Three things to remember to make grad school enjoyable*:<\/p>\n
1. School is for learning.<\/b><\/p>\n
Therefore, if I learn something I didn’t know before, I am ahead. I have succeeded. I have fulfilled a goal. This means that my success in grad school is measured based on the difference between the amount I know at the end of grad school and the amount I knew when I started, NOT on how many new insights I came up with. If I were going to be a professor whose job depended on publishing new insights every several months, then I would place more importance on that. But I’m not. So I won’t. If I write a paper that is nothing more than a synthesis of everything I found out about a topic, stated clearly, succinctly, and interestingly, I am going to claim that paper as valid and valuable to me, whether or not it presents grand new ideas.<\/p>\n
2. I am not in competition with the other grad students.<\/b><\/p>\n
My papers don’t have to be better than theirs, I don’t have to come up with more insights than them, I don’t have to say more things in class than them. They may be competing with each other eventually, for jobs and fellowships and I don’t know what all, but I won’t. Even so, I think competing with other people can sometimes be helpful when it pushes us to excel, but there’s also a point where thinking of life as a competition only increases stress, distrust, and enmity. And that’s true whether the competition is real or imagined. In either case, I’m eschewing it, in favor of the next perspective.<\/p>\n
3. My scholastic efforts are participatory, not performative.<\/b><\/p>\n
This is an alternative perspective to the competition one, really, and one I think is healthier. When I do a presentation on William Cowper, it’s not performative. That is, I’m not doing it to perform and “show off” how well I can do presentations. I’m doing it to share what I’ve learned, for the greater knowledge of the whole class. If I write a paper about Langston Hughes, the purpose is not to show what an awesome paper-writer I am, but to provide an opportunity for discussion. In other words, I used to think of paper-writing as a place to show off. And it can be that, but I think it’s better seen as a participatory act meant not as self-aggrandizement, but as a catalyst for conversation and discussion. Performative acts are focused on the performer(s) and separate performer from audience. Participatory acts are focused on the community and blur the distinction between performer and audience. If academia is about increasing knowledge, then perhaps everything it does should be participatory rather than performative.<\/p>\n
*these things apply more strongly to people who are not really set on becoming professors at the end of grad school; like, you know, me.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Three things to remember to make grad school enjoyable*: 1. School is for learning. Therefore, if I learn something I didn’t know before, I am ahead. I have succeeded. I have fulfilled a goal. This means that my success in grad school is measured based on the difference between the amount I know at the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[15],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":139,"url":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/2006\/11\/grad-student-nuggets\/","url_meta":{"origin":261,"position":0},"title":"Grad Student Nuggets","author":"Jandy","date":"November 14, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"Tonight's nugget of post-class wisdom: \"Not understanding poetry is just like women's clothing sizes.\" This weekend's haul at the bookfair: 42 books for $8.00 (rough estimate, based on a paper shopping bag with books three layers deep, the top level having 14 books; I hope it is 42, because, as\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "School"","block_context":{"text":"School","link":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/category\/school\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":227,"url":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/2007\/02\/my-new-perspective\/","url_meta":{"origin":261,"position":1},"title":"My new perspective","author":"Jandy","date":"February 19, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"Okay, it isn't really a NEW perspective. I've been utilizing this perspective on and off since I started grad school, but I'm now embracing it even more fully. The perspective is this: School is for learning. That's it. Simple, right? But oh-so-helpful when most of the people around you are\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "School"","block_context":{"text":"School","link":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/category\/school\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":122,"url":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/2006\/10\/courtesy-of-the-honors-college\/","url_meta":{"origin":261,"position":2},"title":"Courtesy of the Honors College :)","author":"Jandy","date":"October 12, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"The Honors College had a professor from University of North Carolina down to do a lecture here last night, and because he's the mentor of one of my professors, he taught my British lit class today on Joyce. That was pretty cool, but even cooler is that my professor invited\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "School"","block_context":{"text":"School","link":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/category\/school\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":114,"url":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/2006\/10\/grad-student-grunts\/","url_meta":{"origin":261,"position":3},"title":"Grad Student Grunts","author":"Jandy","date":"October 4, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"I have figured something out. Something that I should have, in retrospect, already known. Graduate students are the grunts of the academic world. You need some extra help with registration for that conference you're putting on? Call the grad students. You'd like to unload some of those old texts you've\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "School"","block_context":{"text":"School","link":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/category\/school\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":154,"url":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/2006\/11\/brrr\/","url_meta":{"origin":261,"position":4},"title":"Brrr","author":"Jandy","date":"November 30, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"Well, November finally hit Waco. Walking a half-mile to school in freezing rain really isn't all it's cracked up to be. After our last Bibliography and Research class last night, several of us students had a mini-party, which was well-deserved in my opinion. Sangria, chips and salsa, and good conversation.\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "School"","block_context":{"text":"School","link":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/category\/school\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":36979,"url":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/2023\/04\/treasure-trove\/","url_meta":{"origin":261,"position":5},"title":"treasure trove","author":"Jandy","date":"April 8, 2023","format":"aside","excerpt":"I just found my notebooks going back to grad school in 2006-2008 and further, to classes I took at WashU in 2004-2005, plus reading\/film journals and commonplace books. Like going back in time over here!","rel":"","context":"In "ephemera"","block_context":{"text":"ephemera","link":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/category\/ephemera\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/261"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=261"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/261\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=261"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=261"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=261"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}