Stormy Seas

If nothing else, my life as a graduate student has been characterized by a series of tradeoffs. Some I expected. Neither the heavy reading nor writing loads surprised me. I anticipated having to function in an environment characterized by fierce competition and occasional subterfuge, and I was prepared to bid farewell to the creature comforts I had once enjoyed, including sleep. At the same time, there are several aspects of my life in graduate school that I did not anticipate.

I still recall my final moments as a high school teacher. For nearly a month I had spent my Saturday mornings in my classroom packing boxes and sorting through the materials I had acquired over the course of my career. My goal was to have everything packed prior to the end of the school year so that I would be able to avoid the good-byes at which I am so bad. When the last day of the school year came, I was able to pick up the remaining boxes, close the door on my classroom, and pass through the twin metal doors out of the school and into the sunlight. I remember that, as I walked toward my parked car, I looked forward to my new life. I recall that I was particularly attracted to the notion of being accountable for only myself, a luxury I had not enjoyed since I had begun to teach. Looking back on that moment, I can’t help but laugh.

As a graduate student, it often seems as if I am accountable to everyone but myself. To some extent I am accountable to the professors with whom I study. Their syllabi set the agenda I follow from week to week, and they influence the time I spend in class and at home. Given my desire to succeed, I am obligated to meet the deadlines they set, and I feel a need to live up to their expectations of me. Still, if this were the extent of my responsibilities, I am certain that I would feel quite comfortable. It was a desire to grow and learn that drove me to resume my life as a student. Unfortunately, it sometimes seems as if addressing my studies is the least of my concerns.

In addition to keeping up with my studies, I am accountable for teaching an introductory education class. I am responsible for planning and conducting the class, grading the students’ papers, and addressing the various problems they face. Again, if this were the extent of my responsibilities, there would be no problems. I made my living as a teacher, and these tasks are familiar to me. Because the students are interested in pursuing a career in the classroom, they are expected to complete a total of twenty hours of observation time in the field. I am responsible for placing them with local teachers, and for overseeing their experiences in the classroom. I am expected to establish contacts with teachers in school districts unfamiliar to me, work with individuals to arrange placements that involve large numbers of people, ensure that the cooperating teachers receive the appropriate paperwork, navigate the political struggles that arise in departments and that affect me and my students, and troubleshoot problems that arise when undergraduates leave the university behind and enter the professional world.

In addition to taking classes and teaching, I am responsible for supervising the English education program’s M.Ed. (Master of Education) interns. I meet with these students on a biweekly basis for instruction in issues related to pedagogy, supervise them throughout their teaching experiences in the field, help them to address the many problems they encounter in the classroom, and troubleshoot the problems that arise when graduate students leave the university behind and enter the professional world.

In addition to taking classes, teaching, and supervising teacher-candidates, I work on two projects with different professors. As a result, I spend a great deal of my “free” time helping them to gather data, transcribe interviews, code transcripts, write papers, and attend conferences. Though these partnerships allow me to advance my own scholarship, they also require a serious time commitment. Unfortunately, it occasionally seems like I am the only one who recognizes this fact. On top of all of this, I try to find time to spend with my wife, help her (when I can) to maintain a home, exercise my dogs, and wonder when (or if) I will ever again exercise myself.

As I compose this entry, I am sitting opposite a window that looks out on to the street that runs in front of the home I rent. The leaves on the trees have begun to change, and the air is remarkably cool. In fact, the expected high for the day is only 61 degrees. Fall has come to the Midwest. With the exception of a barking dog, the neighborhood is unusually calm, a mood that reflects my own (at the moment). It seems as if the storm that I call my life has subsided for the first time in the last forty-eight hours, though I haven’t checked my email account yet. Reading through what I have written, I sense it constitutes a “rant,” the first of my blogging career. I certainly realize that my situation is mirrored by those of thousands of other graduate students. Still, it does help to put my thought and feelings on paper (or into cyberspace as the case may be). Hmm… blogging as a cathartic exercise… there’s a twist. I think that I am finally figuring out why people maintain their weblogs so fastidiously. What other needs might blogging fulfill? I leave this question to my readers. As for myself, it is time to enter the exciting world of qualitative research. I have several hundred pages to read before Monday, and I have yet to grade the memoirs my students turned in to me earlier this week. Until then...