On Grad School and Hair Camisoles

Damn school all to hell. Really. This month alone I missed the Pulitzers; Poem in Your Pocket Day, which loyal Like Fire readers (probably the only ones left) will know is a stone favorite of mine, and in fact all of Poetry Month; the opening of the DPLA—a uniquely contemporary combination of digitally, untetheredly global and painfully Boston-local enough to have to be relocated in the tense days following the Marathon bombing; World Book Night, the grand experiment so stealthily Socialist that everyone loves it anyway; and lord knows what else. I don’t want to think about it.

But think about it I am, chiefly because of a piece over at the New Yorker’s blog, The Impossible Decision: On Whether or Not to Go to Graduate School. In it, Joshua Rothman uses the occasion of being interrogated by his fledgling undergrads to muse on his own career in higher education, which leads to a general stock-taking—“They push you to think about the success and failure of your life projects; to decide whether or not you are happy; to guess what the future holds; to consider your life on a decades-long scale.” Which leads, in the Internet’s insidious domino effect, to my doing the same.

Of course, he’s talking about going after a humanities degree, which comes with its own implications. I’m on the social sciences end of the spectrum, working on an MLS—no offense intended, but these days you couldn’t pay me enough to get an MFA. Still, there are plenty of similarities. One big difference, though, is that Rothman is talking about counseling recent undergrads:

Being consulted about grad school is a little like starring in one of those “Up” documentaries (“28 Up,” ideally; “35 Up,” in some cases).

Dude, keep going… you’re not even warm. Michael Apted’s 56 Up was released here at the beginning of the year, and I think I saw it the first week it was out. At this rate the “Up” subjects have seven years on me, which is a comfortable margin for comparing and contrasting. Still, weren’t any of them in grad school last I looked.

My father was a tenured anthropology professor, and I grew up with a healthy distrust of academia and all its trappings. Which is probably why it took me another 25 years to go back to school after getting my BFA. And here I am, finishing up my last couple of semesters at nearly 50 years of age, every so often wondering just what the hell I’m doing.

I mean, I know what I’m doing: I’m getting my MLS, which will presumably increase my employment potential, and might lead to a good job where I can settle down and toil away the rest of my days. That’s kind of an abstract concept right now, though. For the time being I’m doing the reading, conducting the research, writing the papers, making the PowerPoints, all the while juggling part-time work, freelance work, graduate assistantship, and internship. Add ‘em up, that’s a lot of ships to be keeping afloat. The work is mostly interesting, often challenging, none of it over my head or terribly stressful. Still, it’s a slog. Age and good habits and impeccable writing chops give me a solid advantage, but I find I don’t have the same stamina I would if I were 28. I read slower, rest my eyes more often, and don’t get that sleep-deprivation high anymore; I can function on six hours, but a couple nights of that and I’m dumb as rocks.

Still, I don’t regret signing on for the ride. I don’t think I’m having the immersive experience Rothman describes to his undergrads—I try not to spend a single unnecessary minute on campus, for one thing—but I know it’s making me smarter in some indefinably ascetic way. There’s self-love, and then there’s self-tough-love, and this is definitely the latter; maybe not quite a hair shirt, but definitely a hair camisole. As midlife crises go, it’s still cheaper than a sports car, but rather more expensive than taking up knitting. At this point, I’m not sure I have much choice left.

Fortunately I have Daniel and Terry helping keep this little boat afloat for me while I navigate the waters of my ongoing education, and presumably it’s not forever—even if it feels like it might be. April’s kind of a cruel month anyway. I think some middle-aged guy said that.

Onward.

(Above image is Grad School Barbie ™—“Comes with two outfits: a grubby pair of blue jeans and 5 year old gap T-shirt, and a floppy pair of gray sweatpants with a matching ‘I hate my life’ T-shirt.”)