School is officially out now. I have submitted grades for students, turned in all my own work. That's it. Bye.
And now I'm terribly melancholy. Which is unexpected. I should be brimming with joy at this moment. But I'm not. I'm anxious, sad, and confused.
The truth is that I've been in school since I was 5 years old. That's about 20 years, with hardly any breaks, except a year off during undergrad, and another year between undergrad and grad school. I've always been a student. On a lot of days, I have felt that it is the only constant thing about my identity there is. And for that reason, it lives nearest my core of how I understand myself. And now, not to be a formal student anymore- to give up on grad school at just a master's, and not stay for my PhD- what will that mean for me? I don't think I wonder where that will leave me so much as I wonder who that will leave me, in a sense. Who am I now, if I am no longer that particular thing.
Phil says I can't stay in school forever. But he's wrong- I could've. That was the point, when I dreamt of it idealistically, of becoming an academic. School was a world I could navigate, a world I understood. One I had typically been adept at inhabiting. But now it brings me hardly any joy, and I find that the amount of effort required to be adept, not to mention the politicking, is more than I feel willing to pay. Grey hairs at twenty? Putting off marriage and buying a house? Working 80 hour weeks? No. I can't afford the cost of living in academia, because I'm just not that person. I'm not that person who does all those things.
So fine, so I'm not. So who the hell am I now.
I feel really lost, and I feel almost like I've failed. Even though I really haven't. I got this far. And I'm leaving because I want to, not because anyone has said, we made a mistake- you aren't sharp enough for this, please leave. And yet, I feel like I've failed to fulfill a goal or a dream of mine. I've failed my aspirations. Academia failed my dream image of it. I failed my dream image of the linear progression my life was supposed to travel. School, school, more school, job in school. The End.
And now I have to make a new way, and I'm not even sure which way to turn. I'm not even sure of my own name in all this. When people ask me next year what I do for a living, what will be coming out of my mouth? In five years? How will they look at me when I say these other things?
I know how people look at me when I say I'm in grad school. They generally go two ways- either mild confusion (they do not know what graduate school is and have never known anyone in it) or the nuanced eyebrow raise that indicates that they believe I am leading a charmed life of the mind in mahogany panelled rooms where people sip sherry and discuss Hegel all day. The latter reaction generally comes with them affording me a sense that my occupation, if that's what it is, is somewhat prestigious in a removed non-applied kind of way.
And now what will I say? I'm a bank teller? A high school teacher? A trapeze artist?
Okay, so I probably won't say the last one.
What will people see then- when I don't say I'm a PhD student. They won't assume that I'm good at school. Which often I think is my only positive trait. Robbed of that, stripped of it, I imagine people seeing someone who doesn't know what she's doing, who is uncomfortable in social situations (but tries every time to pretend she isn't and hope no one finds her out). I fear that people will see me, and so help me, I know this is terrible, but I'm so afraid that without that veneer of 'student' they will not excuse away what I always think is my dowdy and sad appearance. I know that shouldn't matter to me. And as a feminist, I hate that I feel these things about myself. But denying these things doesn't make them disappear, and feminism doesn't make my insecurities any less real- it merely frames them in such a way that I understand them as tied to political and social ills.
That said, I have lost who I am. And I'm so afraid I will never feel capable again.
School these past 2 years- that is to say, then, grad school- has made me miserable. But it has also been familiar, and has been part of 'the plan.'
I remember this car I had when I was 16. It was a beat up 13+ year old volvo. It had been someone else's, and then my dad bought it used. It was his. Then it was my brother's, then it was my sister in law's, then it was mine. By the time it was mine, it leaked oil and the water in the radiator needed to be replaced about every other day. The electrical system didn't work unless you put the key in the ignition just the right way, and the radio wouldn't get any FM stations unless you knew where to knock your fist on the dashboard before you turned the radio on. In addition, the doors wouldn't lock because the driver's side doorhandle stuck, so you had to know how to unstick it to get all the doors to lock and latch. And finally, sometimes the car would stall out at the first full stop of a car ride unless you jerked into the stop by tapping the break and alternately revving the engine. No one knew the secrets to my baby, that car, like I did. And for anyone who borrowed it during my tenure with it, the would get deeply frustrated with the old thing and say, "how can you stand this hunk of junk?" I would explain that she was temperamental but not recalcitrant altogether. I pointed out her good qualities- 190k miles and still the engine ran like a charm (sort of). She had good tires, and handled well in bad weather. My brother would always ask why I made excuses and put up with a car that needed me to look under the hood every couple days to add this or check that, and why I was willing to do this rather than see her go to a junk yard- my dad had offered at several points to go half with me on a new (to me) vehicle, which I could've afforded at the time.
And at the thought of letting her, my first car, my ticket to freedom, my companion, go, I felt a slight smothering sensation. And all I could tell my brother by way of explanation was that, this may be a terrible car. It may not do all that cars ought to do. And it may not always deliver on what it, as a concept, promises. But it's my car, and I understand it, and when I drive it, I know exactly what I'm getting into.
And there it is. Marginally functional yet familiar wins out over new and probably improved. This is where I've found myself with school. The thing is- when that car finally did totally and utterly crap out, I cried and grieved and insisted that I be allowed to take the grill off the front of the car to keep before it went to the salvage lot. I mounted it on my bedroom wall at my parent's house. And then the car was gone, forever. School as a concept is much harder to deal with. I can't mount a university on my wall, and schools will be there long after I decide I've gotten enough credentials and taken all the value I can out of what they offer. I guess I could put a university parking ticket up next to the grill on my wall (I have quite a few- most pristine and unpaid), but I somehow doubt this will have the desired effect.
