What a Year, eh?*

It's been a year since I left Canada and moved back to Delaware to live with my parents. I fled for a lot of reasons, but the big one was poverty and it caused most of the other problems. Paying tuition, rent, utilities, food, and all of Dewey's vet bills and prescription bills...it was all too much. My savings were gone (no surprise after five years of grad school), my funding ran out the year before, and I really just didn't see any way to survive on my own any more. I was at the end of my rope. I had no idea what I was going to do or how I was going to pay rent or buy food.

Over a year of this stress turned me into an emotional mess. I cried. A lot. I slept a lot. I curled up into a ball on the couch a lot. I felt as though I would not be able to handle any more problems that came my way. I was on the edge of a breakdown for a really long time. All of that added up to seemingly insurmountable writer's block, too, making the dissertation a frustrating reminder that, at 35, I am a failure both as a PhD student who can no longer write and as an adult who can not support herself and has to move back in with her parents.

This past year has been brutal, even with the help of my parents. They have been more than generous, helped out more than I ever wanted, and did all of this with a "we're so happy you're home" attitude that is truthful and meant to assuage my guilt but does not. I had to go back to waiting tables, working for the same company I worked for when I was sixteen. That was humiliating and yet here I am, working at the same place this summer because the money is too good to pass up. I found out more than I wanted about how precarious and soul-crushing life as an adjunct can be. I did not get to go to my best friend's wedding in the Bahamas, despite the fact that she's been my best friend for thirty years and she is more like a sister than a friend. I have basically spent the past year either at work or on my parents' couch, being unable to afford to do literally anything.

Still, I have had some successes. I presented at the MWCBS and the NACBS. The NACBS was a huge success, with a lot of networking and, more importantly, great feedback on my paper from scholars I really admire. I attended DHSI last summer and DHWI in January, thanks to scholarships and funding from my school. I taught two new classes and, despite some hiccups, really enjoyed the classes and my students, who mostly seemed to reciprocate, aside from a couple (one in particular) Negative Nellies. I'm going to DHSI next week, thanks to another scholarship, and in just over a month, I'm presenting at a Jacobite conference in Paris (again, thanks to funding). The NACBS, DHWI, DHSI, and the Paris conference have all been part of my master plan for years now and it feels amazing, if a little frightening, to actually see that plan become a reality.

The best part, though, is that my writing mojo is back. It's back! Not only am I writing, but my supervisor actually seems to like what I'm writing. He said it was "mature and authoritative," among other compliments that I can't actually remember right now. The pressure from my supervisor leaving for a new job in Scotland is immense and I do still panic that I won't get finished in time, but at least it is helping and not throwing me into a terrified, immobilized stupor, balled up on my couch, like I would have been in last year if this had happened.

The change in my mental state is something I did not expect. I am not expecting to collapse in a heaping puddle of tears at the slightest setback, offhand comment, or if I don't hear from a friend for a few days. I'm no longer terrified of failing, of disappointing my supervisor, my family, myself. Don't get me wrong - I still have a lot of self-doubt, but what grad student doesn't? From all the blogs I read, forget grad student, what academic doesn't? Still, I am recovering from financial disaster and I am writing. Both of those are things I would not have thought possible a year ago.

I owe all of this to my parents. Without them, none of this would have been possible. I doubt they know how grateful I am, unless they understood that all the cooking and baking I've done this year has been my way of thanking them. At least now they can read about how thankful I am.



*Despite my best efforts, "eh?" used to, and still does, pop into my conversations. What's that all aboot?

Je vais a Paris!

It's true. I'm going to the Paris conference in July and I couldn't be happier about it!

Despite my abject poverty and the pressure of finishing the dissertation, the conference was too good to pass up. The conference organizers are paying for grad students' hotel rooms and conferences fees, including lunches and the banquet. Evidently, my aunt and uncle didn't want me to miss this opportunity that I've talked about for, oh, four years, so they sent me a check that more than covers airfare. I tried to refuse (no, seriously, I really tried), but they were adamant, so...I'm going.

A friend I travel with a lot (or used to travel with a lot before poverty set in) is also going with me. We're staying a few days extra because I've never been to Paris and I don't know when I'll get back and I really want to see The Lady and the Unicorn tapestry and Abelard's grave and Sacre Couer and Notre Dame and all of the beautiful churches, really, and I want to wander around the streets, eating baguettes and cheese. Can you tell I'm excited? I can't wait!

The paper is already written, just needing a few revisions because it is similar to a paper I presented last year (the horror! but no one from that conference will be at this conference) and it's also part of a chapter that I've been working on, so it's in pretty good shape. If I stick to my schedule, I'll have three dissertation chapters written and two of them fully revised before Paris, assuaging some of my guilt about taking a break in the midst of heavy writing. So far, so good. More importantly, though, I already have heard from a few people expressing interesting in my new project. It's all starting to come together. Finally.

If anyone has any recommendations about where I need to go in Paris, I'd love to hear them. I especially like oddball places that not everyone knows.

Writing, Writing, and More Writing

It seems as though I am making decent progress on the chapter revisions, which were not too many to begin with, thankfully. The Montgomery Plot is kicking my butt, though, and making me not like it. It just won't fit into my chapter nicely, but it has to and so I've sat here for hours, struggling with it, trying to get it to play nicely because tomorrow is the deadline for these revisions and I can't afford to take longer on this chapter right now.

It doesn't help that I'm stressing about this because I have plans for tonight (for once!) and those plans start in roughly two hours and I still need to shower and get dressed and pack for the night. Perhaps a break to shower and pack will clear my head and I will come back and kick the Montgomery Plot's butt. Whining just a little bit about it has already helped, so did signing up for JaneB's writing group, which leads me to the entire point of this post...

As a reminder, Jane B is hosting the Top Left Quadrant writing group for the summer. Don't forget to sign up if you're interested. It starts this weekend!

That's the end?

My semester of teaching is over and I'm...underwhelmed? It's not like I was expecting a party at the end of the semester, but a "goodbye" email from the chair would have been nice. I don't even need a "thank you," just some recognition that I was there and now I won't be would have been nice. Heck, even just the letter of reference he promised would have been fantastic. Instead, I had to email him to remind him about the letter and to let him know that I'd arrange with a prof teaching summer classes to drop my keys off to her one day this week, since no one was there to give my keys to Friday. What an end.

It would be different if I was a large school and just a face in the crowd. The department has three full-time professors and four adjuncts, one of whom is supposed to be a full-time professor in the fall, if everything works as promised. So...really? Nothing at all? I must expect to much. Courtesy. Courtesy is too much.

On the bright side, my students sound like they will miss me. Before the final, I was trying one more time to convince a student to at least do a minor in history because he was very engaged and able to grasp the larger concepts of what I was teaching. After he asked what classes I'd be teaching in the fall so he could sign up for one and I said I wouldn't be here, he said, "Oh. Well, never mind. I don't really like history. It's boring, but your class was different. You made it different." He then went on to tell me how he dropped a Western Civ class with the chair because it was so boring. That's not information I wanted. I recommended two other profs and he said he'll think about it. The same thing happened at the end of the final when a student I felt certain hated me all semester asked what classes I'm teaching in the fall and I had to again explain that I'm an adjunct and the school isn't bringing me back because of "enrolment." I managed not to roll my eyes or use air quotes when I said that, too, so I was a little proud of that. She was disappointed, though - genuinely so - because she wanted to take another class with me, she'd enjoyed it so much. You could have knocked me over with a feather. I really thought she hated me. Evidently not.

At least it was a great end to the class, if not to my time at the school itself. And now I promise to be done whining about this school. That's over, too.

Going, going....

My advisor is leaving my school. In three months.

I think I'm traumatized.