(read What Seeking Infinite Jest Means Part 1 here, Part 2 here, and Part 3 here)

Introduction:

(click here to listen to “Notion” by The Rare Occasions)

The words you are reading are those of someone in the middle of writing a dissertation. It’s an image that is so ephemeral, conjuring up so many different images for so many people. When I imagined what the dissertation meant while applying to PhD programs, I thought it was going to be this exciting period where I could show off my research skills and help humanity through the brilliant words pouring out of my fingers, like Indiana Jones, saving the world through his academic research. This feels more like work. A lot of work. The kind of work where you clock-in, meet your quota and deadlines, clock out, then wake up and do again, over and over. I was never a 9-5 person. l always thought of writing as this creature that needs to be free, that has the power to liberate you. Instead, I write every day, sunup to sundown, where my highlight of the week is on Tuesdays, when they serve peach-flavored iced tea at the coffee shop in the library. The monotony of it all embeds itself into your hands, to the point where you can see traces of the cog you’ve been pushing all day on your palms. There are some days that are good. Some days, you find the right words to the paragraph you’ve been struggling with for weeks. On other days, you find a source that makes the lightbulb in your brain go off, and then pages just churn themselves out. The writing I do with this blog is dedicated to the writing I can’t do in academia. I write what I feel. Today…I feel like venting. I want to pour my feelings out, bleeding all over this page. I sit down and do it, then that somehow also becomes work. Maybe venting isn’t the solution. I stop for a minute, mute all sound around me, and picture myself in a place where I can tap into what I’m feeling. I’m visualizing a park bench, reading, while the thoughts in my head are running on a low hum, operating on a feeling of gratitude. I’m about to complete my PhD from an R1 university, a position I’ve been aspiring to for years. I am so goddamn lucky to be here. And it doesn’t take long to remember how much work it took to get here.

Sometimes, when I’m writing, I’ll hit a wall, and no matter how hard I try, words stop flowing. It’s so hard to move forward, and so easy to give up. When that happens, I have to escape, even it’s only for a moment. Sometimes, I’ll stop, leave the library, and take a walk around the Oval, getting some sunlight, stretching my legs out. When I do this, this funny feeling comes through. My ideas start to get reorganized. That paragraph I was struggling with suddenly makes sense. It’s no park bench, but a much-needed calm sweeps over, making things clearer. So does my perspective. I get to really think about the work I’m doing and what got me to this point. My writing has improved dramatically since the start of my program. I can spend hours without breaks researching and writing. Some of that writing has even gone beyond the classroom, working with my community. And it’s not just book knowledge informing my writing. Teaching, volunteering, editing a magazine, organizing workshops and outreach. They’ve all contributed to the work I’m doing now. I’ve accumulated so many skills, the kind that transcend academia. Putting my body to work in my dad’s construction company; learning how to work with and talk to others while bartending; becoming versatile in the world of adjunct teaching. Yes, the dissertation is an accumulation of skills and knowledge, but those skills and that knowledge did not solely come from the classroom. I’m putting my heart and soul into my words, forming sentences with the precision of a sculptor. Editing also becomes writing. When I’m editing, the precision is even more intricate, looking at every mark, every gesture, down to the millimeter. I’m writing something that combines the push coming from my heart and soul with all of the knowledge I’ve gained during my program. My defense will be composed of questions about how I’m engaging with the body of knowledge my field consists of. Out of all of this, I will have written something I care about. It’s a luxury, paid for by the years of hard work, collaboration, and perseverance. My expression may not look like it, but I’m ecstatic just to be here.

Construction Days

(click here to listen to “Glass, Concrete and Stone” by David Byrne)

It’s 6:30 in the morning. I’m awake, but my alarm has about an hour before it goes off. I take a shower, then brush my teeth. At the sight of my own face in the mirror, I begin to question everything. I’m on my way to the library, where I will sit in front of a computer for the next twelve hours to work on my dissertation. To me, “being a writer” used to mean living a world that exists on the margins of society, a kind of existence that transcends everyday realities. Years later, after completing my undergrad and Masters in English, I’ve come to see that writing is very much not that. It’s work. Work that you have to do every day, all the time, with no end. You sit at a chair and write words on the page…and that’s it. It’s a strange feeling, when the emotional spirit you have inside of you begins to harden as you learn about how things really work. I think about the writers I loved reading, wondering if they had moments like these in order to figure out how to write what they did. Some days, I’ll sit in the library and think, What if I just wrote a novel? Like…right now? What if I stopped this nonsense and just did the thing I quit a career for? That sounds so goddamn amazing right now. Do nothing but write for myself, crafting the sentences that move me, the writing I’ve been wanting to do since…ever. It takes one email from my advisor, or one friend asking me about my dissertation to bring my feet back down to earth and continue writing. It’s like I’m chained to my desk, with a pair of handcuffs I bring with me every morning. For now, I have a dissertation to write. Not only do I have a dissertation to write, but it’s my job to finish. My program is funding me to finish this thing. I was accepted into a PhD program, and completing my diss is part of the deal. I have to finish this thing. This needs to be my priority.

It feels so intimidating some days, looking at a blank Word doc, waiting for you to write two hundred pages worth of knowledge. All of this pressure makes you want to curl up into a ball, hoping that the writing will complete itself. The friends I have who have already completed theirs have all assured me that the writing does not nor will it ever magically appear on the page. You have to do the work. However many pages and citations are required, however many times you have to write, draft, start over, they all have to be completed. By you. Somehow, it has to be done. So how do I do this? What’s the secret to writing a dissertation? Honestly…no one knows. Some people can crank out tons of pages, then get lost in the editing and citation process; others find a groove, then find a wall, and crash, the kind of crashing reserved for crash test dummies. I think about getting my work done in my program in first years, spending 12 hour stretches of reading in the library, with only a Coke and a bag of beef jerky to get me through the day. I treated it like a job- I would walk in the library, like I was clocking in for a shift at a factory. I did my hours, then would leave the library after the sun went down, leaving my bag in my locker, and my day behind me.

Maybe that’s the secret…or, my secret. When I treat writing like work, it may feel overwhelming and laborious, but it gets done. There’s something comforting about that kind of structure. When I was in high school, I would work with my dad in his construction company, where he specialized in masonry and concrete work. Every morning, we’d leave the house at 6:30am to beat the 405 traffic, get to the job site, and work. On a lot of days, the mornings would start with prepping an area for pouring concrete or getting materials to do brickwork. We’d spend hours digging, making trenches for the foundation the concrete will need, or shovel sand and cement mix to make the mortar for the bricks we would later shape into planters or walkways. Digging for hours under the sun is brutal, the sun beating down on you, hot sweat blinding your eyes. And you don’t just “dig”. The work has to be precise, down to the inch. And you have to be careful not to hit a water line, and you can’t afford to lose time if a tree root is obstructing where you need to dig. Just cut right through with a shovel, or pray you didn’t forget to bring an ax to work that morning. There are other days when you are waiting for the cement truck. You can’t do anything until it gets there, but you don’t want to be idle, so you clean or do something. Then the truck gets there, and then the work starts. Everyone has a job, and everyone is relying on you to do your job, because if you don’t, you can derail the whole process. It’s hundreds of square yards of concrete pouring out of a hose. When we did that, my job was using a claw hammer to lift the rebar when the concrete is poured to get it four inches off of the ground. It’s a state law that you have that reinforcement.

The crossover between working with my dad and working on my diss becomes more and more apparent when I think about getting work done. One summer, my dad and I worked a house in Santa Monica. They wanted a small brick wall with iron fencing, a new irrigation system, and pavers on the side of the house and outside wall. This is work my dad and I have done so many times, but when we got to the house, several months of work hit me in an instant. The house was still being built! It was practically only a frame of a house, a three story, four bed/three bath house in Santa Monica. And it was huge. It’s the kind of house you can only aspire to own instead of actually buying someday. We installed the irrigation system and built a small block wall around the house, about three feet tall with a white picket fence. When the house got its siding, my dad and I moved in with the pavers. (pavers are artificial stones that people add to the sides of houses and buildings to give it an old-fashioned look. with the right color scheme, it can look really nice! [but not a lot of people know what a good color scheme is]). We had to install pavers on the pillars on the walls in the back of the house and up the chimney. This job consisted of my dad and me doing one job every day for two months straight. My job was to clean the edges of each paver and put together a pile of them that will cover the next hundred square feet of wall, and every now and then, I’d have to make thin-set, the mortar used to stick pavers on to the walls. My dad’s job was to grab each paver and stick it on the wall. This job is way more difficult because my dad is figuring out the pattern he’s on while planning the next row. Row after row after row. It’s manual labor and on-your-feet thinking. It’s really hard. When I would make the thin-set, sometimes closing my eyes would make the job easier. I got so good at staying in motion, that I no longer needed to interact with anyone to do my job. At about a quarter of the way through, I just stopped caring about anything. This job needed me to shut down everything and focus on this one thing. I didn’t go out with friends, or think about what life will look like after this job is done. It was a kind of intellectual tunnel vision. It freaked me out for a second. One day melted into several weeks. You just…stop caring. One day, I gave my dad a paver, but not only did it not fit, but it almost ruined the remainder of the job. He yelled at me so freaking badly. My soul left my body for a second. When it did, I was able to see me at my most vulnerable. I soon had to learn that every motion has the potential to either derail the job or nail the execution. I have two options in front of me: do it well or leave. I stayed. And I stopped seeing my dad as “my dad”; when we were at work, he was my employer, and I had to do what he said. One row after the other, one week after another, then the wall was finished. I remember standing on the scaffold as my dad put the last paver in, completely forgetting about being three stories off the ground. The job was done. A job I thought would never be completed, and one that required me to convince myself that I can accomplish several times throughout the process. I had no idea how the hell it would get done. And then it was done.

When I have days when writing my diss is the only thing I have to do, I start my routine: I get to campus, pick up an iced tea, get my bag and books from my locker, grab a seat at the reading room, then sit in the same seat for the next twelve hours. I also added this thing to my routine where I would read something that had nothing to do with my research for an hour before writing. It felt like my brain was going to the gym before working. (I got really into Haruki Murakami after watching the movie Drive My Car, reading his books throughout the diss writing process. wrote a whole blog post about it, too- read about that here) After that, I’d take a walk around the Oval, then sit back down and write. The writing gets done when I do that. Sentences sound crisp, the paragraph development is tight, and I was using my sources like arrows hitting their targets, going exactly where they need to. There are days where writing one paragraph feels like an accomplishment. Then there are days where that one paragraph paved the way for the next ten pages, and they just pour out. I found my routine and stuck with it. Sometimes, people join me, and other times, I can go a whole day without speaking to someone. It’s jarring and exciting and exhausting and harmonious. On days when writing is getting done, I can feel my hands doing what they’ve been primed to do, going all the way back to those construction days. When that happens, words are like those pavers, and soon, I will have built a beautiful looking house. At some point, I’ll put the last paver on, stand back, crack open a beer, and say, Yup….it’s done.

Bartending Days

(click here to listen to “Carińo” by The Marias)

The cool part about studying something so interdisciplinary is that you reach so many fields and people. Thanks to studying medical humanities, I get to work with a lot of people my undergrad experience didn’t have room for. I’ve taken classes outside of my department, I’ve worked with people who study medicine as well as teach it, and last year, I got to volunteer at a hospital. This approach made me really appreciate what it means to collaborate with others. All of this starts with a really simple gesture: reaching out to others. My studies have taken me to so many new spaces, going to conferences out of state and attending online workshops. I got really good at talking to other academics attending such events. A pleasant experience at these places is when you talk to someone and they really tune in to what you’re saying. What’s even more rewarding is when you talk to someone, and then they tell you about their background and interests and soon, the two of you see how they’re organically connected. Reaching out and talking to others is essential. For grad students, that includes joining groups and committees, getting along with your cohort, and sometimes even your students. Being personable and conversing with others is beneficial for everyone, especially in a place where, if you let it, it can feel like the loneliest space in the world.

I owe a lot to a job I had during my undergrad days when it comes to socializing and learning how to reach out to others. When I found my passion for writing, it came from a place where I was able to embrace my voice. Before getting to this point, the jobs I had were tied to physical labor. Work was a physically demanding experience, whether it was working with my dad, pouring concrete, or what was to become my now-former career, working as a mechanic. Your bodily output is what earned your paycheck. There was no room for my voice, and no one was interested in it. I left all of that behind to find my voice, and after a lot of night-classes, reading books I’ve always heard of but never read, and thinking hard about what kind of writer I want to be, I was finding it. I became a full-time student, taking classes at a community college, then transferred to a university. I was on the road to liberating my consciousness. It felt good. While this sounds inspiring, I started to learn that this works when it comes to the written word. When it came actually talking to others, I had way more to learn. I never considered myself an extrovert, and always had an awkward way of sharing what I thought. I was so awkward, never saying the right thing when I needed to, or somehow finding the wrong thing to say at the right time. Kinda like my experience with my dad, I ended up getting a job that forced me to learn how to hone a new skillset. I got a job at a restaurant as a barista, which included working a counter and serving customers. Besides a few catering gigs I did with my brother for extra cash a few years back, I had no experience in this industry. It’s a crazy world, one with its own language, rhythm, and ethics. I had to learn so much on the fly. (the phrase “on the fly” is also one that comes from that industry) Serving people meant encounters with strangers and tending to their needs, trying to figure out how to make their experience a good one. I started to see where the stereotypes about bartenders and waitresses came from. You have to be smart, charming, witty, and a little cute. Why? Because your income is based on tips. If you don’t have those qualities, your income suffers. I did what writers do best to pick up these tricks- I observed. Every shift I worked, I learned a little bit more, to the point where I got really good at it. I started making more money, and serving people became a symbiotic experience. I was in a place where sharing my words was not only what I was supposed to do, but by doing so, I became more confident in myself.

Several years later, after working as a barista, then moving up to a server, then a barback, I was finally slinging drinks at multiple bars. The real trick about bartending is not about being charming; it’s how to think on your feet. You have to take multiple orders at time, keeping track of tabs and credit cards, listen to others, all while keeping a warm approachability and a look on your face that says, “I’m happy to help”. When you get really good at this job, you develop your own persona. There’s the flare bartender, the one who loves his job (a little too much); the sly bartender, the one who will serve you a drink with a smile that can make you melt; the pumped-up bartender, the one who woke up that morning ready to start a party; and the cool bartender, the one who doesn’t say much but puts out a vibe that makes you want to be their best friend. For me, I was able to meld my passion for learning and literature with drinking; I was the storyteller, the one who can serve you a drink with a story on the side. Customers loved these stories, most running no longer than about twelve seconds. A good bartender plays one of these roles well; a great bartender can play whichever one the customer needs that shift. I was all of these in one night, all while tending to ten orders at a time, my hands always in motion, on my feet for up to twelve hours straight. Whatever brought you to the bar that night, I was able to spot it, match the drink for it, and serve it to you with a side of wisdom. It was a cool thing to be good at, and I was really good at it.

If it wasn’t for getting so good at being social, I wouldn’t have made it through my program. After talking to people who were already in PhD programs, I knew how valuable a circle of support was. One group of friends I made was out of a lot of luck. The cohort I joined was made up of so many people, with so many different backgrounds and interests. But the thing we all had in common was getting really good at caring about one-another. We all looked out for everyone, making sure everyone was doing well in their coursework, and catching them when one of us fell. We organized small get-togethers and group events. Out of this came out an amazing safety net of support. I can call on these people today and know that I will get the help I need. We named our group #bestcohortever. (it’s a real thing, too! find us on Instagram) I was really fortunate to be a part of this group, but then I remembered something someone told me about grad school life. One of the first pieces of advice I got before starting my program was to make friends outside of my cohort. I didn’t understand this at first, but after a month of being a grad student, it made so much sense. Some days, you want to be around friends where how you are doing in your classes is not the only thing you talk about. Being sociable made it possible to do that, too. I met a group of friends I affectionately called “My Dance Friends”. This name came after making a friend in the dance department, then meeting other friends through this person also in the dance department. Even in the hardest months of COVID, we stuck together, having virtual potlucks, and staying in touch via hour-long phone calls. Several months ago, I hosted a Potluck at my party, with a theme entitled “Community Charcuterie”, where everyone brought something to add to a charcuterie board. It was beautiful, seeing a collage of all of the people I’ve come to know, assembled on one board via food. #bestcohortever was there, my Dance Friends were there, and other friends I’ve made along the way were there. My heart was full, my stomach had amazing food, but my favorite part was playing bartender one more time. While everyone brought over food, I made drinks from the home bar I started, and it included everything needed to make really good cocktails. Shaker, strainer, bar spoon, mixing glass, and those really good black cherries. I wasn’t keeping track of tabs, and there were no rowdy customers. Instead, everyone had a drink in their hand, handcrafted by me. The end of that night left me with that one feeling that is so rare and so precious: I am nailing grad school.

Being social is so essential for my mental health, and I’m glad I picked up these skills to help make grad school a little easier. Near the tail-end of my program however, I was taught one more lesson about how valuable those skills are. In my last year of my program, I decided to volunteer at a hospital that recently reopened their volunteer program. I was volunteering at The James, the oncology center at OSU Medical. (wrote about that earlier, too- read about that experience here) I didn’t know what to expect since I had no experience working at a medical center. I volunteered because as a medical humanities student, one who has studied everything about the topic from books, I felt that I had to have some kind of experience in a clinical setting. It took one shift to learn how important it is to be able to talk to others and being personable. People walk into that center during what will most likely be the most stressful experience of their lives. Here, they don’t need jokes, or charm; they need someone that can tend to their wellness. That sometimes means putting a hand on their shoulder when you offer them help; sometimes, that means taking in all of their emotions as they share the most tragic medical histories; or sometimes, that means shutting up and giving them exactly what they ask for. It was a jarring experience at first, feeling so conflicted about being there in the first place. But then, a patient would share something with you, or make that tiny gesture that tells you why treating someone’s wellness is (sometimes) just as important as treating their illness, and then you see that just wanting to help someone is all you need to be good at your job. I learned all about this in medical humanities textbooks, but I got to experience it here. I could not have done my job well if it weren’t for the social skills I learned while bartending. It’s kinda funny- working in bars, a job I got for the sole purpose of making extra cash on the weekends, ended up playing such an important role in my experience during my grad program at OSU. It’s a happy accident, like when the first Negroni came from a guy who wanted to make an Americano accidentally poured in gin instead of soda water. I now feel comfortable reaching out to others to collaborate, or talk about my struggles and how I’m feeling, or just starting a conversation with someone waiting for the elevator. My friends, my experiences, seeing them in practice, Negronis. I’m grateful for all of it.

Adjuncting Days

(click here to listen to “Half a World Away” by REM)

Sometimes, when people ask me about how diss writing is going, a jumble of words just falls out of my mouth. I have no idea how to describe how I’m feeling when my job is to write sentences. When I’m talking to people who are in the same position, or who have already crossed that finish line, I always hear the following phrase at least once. “It’s a marathon, not a sprint”. This sentiment isn’t inaccurate or misplaced. The problem is that I am so in the thick of writing, that a marathon doesn’t encapsulate it. It’s like I’m standing right in front of Mount Everest, and my committee is telling me, “It’s your turn to climb this”. When you stand there, this voice begins to tell you, “You can quit if you want. Like,…right now. Just walk away and no one would blame you”. The worst part is that when you’re in a PhD program, this is practical advice. Before I started my program, another piece of advice I got from people who were in a program was that this is not the same thing as dropping out of high school- if you want to quit, you can do that. It offended me hearing that, like they were presuming I was going to fail or something, but the longer I stayed in this program, the more it made sense. Ever since the start of my program, the amount of work demanded of us is so much, borderline-unreasonable. The amount of reading, the length of term papers, juggling being a student with being a teacher, studying for candidacy exams that take a year’s worth of reading, and the diss. It’s a lot. Cards on the table: I’d be lying if I said I didn’t think about it. I once had an assignment that was supposed to take a couple of weeks that stretched out into six months. My logic was, if I can’t complete this, how will I be able to complete anything else down the road? I think about standing at the foot of Mount Everest again, and what that feels like. When I envision it, I think about how much I’m going to put my body through and how doing this makes any sense. But then it hits me- I didn’t decide to do this this morning. It’s been a goal I’ve had for a long time, and I conquered all of the little mountains that came before me. I got my climbing boots on, my rock climbing hammer, my protein bars, my phone, fully charged, and my headphones for music. I can do this. I was made for it.

Perseverance is something I’ve picked up from all of the jobs I’ve had. All of them had their own little challenges. The period after finishing my Masters and getting into my PhD program was all about perseverance. And it wasn’t like one of those messages of inspiration you hear at a gym or in an office; it was more like a working-class way of learning it, the kind where you learn it because you have no other options. When I completed my Masters, I worked as a part-time instructor, often called “adjuncting”. (wrote about that as well. if you wish to learn about the exploitative nature of that job and why we need systemic change, you can [begrudgingly] learn about it here) My goal was to do that while applying to programs, teaching Freshman comp while spending the weekends working on my applications. As I describe this, it sounds perfectly reasonable and doable. Tapping into the feelings I felt during that time, it was very much not that. I was working so many hours per week, making no money, all while trying to convince myself a PhD is still attainable. Application fees are almost a hundred bucks a pop, and GRE exam fees, if you take both the General and Subject, which I did, adds up to almost four hundred. I couldn’t apply the first Fall as an adjunct. It wasn’t possible. My dreams were fleeting, making me wonder what the next few years would look like. When Spring came around, I got a new job at a community college (yay!!) and was able to really get to work on applications. I studied, did research on the schools I wanted to attend, and took the GREs. I proudly sent out my applications, telling everyone how we’re going to celebrate once I get the news. Then they all came back. For the next several weeks, I would go to campus, with my lesson plans ready, and a look on my face that showed everyone how much I loved teaching. What they didn’t see is the look of a person who was so defeated on the inside. I got nothing but rejections that application cycle. Everything shut down for me. This one goal I had has now become unreachable. I was going through this, and I had to keep teaching, at a job that demands so much yet pays so little. I was climbing, then the mountain spit me out, back to sea level. How do you continue with your day when the world tells you your dreams are impossible? This is where perseverance kicks in.

A lot of people who I spoke to about this reminded me that it’s fairly common to not get accepted into a PhD program on their first round. After a few weeks of being sad and listening to sad music on endless loops, I decided to reapply and try again. But I needed to be smart about it. What could I have done differently? What is within my control to change? I reached out to some of the schools I applied to, and some of them got back to me, giving me really productive feedback. My Letter of Recommendation writers warmly told me that them getting back to me was a sign that says I was on the margins of getting accepted or not. One thing I needed to change and was very much in my power was improving my GRE scores. It made sense because that test has always been my Achilles heel. I studied for days straight, taking practice exams, working on my GRE vocabulary, studying on the train ride home after a long day of teaching. I was adroitly on it, my goals inchoate. (see?!?! studying GRE vocabulary paid off!!) I paid for the exam, set a date, and retook it. When I finished this one, I saw my score after, and then the earth cracked open beneath me, dropping me into the deepest pit of the planet. I bombed that test. So. Badly. I wasn’t even at sea level anymore. Somehow, the mountain hired friends to dig a hole and throw me in, miles below surface level. I worked so hard, and it added up to nothing. I could have given up right then, coming to grips with my situation and settling for a more attainable goal. I could find different job, one that I’m qualified for, and live comfortably, on a plateau instead of a mountain. It would have been so easy to do that. There was so much work to do just to get back to sea level. I had no idea how to get out of this hole, and I soon started to question why get out at all.

I was facing another year of wearing a fake smile at my job. Going to work, hanging out with friends, doing anything fun- it all seemed so bleak and pointless, like a grey filter was put over my life. I thought a lot about what was in front of me again, and, again, I asked what was in my control. The answer was…very little. I can’t change my academic history, I can’t add anything to my CV or application essays that will make me a more qualified candidate. All I had was this terrible and exploitative job. That semester, I walked into my classes and looked closer at my students. They served no role in my bleakness and all wanted what I did when I was in their position. They deserve a teacher that wants to be there as much as they want to learn. This was something I could control. I wasn’t expecting any rejection letters since I didn’t apply in the first place. Instead, I threw myself into my work. I worked closely with my students to help them reach their goals. I began working at the Writing Center on campus, leading workshops and offering to substitute classes. I volunteered to help rewrite the Course Learning Objectives for the Bible as Literature class. It was a ton of work, and half of these things, I was learning on the fly. But I also had purpose. Every side gig or job I picked up reminded me why education is so important. It empowers. It liberates. It gets you a little closer to whatever goals you have. This is when perseverance began running through my veins. Perseverance is something you gain, and often not by choice. You have to give it to yourself…because no one else will. I started to care again. About my job, about teaching, about myself. It was the fuel I needed to power through this new year. The summer began to roll though as the semester was ending. I had time to now ask myself, What do I want? I honestly didn’t know. But whatever it was, I had to find it.

When summer rolled around, I was still teaching, but the nice thing about my job was that I only had to teach one out of the two sections of summer classes to get paid for all of it. With this break, I decided to attend the Graphic Medicine conference. Attending this offered me a slice of time where I got to feel like a student again. Plus, the people in this field are really good people. It was held in Seattle, a place I once studied a couple of years back. (wrote a whole blog post about that, as well! read that one here) Attending this reminded me why my studies matter, and why pursuing this is in my bones. My goals felt attainable again. Thanks to that conference, my vocabulary on the subject grew exponentially. Before, I had the ideas, and I had the heart, and now I have the words. Application season came by again and I wanted to try one more time. While working on applications, I also had a really hectic schedule. Thanks to being scrappy, working a job with terrible pay, I found the time I needed to work on applications outside of work. One night, as I was drafting my SOP essays, I sat down and decided not to leave my seat until I had something I liked. Once I finally did, I stood out of my chair, and noticed something… it was, literally, a new day. I had a whole new attitude now. Sending those applications out, I told myself ‘I did my best, and no one can say otherwise, so getting accepted or not is no longer an indication of who I am’. I was still a nervous wreck, just not as nervous. In late January, as I was lecturing about a Paul Auster short story, I got the news. I got it!!! That moment, everything summed itself up and gave me the biggest gust of relief. Knuckles bruised, hair a mess, barely enough cash to buy lunch that afternoon, I somehow actually got it. Somehow, in that pit, I found a jewel that got me out of it. I now have to carry this precious and tiny jewel close as I finally trek up the mountain. I taught my last semester as an adjunct professor, said goodbye to my lovely coworkers, left California, and began my program. Perseverance was the jewel.

Conclusion: Actually Writing My Damn Dissertation

(click here to listen to the acoustic version of I Can Talk With My Eyes Shut by Car Seat Headrest)

It’s 6:47 pm, and I’m back in the library. I taught a class a few hours ago, met with students during my office hours, and finished a grading run. Now, it’s time to get back to writing. As of this writing, I have one chapter (plus revisions) left to complete my dissertation. I really like my subject and the research I’m doing for it is continuously and perpetually turning me into the expert I wish to become in my subject. And I have all my sources on tabs in my browser window. (all 33) I have everything I need to finish…..but Christ, I’m tired. Writing this dissertation is taking every ounce of strength I have. When I’m hanging out with friends or talking to people, a paragraph is being shaped in my head. When I stop by for a Coke on the way home, another voice says, ‘You should also be planning out your writing schedule for tomorrow’. On days when I have to teach, I have to squeeze in some kind of writing; on days I have free, I dedicate the whole day to diss writing. I’m tapping into all the skills that got me here to finish this. What I didn’t expect was how unique the dissertation writing process was like. There’s a huge revision process. I have to learn a whole new citation format. I have to send my drafts to my committee, but wrangling four people together is next to impossible. Also, thanks to the hundreds of other jobs I have, it’s really difficult to squeeze in writing when I’m working on other projects. (shhh!! don’t tell my committee this, but…) Last Fall, I was so busy with taking on so many other jobs (read all about those jobs here), that I barely touched my dissertation for the whole semester. That is a huge no-no. On the days when I do focus, I sit down in front of my laptop and work. No metaphors, no figures of speech, no more mountains. It’s just….really hard. There are days where it feels like I’m staring at a paragraph, I try to add a sentence, second-guess myself, then agonize over a subordinate clause. I look at my watch- I spent FOUR HOURS on the merits on this clause! It’s so strange, like I’m trying to convince myself that it has to be perfect, but behind that notion, I’m trying to convince myself that it’s even possible. The real pressure comes from thinking about how you are contributing to your field. What makes this work worthy of joining the ranks of the works you are currently studying? What makes what I’m saying worth reading? Lastly, who the hell do I think I am doing this? And it’s really hard to turn to anyone about this. How many people on the planet have written a dissertation? (I don’t know about the planet, but in terms of the U.S., it’s 1.2%) I’ve been in front of my laptop for several hours now. I see the cursor blinking, and I’m trying to determine if I’m hungry or if I want to throw up. This is a good time to get up and go for a walk.

(the moment I needed to get up and get away from my laptop)

I have one more chapter to finish, but I’m so ready to call it. Ideas are no longer flowing out of my fingers. It’s more like dust. The sun is moving closer to setting, the day coming to a close, but I have to keep writing. My job is to write out my ideas clearly and coherently. I’ve already demonstrated that I have every skill needed to finish. It’s now time to get all of those skills and prove that here. I’m looking at this chapter, lost and feeling defeated, but then I step away from my laptop, and I see the bigger picture. I’ve been asking the whole time, What does the next paragraph need to look like? But that’s not the right question. It’s actually, How will the ideas I’m working on now fit with the rest of this project? It’s like a big puzzle, trying to fit everything. It’s a huge task, but strangely, stepping away makes writing this thing way easier.  Then, it hits me: I’m not writing this so I can solve the world’s problems. (maybe some day, but…) I’m writing this because I care about it. There’s a project my committee approved, and it’s now up to me to write, and I’m (kinda literally) the only person on the planet who can write it. This walk, like a Fairy Godmother blessing me, is exactly what I needed, clearing away my writer’s block, granting me the clarity I need. As I walk back to the library, the pressure is lifted. I’m not trying to cure cancer, or find the Holy Grail; I’m trying to write a dissertation, and I’m perfectly qualified to do that. There is no guarantee that this will get published, or that it will land me job (if anyone on LinkedIn sees this, please give me a job after finishing my program 😢), but it’s the next phase towards a career goal over ten years in the making. It will be one of the biggest accomplishments in my life, but it will not define me. I’m writing this because I care about something. My only goal is to, someday, get this one subject, something about ten people on the planet know about, and increase that number to eleven, twelve if I’m really good at it. I have everything I need to finish this at my disposal. My sources, a bottle of Coke, and my headphones and study beats. Now I have to sit down and finish.

I’m back from my walk. I’m sitting down now, about to finish this final chapter. I’m exactly where I need to be.

All of my WSIJM posts end with a quote. Here’s one from Haruki Murakami’s Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage, the most recent Murakami novel I read during this writing process:

Our lives are like a complex musical score, Tsukuru thought. Filled with all sorts of cryptic writing, sixteenth and thirty-second notes and other strange signs. It’s next to impossible to correctly interpret these, and even if you could, and then could transpose them into the correct sounds, there’s no guarantee that people would correctly understand, or appreciate, the meaning therein. No guarantee it would make people happy.

I’m about to finish my dissertation. I don’t know if this is good, or if it will make anyone happy. My only hope is that once it’s out there, someone, someday, somewhere, feels inspired to write their story, too. I don’t know who that person is, but I promise to read it.