I confess that I've burned out a little on endless imperialism, but, you know, there's only so much flower-picking, ore-mining, mob-killing, daily questing, etc. that I can stand.  Of course, I could install Oblivion, or try actually completing the Longest Journey (so that I can play the sequel), or even try Mass Effect/ME2, as my husband has recommended.

Well, maybe I'll do it once I get my mage to 85.  Or my dk and warlock there.  Possibly also the shadow priest.  And then there's the druid (trying balance ftw!), and the elemental shaman (two, actually)....

It. Never. Ends.

I am no longer a grad student.

A week ago, I withdrew from my program and dropped my incomplete classes from last year.  And it was good.  Every time I sat at my computer, attempting to write a paper, my brain turned to mush.  I'd try to force it, resulting in word salad incoherence, and high-school level English oversimplifications, gross generalizations, unfounded claims,and a general sense of impossibility.  I attribute this to my own ambivalence about the direction I'd taken in academia (literature), compounded by a stressful pregnancy (itself exacerbated by the financial and bureaucratic pressures it spawned wrt my grad program), a premature baby who spent 5 weeks in the NICU, the continued adjustments following his arrival home, the decision to stay in school for spring because of the fellowship (despite my complete unfitness for school, not enrolling could have required repayment for the first two quarters, something I forgot until today), and the sheer weight of 3 short papers, one 10 pp. paper, two 20 pp. paper, and a paper for which I would have needed a 10-15 pp. draft, followed by a 20-25 pp. final, only to be further expanded and refined into a master's thesis.

And I still had primary care of my baby, though my husband and my mother did help to varying degrees, as well as primary cooking duty, food shopping, and laundry-sorting/planning.

Just recounting that exhausted me.  If it were just ambivalence, a less-complicated pregnancy and a full-term baby, it would still be hard, but the whole miserable process (and so much of that misery was related to grad school in one way or another) tainted the work, whether it was Richardson, Langland, Milton, English Renaissance sonnets or prosody.  All of it just brought back the grinding pain, the sense of mentally and emotionally drowning, that dreadful oppressive duty...

I came close to completing two of them.  Of the six, two.

I'm not sure what I'm doing with this blog.  Mommy blog?  Not like there aren't a ton of those in the world.  Book blog?  Have one started over on WordPress.  Health blog?  At least that would be unique in my plethora of online venue-presences, and yet there's so many of them, too.  I'm not catholic enough in my gaming to do that sort of writing, and not productive enough to feel justified in creating a knitting blog.  I can't stay engaged in following politics without getting fatigued with rage and frustration, and there's so many people who do it better with experientially qualified insight anyhow.  Everybody and their mother does damned near anything online, which, in addition to squelching the last sense of uniqueness from most people, it also taints creativity in certain ways by enforcing sameness.  I may not believe that the world is "flat," but I do believe that the internet flattens things.  I feel like a Luddite more and more each day.  Maybe I'll make a neo-Luddite blog.

That's probably something I can get behind.  Bitch about one more thing that's diminishing our souls, day by day.  Or reflect on the chasm between some activity we consider normal or mundane, and the reality in the not-too-distant past.  Add in the ills of society and its individuals... I would probably need to do research.  Make one post a week, well-researched.  That's all.  It would be a start.

Oh, yeah, this thing.

After the last post, my pregnancy kept being complex and difficult, culminating in a surgical delivery at 33 weeks, with a beautiful baby boy being born in late summer/early September, then spending 35 days in the NICU before coming home with us.

Due to the pathologizing of infancy and my ongoing medication regimen (now discontinued), the first three months were more difficult than the usual crazy-making difficulty. I got little accomplished until finals week of Fall Quarter, then took a second quarter of leave to wrap up my incompletes from Winter and Spring. I did manage to audit my composition pedagogy class, so I am nominally ready to teach in Spring. I think I may try to make an appointment close to the end of the quarter or so to review all the aspects of the class with someone in the writing office, so as not to be flying utterly blind.

Over halfway through this quarter, though, all I've accomplished is lining up my Spring teaching schedule and filing my seminar requests for the next quarter. And getting a former co-worker from my publishing job (who now also bears the title of Grandma) to review my shortest papers from last year for completing some coursework.

The other graduate student here has his own papers, teaching and research to manage, plus a raiding schedule in WoW. Oh, and his daily instances. Sometimes it takes a few tries to complete that daily heroic. During this time, I have my darling son... the whole time. This can be as short as half an hour, or if queues are long, and the luck is bad, 5+ hours. I can't really shower, cook, or do much else, though reading is theoretically possible. But not much notetaking. And there's the question of neglecting my son's needs for stimulation and development, which also distracts me.

I'm frittering the weeks away without meaning to... I hope I can get myself together to actually complete my work and start back with no failures. So, so tired of trying to pull this off, and I'm sure it doesn't help that I'm once again questioning whether this is the right path for me. Or that there is so much riding on it still. The latest conversations with my mom have me sticking it out for the MA and then re-evaluating, considering options like journalism (science & health, particularly), given that I can't be arsed to read more than a few pages at a time on Piers Plowman, Langland, and Franciscan theology in the 14th century, but I can devour non-fiction works on the state of childbirth-specific reproductive rights in the US, the nature of hoarding, a challenge to USDA orthodoxy on healthy diet components and macronutrients, the relationships between climate, volcanic, and/or seismic events and human history, etc. I'm currently reading about the neuroscience of attention and memory, particularly as it relates to the difficulties in navigating the demand for multitasking with the same fundamental brain that tackled agriculture ~12,000-14,000 years ago or so.

Then again, mebbe I just wanna knit something other than a baby hat. That'd be nice, too.

An unending rabbit hole.

The most unexpected thing about pregnancy has been the full-time pain management gig. My days, which should be spent readying the home for a tiny, new human and wrapping up my gazillion incompletes from the past two migraine-derailed quarters, are spent monitoring my sleep, food, and caffeine consumption, dutifully taking my meds on schedule or as needed, depending on the regimen, and trying to minimize the external triggers like florescent lights (ix-nay on opping-shay), heat (luckily, it's been decent thus far this summer, but I dread August), and excess screen-viewing (so I knit a lot while listening to and half-watching TV, or spend limited amounts of time on the computer, which isn't conducive to intensive paper-writing). I should be reading, but between the pain and the meds, I have a hard time finding a relatively clear-headed balance point.

The whole baby-arriving-in-a-little-over-three-months thing? Totally sidelined. And I need to finish the coursework for winter and spring to retain my insurance, the on-campus apartment we just put into my name, and my now-spent fellowship monies, as well as remaining in good standing with the university in general. Seeing the neuro on Tuesday.

This whole thing has made immersion in grad school damned near impossible, and my sense of direction is getting more and more fogged with the temporal and intellectual distance. I need to get back on track; I even penciled in a return-to-reading for tomorrow, since I've found some meds that don't seem to excessively fog my brain up while still providing relief (though they are untested wrt graduate-level work, as opposed to knitting lace). Part of the problem is managing stress so that the pain doesn't intensify, and spike my blood pressure. Supposedly, chronic migraineurs like myself, who are strongly (though not exclusively) hormone-sensitive, and have escalating headache craziness in pregnancy, well, we are at higher risk of pre-eclampsia/eclampsia in general. That doesn't cause any stress at all.

On top of that, I'm on total pelvic rest with a partial previa that might resolve by week 32 (I have another 6 to go before that), so I'm not much for help around the house. The main non-pregnancy obstacle I face is the creeping clutter issue. And since sprucing up the rest of the apartment left me with more crap in my office, it's even more stuff to dig out. I'm still at learning pain management options, and other people expect me to be writing. I'm not sure how to communicate how hard it is to write at a graduate level on literature when the pain is hard to keep under control, so that my highest-and-best ends up as lace knitting while half-watching crap TV. The past day or two, the pain's been lower, more nauseating and irritating than it was 2-3 days ago, where it was an insistent, unrelenting pounding that outlasted everything I threw at it. And that had gone on for 2-3 days. Probably (sadly) due to the overnight trip I made to visit my mom and my best friend in SD over the 4th. Before that, I made the mistake of going to a late-ish grad English party, overstaying beyond my own good in my desperate state of social need, so that the next day was misery. Ironically, I wasn't up late for my usual schedule (I'm horribly nocturnal), but the disruption of my shut-in habits, and the expenditure of social energy turned the following day into a nasty migraine.

I can't burn out on grad school. I'm too busy burning out on pregnancy. I'm just hoping I don't fail out of grad school before I have a chance to get anything done.

Oops. Sorry. Busy.

1. I'm pregnant. This means I'll be taking advantage of all the childcare options and general flexibility of graduate school over the next few years. It's one more reason to be glad I'm free of the cube farm. Another advantage is that I shouldn't have an infant depending on me by the time I'm on the job market. The biggest question in my mind on the long-term plan is how to do siblings (I'm thinking post-qualifying exam).

2. Biggest downside of pregnancy is migraines. I had erroneously assumed I'd gotten pregnancy fog early, and hadn't connected it to my increasingly insistent headaches, until I was on the verge of hysterics (which would have just made it all hurt more) and went in to see the doc. A month of pain management later, and I'm keeping up just fine.

3. Second-biggest downside: Having to take incompletes for winter quarter due to the migraines (and resulting high blood pressure). That said, I think I can get all my papers squared away before the end of the quarter and still keep up on spring coursework, especially now that I'm not wrestling with housing.

4. Campus housing is a bureaucratic nightmare, especially if you already lived on campus before applying/entering the program. Someone will assume that they'll get you on a list for a contract, but delete you from the list of entrants needing placement, and then you'll do a wild goose chase dance until you finally manage to get the attention of the right person. It's the same story as any other stupid bureaucracy problem, just the particulars differ. Thankfully, it is now resolved, and I can get back to being a student.

5. I also have my migraine management set for a month, as well as no OB appointments. The only obstacles are ones posed by the shifting nature of my body, especially the hips. It, well, hurts.

6. As much as I relish being able to return to focusing on academia, the stress of the past week alone is telling me I need a day of computer games, fluffy urban fantasy novels, sitting in front of the TV knitting, and generally slacking as a mental health move. I don't even have to go anywhere farther than one building over today!

Neeed...moar....braaiiiins....

Survived the first quarter, now 70% of the way into the second and up to my eyeballs in work. Annotated bibliography, more seminar papers than is reasonable, and a dry run on the major language exam. Upside: Enjoying my classes. Downside: Not fully feeling the mental gelling of paper topics, and I need to have my first 20 pp. rough draft done in 11 days. Second done in, um, 17 days. Plus a 10-15 pp. starter-draft to kick off the spring Arbeitseminar on Milton. After this, though, it's a continuation of the same topic for one, plus poetry (Renaissance sonnet paired with a course on prosody--and I need both). Oh, and taking the language exam in earnest.

Anyhow. I'm going to get it all done. I just need to eat, then shower, and hopefully my brain will decide that we're back on speaking terms. And it's not the schoolwork (or some convivial stress-relief) that's doing in our relationship, just, um, stuff. Stuff that will sort itself out fairly soon one way or the other (nothing bad, just, um, stuff).

Grad School: The Burrowing-In

Since last post (um, whenever that was), have attended each class twice. Going from one seminar and 2 proseminars to 2 seminars and one proseminar. This is a big leap, but the course on literary theory is just too fascinating not to want to dig in. It does mean ~52+ pp. of writing this quarter, rather than ~32 pp., and two oral presentations, but so it goes.

Though the reading has been part of the problem, there was also a hectic, heavily social beginning of quarter, including an all-day SD trip, and a sick husband. This biggest issue with the readings, however, has not been the quantity, but the media, specifically, PDFs. Oh, and my dept. doesn't cover printing for its fellowship people, only TAs (which begins next year). And the bulk of the critical readings for two of the courses (Faulkner & Chaucer)... PDFs. I haven't quite wrapped my head around how the on-campus printing works, but I have yet to replace the ink cartridges for our home printer, so I've mostly been reading the digital copies and not having any print version on-hand in class. This is not so smrt.

I'm building up to a system for handling this, but in the interim, bleah. I know it's all the rage to save the trees and have a laptop for notes and pulling up PDFs in-class, etc., but, well, that's just not how I roll. I'm all old skool with the taking notes by hand and scribbling in margins and underlining key passages of everything in pencil.

Other than that, I have a headache and one seminar left for the week. The one with the most PDFs. After that, weekend. I hope I can actually get on top of the reading for next week starting Sunday; until there is a paper at hand, I'm thinking my Saturdays should be reserved for maintaining that much-touted "work-life balance," which currently means leveling my orc shaman in WoW. Oh, and maybe some laundry. Trip to Target. That sort of crazy fun. Whee.

Reading life.

Last night was Top Ramen with egg dinner, only the first of many, I'm sure. That's when I really, finally felt like I was back in school. I don't know that I'd had that combo since undergrad, while living in Irvine, which does make it a decade ago. I like to think that I've graduated from lentils-and-ranch to lentils-and-yogurt for cheap eats, but only time will tell.

Yesterday should have been my first seminar, but its conflict with the walkout/teach-in (@ a UC, yes) led the instructor to delay a week, with a make-up session to follow sometime later this quarter. I did not brave the heat and evil daystar for the demonstration, but instead did my reading. Middle English is not a fast read, generally. In class, I realized I definitely needed to give myself more lead time on readings (finish no later than the Tuesday before) in order to review everything again to develop some commentary. Even though I'm taking it as a seminar, I might do response papers for the first few weeks just to get myself into the swing of things, and ease the transition back into school.

Of course, I have readings to do for other classes, but now I have a pile of other potentially relevant works that I need to peruse to see if they have any insightful contributions to make to Machaut, Chaucer, Ovid, etc. Meh.

One thing I hope to get a handle on very soon is sleep. As in, doing it at the right time, for a long enough time. This also helps one brain better, as it can keep away the dumb.

Inauspicious Introductions?

1. First on-campus homicide occurred last Saturday. V. surreal. Off-the-cuff, it sounded like a DV situation, but, as always, the truth came out. It was quite a bit more sad and preventable than expected. That it happened during the first few weeks many new grad students would be moving on campus, and the weekend before the undergrads arrived, well, see title of post.

2. First day of classes is scheduled for a system-wide faculty (and grad employee) walkout. It's one thing for strikes to begin mid-year, another for it to be, again, a first introduction to university culture, or a particular university's culture. The university itself is an island of liberalism that stands in high contrast to the surrounding communities, which, while increasingly international in terms of represented cultures (Middle Eastern, Eastern European, South Asian, and East Asian, in addition to the WASP contingent), still consists of the largely conservative higher income brackets. Oh, and the buildings don't match each other the way the rest of the local architecture tends to do.

So, between the two, I expect a slightly more surreal start back to school than I'd anticipated. Oh, and I've confirmed that I really am older than most of the current Ph.D. students, not just the incoming ones. OTOH, my favorite TA from my undergrad years was probably the same age as I am now, or a little older, when she left her teaching position with a large local school district to start working on her Ph.D. Still, I think she's gone on to a career as a skydiving instructor, not a tenure-track academic, though there's probably a lot of personal reasons for this.

First and foremost, I'm territorial.

As far as I know, I'm the only person I know using this intarweb name. Hence, I try locking it up on random blogging sites, becoming this inactive e-squatter, preemptively defending my e-name from... um... yeah.

I really have no business doing this, as I already have an LJ, a Dreamwidth account, and a Wordpress blog, on top of being about a week and a half out from starting grad school (to study English literature, written in English primarily by actual English people, not literatures in English which include American and other postcolonial Anglophone national literatures).

At this point, I'm dithering about my dwindling amount of Slack, wishing there were more time to play WoW, knit, read fluffy SFFH/specfic non-assigned books, cook random stuff (I have a week and a half to do fesenjan, Hawaiian-Korean beef BBQ of some sort, and probably a round of potato tacos, homemade style), and do half the other things I thought I'd do when I left my publishing job two years ago. Then again, applying to graduate school was as rewarding as it was nerve-wracking, and I expect more of the same from the actual experience.

Coming to the end of my long vacation is still jarring; I hadn't planned to be out of work for so long -- when we moved two years ago, it was right at the start of the recession, in one of its first epicenters (SoCal). A year ago, I realized I had no business doing anything other than applying to grad school. The worst that could happen was not getting in, having to reapply, and working somehow in the mean time. Instead, I got accepted at two universities, received solid financial aid packages, and ended up with a finite deadline to unemployment. Technically, I don't know whether it begins on the 21st or the 24th, but it's less than two weeks away by either count.

Now there's reading I should do in preparation for the reading I hope to do -- won't even really know what I'm taking until three days before classes start. I requested three classes, but everyone puts in requests for various seminars, and the department chooses the roster. The lack of control bugs me a little, though I understand the reasoning. But in the mean time, it's the push-pull between last-hurrah slacking and being-serious studying. There's even Latin to review.

Mostly, it's strange to start living an external life again. I've cloistered myself in the apartment for much of the time, playing with string, and escaping into other worlds via books or computer, making random dishes, experimenting with goat, oxtails, amaranth, and millet, as well as a range of New World, Old World, and creole-culture cooking styles, poring through James Beard, the Doubleday Cookbook and The New Basics, then consulting Diana Kennedy, Madhur Jaffrey and The Soul of a New Cuisine. I've got numerous scarves and given handmade gifts to show for my two years of exploring knitting. I even have a sweater for the cats to sleep on. My inner goth has been let out of exile, returning to Convergence, and has since found a nice monthly deathrock night relatively close (and affordable) to feed the soul. I haven't made all the progress with exercise that I would have liked, but being a student on a semi-regular schedule should help with that a little. I hear tell that the undergrads are scarce before noon.

Hopefully, I'll be a little more measured in my graduate studies than my frenetic overscheduling ten years ago. I am a little lazier and older. Still, I'm sure I'll be fine. It's just the waiting that's getting me all antsy.