Survived Year 1

I feel the need to apologize for my lack of posting, but I'm really not sure what I would write about if I made this a weekly thing. Maybe I'll start up a new goal of trying to post once a month. Anyway, here's the latest scoop on the happenings in my life as a doctoral student.

I survived the first year of my coursework! This past semester has been rough. One class was really interesting and enjoyable, but the other two were a struggle to say the least. For both classes I just didn't have a clue how to make the professors happy. I met with one of them for almost every assignment over the course of the semester, and I still struggled to do anything he liked. My distaste for theory has definitely been confirmed, so I think I'll stick to theorizing pedagogy and teaching in my field without dabbling in any of that other theory. Perhaps the most important takeaway from the semester is that of gritting your teeth and just pushing through, which I think is something that I'll have to continue to do while earning my degree and maybe even beyond that.

In other news, I presented at a conference in March and have been applying to other conferences as well as trying to get something published (more news on that as I hear more). I wish I had more opportunity to enjoy the conference, but homework called to me (the conference was during midterms--yikes!). The conference actually took me just a few hours from home, and I was able to visit with friends I've been making in the field and even friends from my MA at a wedding. I'm hoping to get more out of conferences this year, but the cost to attend is pretty much killing me.

Speaking of cost, I just moved in with my boyfriend. He's in the program with me, and dating is actually very much something I resisted at first. I want the focus to be on my education and not have the stress of a relationship. So far it seems to be working fine and, getting to the cost point, I'm going to be saving $300+ a month on living expenses. That's pretty major when your income is like mine.

Also related to money, I don't have a summer job. I thought I could get something in on campus, but that fell through. I'm waiting to hear back from my second job tutoring to see if they could use me during the summer. Otherwise, I'm trying to do some freelance writing where I can. Soon I think I will have to resort to applying to anyplace that will take me during the summer months.

Overall, I think one of the most significant burdens from this whole experience is the financial burden. I'm already stressed about school and keeping up with that work, plus I'll begin teaching two classes in the fall so I'll be worried about my students, but I also have to worry about paying the bills. The easiest expense to reduce would be the cost of an apartment, but I don't really want to live in an unsafe, unclean place. The financial burden lends itself to holding another job, which increases the school-related stress. I just don't see a way out of the loop.

Enough of the downer stuff. I still believe I'm on the right path despite the stress along the way. I find the reading, researching, and writing to be really rewarding. Then next semester I'll be able to influence my own students and hopefully encourage their own development. I've already begun planning for the course, and I'm really excited to see where that goes.

But, if anyone has any bright ideas in regards to my financial situation, I'm all ears!

Grades that you lose sleep over

Grades are an interesting part of coursework. They're used to "evaluate" how effectively a student demonstrates learning, and each professor develops their own verbage to talk about what "counts" as an A or what "counts" as a B. Example:

• "A work is excellent and goes beyond what is required in terms of thinking and insight into the material."
• "B is an honor grade, awarded for work that is thoughtful and well-written, and demonstrates a good understanding of the material."

So what's the point of this? I got a B on my first writing assignment this semester. Graduate students are particularly funny about receiving grades. Somehow a B, that is supposedly an honor grade, makes my heart sink (and I know it has done the same to other grad students, too). What did I do wrong and how can I do better next time? Well, the written comments say I didn't "engage" with the reading enough. While completing this assignment, I was concerned that I wasn't including enough content from the readings, but this particular prompt asked us to really consider our audience (which was assigned to us as incoming graduate students) and I justified the amount of the course readings I included in those terms. Apparently my professor thinks I "dumbed the subject down" too much. That's my interpretation of his comments, by the way.

All in all, I'm discovering that the hardest graders are the ones not in the graduate program I'm enrolled in. In order to teach next semester, I've been required to take two courses outside of the regular coursework I'm doing. Although I'm familiar with the discipline these two other courses are in, the fact that I struggle the most in pleasing these professors is disconcerting to me. Ultimately, I'd like to earn a position at a university to work in this discipline, and here I am earning a B.

Luckily, I have a whole semester ahead of me to try to figure this professor out, but it's become evident that it won't be easy going. Maybe this will be the class I take the most out of simply because of how much it will evidently challenge me. (Although, I have earned any grades in one of my other courses yet. Maybe that one will end up being the toughest of them all).

Confident or Overconfident?

Been a long time, too long perhaps, but I survived my first semester as a Ph.D. student and am entering into my second. Lately, the idea of "success" as a student and in the academic career that will (hopefully) follow has been weighing heavily on my mind. It just so happens to be aligned nicely (or perhaps frightfully) with an article in The Chronicle of Higher Education on job prospects for Ph.D.s (The Odds Are Never In Your Favor). 

For the most part, since I've decided to go down the path of pursuing a Ph.D. I've been confident that I would succeed. This may be in part due to the professors in my master's program encouraging me down this path, suggesting that I would be brilliant and fully capable of success, but it's also knowing that I've made it this far already. Don't get me wrong, there are plenty aspects of this road I'm travelling that frighten me. Comprehensive exams, getting published, dissertation, finding funding for travel to conferences, entering the job market and totally relocating yet again. Despite all of that, I still think of it as taking just one step at a time and that it is all conquerable. However, is that outlook detrimental?

I'm not naive enough to think that I won't question it or that I won't want to give up, but maybe this confidence I have can do more harm than good. Maybe when it comes time for me to face this giant hurdles I will not face them with the caution that I should, and I will find myself pushed to the brink wondering what will happen to me if I break. Along the same token, I think too much caution, too much fear, of what lies ahead is dangerous. If I constantly fear the unknown and what has yet to come, how can I ever make the bold choices that I may need to make?

Maybe it's not an issue of confidence after all and it's just a matter of having a positive outlook on life. Thinking that I'm here for a purpose, even if I don't know what that purpose is, and the only possible way forward is for me to succeed.