The Truant Returns

Last Thursday and Friday I went back to grad school town to have a meeting with PhD adviser. Since I haven't been there in over a year and a half, needless to say it was a bit of a shock. Most of the people I had known were out of the country or on the job market. It was especially disturbing when I first arrived. The department secretary didn't recognize me, and I couldn't connect to the wireless. I went about like a lost soul, half regretting that I wasn't meeting up with anyone I knew and half dreading meeting anyone I knew--especially professors I had failed to particularly cultivate. Also, there were almost no unassigned carrels in the library, and all the people up there were strangers.

I did this that and the other for a while. Felt a lot better after naughtily wolfing down a substantial snack of sushi. For dinner, I went out with three of Pocket of Bolts' friends. It was a little awkward, given that PoB hadn't actually come with me, but they were all friendly and kind, and we did our best to make conversation. After dinner (I had a small beer; hadn't had one in ages because of they points and it was SO good!), I tagged along with DBake, with whom I was stay. DBake's girlfriend is going to be one of my bridesmaids, which is why I felt okay about crashing in their spare room. But she was out of town.... It was a little awkward, but not so awkward as to warrant a $200 hotel room...

Actually I got a lot of work done in their house, an exact copy of the house PoB and I used to live in. I felt so nostalgic, despite having become spoiled by the pleasures of proper heating and insulation. The place was COLD! I curled up under my coat and banged out several pages of dissertation, sitting in the old red velvet chair that PoB had bequeathed to DBake, as it had been bequeathed to him. The persistence of grad school furniture!

I slept in a sleeping bag on the futon in their study and had dreams about running away from bad guys, a standard thesis anxiety trope, don't ask me why.

The next morning, I slept in, had an incredibly decadent bagel for breakfast--with butter! (OMG, delicious) In the cafe, I did run into someone I knew, one of my younger classmates. She was very surprised to see me. I was surprised by how beautiful she had become! Truly, a flower in blossom. We agreed to meet for lunch, with a number of other people I knew slightly or not at all. Then I went on a bibliographic wild goose chase in the library.

The lunch was amazingly fun. More people kept arriving! I felt like the queen for a day, or the general reviewing the troops. I dispensed advice and reassurance about qualifying exams to someone who was about to start them, talked about China to the Chinese students, met the new ones, the first and second years. It filled me with great happiness. I MISS them, even the ones I don't know! It is my natural community. On a wave of good fellowship we all went to get tea at the department, and chattered away about everything. I felt quite sad to go, but of course I had the momentous meeting with adviser to prepare for.

The meeting went surprisingly well. The upshot of it was, keep doing what you're doing. You'll have to condense, and take out the sloppy bits, redoing them rigorously in the introduction. But don't worry about that now. Just keep on. Though we did discuss the problematic issues some. I felt very on, like I had worthwhile things to say, like I knew enough to have a substantial discussion. Adviser knew enough too. He's made progress in the last few years, an awful thing to say but true. In this field, the wholes in a person's knowledge are quite apparent, and in past years I had been especially critical of his. But he has been filling them in. Education is an unending pursuit, and that's a good thing about it.

Contrary to my fears, I left the meeting feeling encouraged about the work. The sun was going down and it was time for me to head to the airport. It's sad that a person can't be in two places at once, because I really wished I could work all day in at grad school and come home to PoB in Chicago at night. Grad school provides all kinds of small supports and encouragements that it's hard to even notice when you're in the middle of it, but when you don't have them anymore...

Well, nothing lasts forever. I will graduate eventually and be pushed all the way out into the mean old real world. The main thing is to write a good dissertation and get a job somewhere that has an actual department in what I do, colleagues to talk to, and try to get back some of that community feeling.

Last picture is the campus train station at dusk. Journey of a thousand miles...