dressing like the books i’m working on

firstfullmoon:

“Listen to me. All of writing is a huge lake. There are great rivers that feed the lake, like Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky. And there are mere trickles, like Jean Rhys. All that matters is feeding the lake. I don’t matter. The lake matters. You must keep feeding the lake.”

— Jean Rhys, from an interview in The Paris Review (via exhaled-spirals)

(via confessionalists)

Anonymous asked:

Thank you so much for sharing your experience re: grad school! Wishing you the best, most empowering, and satisfying future, regardless of where/what that might be. I've followed you for a long time and I feel that you will do great things anywhere, whether that's in or outside the university as an institution <3

YOU DARLING

boy oh boy have we been on this journey together for a long time. thanks for sticking around. it really means so much.

Anonymous asked:

hi! just read your reply to the question about how far into the phd you are. are you thinking of leaving after the MA, or switching to another program? what's been your experience with the small town you live in? i'm also thinking of grad school and your thoughts are always super helpful :)

i’m not going to deny that living in a small small town has been hard. i grew up in small towns and small cities, but this is a town that grew up around a college and mainly only survives because of the college. and it’s a true american college, too, with frat houses and boys practicing their golf swings on the lawn and football games and–inevitably–the kinds of right-wing and anti-masking sentiments which come packaged with that culture. and some trump-pence bumper stickers and yard signs. my first time experiencing that upfront. it’s really sad but i don’t like to hold my partner’s hand out in public when she’s here.

but at the same time… i’ve learned so much about myself since moving here. even though i’ve been lonely sometimes, my loneliness has pushed me to seek out new spaces in myself and in my relationships to my body and the land around me. i have become more in tune with the seasons and the birds in my backyard and the bunnies i see on my evening walks. i have started noticing the intricacies of plant life to a degree that was never possible in my previous setting, whether because of the urban environment or because i simply wasn’t tapped into that kind of awareness.

the smallness of this place has also made my connections to other people very special. i mentioned this to the last anon so i won’t go on forever, but i have been grateful for friends here in a new way.

the question, of course, is whether all of that is enough to live on. to survive with. the jury is out on that question, and i will have to keep reflecting as next year approaches. i will certainly “apply into” the PhD portion of the program (our version of the qualifying exam, it’s like re-applying again with a new statement and a sample of writing from coursework) but i don’t know much beyond that yet. although i regret nothing about moving and i am endlessly grateful for the discoveries i’ve made since beginning this program, i need to weigh out carefully the pros and cons of this life path–not just in terms of location but in my career goals, my passions and also the logistics of my life (for ex, can i go five more years doing long distance full-time with my partner…probably not, so something’s gotta give).

Anonymous asked:

i want more of your thoughts about the difference between ivy and non-ivy! also what made you want to go to the states rather than stay in canada (not sure where you're form originally). THANK YOU for sharing your experience!!

alright friendos i’m settling in at my desk with a little saturday-night drinky to answer a couple questions you’ve sent in about grad school. first up! ivy vs. non-ivy!

to start, i feel a little bad about the way i phrased this binary in my last answer. the distinction i’m trying to make shouldn’t really be between ivy and non-ivy, which is probably a reductive comparison (and i apologize to ivy people for that), but between the two kinds of academic settings i’ve experienced: the somewhat colder, more “traditional” and Prestige-obsessed setting (and with the capital P i mean a specific kind of old-school clout), which often happens to emerge from ivy schools, and the smaller, sometimes warmer and more community-focused environment of schools that don’t get ivy status but which are still very much worthy places to study. at the university i was previously attending, the department was so incredibly fixated on maintaining its status and on producing rigorous, “respectable” scholarship that it seemed impossible at times to generate any warmer sense of comradeship. at my new institution, which is by no means less scholarly rigorous but perhaps cares a tad less about keeping a “traditional” academic-humanistic reputation, the community has been immediate, responsive, and rather cozy in ways i didn’t anticipate when i chose my school. this is partly the result of the school’s setting in a smaller town, forcing students to rely on each other more for co-survival than in a big city (my previous setting). in a city you kinda go home after class and you’re sorta expected, for lack of a better phrase, to fuck off to your own life. and that can be really alienating! but i don’t mean to glamorize the alternative - small towns can be very alienating in different ways, and sometimes dangerous, especially for BIPOC, queer, and/or trans people.

so there are pros and cons to every school. for me, having heard second-hand from my partner about her experience at an ivy school in a city, i feel that the choice of a smaller-town non-ivy school actually ended up doing me better. my mentors and professors have been attentive and responsive to my problems (as much as they can within a fundamentally flawed institution, which is its own problem), and my classmates and i have bonded in a really special way. but even that, again, can vary from cohort to cohort, regardless of where you are.

glowpathy asked:

hey love! just read your response to that anon about adhd etc. you are so kind and i felt grateful so know there are kind people in the world like you who would take the time to help people. thank you <3

aawwwww belated reply (so sorry) but thank YOU!!

Anonymous asked:

how do you find the PHD journey in the humanities? i'm thinking about pursuing one but i'm trying to weigh the pros (funding, cool experience, living somewhere else, learning something i love+am good at, etc) vs cons (long 4 years, tough job prospects, i could be learning something new differently etc)

hello HELLO sorry for the late reply!

oooh what a doozie of a question. it’s one that i’m going to keep having for some time to come, if i stay on this path. the bad news is that there is no straightforward answer. the market for PhDs who graduated last year will be different than the market this year, and different again in six years’ time. the good news is that you CAN do a PhD because you want to and not because you think you’ll make a “job” out of “it.” i put quotes because we often talk about the “it” job as the tenure-track professor dream, but there are many other skills that the PhD *can* (not will, but can, because it depends on the institutional atmosphere, your funding package, and your resources) cultivate which can send you on endless exciting career paths beyond the TT job. that’s at least how i’ve started to view it. if you’re going somewhere with liveable funding (god i wish it were more than liveable, though), you can treat the PhD as your job for six years. you get paid in return for reading and teaching and writing. this is a somewhat simplified formula but it will have to do for now lest i write a novel.

beyond the whole question of jobs (if anything can be said to be outside the question of jobs, bc i understand that financial flexibility is often unfairly assumed), the PhD experience is cool for the very reasons you suggest. i haven’t been here one year and i have been transformed, most specifically by my cohort-mates. this is something i wasn’t really anticipating; i came here knowing i was enthusiastic about the scholar i wanted to work with, and the general learning atmosphere, but i didn’t think that much about the influence of classmates. holy shit, they’re worth it a hundred times over. i’m lucky in this regard because it’s not always the case, but sometimes you have to take a chance. (i have more thoughts on this if anyone wants more of them–particularly on the maybe more organic cohort environment in non-ivy schools, like where i am.)

there’s much more to be said but i’ll leave it here for now!

Anonymous asked:

How far into your phd are you?

i’m only in the first year of my new program in the states, so not very far at all! it feels like i’m farther than i actually am, since i completed a whole other MA before coming to this american program (where they typically ask you to complete an MA before it becomes PhD work). it was only a one-year MA, but it was a condensed coarse-load that made me feel 1000 years older by the end.

in our second year we “apply into” the PhD (like a qualifying stage), and before then i’m going to be having some really deep life chats with myself about my future (and whether i can survive five more years in this small town)