14

I have 14 solid pages, plus 8 crappy pages for the working class paper.
I have 19 crappy pages for the Dorothea Lasky paper.

I want to finish them both tonight.

I want to be in bed by 2am.

I'm wondering how far I have to lower my standards in order to achieve those goals.

I'm aiming for a 3.0 GPA this semester. Is that bad enough to get kicked out of grad school?

And yep, I'm still trying to quit smoking. Which is to say I'm not actually a non-smoker. Because non-smokers don't pace around their apartments wondering why they quit smoking in the first place. Do they?

Don't worry. After 8 months I'm not about to go effing it up now.

I think I wrote something on this blog once about how I enjoyed writing papers. I was clearly delusional that day.

Indulge me, won't you?

As if I don't do this enough, forgive me while I whine a minute.

Someday, before this thing called grad school is over, I will figure out the right balance of working ahead and procrastinating. This semester, I have not done a good job of it.

I started both of my papers over spring break (six weeks ago). I've worked on both papers regularly ever since. At least 2-3 days a week. As a result, I'm not in a panic to generate material but I am completely bogged down in utter boredom with my own thoughts on the topics.

There's only 3(ish) days left until I'll turn both of these papers in, which kind of sounds like torture. Three more days of this? Ugh. I wish I could turn my brain up to turbo and get them both done today. I wish I was done.

Okay. Whine over. Back to it. Thanks for listening. : )

***

And another thing.

Why do you always land on the really interesting idea when it's way too late to do anything about it?

a different kind of thesis freak-out

Since I still don't have any chairs to go around my kitchen table, I've moved it into the living room and turned it into a catch-all for my paper-writing paraphernalia: library books, drafts, post-its, and...I don't know what the calculator is doing there.

As you can see, I'm writing about Dorothea Lasky's AWE for my contemporary poetry class. I have mixed feelings about this book. (Oh! I just realized I had a dream about Lasky last night. That's my first author dream ever. I think we were doing a reading together. Anyway.) There are some poems that I just read and think, Huh? You got this published? For example, there's this: "You are so summery / You summery summery love." And then there are poems that I love, that floor me and make me sad, and I think that's what she wants. There's rarely anything exciting happening with the language in Lasky's work, at least not on the surface, and images are often lost in the exclamatory silliness of things like summery summery love. But I've spent weeks with this book, read it and reread it, and it continues to haunt me. It has something to say. I just have to figure out what that something is.

And thus we come to my post title today: A different kind of thesis freak out. I'm not talking about a master's thesis, just a tiny little thesis statement. Or, to be true to how I'm feeling now, the one sentence that makes or breaks a paper. The one sentence that is escaping me despite the fact that I have more complete rough drafts for either of these papers than I've ever had before (which is to say I don't usually make it past the first draft with term papers because I wait so long to start them).

I have no idea what my point is, what I'm arguing, why it matters...and so these papers are going no where, even though they keep getting longer as I meander through my sources and my notes. I really, really need to figure out what my damn arguments are.

Wish me luck...

laborious

I may as well be chipping my term papers into stone, it's taking so damn long.

Why is the process of writing something academic so much less rewarding than writing something creative? Even the cover letter I wrote today was more fun than these papers.

There are 11 days left in the first year of my Ph.D. I guess it ain't all bad.

Saturday morning

It's days like this that I miss my old apartment in Cuyahoga Falls the most. Spending one of the first warm Saturday mornings of the year on the porch with a cup of coffee and a book (I'll leave the cigarettes in the past, thank-you-very-much) would be truly ideal. Having Michael, my nephew, come out to distract me every now and then, but then going to work on his senior design project in the garage with ESPN on in the background would be really nice too. Alas, I'm here in Chicago where my porch is not big enough for a table, and besides, there's this crew working on the building (and has been every nice day since I moved in) that make all kinds of noise and debris, thus making it impossible to spend any time on my tiny balcony.

This is why I have plans to go to my friend Shelly's house a little later on--Shelly has a deck. Also, Shelly thinks that if we work on our papers in the same place at the same time, I'll be able to help her focus. But Shelly lives in Bronzville, which will take me an hour on the el to get to, and it is supposed to rain. I might just bail on Shelly. If I had a car, I'd so be there. But the commute...

Maybe to Bar on Buena. They probably will open the windows (which are the size of garage doors) today. That would be almost like sitting outside.

Or maybe I'll just stay here, where all my books and papers are, where I have a freezer full of food I've already paid for, where I have instant coffee and my favorite mug. The sliding glass door is already open, the birds are chirping, I'm drinking coffee...I guess there's nothing wrong with where I am.

*

Today I'll be focusing on my paper for Proseminar--the Political Economy course. The one that really pissed me off at the beginning of the semester. I mean, I'm getting a PhD in English, writing a creative dissertation, and I'm forced to study the Political Economy? What the...? But then I started getting into some of it. Rather, I started getting riled up about the way theorists are describing working class people, and I found my way into the class. So now, I'm trying--emphasis on trying--to write a paper that deals with working class identification / values / discourse as they relate to (or contradict) working class theory. I don't really know if I have the theory chops for this project, but I'm going to give it a shot. And the strange thing is, I'm way, WAY more excited about writing this paper than I am about writing the paper for my contemporary poetry course. So hopefully today is a good, productive, intellectually satisfying day. Maybe I'll learn something.

Who knew?

I learned the most amazing thing today. If you start working on a paper a couple of weeks before it's due, you can take a break when you hit a wall. You don't have to just keep at it even when your brain has turned to mush.

I was hoping for a five page draft, but I ended up with a 13 page outline-ish thing. It's enough to get me through the meeting I have scheduled with the prof tomorrow, and hopefully said meeting will help me get through the wall.

*

Speaking of walls, I haven't thought much about NaPoMo for a few days. Not since Saturday, actually. I wouldn't say I'm giving up, but with the semester winding down, I think all of my creative energy is going to be going to these two papers I'm working on. If a draft happens to come to me, I'll post it, but I'm not going to force it. I'd say that the 15 or so drafts I've gotten are a pretty big accomplishment, considering I usually spend a semester coming up with 10-12. There's still, what? 9 days left this month. I could maybe get a few more.

*

I am dying to start working on my course materials for Intro to Poetry for the fall, but that just can't be a priority right now. I have decided not to use a text book (unless someone can suggest something that is perfect) which means that I have to compile a course packet. It's going to be lots of fun (and for once, I'm not being sarcastic!). I also might teach a couple of full length collections...but how do you pick?