A Subjective Account of English Graduate School, Part I

Any of my friends could recount how often I have complained about the difficulty of finding meaningful conversation outside of academia. The problem with the real world is: too many people work. Sweating for provender not only robs people of the time that they ought to spend loafing in transcendental exuberance, it also renders them neurotic about events that mean nothing and that unfold completely beyond our control. Work teaches people that they may meddle, but only within the span of a yoctometer. Leave everything else up to the other professionals and the robots.

No surprise, then, that I waxed ecstatic when I learned I was returning school for my graduate degree in English. When I read the first words of the grad school advice pamphlet that was in the same envelope as my acceptance letter, the realization hit me and I had to sit down on the floor in the middle of the post office. I didn't feel especially accomplished, but the arrival of this small certainty unburdened me in ways that I did not know I had been burdened. I entertained visions of competent colleagues and equitable discussion groups. I dreamed about research papers. I remembered how throughout the cold, cold nights of July (cold because my parents, in whose house I was staying, kept the the thermostat at 40 degrees kelvin), I had warded off madness only with thoughts of scholarly articles and the occasional session of quiet, unenthusiastic masturbation. However, the poorly stapled teal leaflets in my hand signified that I had vindicated at least some of the sacrifices I had made.

But, like any enchanted image, my dream of grad school has come into existence only to fall out of a window and shatter. It's only been a week or two, but already it irks to discover that grad school appears to lie on the same continuum as undergrad, just that it lies a little farther up. I love grad school; I love that society loans me the time and funds to research whatever I want to. It's just that I don't sense any shift in the character of certain class discussions which I have had both in undergraduate and already in graduate courses and which frustrate me to the point of physical pain.

When I was not in graduate school, I disliked a lot of conversations because they weren't "intellectual" enough for someone as arrogant as I am, but now that I'm in graduate school, I find that jargon rather than content continues to drive many conversations. I think the Buddha's right. I'll never be happy.

A pretty arrogant and depressing blog. Next week I'll focus on the positive.