Topic of the Day: The 5-Year Plan

Hello Readers!
   I hope this Tuesday finds you well! I am actually blogging today from an airplane -- whoohoo! I love in-flight wifi!!
   Since I have recently been thinking a lot about my personal future and about how amazing and crazy life's twists and turns can be, I thought today would be a good day to broach the topic of how graduate school fits into one's life as a whole -- in other words, how it fits into, or doesn't fit into, your grand plan for life. If you are not familiar with graduate school life, or maybe if you are just starting out as a degree candidate, you should know that life does not stop for graduate school. Despite enrollment, courses, classes, papers, dissertations, comps, exams, and tuition, life, indeed, keeps occurring. I have known colleagues who have fallen in love, gotten married, bought houses, had children, gotten divorced, traveled, climbed mountains, ice-skated in national competitions, played in rock and roll bands, and achieved other typical and non-typical life milestones all while working towards their degrees. Life rolls on around us, and most of us treat graduate school just as if we would treat a regular job -- we work, we play, and we live our lives. The only thing that is different than being in the non-academic working world is that there is an ending to grad school. And even then, life doesn't really change that much.
   Immediately when I decided to write about this topic, I thought of Dr. Karen's 5 Year Plan. For those of you who don't know Dr. Karen, allow me to introduce you to her website, The Professor Is In. A colleague of mine had passed her site along to me a while back, and it provides a gold-mine of  information and anecdotes and advice that will give interesting and candid perspectives about the academic world. Dr. Karen's perspective on the 5 year plan is basically that while you can't expect to control everything in life, you can however take charge of your career and make choices based on your own personal goals. She writes, "I don’t think anybody should ever be in graduate school, or on the tenure-track, without a five-year plan," and continues:

"Some of my clients are masters of the five-year plan, and even have things like getting pregnant in there. I admire that, even while I know that 'the best laid plans…' You can’t plan for everything (or, you can, but your plans may not work out). But the core point of planning is this: that you’re taking control of your process into your own hands, and not leaving it out there somewhere, in the hands of your advisor, your department, or 'fate.' You decide when you’ll write, when you’ll defend, when you’ll publish, and so on. These are all your decisions to make."

   What Dr. Karen is sure to point out, though, is that a plan in and of itself is not going to get you anywhere. You have to stick to the plan. In other words, you have to meet deadlines. In a follow-up post, Dr. Karen asserts:

"Staying on top of deadlines is exactly what allows a person to achieve  huge life goals. Yes, I’m quoting Thomas Edison:  ”success is 10% inspiration, and 90% perspiration.”  The people who succeed in getting into the national conference are, first and foremost, the ones who actually remember to submit the proposal to the national conference, by the deadline, properly formatted. One of the most important outcomes of the 5-year plan is that you never miss a submission deadline for a conference or a funding opportunity.  As you learn of new conferences and funding opportunities, you simply add them in, without losing track of the other deadlines. You also plan out a publication schedule, and put your own deadlines for submission to journals there in the plan.  And money racks up, and publications rack up, and networks rack up, and voila, the cumulative effect 5 years later is—an epic CV that gets you an epic job offer, or tenure."

    Ok, well, yes, but never miss a deadline? "Simply" add them in? It sounds great in theory, but I think the biggest problem most graduate students have is that meeting deadlines is not at all simple. Life sometimes tears you away, even if your academic work is your number one priority. It is not always so black and white.

    So what are your thoughts on the 5 year plan? Though I may have some theoretical questions about how the 5 Year Plan works, most of my questions about creating a 5 Year Plan are entirely logistical -- meaning, what does the plan actually LOOK like? By this I mean literally how does it look? What format does it take? Is in in calendar form? List form? Do you try for a month-by-month set of goals, or set up it up year by year? Or something in between? Do you work on multitple goals at a time, or try to nail one thing down before moving onto the next? I'm sure different solutions work for different people, but I am wondering what would work for me, and what has worked for you? I'm curious to hear your thoughts!
    And another thought I always have when I revisit the 5 year plan post: how do you know if your goals are realistic? Is there such a thing as shooting too high? Should your goals be based on practical things such as making money and attaining a job with benefits, or should the goals be focused on advancing the scholarly conversation? How do you set yourself up for success with the 5 Year Plan?
   Please share your thoughts about how grad life fits into your big picture!
Until next time, Liza

An Origin Story, with Fireworks

Hello Readers,
     Happy Monday! I hope everyone had a nice 4th of July week! As I celebrated 4th of July, with city-folks trying to stay cool, donning red, white, and blue, and with crowds gathering together to watch as fireworks burst overhead, I was prompted to remember what inspired me to follow my current path as an Americanist in the graduate English department. Without any irony on my part, I have to say that it is sort of a patriotic story -- probably the only genuine feeling and act of patriotism that I have experienced in my adult life. (Which, I guess, is sad.)

Photo from The Library of Congress Website

     Before I tell the inspiring story (ok, the irony is back), first I'll just give a little bit of reflection on the reflection. Since graduate students' interests have a tendency to morph as they learn more, think more, and work through the critical problems they encounter, it makes sense that I was not always an Americanist studying 18th and 19th century novels. But it is also true that to commit to a certain discipline of scholarship for so many years at such a high level, it is not uncommon that graduate students often have specific reasons for choosing what to study -- sometimes practical, sometimes academic, and sometimes emotional reasons --  as well as a great degree of conviction about what that field means to them. Becoming an Americanist who studied novels was not a given for me, and even now, on a daily basis, I do not consciously think about the reasons that turned me in that direction. But on Independence Day, as flags waved, I felt more connected to that origin story than I usually do.  I thought I would share the reasons that I study early American literature, and then invite you to share your stories about why you study what you study.
    My path as a student of literature began as an undergraduate, when I studied Early Modern, Modern, and Contemporary Drama, and also wrote a lot of poetry. As I began my Master's, I shifted my focus from drama to novels, and from poetry to fiction. I believe that happened for a practical reasons: at Fordham, the Modern Drama teacher was retiring as I began my coursework, and I began to choose classes that were centered on fiction writing and novels, and it just kind of stuck. As the semesters raced by, I fell completely in love with Victorian novels -- the classics such as Vanity Fair, Jane Eyre, Our Mutual Friend, and Wuthering Heights, and the Gothic greats like Dracula and Frankenstein, and off-the-beaten path sensation fiction such as Lady Audley's Secret.  I couldn't get enough of them -- they were like candy to me, and writing about them was proving to be so much fun. The Master's program for English required, at the time, a certain number of British Lit courses and a certain number of American Lit courses, so of course I made the rounds, but whenever I could take a class that centered around Victorian novels, I signed up.
   I had a couple of great American classes, too, and read and re-read some American classics, but they just weren't stacking up to the delicious Victorian dishes I had become so hungry for.

   This all changed when I went for an innocent visit to see an old college friend who happened to live in Washington, D.C. Believe it or not, I had never been to that city before. When my friend Heather heard that, she took it upon herself to arrange for me to see at least all the monuments and a couple of the special exhibits and sites/ sights that were so special to the city. I never in my dreams believed that a little sight-seeing would alter the path of my life! As I took in one site after another, I began to feel something I had never felt about the United States of America, and to think thoughts I had never thought about the origin of our country.
   It was, to be precise, the words that did it. It was the words I read as I crossed through FDR's monument, that ran through my brain as the fountains and waterfalls flowed and trickled around me. It was the words carved into Jefferson's and Lincoln's echoey stone houses that gave me the feelings down to my bones about the bravery of starting something so new -- of fighting for independence with nothing more than ideas pressed out into the world in the form of language.  As I read the inscriptions, something deep down inside made me want to study how it could be possible for a nation to create itself -- and how stories and words and language were the key instruments in doing so. And somehow it resonated with me personally, too -- could language and stories create not just a nation, but an individual? How does this all work? Can you trust it?

    This feeling was more than an appetite for the sweet treats of Victorian novels -- this desire was about wanting to know HOW, and WHY, and WHAT HAPPENED ALONG THE WAY. It was curiosity about the very ground I walked on, the rules I lived by, the customs I followed blindly, the social hierarchies that governed my life, the values that shaped my choices and beliefs about work, education, freedom, family, and self-hood. I was feeling, for the first time, a part of a nation, and I wanted to know more about its origins, and if the language behind those origins could be trusted and believed in.
   That was the weekend I decided to become an Americanist. I remember telling Heather about my decision as we were sitting underneath some pretty flowery trees near the National Mall. I said, I think it could matter, at least to me, to learn about what was written then, and to think through it, and to see where it veered off track. She said, "It's good if it matters." I remember feeling elated about this decision, as if it were a revelation that the universe had been waiting for me to have. I left DC that weekend feeling a renewed energy, and that fall I began my PHD and declared my field as American Literature. I had new purpose!
   Now, when I am feeling challenged and unmotivated, I do try to remember that weekend, and to recall my revelatory feelings about American literature. For me, no matter what happens in the rest of my life, I'm sure that fireworks on the Fourth of July will always remind me of that refreshing wonderful feeling of true conviction about the next step in my life path. That feeling is not so easy to come by, and I am grateful I had the experience even once in my life, even if my path twists and turns from here.

    It may sound cheesy, but that is my story of why I committed to my major field. With all that said, I am sincerely interested in your personal stories -- what drew you into what you are studying? Was it a moment, a weekend, a person, a book, an experience? And when you are frustrated and stuck, what brings you back to that moment of origin? Please share!!!
Until next time, Liza