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

Graduate Personalities

  

    I often identify my first year of graduate school as the year in which I began to understand that I was more of an introvert than an extrovert. This narrative of the development of my self-knowledge has often comforted me in times when I need to understand some of the big-picture ways that going to graduate school has benefited me personally, as a soul moving through the universe, maturing and growing.

    So, considering that this topic of introversion vs extroversion has been something I’ve been thinking about for several years now in relation to myself, it was a pleasant surprise to see an article about introverts and extroverts in the April 20^th edition of The Chronicle.

    In the article, entitled "Screening out the Introverts," William Pannapacker reflects on the cultural bias towards the qualities of extroversion.  He discusses the way that introversion is looked down upon and even pathologized in our culture, and wonders whether graduate school programs do enough to resist these kinds of biases, and to accommodate and even celebrate the qualities of an introverted personality.

    To set up his reflection, Pannapacker points out that academia might seem to be a haven for an introverted type of personality: “Many people are drawn to academic life because they expect it will provide a refuge from the social demands of other careers: They believe one can be valued as a studious introvert, as many undergraduates are.” But then he also points out that a career as an academic is very different from life as a student; it requires a person to be comfortable both with solitary tasks as well as with very public engagements. As an academic, he points out, “Long periods of social isolation – research and writing – are punctuated by brief periods of intense social engagements: job interviews, teaching, conferences, and meetings.”

    Reading this article made me revisit my own narrative of how I came to know myself as more introverted than extroverted, and how that story relates to my growth as a graduate student. All my life, while I was in school from basically kindergarten through most of my undergraduate years, I considered myself a “people person.” Also, I loved being on stage, performing and acting and singing.  So, growing up, everyone, including myself, would consistently describe me as an outgoing, sociable, and friendly. I would say I “loved people.”

    There was, of course, another side to me as well. I loved to get absorbed in a good book, a new CD, a great movie, or my own writing, and I loved the mental retreat of a beautiful view of the ocean, a distant city skyline, a mountain, or a valley. I liked having one or two special best friends who knew everything about me. I liked meaningful, long, one-on-one conversations.

    When I first took the Myer’s Briggs test as a college freshmen, I came out an as extrovert. I now believe that my “extrovert” result was at least partly because of the very stigmas about introversion that Pannapacker points out. He says, “Given that introversion is frowned upon almost everywhere in the US culture, the test might as well have asked, “Would you prefer to be cool, popular and successful or weird, isolated, and a failure?” I do believe that our cultural biases probably skewed the test results, at least in my case. Plus, I thought because I “loved people” and loved being on stage that it didn’t make sense to identify myself as introverted.

    But the real point I want to make here is that I actually didn’t even know about my introversion until I entered the workforce in the corporate setting. I had always and forever been a student, and so always was in a social position in which acts of reflection and study were valuable and worthwhile ways to spend my time. But this notion of time well spent changed when I entered the work-force. When I graduated from college, I began working in the corporate world, in a consumer marketing position. No longer was I in a position in which acts of reflection or study were acceptable; now was the time to produce, not study. I believe it was this new social role that caused my discomfort. I missed the feeling that some personal reflection time was a worthwhile way to way my time. I felt drained and exhausted after interacting all day with people I didn’t care about or wouldn’t choose to be with if I wasn’t at work. After work I would crawl into bed, watch TV, and try to gear up for another day.

    I remember when I first began graduate school a year later, a sense of balance was restored to my inner self. I had time built into my life to read, to be in solitude, to write, to study and reflect; I also engaged with people in meaningful ways that made me feel purposeful and connected. By the end of a day’s work in the graduate school life, I felt energized and wanted to socialize with my family and friends rather than crawling in a hole and watching TV.

    With this sharp contrast to the way I had felt after a day of work as a consumer marketing assistant, I finally began to rethink my characterization as an extrovert. I began to realize that the solitude involved in writing and research actually helped recharge me and make me feel alive, and then my relationships with people could thrive and my interpersonal interactions were full of the energy and sociability I had always known throughout my life. I felt sure I had found a kind of job and life that harmonized with my personality.

    Ultimately, I guess the point of this blog post is to continue the important conversation that Pannapacker began in The Chronicle – to think through how personalities can define and shape the system of education, even as the system of education can define and shape personalities. What has been your experience in graduate school in terms of your dominant personality traits? In what ways do you think your personality drew you to your field? Which personality traits do you think are more valued within the system of graduate education? Which traits are frowned upon? How have these biases affected you? Please share your thoughts and reflections! :)

Part Two of "And the Oscar for Best Grad School Movie goes to..."

 

       OSCARS! In honor of this day, I’ve devoted a two-part blog to the representation of graduate school in Hollywood films.

       So, as you noted from Part One, there aren’t so many movies set in graduate school or even with grad students as characters. To recap, most films that people come up with when asked this question feature LAW or MED school students, but not arts and sciences PhD students.

      I think I assumed there were at least a few good ones, because I rationalized that I must have had some kind of image in my mind about what graduate school “looked like” before I… signed up for it. I assumed that that image came from either novels or movies. But after some investigating, I realized this “image” must have come more from novels than movies, or maybe just from something that I made up in my head based on romantic ideas of scholarship and academia that came from the pleasure I take in reading and being alone in a library.  Wherever I got my “ideas” from, it probably wasn’t from movies, because, the truth is, there just ain’t that many movies out there.

       That said, with a little digging, I was able to come up with a list of my own with some additional titles on it for us to check out. I haven’t seen all of these, so I won’t attempt to rank them or call it my “Top Ten” or anything like that. But, here’s a little filmography of movies featuring some element of graduate school. Criteria for this list: the movie has to have a character that either is, or was, a graduate student during, or just previous to, the action of the movie. Alternatively, if the character refers to graduate school in a significant way (teaching perhaps?), or was significantly shaped by graduate school, meaning that he or she is living a scholarly life that reflects a graduate school education, I also included the movie. Finally, the said graduate program cannot be law or med school.

        Proof (2005): I don’t want to give away the plot, because it is a great little movie if you haven’t seen it, but the film involves graduate level math work that, within the world of the movie, would revolutionize the mathematics world. Originally a play.

        Possession (2002): main characters are literary scholars in pursuit of the identity of a famous Victorian poet’s lover to whom he wrote beautiful letters.

       The Addiction (1995): main character is a philosophy grad student turned into vampire! Sounds amazing!

       The Shape of Things (2003): Features a romance between an English lit major and a graduate art student. Also originally a play.

       The Last Supper (1995): A group of graduate students host a series of murderous dinner parties during their summer break. Seems like an interesting representation of grad students!!

       Tenure (2009): Not exactly grad life, but in this film, with the young professors trying to get tenured, it has the atmosphere of grad school.

      Marathon Man (1976): Never saw this but apparently, according to IMDB, Hoffman’s character is a history grad student.

      Wonder Boys (2000): Can’t remember if these students are undergrad creative writing students or MFA students, but either way it has the intense feeling of what I would imagine a competitive MFA program to be like.

     PHD the Movie (2011): Piled Higher and Deeper, our favorite grad-school comic, made a movie this year! Making the rounds at Universities all over the country – expect witty and satirical portraits of grad life, just like the comics.

      Naturally Obsessed (2009): Documentary, not fiction, it follows the life of grad students in the microbiology department of Columbia University. Seems like it might be a good one to watch!

      Okay, so maybe all of these aren’t “grad school movies” the way Animal House, Rudy, St. Elmo’s Fire, and With Honors are “college movies” – but you get the idea. If you've seen any of these, write in and let us know how accurate the depiction of grad life is!!!

     To conclude: On a message board thread about this very topic, a poster asked, “Given the types of people who go to grad school and the life drama that ensues there, I'd think grad school days would be rich fodder for fiction/fictionalized memoir. What am I missing?” This question parallels the one I proposed in my last blog entry. The response to this post, by someone (with the handle “Brain Glutton”), also parallels some of what I was thinking as I realized that most “grad school” movies featured law or med students:

“Audience appeal. If the subject the characters are studying is an important part of the drama -- and it is, to real-life grad students -- then the scenario is too intellectual for most people -- too intellectual for most intellectuals, in fact, if involves a grad program outside their own field of expertise. To make it accessible, you have to make it about a law school or med school, something that produces professionals whom the average person has to deal with, and who do things the average person understands at least in general principles.”

          There are a couple of points here I’d like to discuss. First, I love how Brain Glutton doesn’t pull any punches. She, or he, answers right off the bat – What’s missing? “Audience appeal.” BAM. Right across the face. Then we get the assessment explaining why a movie set in graduate school would lack audience appeal: “Too intellectual,” not “accessible,” not dealing with “things the average person understands.” This reasoning assumes at least two things: that movies are usually made to appeal to the widest audience possible (which is probably true); and that academic intellectual pursuits are not widely appealing (which is probably true in the US at least.) Hence, therefore: movies about academic intellectual pursuits are not usually made. There’s a great little syllogism.

       What do you readers think about this assessment? I would love to hear your thoughts! 

       

       Enjoy Oscars Night!!! Make sure to fill out your scorecard!! Until next time, Liza

Comprehensive Exams: What's At Stake?

          A recent column by David Brooks on The Chronicle’s website stood out to me because of its title, “As Smart As I’ll Ever Be.” Immediately, I thought to myself, “That must be about comps.”

          Yes, it was. As I read the column, in which the author recounts his exam year experience of reading, studying, and preparing, I remembered my comprehensive exams, which happened to be around the same year as the author’s. I resonated with Mr. Brooks’ nostalgic and reflective tone. Like Mr. Brooks, I often remember my exam prep as a time full of motivation and revelation.

          Lots of images and ideas in the column sounded familiar to me. Brooks describes his study scene, and his realization that this studying would not only help him get his degree, but also form the foundation of his career: “As I organized titles into ever-growing piles in my basement, I saw potential courses emerge. I started jotting down ideas for new syllabi. The process of going through the books helped me imagine teaching from them. For one of my four fields, the written exam became a survey-course syllabus with an annotated bibliography, including a justification for each reference.”

          Like Brooks, I, too, studied in a basement. For me, I found that I required some kind of physical space that could match the mental spaces I was carving out in my mind for this information and these ideas. And I remember thinking the same things – finding threads around which entire courses could be designed. It was exciting. Brooks writes, “Suddenly I was reading with the intent of organizing my impressions into a big, and hopefully clear, picture of those fields, rather than for the immediate, frantic task of cranking out another seminar assignment.” It was true – comps studying changed my view of my field entirely. It was a chance to zoom out, to take what I had found under the microscope and see how it fit into the whole literary organism.

          I always tell my friends, both within and outside my program, that I have never felt smarter than I did when I was waist-deep in studying for comps. Brooks alludes to this same feeling, and also notes that others he talked to felt the same way.  He writes about his talks with his colleagues about their experiences: “I sensed a degree of nostalgia that I have never heard anyone associate with, say, writing a dissertation.” As someone who is writing her dissertation now, I think that rings true, although I of course don’t know for sure since I am currently writing the diss rather than looking back on it. But what rings true to me is the difference between my feeling during comps studying and my experience writing the diss. Unlike during my exam year, I don’t feel smart writing my dissertation. I often feel overwhelmed and like nothing is good enough.  But during exam prep, I felt sharpened, and productive. I felt like I was making discoveries. I'm not exactly sure why the two periods in my academic career feel so different. Maybe it purely the veil of nostalgia. But who wouldn’t be nostalgic for a time of intense and revelatory intellectual and personal discoveries – a time when you felt smart and purposeful and motivated? On the timeline of someone’s life, those kind of moments or periods of time may be precious and rare.

          Towards the end of my exam prep, at dinner with my parents one night, I remember a comment that my dad made that shaped the way I understood my experience of studying for exams. This always sticks out in my mind, so thought sharing the anecdote on this blog may help me sort out why this seemingly off-hand comment has stayed with me.

          Let me set the scene: I had emerged from the basement of my childhood home, where I had set up a temporary “exam study room” with a bed, desk, and all my study materials. I was starving, ready to break for a meal before my night-time review session. I had come to look forward to my night time session  -- in the last month before my oral exam date, before bed each night I played a game with myself. For this game, I made index cards each day with important names, themes, titles, authors, characters, critics, and contextual threads written on the front. On the back of the card, during the day, I would write everything I knew. Then, that night, before I’d go to bed, I’d spread these cards out on my bed, so that they covered my entire bed spread. I wasn’t allowed to go to bed until I’d talked through each card.  I found this game to be a great way to review the studying I’d done during the day, or week, and also to practice speaking orally about the topics, which I knew was a different skill then just knowing the information. Anyway, that evening, I had just set up my cards for the night, and my plan was to eat dinner, hang with my parents for a bit, and then head downstairs for my game of literary solitaire. 

          I was lucky that I was able to move back in with my parents for exams, for financial reasons as well as time-saving reasons such as being able to share dinners with them sometimes instead of cooking for myself.  My parents were so generous with their time that semester, and so supportive and understanding. I realize that not everyone has the comforts of their mom and dad’s support during exam time! So I was feeling grateful that I could take a break and have a nice dinner with them.

          Anyway, during the meal, the three of us began discussing something that had nothing to do with academia or literature. I actually think we were discussing a new Bruce Springsteen song. I don’t remember exactly what I said, but I remember my dad looking at me after I spoke and saying, “Maybe you are getting too smart to talk to us.” My first reaction was embarrassment. I apologized and blamed it on being immersed in comps studying. But the comment startled me – I hadn’t realized the kind of “mode” that comps studying had put me in. I finished dinner and went back downstairs, to play my game. But I ended up thinking long and hard about my dad’s comment.

          In the end, I was grateful for the comment in two respects. One, it made me aware that my studying was restructuring, hopefully permanently, the way I saw connections between my field and the world at large. Studying was indeed, a comprehensive act, and it was helping me draw together small threads of analysis that I had been accumulating and weave them into larger bolts of thought-fabric. I was seeing a bigger picture, thinking in ways that allowed me to make connections and draw important conclusions.

          The second reason I was glad my dad made the comment was that I didn’t want to walk around sounding like a jerk.

          “As Smart As I’ll Ever Be” made me think back and reflect on my exam experience. And my dad’s comment always makes me remember that graduate school, if nothing else, is helping my thoughts, views, and thinking skills to constantly evolve and grow.  I’m not the same person I was before graduate school, before comps, and before beginning my dissertation. And being aware of this evolution helps me see both the pros and cons of the graduate experience. Ultimately, it helped me realize what kinds of forces were shaping my views of the world -- and being aware of what shapes your thoughts is so important if you ever want to offer the world some original, truly creative new ideas.  

          All of this also makes me realize that grad life is real life – it’s part of the journey of who you are, who you become, and who will be. So, now that you’ve heard one of mine, what were your exam stories? Or, if you have yet to take them, what questions, fears, anticipations and expectations do you have? Comment and discuss!!

          In the meantime, I’ll be working dutifully on the dissertation, trying to reclaim some of little piece of the intellectual self-esteem I had once staked out for myself, during comps.  Oh, nostalgia…. 

Until next time,

Liza

New Semester; new blogger! Introducing...

Hello! My name is Liza Zitelli, and I will be taking over the writing duties for the Grad.Life blog! I’m happy to be in a position to take over the fine work of Alexandra Loizzo, the first Grad.Life blogger, and Naima Coster, who took over the post after Alex graduated. I took the weekend to read through the Grad.Life archives; at times poignant, at times humorous, and always thought-provoking, it was a great read! My only sadness upon reading these posts during the weekend arose from the fact that I hadn’t been a follower of the blog up to this point.

  Image: Idea go / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

In fact, I didn’t even know the blog existed! To be fair, I arrived on the GSAS scene back in 2003, before (way before – almost a decade before!) the Grad.Life blog began. In fact, it was probably before most blogs began – when the blogosphere was enjoying the early stages of its big bang, just at the beginning of the era when blogs were becoming a real mainstream form of communication and source of information for institutions and programs. And over the course of the pre-blog years, I guess I got into such a routine of getting my information from Blackboard, from emails, and from word of mouth, that I never took real quality time to venture out of my information-comfort-zone to utilize, discover, or take note of some of the new updated methods of communication available within the GSAS. It makes sense (says Liza, rationalizing to herself,) that, as such a long-time student, I might have missed this boat.

Still, I was unnerved when I was offered the position of writing for the GSAS blog of which I never had heard tell, never mind had read. Having been a graduate student for so many years, in many incarnations, I want to think that I am a connected, long-term, entrenched member of the GSAS community. I began my Master’s in English here in 2003, and then have worked through several forms of fellowships and teaching associate positions, both full and part time for different stretches, slowly grinding out my up and coming dissertation. But somehow not getting the memo about Grad.Life over the last two or three years made me begin to think a lot about what it means, exactly, to be a part of the GSAS.

jscreationzs / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Sure, we all can get caught up in the bubble of our own head, research, classes, department, teaching positions, and outside lives. But learning so late in the game that there was a blog dedicated to, and written by, GSAS students, left me feeling – I don’t know – left out, out of the loop. In the same way we need to read journals in our field, and to take advantage of professionalization tools offered by our city, university, and departments, we also need to be aware of the community resources around us. Graduate life is not just about teaching and researching. If it was, it wouldn’t really be a worthwhile pursuit.  Learning about Grad.Life was a huge reminder to me that in our profession, we have to make it part of our duty to stay connected, and stay with the times.

Ok, so lesson learned, and writing will commence for the semester! Yours truly is humbled and discomfited by my utter lack of awareness  – and also I’m afraid of karma, because now that I am going to be a contributing writer of the blog, I want to make sure Grad.Life is reaching all the students it is intended to reach, and more!! Over the next semester, I will be posting blogs that will attempt to reach out to the student body, hoping my 9 years here will be able to provide some great insights. Obviously, I will need to learn some things along the way, too! But that is the great thing about writing – it always leads to discovery.

Above all, I’m excited to be able to reach out to the Fordham GSAS community in this way after all these years of being a part of the community. Graduate school blogs, from what I sense, can be a refreshing and replenishing site for reflection, sharing, and regeneration for graduate students who want and need to know that they are not, by far, alone – that there is, in fact, a community around them – and that the community has a site in which to see, build, and shape itself.  

Until next time! Yours, Liza Z.

A Late Summer Farewell

The end is near, dear friends... 

Summer is drawing to a close and my time writing for the Grad Life blog is also coming to an end. 

Between my graduate study abroad experience in London, to my work writing for all of you, I have had a great summer. I hope you, too, had a fantastic summer whether you were studying for Comps, researching your dissertation, preparing to begin your first year at Fordham, or just hanging out before another school year begins. 

Someone else will be taking over the Grad Life blog soon, and I'm sure they'll do a great job, keeping up the legacy Alex Loizzo started and that I tried to uphold. 

I introduced myself back in June and shared insights about my own life as a grad student, as well as ideas about larger issues of grad life. 

I shared the benefits of studying abroad as a grad student and experiencing new ways of living, as well as the fantastic/terrible truth that as a grad student, you are always working and learning and there is no such thing as summer break. I shared the highlights from my first year at Fordham, from my work on the Turning Tides Symposium on Diasporic Literature, and my realization that grad school is hard and doing exactly what you hope to do is often more challenging than do anything else.

There were a few posts about navigating the common logistics of grad life from hunting for an apartment at the start of a new school year to figuring out study habits that combat the loneliness of grad school (in two parts!). 

I hope that you were encouraged to dig deep and think about the relevance of pop culture phenomena like Harry Potter to our work as aspiring academics, as well as the way Twitter may (or may not) change the face of academia.

And beyond all these ideas about grad life, I hope the enduring conversations you will have with yourself and others after this summer on the Grad Life blog, will be about how to learn about teaching while we are grad students so that we can be sure to pass along all that we learn effectively, and also how to honor the ties between your personal life and your professional scholarship.

Keep reading what's been written and be sure to pass it along!

May your journey to grad school take you great places! 

Twitter & The Academy

Is this the little bird we're supposed to follow into the future of academia?

A distraction.

Noise.

Compulsive over-sharing.

The death of the printed word.

A revolution.

A return to written expressions of emotion.

Social media.

Poetry in 140 characters or less.

Say “Twitter” and you’ll elicit a number of different responses, depending on your audience. Some praise Twitter for the way it transforms social relationships, community organizing, and the circulation of news. Others condemn it at yet another technological advancement that encourages our cultural obsession with TMI, our unwillingness to communicate face-to-face, and our grammatical deficiencies.

Irrespective of what you think about Twitter, its force globally is undeniable. The role of Twitter in election coverage and political revolution has been hotly debated over the past year, as well as its less incendiary power in terms of chronicling conflict and romance between popular celebrities.

But what is the role of Twitter to academia? Prominent intellectuals, such as Cornel West, and major literary organizations like AWP, tweet regularly. There is even advice online about how academics can best use Twitter.

As grad students, is Twitter a tool related to our career and our work in our field? Do we tweet links to articles we’ve published and retweet the postings of academics we admire? Or is Twitter’s function to us still purely social? Do we follow Britney and tweet about the newest episodes of Glee? 

I, for one, am interested in the power of Twitter to connect grad students and professors across academia. In our fields, connection and relationships are crucial for continued learning and professional growth; these relationships are also vita to our continued wellbeing as we work in a field defined, at times, by independent (read: solitary) work.

Chad Taylor, a writer for Kirkus Reviews, praises Twitter for its ability to change the world of publishing and to create intimate contact between author and reader. In his piece, “Embrace the Digital Age: A Contrarian Opinion,” he celebrates the imaginative technology of Twitter, the cutting out of the middle man between authors and readers, and new possibilities for writing to be shared directly between author and reader through platforms like Twitter. To those who would take Twitter’s modernness as proof that old modes of communication are in jeopardy, Taylor says:

Three thousand years ago Plato told everyone who would listen that this newfangled thing called an "alphabet" was going to be the death of storytelling. Why would anyone remember stories, he asked, when you could just "write them down"?

Taylor’s perspective is a refreshing one; he reminds us that changes in technology and media can seem frightening and unorthodox (thus impermissible), the human practice of storytelling endures. The exchange of information, the pursuit of knowledge, and the human need to create and communicate is not at risk because of Twitter… or the alphabet.

In addition to the new ways of communicating and creating that Twitter and other forms of social media introduce to us, there is the good company of Twitter. As I wrote a few weeks ago, graduate study can often be a lonely pursuit. Being social and remaining connected to others requires intentionality and effort because it is easy to sink into books and learning and isolation when you have so much work to do.

Colson Whitehead, award-winning novelist and Twitter personality, wrote a fantastic article for Publisher’s Weekly about Twitter and the gift of connection that it provides to homebound writers who create largely in isolation. In “Better Than Renting Out A Windowless Room: The Blessed Distraction of Technology,” he confesses:

I used to think that I was the only one hunched over a keyboard in soiled pajamas, rummaging through the catalogue of my failures and intermittently weeping. Now, I open Twitter and see that I am not alone. I am part of a vast and wretched assembly of freaks who are not fit for decent work and thus must write, or wither. I am fortified by their failures, and I hope they take succor from mine.

As a grad student (and writer), I relate to Whitehead. I take succor from the knowledge that I am not alone in my daily struggle at my desk to learn something and to produce something meaningful. Twitter, for me, is a way to feel that I am part of a creative and intellectual community that stretches beyond just my apartment, university, city, and nation.

The range of opinions on Twitter still holds, and tweeting might not be as powerful a tool for sharing information and connecting with peers for everyone as it is for Whitehead and Kirkus. 

You might choose to professionalize your Twitter handle (I recommend some reference to Derrida, Foucault, or Said) and use social media only as a part of your work in your field. Or, you might use the platform for your personal life, locking your Tweets so that prospective employers and other conference attendees can’t read about how much you loved the latest Jersey Shore. 

Whatever our choices may be, Twitter is a part of the way we network and share information. As grad students, we'll be interacting with the social media platform for years to come, whether it proves as radical a change to our culture as the alphabet... or not.

grad school is hard

If you think coming to grad school means a straightforward path has been set before you, you're wrong. Pursuing your interest in grad school often creates more questions than answers and presents you with tasks that are as daunting as they are rewarding. Welcome to the maze of higher ed and pursuing your passion... 

When I was applying to Fordham, grad school seemed like an answer to my problems. I was tired of the 9 to 5 grind of full-time employment. I wanted more time to write and the freedom to work on my own projects. I missed the intellectual and creative community of college.

I couldn’t wait to be a student again. I figured the working world had been hard, and grad school would be easy. What could be more fulfilling and straightforward than studying what I had always had it in my heart to pursue?

Right?

While the labor of grad school will never be hard in the way many other types of labor in the working world can be, graduate study is challenging in its own respects. Grad school has pushed me intellectually, but also personally and emotionally. It has totally widened and complicated my vision of my life’s work in terms of art and scholarship.

The old cliché is true; I have found that the more I learn, the more I realize how little I know. It has been transformative to come to know the meaning of this adage intimately. I have felt increased drive and a heightened sense of urgency about my work and writing, as I grasp how much more I must learn and improve.

Beyond the drive and urgency, I have also felt panic. How do we deal with the knowledge of how far we are from where we hope to be? How do we stay encouraged and exhilarated, rather than daunted and overwhelmed? In many ways, I feel as if I am on the first page of an incredibly long final paper and I cannot see the end – except in this analogy, the paper is my life.

For me, the dilemma manifests itself particularly in terms of my writing. While I celebrate the strides I have made as a writer at Fordham, I feel fear sometimes, as well as hopefulness. As I have grown at Fordham, the errors and deficiencies in my work, as well as the strengths and aptitudes, have come into clearer focus.

I am thankful that grad school gives me the time, space, and guidance to improve.  I am aware of the gift of such an opportunity, and yet I can’t help but have a "gulp" moment when I think of the immensity of the task set before me.

Gulp.

This summer I started working on a memoir as part of a graduate tutorial in the English Master’s program. I have been writing a coming of age story about cultural difference, identity, and belonging. I have stretched myself this summer, venturing beyond my usual genre of fiction.  It has been exciting to see memoir writing emerge as a viable way for me to work, but the memoir writing hasn’t gotten any easier. The better I get at it, the harder it is.

Again, I say:

Gulp.

The great surprise (and it really shouldn’t have been a surprise since I knew the old cliché) of grad school is that work has not become any easier or simpler since I began working full-time as a student in my field. But growth is never easy or simple, is it?

I was reminded of this as I completed my tutorial (in London, where there was plenty to keep me reflecting on questions of difference and belonging). As I wrote, I waded through the seeming formlessness of my own memories; I fumbled for a structure to impose on the narrative of my past. I wondered how to organize feelings and images that are contiguous to me emotionally but not chronologically.

I felt lost, but I was moving forward, one way or another. And when I managed to set aside feelings of panic and intimidation, I felt the thrill that comes from progress, however partial.

Grad school is dynamic and daunting precisely because of this paradox. As our understanding deepens and our vision expands, the tasks before us become more rigorous. The amount of work multiplies as we become more adept to do it. Nothing is easier, but everything is richer. The process of discovery is constant and without end.

So far, Fordham has not provided me with an answer to anything. My coursework and independent study have brought me instead to a series of exciting beginnings, which is more than I bargained for. This is a good thing. So no gulp moment.

Did you get more than you bargained for when you applied to grad school? Was there an interest you expected to pursue straightforwardly? Was it more difficult than you imagined it would be? Have you been intimidated or invigorated by the challenge?  

Life/Scholarship

 The words on either side of that forward slash are more closely linked than you might think. What we study while we're in Walsh has everything to do with who we are outside of it.

Fordham professor and novelist Christina Baker Kline has a fabulous blog on creative process and craft called Writing/Life. She taught a class at Fordham by the same name about the lines between memoir and fiction. As writing students in her class, we investigated the relationship between life experience and the narrative decisions we make about our work in fiction and creative nonfiction.

I'm fascinated by the way life experience -- from the big moments to the seemingly insignificant ones -- define so many of our choices as writers and scholars. I wonder why my peers in graduate school as well as my professors and mentors have chosen their fields. What about our pasts draws us to a particular field of study?

For example, why does one become a Virginia Woolf scholar? A mathematician? A classicist? Why does one choose to dedicate her life to the study of black feminist poetics?

To say that we study what we study because we love it is true, but a bit opaque and incomplete. "I love Mrs Dalloway," and "Math is the universal language," are straightforward answers. "I've always been good at Latin," and "I believe in the power of black feminist expressive culture," might be honest answers too, but they do not get at the deep personal roots of scholarly passion. I would contend that even if we do not fully understand why we have chosen to work in our fields, we are not grad students merely because of our proficiency in a field or a coincidental interest in a text. Our motivations are profound and intimate. Why else would we devote our lives to scholarship, research, and writing?

I decided to pursue writing for many reasons. The more surface reasons are because I loved it and it was fun.  I enjoyed the process of discovery in writing. I feel a rush when I imagine a whole world and whole people. I am exhilarated when I'm writing and I feel my initial plan begin to shift. The story takes me somewhere unexpected, or to a place I had expected to go but by an entirely different route. This rush and exhilaration is part of why I write.

I was an avid reader as a child, and I became obsessed with words and the meaning they could convey. This childhood love persists and has grown to include my love of editing. Re-envisioning an image, reordering sentences, and cutting extraneous words are puzzles and brainteasers that fully absorb my attention. When I make strides in a revision, I feel a satisfaction that is so visceral it could be described as "a tingly feeling."

But these reasons explain why I like writing and why I am good at writing -- not why I am drawn to it, why I have chosen to pursue it in grad school and beyond, or why I must keep at it. This reason is deeply rooted in my own personal experience of my family and my community, and my own place in both.

As a girl, I adored hearing stories. I learned so much about the world and life from listening to women in my family speak. Sometimes they spoke to me, and sometimes to each other. Sometimes they were intentionally telling stories, and other times they were doing it without noticing how much they were disclosing. I loved the way I could fall into their experiences and their way of seeing the world. Their words transported me to specific moments in time and to regions of the Dominican Republic, where they were raised, that I had never been. I felt their loss and ecstasy and reality although I had never lived them.

As a shy child, writing and storytelling became a way for me to connect to others. I not only accessed the memories and consciousness of other people with pen, paper, and my imagination, but I learned to express my own inmost hopes and ideas, which I found difficult to do aloud. (Being shy ain't easy.) I knew firsthand how telling a story, or hearing one, could change a person. This power made me want to spend my life sharing other people's stories and my own.

I imagine the same is true for the poet interested in the sacred in Gloria Anzaldúa's work, or the scholar interested in Anglo-Norman saints' lives. We want to contribute to our fields because we have seen and known their power intimately. We choose to do what we do because of who we have been and who we hope to be.

As we move forward in our fields, our personal lives and our scholarly lives may seem to diverge. Life might be partners and parties and travel and bills, maybe children and families. Scholarship might be what we publish, the universities where we teach, our paid work. But I believe there will always be synergy between scholarship and life, an inextricable relationship between who we are and what we pursue.

What about you? What experience in your personal life has inspired your course of study? Was it a particular event or a series of moments? In short, why do you do what you do?

The Back-to-School Apartment Hunt

 This photograph depicts a typical grad student apartment – except not really, not at all.

Around this time last year, I was preparing to start grad school. No, I wasn’t buying school supplies. No, I wasn’t buying frilly white ankles socks to go with my patent leather Mary Janes. Unlike high school and college, grad school didn’t require much of me up front.

Thankfully, most of the preparation I had to do for grad school was internal; I had to prepare mentally for this next step in my education. Besides this internal work, the only “thing” that I had to really “do” was find an apartment close to campus before classes began.

Anyone who has ever survived a New York City move knows that relocating in the city is a momentous task. Apartment hunting can mean braving Craigslist, asking everyone you meet if they’re looking for a roommate or know of someone looking for a roommate, scouring newspapers, and wandering around hoping to find a FOR RENT sign in a window.

I was daunted by the prospect of moving for many reasons. I had to find a neighborhood I liked, a reasonably priced apartment, and a kind, non-crazy, responsible roommate. Even after I sorted out where to live, I would have to weather the horrific process of actually moving – heavy-lifting, disassembling furniture, sorting all of my earthly belongings into boxes, and then loading them into a U HAUL. I would also have to find (read: bribe) a friend into driving a U HAUL truck, city since as a true-to-form lifelong New Yorker, I have never learned how to drive.

I exaggerate a bit about how “horrific” it can be to move, but after moving four times in the past three years, I have learned a good amount about searching for housing in NYC.

I’ve put together a list of tips I wish someone had shared with me each time I began my search. And while everyone has unique tastes, budgets, needs and priorities in terms of living situations, I hope that these ideas will prove useful – and that you will pass them along!

1. Use your networks.

For a moment, allow me to channel Mark Zuckerberg and encourage you to use the friends you have to help you in your search. The city is always changing, for better or for worse, and it’s likely that you’ll find someone in your circles (to channel Google + for a moment) who is looking for housing.

Before turning to Craigslist (or anywhere else), I would recommend changing your Facebook status and sending out an email blast about your search for an apartment or roommate or both.

Email your friends and ask them to pass along the news about your search for housing to their contacts. Be sure to mention neighborhoods you’re interested in, your timeline, living habits, price range, and qualities you’re looking for in your roommate.

If you email enough people, and they pass it along to enough people, you’ll hear from interested friends and friends of friends soon! The greatest benefit of the email blast is that you can search within your circles without sifting through scores of Craigslist strangers. You can live with someone you know or a person who someone you know can vouch for. Try the email blast first and you might just find the apartment or roomie of your dreams. 

2. Use Fordham!

Fordham has a range of resources for grad students in search of housing. Don’t be afraid to use them!

Fordham offers furnished off-campus housing in the Bronx at Arthur II, as well as graduate housing at Lincoln Center. Beyond the graduate housing offered by Fordham, there are tools GSAS offers to help grad students in their search off-campus. The Office of Residential Life uses the Places 4 Students server to help students browse off-campus housing options. Best of all, the Fordham Grad Housing site posts listing for housing, as well as listings of grad students looking for roommates.

The advantage to living with another Fordham grad student – even someone in your program! – is the grad life camaraderie, and a shared experience deeper than splitting the Con Ed bill and taking turns washing the dishes.

3. Account for the commute!

Be sure to consider how you’ll get from wherever you’re living to Rose Hill or Lincoln Center, depending on your class schedule. Perhaps having a quick commute is of the utmost importance to you, and you’d be happiest just a few blocks away from campus on Arthur Ave. Or maybe you’ve got your heart set on Williamsburg (you hipster grad student you) and you like reading on long train rides. It’s up to you – just be honest about what will work with your study habits.

The truth is that Fordham is in New York, people, and in New York everyone commutes. Columbus Circle is highly accessible, and so is Rose Hill. The 4 and D are within walking distance from the Bronx campus and the Bx12 bus connects to the 1 and A trains.

Between the subway, buses, Ram Van, and MetroNorth you can get to Fordham from pretty much anywhere in the city. So after you’ve found a neighborhood you love and accounted for commuting time…

4. Just live wherever you want to live!

Part of the beauty of grad school is that it is a fundamental part of your life but it need not define your experience of New York City. You can be as immersed in university life as you’d like, or you can turn up on campus only for class and conferences with professors.

I have friends at Fordham from all five boroughs (yes, all five – including Staten Island), as well as other states. I know grad students who commute from as far as Connecticut, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania!

Live where you want to live – and do what works for you.

Grad school is so all-consuming (in a sometimes fantastic, sometimes stressful way), that your home must be a refuge: a place where you can do work but also be at peace. Find the roommate, space, and neighborhood that feel right and try not to worry about the rest. (The rest will worry about itself.)

If you’re thinking about moving before this next year of grad school begins, I wish you luck! Remember to keep calm and carry on, and do what is best for you! Use the resources and networks within your grasp, and make sure to thrive wherever you land.

Harry Potter & the Ph.D.

What does the struggle to bring down He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named have to do with grad school?

         

It’s all ending.

           

For those of you who have already seen Part 2 of The Deathly Hallows, it’s already ended – “it” being the film phenomenon of the Harry Potter series, which began in 2001 with the Sorcerer’s Stone and has lasted a solid decade. Although I not among the record-breaking number of people who have seen the film, I am a Harry Potter fan, and I’ve been following the worldwide response closely.

Last Friday, July 15^th, I watched my Facebook newsfeed erupt in statuses about the film. Some of my friends confessed to sobbing at the film's end; others questioned whether the epilogue was successful or necessary. One friend, a Fordham Ph.D. in literature, of course, posted quotes from the seventh book:

“Do not pity the dead, Harry. Pity the living, and, above all, those who live without love.”

and

“Of course it is happening inside your head, Harry, but why on earth should that mean that it isn’t real?” 

As an aspiring writer and scholar of literature, I am amazed whenever a book (or, in this case, a septalogy of books) becomes such a cultural force. Rowling’s books have not only made millions for all those invested in the franchise (book publishers, film studios, and makers of HP-themed lunch boxes), but they have shaped the way a generation of young readers think about the world. Rowling has not shied from theological, political, and moral issues in her books, and the Deathly Hallows mania is a testament to the cultural impact of the series.

While some academics might frown upon the Harry Potter books as “low” art and simplistic (it's contemporary children’s fantasy literature written by a woman!), many academics are intrigued by the way effects of the books and have taken an interest in all things HP.

One such scholar Danielle Elizabeth Tumminio has taught theology classes about Harry Potter and published a book about the experience entitled God and Harry Potter at Yale: Teaching Faith and Fantasy Fiction In An Ivy League Classroom. Her students' conversations about Harry Potter and theology sound fascinating and have become a part of their experience in higher education.

These conversations about Rowling's books have gone beyond the academy; the "big themes" of the series (Morality, Death, Friendship, Good, Evil, etc.) are happening all over the internet. Facebook, The Leaky Cauldron, and Twitter are alive with closereading, questioning, and dialogue about the series and its conclusion. The average reader has become more than just a fan but is at work on message boards and in social media as a critic and theorist in his or her own right.

I have especially enjoyed reading all the feminist criticism of Harry Potter that has emerged on the internet, like the fantastic Ms. Magazine article, “Hermione Granger and the Fight for Equal Rights,” and “An Unabashed Love Letter to Ginny Weasley” that went up on Feminsiting after the release of Part 1 of The Deathly Hallows. 

These non-academic pieces are illuminating and provocative... sans jargon! These pieces are available online to a broad audience. Young readers might stumble upon some feminist theory when they Google Hogwarts! How exciting for us, as grad students, to see these conversations thriving  across a range of communities and platforms. Very.

While I have yet to meet someone whose dissertation is on Harry Potter, the impact of the books on our cultural and intellectual life is clear. And as the world buzzes over the eighth and final film, we grad students get to satisfy our deep nerdy inner desire to talk about Apparation and the Dark Mark, what it all means, and why it matters.  

What is your take on scholarly interest in pop culture phenomena like Harry Potter? What about the closereading and theorizing happening on Facebook, message boards, and Twitter? And, most importantly, what can we learn from Snape about the nature of good and evil?