Ahhh, PhDness smells of the sweet, pollen-filled summer air. The ants are on their way to invade my house, only to join the ladybugs up on the guest room ceiling; people are outdoors all day while they can be in this nice mid-80s heat before we hit the standard 95-100 degree days; it’s all here. Summer in Athens, GA is much different for an undergraduate student than a PhD student, of course, but at least there are only a few thousand bodies on campus and around town, rather than the 35,000 bodies who regularly take up 2 parking spaces with their Georgia lottery-funded-Hope-Scholarship-SUVs; those bodies who over-populate study rooms at the student learning center for 10 hours at a time so they can post fabulous “guess what I’m doing now” messages and (future) incriminating photos to Facebook while cramming for chemistry exams; and there are a few less bodies flailing around the bars downtown demonstrating their professionalism as under-aged drinkers who are consistently over-served.
I love summer. My 4th summer in PhDness. I can’t believe it. How time flies when you’re slowly chipping away at a deliberate and painful death via a doctoral degree. Summer doesn’t make PhDness any easier, (well, it does for those who totally disassociate themselves from PhDness in order to travel…as if they aren’t living on government loans like the rest of us), but it is more giving of time, let’s say. No classes to teach, no student teachers to supervise/observe, no classes to take as a PhD student anymore. (That was summers 1 and 2) Nope. Just a few 60 hour assistantships, working for and with professors to make some extra money, and my own dissertation work to attend to. Which, now that I think about it, is so much more than I’d like to be doing during a summer’s “rest;” but alas, I am engulfed in PhDness. Near the end of PhDness, mind you, with only one more school year left. Whew. What a ride it’s been thus far.
I liken my current PhDness to those moments when I lose my car in a parking lot (which I do more often now than I ever have for some reason). I use this analogy because I know I drove my car to that parking lot, and I know I parked it and left it in a certain spot, and I know it will still be there when I find it. But I wonder around aimlessly questioning what in the hell I could have been doing when I drove into the lot so that I, at the present moment, have no recollection what-so-ever as to where it could have ended up, as if it drove itself—all while acting like I know where my stupid car is so no one will think me odd to have lost my car in a parking lot of only 50 cars. You’ve done that, right?
Just like my current stage of PhDness.
I know I’ve been here doing a lot of challenging work for four years; I know that I have defended and “passed” my comprehensive exams as well as my prospectus (my dissertation proposal); and I know I spent a year “collecting data” for my dissertation research. I met with a group of 7th grade girls every week, talked about bodies in various ways, wrote about bodies, read about bodies, recorded it, transcribed those recordings, took lots of notes about what took place around “bodily enoughness,” and read a lot of philosophy during that whole process.
I know all of these things took place, just as I know I parked my car “somewhere.” But as I wonder aimlessly to find that cute little Subaru, I also wonder aimlessly in PhDness. I know I have to “analyze my data” and write a dissertation (maybe a few hundred pages?), but every time I think about it, I just look around and go….Hmmm, I wonder where I am. See? Just like losing your car.
My other interesting thought about PhDness is people’s continued reaction to an advanced degree in education, and more specifically, middle grades education. Anywhere outside of PhDness (meaning, anywhere outside of a circle of professors or PhD students IN education), when people ask me what I’m studying and I tell them I’m “working on a PhD in Middle Grades Education,” the first question is… can you guess? “Oh, so do you want to be an administrator?” (Nope.) “Oh, do you want to be a teacher?” (Already did that.) And the still-always-fascinating, most popular comment that I just got again at the eye doctor this morning from some of the office girls, “Oh, middle school. That is a challenging age, isn’t it.” (Not any more challenging than the high-maintenance 30 and 40-year-olds I know, sister.)
When I do give my canned response, “I actually want to do research concerning 10-to-14-year-olds, and I want to teach at a large university so I can work with people who want to teach middle schoolers.” I get the, “Oh yes, that’s important” Or the “Yes, we need that.” Which probably means, “Oh, she’s going to be a principal.”
But I’m not going to be a principal, people (not that there is ANYTHING wrong with that). And I’m not going to be a teacher of middle schoolers again (as far as I know right now…because it’s too much work). [Insert metaphorical soap box here] I am going to continue working with middle school girls and boys so we can talk and write about bodies. It is fascinating how much we as a culture affect those little bodies. They can be poor bodies, rich bodies, black bodies, brown bodies, white bodies, fat bodies, skinny bodies, short or tall. They are girls and boys, straight and gay, religious and searching. And they are affected by what our society does TO their bodies; so much so that it manifests itself in their bodies, on their bodies, and through their body movements and actions on a daily basis. And here we are—any of us—what are WE doing to help them? Some of us can’t even talk about bodies in a way that we feel comfortable (i.e., sex, sexual orientation, body image), so how can we help those little bodies re-define what “normal” bodies are “supposed to be” or “can be” when we have such skewed perceptions of what “normal” is ourselves? That’s my car in a parking lot right now. I know it’s there; I’m just having a hard time finding its exact location. But when I do it will be a joyful event!
So go talk about bodies, people. Be aware of your body and be willing to talk about it anyway you can. Push yourself. Be uncomfortable. Challenge your perceptions about what can be a “normal” body because what is “normal” now is NOT OKAY. And for the millions of us who don’t have those “normal” body-markers ( the thin, toned, blemish-free, white, middle-class, heterosexual bodies mostly represented in popular culture stuff), we spend much of life trying to make our bodies fit into those “normal” markers…even if we don’t know it….[OK, stepping off the soap box now]
Off to work on a “body” article I’m writing with a professor. (A professor who had her undergraduate students stand together in a circle during class last year, hold hands, and chant “penis” and “vagina” because it was so torturous for them to say those two words as future elementary education teachers.) Priceless.
Hope all is well with everyone! I get married in less than 5 months. Holy crap. I LOVE me some Thomas!
HEH
May 2010
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