Summer as a Grad Student: A Testimony About Work, Play, and “Vacation”

In elementary school, I equated “summer” with “vacation.” The words were interchangeable to me.

Although I was an incredible nerd (bookworm, teacher’s pet, and extra credit fiend) who loved school, I cherished summer as a welcome break from the routines and rules of the school year. By every June 1^st, I was dreaming of warmer weather, longer days, and leaving the house without a backpack or No. 2 pencils.

Even in high school when I started working summer jobs and internships, I still thought of summer as vacation. I worked 9 to 5, but there were never any assignments waiting for me at home. No required reading, no exams to study for – just wide-open evenings and weekends. Endless possibilities.

Now that I am officially done with my first year of graduate school, I am realizing that I might never have another summer “off.”

My first year at Fordham was exhilarating, full of new people, books, and unexpected opportunities. Still, by the end of the year, I was ready for a break. I wrote my final papers while looking forward to another magical date – May 18^th. This date was circled in my calendar, marked with emphatic ink stars and exclamation points that meant the end of the semester, the start of summer.

May 18^th came and went. And since, I have enjoyed some R&R, but I have also done quite a bit of… well, work.

For one, I have been trying to revise stories that I wrote this year. Although I turned in final drafts of these pieces, none of them are quite finished. I may have completed my course requirements, but it will take much longer than a single semester to make the work actually publishable.

I have been reading magazines and journals, trying to decide where to submit and subscribe. Unfortunately, there isn’t a comprehensive list somewhere (no, not even at Poets & Writers) of which journals will expose me to the writing, authors, and techniques that I will learn from and love. I am sort of making a syllabus for myself: a list of nonrequired required reading to keep me current and connected.

I have been reading books, too – texts that will help me understand the issues I care about more deeply and also grow as a storyteller. Most recently, I have been reading The Liars’ Club by Mary Karr. This memoir about Karr’s “God-awful childhood” made me laugh and weep and sink into the 1960s Texas of her memories. I am reading for fun but not just for fun; I try to pay attention to the writing and take in all that I can about craft.

I am sure other grad students on “vacation” (those fortunate enough to take some time off before a summer class, job, or research project) have also filled their days with work related to their fields. It is not the break I imagined myself when I was counting down the days to May 18th. 

And yet, I’ve been able to watch more episodes of Buffy than I usually can during the school year, and I’ve felt all right hitting the snooze more than once in the morning. I have been taking more walks with friends and by myself. Undoubtedly, I have been on vacation; it’s just the busiest, most focused and fruitful vacation of my life.

Perhaps this is the greatest gift of graduate school (besides that degree!) – this seamlessness between work and pleasure, duty and play. As a grad student, you learn to regard your passions as a part of your life’s work and not just your schoolwork.

This sort of thinking is undeniably a sign of (oh my!) maturity. I’m a writer and scholar now full-time, all the time. As grad school ushers me into the future, I know that I can’t go on being that same restless little girl, counting down the days to summer on her calendar, wishing she were running through sprinklers instead of sitting in class.

Well, maybe sometimes I can.

Passing the Baton

Hello everyone!

My name is Naima, and I’m delighted to be taking over the Fordham GSAS: Grad Life Blog. I have big shoes to fill since Alex Loizzo, long-time writer for this blog, did such a fantastic job creating an online community for GSAS students, friends of Fordham, and other graduate students near and far.

Alex has graduated and is moving on – but the Grad Life Blog lives!

I just finished my first year as a Master’s student in the English program and Creative Writing Concentration at Fordham. I am still processing and reveling in all that I learned about grad life, writing, and myself.

This summer I’ll share my insights on life as a grad student in New York City and at Fordham University. My hope is that this blog will be a space for all of us to explore how grad life is changing because of social media, the current political and economic climate, and other cultural shifts.

In short, I am aiming for a broad but also an intimate scope.

I would love to hear your feedback on my posts, as well as any questions you might have about life at Fordham. Suggestions for future blog posts are very, very welcome.

The more interactive and participatory this blog can be, the better.

Here’s to a great summer!

-- Naima Coster

“Time Goes By So Slowly for Those Who Wait”

Time is a funny thing. Personally, I have a love-hate relationship with time. Maybe that’s because it always seems to do the opposite of what I want it to do (goes quickly when I want it to go slowly or vice versa), only to change its mind midway through.

For example, I now feel that my two years here at Fordham went by in an instant. I still vividly remember orientation and my first weeks here. I still feel like all of those graduate school “firsts” happened at most a month or so ago. And yet, while I was going through it, I felt that it would never end. I was certain that the work would go on forever, the reading would take centuries, the writing would never get done, and I would never graduate. When I wanted time to go quickly, to get out of the pile of work I was buried in, it would just refuse to budge. And now that I’m sad to leave all my friends, it’s decided to speed up like crazy. But I guess that’s what I asked for, right? 

But enough of these metaphysical reflections. Really, what I want to tell you all in this, my last entry for this blog, is thank you. Thank you for reading. Thank you for commenting, here or on Facebook,…or for thinking about commenting. Or for trying to comment and having technical difficulties (I heard about at least one instance of that). Thank you for allowing me to represent you and your graduate school life with my musings and questions. It has seriously been a great experience for me, and I hope it was fun and interesting for all of you on the other end of the screen/page/*your choice of metaphor here*.

I don’t know who will take over this blog next year, but I’m sure that, whoever it is, he or she will be wonderful. Because (s)he will be one of us. One of us strange people who choose more and more school. So I encourage all of you, whether you are graduating with me or not, to check back here sometime in late August or early September, and get to know the new GSAS blogger. I know I will. 

So, with graduation upon us, I wish all of you staying here at Fordham (or at other schools) good luck in the future. And a big CONGRATULATIONS to all of you getting those pieces of paper we all work so hard for. No, not money guys. Come on, this is grad. school. I mean diplomas!

Alex

Fordham Gives Back (With the Help of BRAC)--Guest Post!

It's my pleasure to introduce the second guest post of this blog's history, which comes from a member of one of Fordham's newest initiatives: the Fordham-BRAC Task Force. I have seen these guys present twice now, and I can honestly say that they are an amazing group of people, and I am very excited to hear about their work in the future.




As members of the Fordham University community, students are always looking for ways to be actively engaged in the Jesuit tradition of service and outreach that serves as the backbone of this institution. So when GSAS recently launched a project to work with BRAC USA to create a public awareness campaign, several students immediately jumped to the task. What developed was a task force of ten members who are working to create a campaign that highlight’s BRAC’s commitment to creating better opportunities for others.

BRAC (first known as the Bangladesh Rehabilitation Assistance Committee) was created in 1972, after the end of Bangladesh’s War of Liberation. Originally meant to support the Bangladeshi population, BRAC has now expanded to over nine countries globally, while also supporting other nonprofit organizations around the world (which is why BRAC is no longer an acronym). BRAC’s work has been so widespread that the organization is currently the largest non-profit developmental organization in the world, with well over 100,000 employees. BRAC aims to empower the population of the locations they serve, so that those people are able to meet their full potential. By teaming up with BRAC, the Fordham Task Force hopes to bring awareness to the organization, specifically by creating a campaign focused on BRAC’s work in Tanzania. This awareness campaign is centered on the Empowerment and Livelihood for Adolescents Program (ELA), which aims to empower girls, aged 13-20, to make a difference in their own lives as well as in the lives of others. This summer, members of the team will be creating a mini-documentary that will highlight this ELA program in Tanzania, as well as show the similarities and differences between Tanzanian and American youth. The team will be collecting stories and information from adolescents in the United States while two task-force members will travel to Tanzania to get more information from the girls in that country.

Last Friday, the members of the BRAC taskforce were honored by GSAS for their work on the project at the annual Awards Ceremony. I urge you all to help me in supporting and congratulating my fellow members of the BRAC Task Force on their work:

Minhajul Meje (Task Force Coordinator) 

Urban Studies

Kathleen Adams (Team Liaison)         

Urban Studies

Kevin Chua

Economics

Meghan Froehner

Economics

Erika Harrington

Ethics and Society

Danielle Noumbouwo

Humanities and Sciences

Kimberly Ogonosky

Public Communications

Nathan Snyder

IPED

Gergana Tomova

Elections and Campaign Management

  

The final documentary will be screened on campus to different members of the Fordham community this coming fall. We invite you to learn more about BRAC online, and more about the BRAC ELA Program in Tanzania specifically. Be sure to watch for more updates from the Task Force in the upcoming future!

 Kirk Dobson is a Fordham GSAS student in the Political Science department and a BRAC Task Force Member.

Almost A Decade Later (And No, I’m Not Talking About How Long it Takes to Get a PhD!)

With everything going on in the outside world right now, a blog post about grad. life or academia seems almost silly to me.

I was in my freshman year of high school, and only about a week into the school year, when planes crashed into the World Trade Center. I was only 14 on September 11^th, 2001. But I remember feeling so old. I had friends who saw the second tower fall from the Hoboken pier across the river. I didn’t run fast enough. I only saw the debris floating over from Manhattan. Now, when I’m about to graduate with an MA, the man responsible for orchestrating “9/11” has been killed. (He has also been buried most respectfully, following the rites and rituals of his own religion, which I personally think is a great step towards a more sympathetic political approach toward cultural and religious differences. And which I think hasn’t gotten enough coverage.)

Most of my friends, both from Fordham and beyond, are very globally conscious. You can see evidence of this through the way they interact with social media sites, and there has especially been a lot of thought-provoking discussion online since last night’s announcement. Facebook, the all-knowing thermometer of public sentiment for my generation and beyond, is telling me there are mixed feelings regarding Osama bin Laden’s death. It’s not that most Americans (and others) don’t feel at least somewhat relieved…at least I don’t think that’s it. It’s more that, as many of my educated Facebook friends point out, his death won’t bring back the lives that have already been lost. Should we be celebrating, or mourning? Should we be speculating how this will affect the 2012 presidential campaign or losing ourselves in memories of 2001, both pre- and post- the attacks?

I know that this isn’t simply a graduate student issue, but it’s something that I think we, as people who aspire to be spreaders of knowledge in the world, should think about. It's our responsibility in some way to at least place ourselves in relation to these kinds of historic events, isn't it? Perhaps what we should really be meditating on is the distinction between vengeance and justice, and what we can do to make sure that distinction is maintained in the future, even in our own daily lives.

Alex

Grad. School and the City

“To Atlantic Avenue” Believe it or not, the photo above is actually of a miniature sculpture by artist Alan Wolfson. You can see more of his work in The Huffington Post’s recent article.

“New York is my campus. Fordham is my school.” This is Fordham’s (relatively new, I believe) slogan. Though I’m sure it’s mostly meant to describe undergrads who are often asked to incorporate the city into their class assignments, our lives as graduate students are also influenced by the location of our school.

This blog is about graduate life in general but also about Fordham in particular, and I recently realized that I haven’t really talked much about the experience of going to school in a boroughs of NYC. Maybe that’s because I grew up right across the river and don’t remember my first visit to the city. The skyline was always just there (trust me, it’s a way better view from the NJ side of the river). In any case, it’s certainly true that city life is a big part of a Fordham grad. student’s experience.

In fact, because so many graduate students commute, either from another burrow or another state, New York City’s public transportation system is something many of us are forced to become intimate with. And, let me tell you, intellectual stimulation happens on the go as well. For example, as my friend was re-reading Frankenstein for her comps. exam on her commute home one day, she got hit on no less than three times, and every guy mentioned the book she was reading as an opening. One guy even tried to start a discussion of “transhumanism.” No, I’m not joking.

I often find myself wanting to record events I observe on my commute home, especially on the subway. I had a friend who once told me that she prefers NYC’s public transportation system to anywhere else’s because “nobody will bother you if you cry on the subway in New York.” Her observation points to why observing people on the NYC subway is so interesting—NYC’s anonymity really encourages people to act like nobody is watching, even in public. Which makes them perfect to watch!

Riding the subway when I’m just coming home from class and am already primed for analysis makes me feel kind of like an anthropologist in the field. Sometimes, I even take notes:

An Excerpt from “The Subway Diaries”

Why is it that people sit next to themselves on the subway?

The South Asian man sits next to the South Asian woman, the black woman next to another black woman, the stereotypical Hispanic man next to yet another stereotypical Hispanic man..and the short, pale brunette with the pointy nose next to me.

So many other choices of empty seats, but the woman who chose to sit next to me could play my stunt double in a movie.

Sure, you could just do your homework on the commute home. But what’s the point of going to grad. school in the city if you can’t analyze it to death? Right?

Alex

PS If anyone else has fun NYC-related stories, please share!

Arts vs. Sciences?

Is this an Arts brain or a Sciences brain? Can YOU tell?

As readers of this blog know, though this blog is sponsored by Fordham’s Graduate School of Arts AND Sciences it leans heavily towards the “Arts” part, better known as the humanities. Since I, the writer, am an English major, this is probably natural. Of course, I have always made an effort to address the math and science-y side of things, but I’m not very well-versed in these disciplines, and so I’m sure I’ve missed something here and there. The thing is, I don’t dislike the sciences. In fact, I’m not even scared of them. What I’m scared of is math. I think I developed a block around 5^th grade when they switched me from the dumb math class to the smart math class and I couldn’t catch up, so then by the time I got switched back to the dumb math class I’d missed things and I was totally confused. Yep. Ever since then I’ve been afraid of math. I have a deep psychological fear that I am going to add 3 + 3 and make a stupid mistake and get 9 (see what I did there? I multiplied instead. Embarrassing fact: I’ve actually done that on tests before because I get so nervous).

But this fear of math shouldn’t keep me back from things I enjoy, science-y subjects like astronomy. And I try not to let it. But the problem seems to be that, even in schools like GSAS which are supposed to incorporate the arts and the sciences, the divide is jut too wide, especially by the time we get to grad. school. This isn’t any particular school’s fault either…it simply seems to be the nature of the American education system. An author of an interesting article in The Chronicle seems to think that this is because, as a nation, we do not value "science literacy." “I have no memories of my science and math professors telling us that reading and writing were unimportant or optional. I can’t say the same for my humanities professors,” he says. 

In my experience, though, this isn’t the problem. In fact, I never had any humanities professors say science wasn’t important. On the other hand, I have had a math teacher (not professors mind you, a teacher in high school) who insisted that everyone must love math and who questioned the value of studying something like English in college. The humanities are often viewed as “soft” by these kinds of people. Hence the term “hard sciences.”

In all honesty, I think the problem doesn’t lie with who places too little value on what. That just ends up turning into an unproductive blame game. Everyone always has a bias…it’s almost as natural to favor your own subject and others like it as it is to favor your own children. The problem is that teachers at all levels, from elementary to graduate school, and in all subjects, from English to Physics, are usually “naturals” in whatever field they teach. Because of this, they often don’t know how to teach to people who don’t grasp it as quickly and instinctively. I felt this problem first hand in middle and high school. The year I got a math teacher who knew how to (and took the time to) explain math to my English-major brain, I suddenly wasn’t afraid anymore. I could do math. I got A's. Then, the next year, I got another teacher who didn’t know what he was doing and it was back to the fear. I noticed the same kind of thing happening for the people who went on to do things like Physics and Economics in college. Though many of them generally feared writing essays, there was one English teacher who just made everyone understand how to put together a sentence, or how to present evidence or create a convincing thesis statement. In her class, with her training, everyone could write a decent paper. 

If we’re not going to bring the disciplines closer together, which I know would be very difficult now that everyone has become so specialized, the Chronicle author is right: we have to do something about all this earlier, in elementary, middle, and/or high school. But I don’t think his proposal is quite the solution. Teachers from all subjects and at all levels need to embrace the importance of all others. We need to be at least a little more interdisciplinary in our thinking, even if we’re not part of a more interdisciplinary department like American Studies. A liberal arts education isn’t actually supposed to be, as he seems to think, all about the humanities. At least that’s not my understanding of it. The liberal arts education so touted in America is supposed to create well-rounded individuals who have experience in the humanities, the social sciences, the hard sciences, and anything else you can think of. We need to remember this and start to make sure students appreciate every discipline early. We need to learn how to teach to people who don’t just “get it” right away. Maybe it wouldn’t hurt to make people teach subjects they weren’t necessarily inclined to. I know the Jesuit Pedagogy Seminar here at Fordham makes students sit in on classes that are outside of their departments, and I think that’s a really good start.

One of the most rewarding experiences I ever had was subbing for an afterschool program called “Hands on Science” as a college freshman in Swarthmore, PA the year before I transferred to Barnard. Having to explain basic science concepts to elementary school students, making science exciting for them even though it wasn’t “my thing” (I guess my thing would be teaching them how exciting reading can be), helped me appreciate my peers who were still studying things like Biology on a more advanced level. Plus, there’s nothing like being the first one to teach a whole group of kids what ROY G BIV means. Even if I am an English major.

Alex