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pantryslutSince this came up more than once this weekend, I guess I have been less than forthcoming about my plans for higher education.
Yes, it's true, I am applying to graduate school. I intend to study something that can be classified as English, or as Cultural Studies, or as Gender or Women's Studies, depending on how you want to slice up that particular academic pie. Words and gender roles and texts.
I have very mixed feelings about this whole thing. For one thing, I don't want to move. For another, I've applied to graduate school in the past, more than once, and been turned down. Of course, the last couple times I applied, it was for writing programs -- poetry, in fact, long in the distant past. I got waitlisted a lot. I got discouraged a lot.
For a third, I am rather poor at the moment and will need a lot of financial aid to even attempt to do this.
For a fourth, I have a fraught relationship with academia, and academic discourse in particular. I'm a populist at heart. I know a lot of esoteric shit, but I want to share it with more than just a circle of people who know the same jargon that I do. Academics (the people not the subject) can be so *boring,* so lost in their own world. I don't want to be like that.
And I've been away from that world for such a long time. I have a lot of anxiety around that. I get grumpy every time I run into those fresh-faced college seniors. And we have them a'plenty, living right next to Berkeley and all.
So I haven't been talking about it in part because I don't want to get my hopes up, and I don't want everyone getting excited for me just to watch me fail -- or decide that this isn't what I want to do after all. I also don't want my friends here to think they have a limited time to see me in before I go away. I hate that feeling of borrowed time.
I'll save my grumblings about the glorified trivia quiz that is the GRE Subject Test in English -- which I took Saturday, just in case I go insane and decide to do this *again* someday -- for another time.
Yes, it's true, I am applying to graduate school. I intend to study something that can be classified as English, or as Cultural Studies, or as Gender or Women's Studies, depending on how you want to slice up that particular academic pie. Words and gender roles and texts.
I have very mixed feelings about this whole thing. For one thing, I don't want to move. For another, I've applied to graduate school in the past, more than once, and been turned down. Of course, the last couple times I applied, it was for writing programs -- poetry, in fact, long in the distant past. I got waitlisted a lot. I got discouraged a lot.
For a third, I am rather poor at the moment and will need a lot of financial aid to even attempt to do this.
For a fourth, I have a fraught relationship with academia, and academic discourse in particular. I'm a populist at heart. I know a lot of esoteric shit, but I want to share it with more than just a circle of people who know the same jargon that I do. Academics (the people not the subject) can be so *boring,* so lost in their own world. I don't want to be like that.
And I've been away from that world for such a long time. I have a lot of anxiety around that. I get grumpy every time I run into those fresh-faced college seniors. And we have them a'plenty, living right next to Berkeley and all.
So I haven't been talking about it in part because I don't want to get my hopes up, and I don't want everyone getting excited for me just to watch me fail -- or decide that this isn't what I want to do after all. I also don't want my friends here to think they have a limited time to see me in before I go away. I hate that feeling of borrowed time.
I'll save my grumblings about the glorified trivia quiz that is the GRE Subject Test in English -- which I took Saturday, just in case I go insane and decide to do this *again* someday -- for another time.
