One of the worst things about coming home for vacation from graduate school is that most people don’t really understand what gradute school is or why anyone would want to really bother with it, so I have consequently had to spend a lot of time justifying my (admittedly, sometimes poor) life choices to, like, everybody I know over the age of 30, including but not limited to my grandparents, my former choir conductor, parents of friends, my 8th grade teacher, and, even though my parents are very supportive and never question what I am doing, I feel strangely compelled to constantly remind them that I am not wasting my life, so I talk loudly about All of These Conferences I Have Successfully Presented My Work At and also That Journal Article That I Will Theoretically Publish Some Day and also People I Know With Tenure-Track Jobs.
So anyhow, constantly having to justify my existence has naturally resulted in a minor existential crisis. The thing is, I know why I am in gradute school. I am getting a Ph.D. because, fuck y’all, I want to. I really like to research and I really like to write, and I really like to teach, and one day, UCLA came along and offered to give me money for doing those things, which is a pretty sweet deal. The question remains, however, of what I will do with myself when I am done. Ideally, I would like an academic job somewhere. Ideally. But we all know how totally crappy the academic job market ALWAYS is, so I am a realist, and I know that I might end up doing something else, and I am really totally ok with that, because I know that while academia is what I am doing right now, it isn’t what I have to do with the rest of my life because there are lots of other things I could do.
I know that.
But because everybody asks me what I am going to do when I’m done, and because I don’t really know what I’m going to do when I’m done, I was kind of freaking out. I was freaking out until I told Tanya about how I was freaking out, and then Tanya said the most useful thing anybody has ever said to me. She said that when I’m done I should just Do Whatever the Fuck I Want.
And it was like a light went on! I can do whatever the fuck I want! I have no children, I have no husband, I have no house, and while Some People might see that as a bad thing, it is actually totally awesome, because it means that whenever I want, I can just drop everything and Do Whatever the Fuck I Want with my life. It’s weird because sometimes I feel like I should be establishing some kind of nest somewhere, but I don’t really want to, because I have more important things to do.
So I am going to do it. I am going to pursue my dream of becoming a Great Woman of Letters (a job title that I have invented that means Whatever the Fuck I Want it To Mean).
First, though, I do have things to deal with right now, namely the problems of I Don’t Know Who My Dissertation Advisor Will Be And Maybe I Should Make Up My Mind About That, and also I Just Sent My First Ever Article Manuscript Out to a Journal and Am Consequently Filled With Self-Doubt, but I’m sure those things will resolve themselves somehow.
*What would Barbarella do?
Working in crazyville, I’ve come to learn that most crises, existential or otherwise, resolve themselves in 3-5 days. Intervention or no intervention. And since my coworkers at crazyville are awfully resistant to doing any actual work, most of the crises we deal with sit on our white board for 3-5 days until they resolve themselves without us actually doing anything to help. At that point, we pat ourselves on the back and go “good job”, then discharge the file. So all your problems will resolve themselves in 3-5 days by the power of magic.
Grad school is all about having this particular crisis at least once a year (more when writing dissertation). I will talk you through it anytime. Plus, tell people you are going to be a professor. You can always say you changed your mind later.
I keep having this crisis, but then again it’s because I no longer have any excuses for not producing stellar work. ::sigh::
I’m kind of sorry that my sage advice also makes me sound like a sailor. The other important piece of advice that goes with Do Whatever the Fuck You Want, is that most people fail at life not because they don’t try hard enough, but because they don’t try, like, AT ALL. Which is the part of life advice where I sound like a Valley Girl. But so, so true.