In which we clarify our comments of April 16 and wallow in self-pity
I noticed an alarming trend in the visitor logs in the past couple of days: our usual dozen readers have been joined by a bunch of suspiciously Midwestern-looking IP addresses, apparently, according to the referrer logs, stemming from a cascade of emails ("Susie*, you've got to read this...!").
I've gotten in trouble before, when the blog was suddenly glanced at by a bunch of non-regulars, and I know we can easily be misconstrued by a post or two out of context, so I'd just like to clarify a few things. I mean, pretty much all my friends are littoral, if not bicoastal (not that there's anything wrong with that), but I still don't want to find myself on some sort of list, banned from traveling west of Pittsburgh -- after all, one never knows when one might have to change planes in Chicago, or something.
Regulars! Join me as we sing the chorus: This blog employs hyperbole. Like, 150 percent of the time. Also, our weapons are three: irony, catachresis, apophasis, and innumeracy. And, whatever it was, we didn't really mean it.
No, seriously. I'm sorry if you think that my saying that I'm not a Midwest sort of person implies that you ought not to be one. It really, really doesn't. I'm very much in favor of honest geographic self-sorting, in part because I think geography really does matter, and plays a larger role in quality of life than most people acknowledge. Self-sorting prevents homogeneity, and I, for one, say amen to that.
And although it probably looked as though I turned down a graduate fellowship at what I've already freely admitted is an excellent department because of the weather...well, ok; I mean, weather played a role, yes....but what I was trying to get at is simply this: four years is a long time. Too long to simply be sustained by the notion that getting a doctorate is a good idea. For decisions like this, I've learned it's best to go as far as possible from the abstract. I imagine the minutiae -- the stuff which, on a daily basis, will loom largest -- and evaluate those: will I have a private office, with a glimpse of something green out the window? (No. Windowless, five per room, and the prospie behind me already squealed to another "ooh, if we shared, we could make a Star Trek wall!") Is there a nearby coffeehouse where I will sit and grade papers? (Yes.) Is it nice? (No.) How will I feel when I wake up in the morning and remember where I am? (Like a giant thumb is squeezing all my hopes and dreams into the featureless gray putty that is Ohio.) And so forth.
Some friends and family have concluded from my obsession with the apparently trivial aspects of the grad school experience that I am not serious about grad school. This is entirely possible. (When have I ever been serious about anything?) However, though the conclusion may be accidentally true, I disagree that it has been validly entailed.
At any rate, all this is moot. I've already declined OSU, and I don't think anyplace else will be on offer. Moving on to answer Bill's comment, two posts below, here in the main section because (1) I can, and (2) I don't want to interrupt what I'm still sorta hoping will eventuate into a flame war between my mother and the painfully polite Italo...
Bill offers a pep talk, of sorts. While I appreciate his optimism about my options, I'm afraid I don't share it. I think the definition of middle age is when one's options, which have grown steadily until that point, begin to contract. (Middle age is the recession of life.) Most people, I think, have fixated on a goal by that point and might not even notice that choices are disappearing. Others may, but might also find it something of a relief. And then there are those of us...
The problem, I think, is that I've never even held it as a personal value to be the man, as it were, with the plan. I've always striven to be the man with elan. (Perhaps, in time, rejoined by K: the man with the flan.) And now, I'm afraid, it's all catching up with me and is about to bite me on the ass.
*I typed, but deleted, "Brandine." Because it was the wrong region, you say. To prove I have a modicum of self-control, I will insist.
I've gotten in trouble before, when the blog was suddenly glanced at by a bunch of non-regulars, and I know we can easily be misconstrued by a post or two out of context, so I'd just like to clarify a few things. I mean, pretty much all my friends are littoral, if not bicoastal (not that there's anything wrong with that), but I still don't want to find myself on some sort of list, banned from traveling west of Pittsburgh -- after all, one never knows when one might have to change planes in Chicago, or something.
Regulars! Join me as we sing the chorus: This blog employs hyperbole. Like, 150 percent of the time. Also, our weapons are three: irony, catachresis, apophasis, and innumeracy. And, whatever it was, we didn't really mean it.
No, seriously. I'm sorry if you think that my saying that I'm not a Midwest sort of person implies that you ought not to be one. It really, really doesn't. I'm very much in favor of honest geographic self-sorting, in part because I think geography really does matter, and plays a larger role in quality of life than most people acknowledge. Self-sorting prevents homogeneity, and I, for one, say amen to that.
And although it probably looked as though I turned down a graduate fellowship at what I've already freely admitted is an excellent department because of the weather...well, ok; I mean, weather played a role, yes....but what I was trying to get at is simply this: four years is a long time. Too long to simply be sustained by the notion that getting a doctorate is a good idea. For decisions like this, I've learned it's best to go as far as possible from the abstract. I imagine the minutiae -- the stuff which, on a daily basis, will loom largest -- and evaluate those: will I have a private office, with a glimpse of something green out the window? (No. Windowless, five per room, and the prospie behind me already squealed to another "ooh, if we shared, we could make a Star Trek wall!") Is there a nearby coffeehouse where I will sit and grade papers? (Yes.) Is it nice? (No.) How will I feel when I wake up in the morning and remember where I am? (Like a giant thumb is squeezing all my hopes and dreams into the featureless gray putty that is Ohio.) And so forth.
Some friends and family have concluded from my obsession with the apparently trivial aspects of the grad school experience that I am not serious about grad school. This is entirely possible. (When have I ever been serious about anything?) However, though the conclusion may be accidentally true, I disagree that it has been validly entailed.
At any rate, all this is moot. I've already declined OSU, and I don't think anyplace else will be on offer. Moving on to answer Bill's comment, two posts below, here in the main section because (1) I can, and (2) I don't want to interrupt what I'm still sorta hoping will eventuate into a flame war between my mother and the painfully polite Italo...
Bill offers a pep talk, of sorts. While I appreciate his optimism about my options, I'm afraid I don't share it. I think the definition of middle age is when one's options, which have grown steadily until that point, begin to contract. (Middle age is the recession of life.) Most people, I think, have fixated on a goal by that point and might not even notice that choices are disappearing. Others may, but might also find it something of a relief. And then there are those of us...
The problem, I think, is that I've never even held it as a personal value to be the man, as it were, with the plan. I've always striven to be the man with elan. (Perhaps, in time, rejoined by K: the man with the flan.) And now, I'm afraid, it's all catching up with me and is about to bite me on the ass.
*I typed, but deleted, "Brandine." Because it was the wrong region, you say. To prove I have a modicum of self-control, I will insist.
2 Comments:
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Anonymous said...
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- 2:45 AM
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Anonymous said...
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- 8:58 PM
Post a CommentThis is easily the funniest post of the year, especially the parentheticals.
One of my colleagues is possibly the genuinely politest person in the world, and she just said to me the other day, "You worry too much about being polite."
As you can attest, it was ever thus.
Four years?!?!?
I get claustrophobic after just four days in Ohio.
I totally get it.
Have you ever noticed how many people one meets who are from Ohio and who now have chosen to live somewhere else? It's like that Nursery Rhyme about going to St. Ives and counting all the folks going the other way.
-Barb
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