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Book Choice for March 2019: By Milan Kundera, 1984

On the one hand, I have so many thoughts about this book, and on the other, I felt like not bothering to write about this book at all. Which is exactly the plot and point of this book, ironically.

I wasn’t sure about whether this book was worthy of being written about as one of my 12 books for the year, as my 12 books are meant to be mostly classics, or challenging reads, or things I always meant to get around to…and while this book has been described as a modern classic, it initially didn’t seem to contain enough for me to dissect here. However, what I have come to notice via writing this blog is that having more fiction on the brain IS helping me with my journey through life. The right stuff is coming into my hands at the right times, and now I will talk about this book as it impacted basically only me, and where I am with my politics at this moment, while proceeding to miss the point of this entire work (probably). But then again, when people just say the same stuff over and over again (it’s a great work, great greaty great)….don’t you get the feeling that they were not personally impacted at all? And we will all be impacted by different parts of works. Isn’t that the point?

I am definitely not a reviewer, able to speak on the technical merit of a book, or its artistry (although do those really matter if you are not impacted in any way?) I am merely a millennial, with a fixed, eternal, self-referential point, as the sun is to the earth.

Moving on. This book is about a man, name unnecessary, as he is a stand-in for the melancholy yearning-ness of life (which can also be expressed as “Damn it, why can’t I literally f*** everyone on the earth?”) But don’t worry, he has a very good try, and I don’t remember which city they lived in, must have been Prague, and by the end of the book you are literally asking yourself, “was there any woman in Prague that he left unsexed?” Likely not. But it doesn’t matter, it is part of showing you that carnal encounters are necessary somehow to living/suffering, although they are shallow, but oh wait, he is also married and THAT is deep, because like, it is?

And there is a sad woman, I do think her name is Teresa (the book is right beside me but I am refusing to check) and she is The Wife, and when I say sad I mean pathetic. She just loves Mr. Sexyman; because of course she does, women just love things because they can’t help themselves, even if they are being hurt by it every day, because do women ever grow, really? Or learn? Or have spines? No. They just wonder who their Man was with last night and internalize the tears. There is literally no other way to live in the melancholy shit that is life.

But you know, I didn’t hate reading this book. And now I will say the things that I am unqualified to say: the writing is good (?) It does keep you going. Not in a page-turner way, but while you are reading it you actually DO want to know what happens to Mr. Sex and Sad Teresa. It is well-written in the way that it really condenses huge feelings and experiences that you and I and everyone has while living life into 1-2 sentence epigrams which cause you to put the book down and stare at the wall or window for awhile. And THAT is valuable, really, above rubies, and must be the reason why people have taken to this book so much. Those scattered sentences of extremely dense meaning can only be written by having lived. I don’t remember the words being particularly beautiful, but they were certainly effective.

But I won’t read it again, I think, and I will tell you why.

This book panders to the West. (Yes, I live in the West and have a whole bag of privileges and everyday trials to show for it). But once you have woken up (see Marx, above), you have, and you can never go back. There are several times in the book that the horrors of Communism™ are subtly dropped-in, and these dark HINTS seem worse than when the charcters openly come into contact with the “stupidity” of the Czech communist regime.

There is a character in the book I will call Bowler-Hat because of some sexy routine she does with her hat, and she is an artist. But she CAN’T BE AN ARTIST under the regime, it’s just cramping her style on an existential level (by the way, yes, there was art and culture in the Soviet block countries). But you wouldn’t know it from this book, as this flighty artist woman (probably a symbol of freedom) “escapes” to other European countries where she can just keep flirtin’ around and doing not so much. Oh actually later she lives with an old couple for no apparent reason.

At another point Bowler-Hat tells a very TELLING story. It’s about how when she was a teenager growing up under Communism, the regime “forced” you (forced is not said, but implied) to do parades with your school peers. But Bowler-Hat didn’t WANT to do parades “with everyone smiling” so SHE hid in the bathroom. It was “fake” to her, ergo, it must have been fake for everyone involved. All readers living under free-market capitalism nod vigorously.

Parades are so gross.

It is interesting to me that some people just can never get over a cherished belief in their own uniqueness. They are INDIVIDUALS, never part of a (gasp, horror!) group. This short description in this book haunts me, exactly because I know it will impress many people very deeply the other way: “Can you believe it? All those jumped-up parades? Forcing everyone to dress the same and wear BIG FAKE SMILES?”

So now that you have learned almost nothing about this book, except that I would say that you COULD read it yourself and see what you get from it (and there is an amazing character named Franz who I have definitely met in real life, doomed from birth by his outrageous Euro-privilege) I will continue with a story about how this book fits in with the general trajectory of my life:

On irregular Tuesdays I give an hour of Conversational English to an older lady in town, let’s call her Diana (She’s 75 and she looks great, actually I met her in the gym!) She has had a very interesting life. She was born in Slovak and was studying in Czech when the regime changed and she had to decide to go to Germany, permanently, with her boyfriend, in just a weekend. To do that, they also had to get married that weekend. They did, and both continued their medical studies in Leipzig, in what became (that weekend I guess) East Germany, which I will refer to as the DDR, because it used to be called the Deutsch Democratic Republic, and DDR is much faster.

Anyway, this past week we met and we just chatted as usual about art (now that she is retired you just can’t keep her out of art galleries and museums and we usually talk about what she has seen and where she has been lately). And then books, and I told her that I bought my boyfriend a book called Liebe, Sex und Socialismus for his birthday (as you do) but as he read it, it wasn’t exactly what it said on the tin. Although it had been translated into German, it was a study of the love lives of people in the DDR by an English researcher, who turned out to be prey to the same West-splanations as is, it seems, everyone outside of Socialist regimes, or you could say, everyone without personal experience of them.

L,S & S is written from this stance: “Oh, well yes, these people say they were happy, but like, do they even KNOW what happiness is? Yes, they had more time for sex and relationships than we do now [because they worked fewer hours] and women seem to have had a higher level of equality in the workplace than anywhere ever before [or since]* and they weren’t constrained by childcare [all children went to free kindergartens, then free schools] but these poor people were obviously just confused and brainwashed, so we can never know.”

It is Western mantra that people in socialist regimes such as the DDR cannot have been happy.

But Diana says they were. And ya know, she was THERE. Or here, I should say.

Diana, regarding the authors of Chernobyl and LS&S: “They cannot understand if they were not here. They will not.”

(And she means will in the sense of the German verb, as “they do not want to understand.”

Diana: “Here it was very good. Everyone had a job, and the schools were excellent, very excellent.”

Already she has said one unthinkable thing in our culture: That everyone can be assured of a job and a secure income. Can you even imagine that? No, you can’t. Not worrying yourself sick every week that you could lose your job and die on the street? Sounds good to me. Also, NO ONE in the DDR was living on the street, not one person. Homelessness solved, by social programs. It’s unthinkable in our culture, truly.

But then Diana continued:

“But you know, it is always the people who make Communism not work. There are always people who don’t want it, and they make it fall down for everyone.”

Practically since birth advertisements teach us that our personal need to feel independence (which is of course a mirage in this complicated, interdependent world) trumps the right of everyone to obtain a good standard of housing, work and family life. Those last three aren’t even worth smiling in a parade for.

*Along with perspectives like Diana’s, which Western ears don’t commonly hear, I want to add the testimony of one of my Russian friends. While my own grandmother was a homemaker (and a wonderful one) with a sixth-grade education, who got married at 18 to escape an abusive father, my friend’s grandmother was a Floor Manager (over men and women) in a bustling factory. Different situations, different expectations, different opportunities, but underlying it all are different social structures.

Book Choice for January 2019, by Geoffrey Chaucer, published c. 1387

Yes. It is September now. Late September, it’s definitely autumn, and while there is golden sunlight, I am homesick, because frankly, we do “fall” way better in Canada. Let’s also pretend that I have been enjoying a sun-drenched two month holiday during which it was just not necessary to blog because I was living life in the moment. It’s better that way. I’m not such a fan of summer but –bip– the record has scratched and it is over anyway. Vorbei.

The Canterbury Tales is a book that most people do hear about. The major golden oldies of English literature are known to almost everyone; a smooth pebble skipped across a pond that makes contact on –Beowulf—ping—Chaucer—boiiing—Shakespeare—dunk!! With a splash, the pebble sinks to the bottom until, like, Jane Austen or something. (Maybe I did miss out by basically not going outside this summer. I’ve forgotten how nature works. Or sounds).

To be fair, I did not start The Canterbury Tales in the summer. I did start it in January, under incredibly ideal circumstances, which will be helpful for you, dear reader, to hear as well. For one thing, I started to read the Canterbury Tales when it was the only book I had access to, in a language I could read. So let that be a lesson to you, if you are in a country you have never been to before, without the prospect of obtaining any other reading material, it is a good time to consider The Canterbury Tales (assuming you have it with you).

As well, I started to read it when I was going on a 10-day holiday where I forbade myself (and I was very right about this) to bring any work. As well, there was no internet where I was staying. So, also, if you want to read the Canterbury Tales, do that, abandon your job and cut yourself off from the modern world. It will help, trust me. Get the circumstances right and you will find that you will soon be driven to reading a nearly 500 page tome (including the necessary explanatory notes!) But I must be real here: even with all the advantages of time to burn, no chores to do, and the only goal of enjoying myself—I still only got three-quarters of the way through before I stalled.

The Canterbury Tales is very much of its time, misogynistically speaking. But hey, it could have been much worse. Chaucer actually thought women were kind of interesting, and that like men, some of them have merit and some don’t. Which is quite fair. With his characters, I did feel Chaucer was being fair at least— I actually felt that from the writing, it was just more the subject matter that bothered me. (It’s my blog so I can be bothered if I want). Ooop–another rape, but don’t worry, it’s not portrayed as a problem for anyone involved. Next story—rape, oh no, not again, what a curious twist! While I can’t remember any example of sexual assault explicitly being played for laughs, it was a nonchalantly repeated occurrence, possibly echoing what people often say, —its just what happened in those days. Ughhhh (see above, me sitting in my garden).

Most people nowadays come to The Canterbury Tales academically, and not really for the enjoyment factor (although when I have heard about the Canterbury Tales, I have heard things in the vein of ‘its a rollicking good time!’). When you read about misogynistic crap, even fictional, in Uni, everyone just bounces over it as part of Ye Olde Plotting Devices. We somehow have developed a stomach, over time, for overlooking things that make us, naturally, squinch up our noses with distaste. We know that we HAVE to read it, because its, like, literature. And literature is valuable. We don’t have to love it, but we have to get through it, if we want to be well read. At many, many times during this collection of tales, which as I said, were not disturbingly graphic (rape was just a matter of course) or incredibly unfair, I still sat back and said “Am I really doing this to myself for fun?”

It may be that you say “hell no” to this great work. I would not blame you, although many would, aghast that you could ignore something GREAT because of your personal tastes. I plodded through. The particular translation I had was really brilliant, even I could tell that David Wright had made an incredible achievement, making the source material understandable, and arranged in cute little stanzas. Like I said, I stopped reading with about 100 pages to go in January, and then in about the end of May I finished it off, using sheer willpower. As this is the way that I read it, and now I am writing about it nearly 9 months later, only a few things stand out to me:

1. The Wife of Bath is quite good. (She’s a character that you may hear about before you read the book, often held up as a feminist archetype). She does say a lot of cool stuff, she had a lot of husbands who treated her in varying ways, and well, she was a woman and was given a chance to speak, it was interesting, but it didn’t leave me shocked and changed. In sum, I had always meant to learn more about her, and now I know.
2. There is a tale called “The Prioress’s Tale” and it is a disgusting thing about the evilness of Jews—and that’s when you realize that just because a piece of literature is old, doesn’t mean it’s not a piece of crap. The fact this tale was copied for centuries was a horrible waste of parchment, with potentially very real repercussions. I suppose, the fact that it was preserved allows us to see that everywhere in medieval Europe (except I think Spain, before Ferdinand and Isabella) it was completely ok to murder your neighbors because you coveted their things. Now I will interject with a story: once I went to York in England with a school friend. We had a nice day of eating treats in the market and looking at the cathedral. It was lovely. At one point we went up a hill and walked into an old tower which was very cold inside. We poked around and went out, happening to read the British Heritage plaque which said that in 1108 (or thereabouts) all the York folk put their Jewish neighbors into that tower and burned them alive. In thr Prioress’s tale Chaucer has preserved for us the mindset that allowed our ancestors to carry out such deeds! Over and over in almost every major city!*
3. Thank goodness that this Oxford edition I have cuts out the several pieces of dry religious writings which were once between the tales, and certain sermon-like poems (Chaucer thought he was very good at writing sermons apparently, and that his audience had infinite time on their hands). I’m so grateful they cut these parts (in the words of the editors “as this is of interest to almost no one today”) or I would never have finished this literary work.
4. At one point, I was planning to read my translated version of The Canterbury Tales and then read the original poem in Middle English (I have a copy at home) and compare them and make a video for youtube, and be very detailed and draw from supporting works, etc. But now I’m not going to do that. I’m happy to let Chaucer go!

I cannot say that a very long book made up of alternatingly fairly boring or alarming tales, which actually has no proper wrap-up or ending, is very good. If I had to “rate” it, The Canterbury Tales would get 2 stars–one for the plethora of mentions relating to astrology and horoscopy—it IS interesting that everyone used to believe in this alongside Christianity—and because the poetic form was probably once pretty impressive. But it was not a cracking read. I found it more of an Ugh.

*If you go to the Jewish Museum in Erfurt Germany you can see medieval Jewry from the other side, the thriving, cultural side. But this population was also massacred twice and forced to relocate several times. It is a real learning experience.

Well, hello again! (That was a very long “day” spanning from June 13th right to the last day of June!) In today’s post I will update you about the highs of the PhD, as there have been a few good things going on lately. Really, one cannot take the low times too seriously, there have been worse times in my PhD than the vague depression that I went on about in my last post, of having no money to pay my bills, and other assprted trifles. And I feel that complaining lowers one’s chances of being taken seriously, of being a SUCCESS.

I have been thinking about success off and on the last while, which is a completely useless thing to do. It’s uncertain if my work will ever be completed, much less whether it will be a success. And there are a lot of dice games played when one is trying to win a job in academia, so much that every time I think about the Future—I just have to remember to shake myself because you CAN’T know. So don’t think about success. Have a sneaking suspicion that somehow you are destined for greatness, sure, but don’t speak it aloud to friend or foe. The world is too willing to test you.

But the good things, yes. One good thing I did was that I went to Berlin to visit my tablets in the museum where they repose, the rarest unreadable things in the world—and I actually, because I am on the slowest improvement curve in the world (but hey, at least it’s trending UP) I actually worked hard. I think this is my fourth or fifth time to visit my tablets (I hope it is only the fourth) and previously, I have kind of dithered, been distracted, and have not used my precious time in the hermetically sealed tablet room particularly well.

This time however, I was on point and engaged, and somehow, my mind was clear (maybe getting away from your surroundings, even for 2 days, really does help) I had lots of ideas, I checked all ten tablets allotted to me, and I almost finished drawing one side of a large tablet which seems to contain literature (that no one has ever even tried to read). The process of checking tablets sign-by sign for the most minor details (details which you can’t even see on enlarged computer scans) is called “collation” by the way. (Jargon!) Assyriology is an arcane discipline which requires one to actually see the artefacts with their own eyes, and the study room at the Vorderasiatisches Museum Berlin is really a haven in a wild world.

Another positive thing that I am doing for myself/ putting myself through is going to the annual conference for Assyriologists and Near Eastern Archaeologists (also Hittitologists, I suppose they are in there too). I wasn’t planning on it, but I got myself in just under the deadline, and now I am presenting a short paper. This is something GOOD for me to do, as I am afraid even our tiny community might forget that I am still working on the PhD, as I haven’t finished. (I have suffered a lot this month comparing myself to German PhD students who “often” (a kind friend recently told me it is debatable how common this is) finish their PhDs in 3 years flat. We are coming up to the end of my fourth….but I must just stay strong, keep going , plan and execute (the plans, not myself…poor taste, I’m aware…)

Anyway, I am going to attend the conference, and it’s actually quite soon. I’m preparing. I hope to say something useful and slightly provoking, and harvest all the input I can for my own basically unwritten dissertation. I know, its too late for it to be “basically unwritten”–but I said this blog was not going to be One Big Panic. That was last post. It’s not so easy you know, to make yourself write. I didn’t think I was scared of writing, but the articles I “need” to read keep ballooning, not getting fewer, and I have to wonder if maybe I actually AM scared of writing.

Ok, fine. Right now I really have to put the pedal down in order to get my conference speech done, but I promise the two readers of this blog that when I get back from Paris (le sigh!) I will take the advice of the only dissertation-writing book which will not give the reader heartburn—and that is Joan Bolker’s Writing Your Dissertation in 15 Minutes a Day (1998).

It is one where basically, the wisdom is there for all to see in the title, but nevertheless, it is harder to put into practice than you might think.

In the second half of July my boyfriend and I will also be moving to a new flat, which IS DEFINITELY a wonderful new thing, as I can’t wait to get out of shared accommodation. We are packing now, in the evenings, and there are a million things to attend to in closing our flat, but such is life. Actually, in Bolker’s book, there are 3 things that you are not supposed to do during your PhD, as follows: 1. Move house, 2. Go on long trips and 3. Get a puppy. As I have been back and forth to Canada at least a month each year of my diss, to see family and to work, and due to the fact that we cherish a hope of getting a pug and naming him Bertie, I will be three for three on Bolker’s list of forbidden tasks. And yet, life must be lived as it comes.

I recommend 15 Minutes a Day… as the gentlest book out there on doing a PhD, (for what I consider, the right reasons). It’s also incredibly sweet (and basically a historical artefact, going on about the agonizing decision one faces when choosing between word-processing or using a typewriter). I still have another guide that I picked up in 2008 and which might as well be called How to Make Yourself a Knife-Sharp Competition-Destroying Hard-Work No-Fun Machine, which I will not mention, as obviously it is my secret weapon. (That IS a joke!) I am not sure why I hold onto that guide though. Maybe because German PhDs certainly are choose-your-own-adventures. (And that’s why I came here). But if you need reassurance, Bolker’s book starts from the premise that you will be undertaking a PhD very much for your own personal improvement and satisfaction.

And, at the end of the day, that’s all you have.

Hi! I’ve not checked in for awhile. Dare I say that there hasn’t been time? I did want to be one of those “regular posters”— but I know that the point of this blog (what it’s starting to morph into) is not to push out “content”, but to chronicle my personal journey. Who knows, maybe forever, as I plan on being a Slow Scholar for the long haul. It is my ideal lifestyle, my wished-for vocation–I just have to make it work.

Happily, I cannot remember the final weeks of May very well. I was mired in a general Anxiety with no particular cause (this just happens sometimes, once in awhile I have a week where it’s just Existential Dread Week, no matter what I do) but it passes. (I have to remember that it always passes). Does this happen to other people? Maybe I should mark it on the calendar to keep track. Is it physiological, or the madness of the moon? Or just the regular, cyclical Doubt derived from being a human with one short life?

The thing is, life is going so unabashedly well right now, my usual state is happiness and all my external circumstances are fine (indeed fortunate). This helped me to remember, in the midst of the plaguing Uncertainty, that this unexplained Unease, would in time, lift.

And it did. Thankfully.

Looking back, I can be much more cool about it (as I am removed from it) and I can provide a short summary of what was actually happening (all anguish extracted). I had two set-backs during the last little while, if I’m totally honest, the feelings of Malaise actually happened before the setbacks. If I can give any advice from this, it is that we may not know why we feel a bit miserable sometimes—so during this time it’s best not to act. When something less than ideal actually happens however, something concrete and objective, then is the time to assess, do your best, and act.

Setback #1, which hit in the beginning of June, was that I realized that I had had a piece of data-collection work for my thesis done twice–and that I had PAID for it to be done twice. Ugh I cried to the heavens! I don’t have resources to burn like this! And there is still SO MUCH data that needs collection!

Sometimes, when money is so tight and I am trying to do my best to manage it, and unexpected expenses crop up when you are trying so hard, I like to say a personal nonsense verse to myself to calm me: “It’s fine—I will get it back 800-fold.” (Why “800”—no one knows). But it helps calm me down. Because there is always the potential money is lost, what can you do? You have to let it go and look to the future. In this case, I realized that I have a lot of irons in the fire, that this was bound to happen eventually if I didn’t step up my organizational game (which I have now done, with lists of tablets in Dropbox, on paper, AND in my phone). In this way, life grew me.

Setback #2 is still sitting on the fence, deciding if it is truly a “setback” or not. Possibly the source of the Malaise, I was feeling suddenly Overwhelmed in the beginning of June (more so than normal). After much suffering, I realized that I was constantly wondering whether my PhD project is too big, on some lower-level of consciousness. Finally, I realized, that if I just “think” my project is too big, I’m just idling in Uncertainty. I have to do the actual calculations!

As W. Edwards Deming said:

“Without data you are just another person with an opinion.”

Too true. Eventually I realized that I had to go back to my original (read: WAY TOO OVERZEALOUS) time-frame, and actually realistically estimate the ACTUAL time everything is going to take, by counting the blocks of texts on individual tablets (I study ancient Sumerian clay tablets if I haven’t said before), starting from the very real standpoint of early June (now, and not an imaginary ideal point in the past). This only too 40 minutes to do (but until I did it I was living in an unhappy daze) and I came up with some startling figures.

You see, for my thesis I intended to study 138 ancient clay tablets in depth. (Originally this total was over 800—so melts snow in the sun). I had told myself that 138 is fine, I will do 8 per month and finish by the middle of next year (2020). There are 2 problems with this plan: one is that not all tablets are tablets the same, some have 20 columns of written text on them, some have 2, and the second is that so far this year I have been engaged on one of the most difficult (um, in the world) tablets, so that my monthly accomplishments hang around 2 tablets studied, not 8.

In fact, to do my whole study as it stands now, assuming no Setbacks (but also no assistants) it will take 3 years 2 months from June of this year (just to get all the data!!!) And, if I cut about 45 tablets out (25%-ish of the corpus) it will still take 2 years 4 months. Being confronted with reality in this way was indeed necessary, but it did give me a couple worried nights.

But, when you are IN it, when this is what you’ve chosen, freiwillig as the Germans say–this is your life! I can do it, I’ll find a way.

Stay tuned for tomorrow’s post wherein I describe the 2.5 new Good Things that have developed over the last little while.

Ciao!

Recently all my spare minutes added up, and they took the form of the novel “Ring for Jeeves” by P.G. Wodehouse. Actually, these were mostly stolen minutes, in the way that I made them work double-time, I was actually working on a database while I listened to this book. It is narrated superbly Martin Jarvis on YouTube here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fC3eSQBCavs he does a lovely job and all the voices, it’s really fabulous. Perhaps I even got triple value out of these 5 hours, as the job of cutting and pasting material into the database was so mechanical that I could listen to something at the same time as I got paid, and the entertainment was FREE.

It made me think that I will someday search out other audio versions of Wodehouse novels, but I didnt exactly run to do this. These novels (well, there are 90 of them so they may not all be the same! Although quick Google searches suggest otherwise) are, as one critic has said, “saccharine sweet.” In a good way, like candy is good, but too much makes your teeth ache. This novel is one that you could hear while getting ready in the morning, with half an ear, for some very pleasant background babbling. Perhaps they deserve more attention, but they don’t demand it.

It’s a bit like kindness, an experience so easy to overlook or forget, great humour, which makes you snort through your nose (this book provided that for me) is probably hard work to construct and maintain; what lies behind he lightness might have been rigorous chiseling.

I really appreciated it, as I love word play and a general sense of madness. The characters in this one (actually a novel with Jeeves the Butler who most people will recognise even if they have never read or seen a Wodehouse work, but one in which Bertie Wooster does not appear) were BONKERS. It was so enjoyable, but very hard to describe. It was a collision of silliness, a pile of send-ups, stacked to the sky.

For example, there is a character named Rory, who is a toff who now cheerfully works in a department store, he is the joke of a stereotype, and used to send-up everything from the aristocracy to hot-water bottles. Yes, he defames hot-water bottles, before moving on, in a split second, to be egregiously ridiculous in another vein.

Basically, think of a really good conversation with a couple of friends, maybe you’ve had a bit to drink and EVERYTHING is funny, you are all a bunch of real CHARACTERS, and you hold forth on various topics, piling insincerity on truth, creating hilarity, and everyone is laughing a LOT. Really good conversations like this can be rare, unless you practice with other equally verbose characters often, until you trust the other members of the troupe to rise to the occasion and egg it on further. But in real life jokes only hang in the air as long as smoke, they float away and die, as if they’ve never happened. Well, Wodehouse was there with you, on your best and funniest night, and he preserved your wit. He polished it up a bit though, perfected it and now it sings.

I was not a bit surprised to learn from Wikipedia that P.G Wodehouse had written musical comedies in the thirties and forties. Ring for Jeeves is just like watching a stage play, I’m not even sure that reading more of these novels in print is the right way to experience them. However I do want to order a few, and keep them in my medicine cupboard. If you feel depressed there is no better cure. Just don’t overdo the dosage!

Last Sunday I received a thin rejection letter from a scholarship fund. I’ve been waiting for a reply for about 6 months (and the application process had dragged on for 6 months before that). It was my last chance to get funding for this sprawling PhD project, it didn’t come, it’s not happening and I just have to face it: It’s not going to get easier than it has been. I’m not going to be able to pay my assistants without seriously cutting into my food budget, or taking money off my credit card (real talk). I’m not going to save 300 dollars a month against the impending landslide of my student loans as I’d been rosily picturing in spare moments.

In one way, I’ve lost nothing, I’m at the same point I always was, having to work alongside doing my research, which will likely double the completion time. That’s fine. I guess it has to be, as I’ve designed this project myself and am committed to seeing it through. And, so few people can win the big scholarships after all, they must have thousands of applicants, so it’s hardly even a let-down. It’s just—

I needed the vote of confidence in my project, almost as much as the money.

Every other person I know who has finished a PhD has had funding in what I can only imagine were princely amounts. (They probably weren’t, but from the outside, that’s what it looks like). And more than just their having the ability to devote more time to their research, they could relax on an existential plane, knowing that someone with authority had said “wow, it’s really WORTH IT that Student X does that particular PhD study. That’s what the world needs!”

And no one is saying that to me.

As this is hardly the first rejection, as I am basically a hard-boiled egg with legs by this point (bobbing in the Sea of First World Problems) I didn’t even shed a tear when I heard of the death of my last hope. I just cancelled my evening plans and breathed rather forcefully through my nose for awhile. Everyone I know who has finished has had funding. The whole time. But not me. It’s fine. My debts are something I’ve grown expert at repressing, but it’s fine. My project is a good one, experimental, self-designed, it’s going to answer a question that actually fills a gap in the research, but it’s not going to get funding. Fine.

It’s fine it’s fine it’s fine at least I believe in me it’s fine.

There is a lot that could be said about the big questions of whether we have to suffer for our art, or to what degree we are our work. I am not going to get into those today. I just want to make the point here that no one can prove that you aren’t what you think you are capable of being. And that you can say NO—to the assessments of others– and even to the assessments of funding bodies who pay people just for the purpose of assessing you. You can grit your teeth and not believe it.

So I sat outside on Tuesday this week, searching my soul with the aid of an Aperol Spritz (truly the Queen of cocktails) and allowing for the possibility that my soul might whisper back to me “I don’t want to do this anymore.” I paused, but nothing spoke. It seems to still not even be a question. I’m not going to stop. I couldn’t stop if I tried. As someone once said (I think it was Harry Potter) “They’ll know…in the end.” They’ll see, when it’s done. Then it will be “And you did it ALL, without support?” That’s right. It’s been several years since I bought stocks in the vindictive refusal to quit—it’s really amazing how much power they can generate! And how much interest they accrue over time.

Things that scare me:

Not knowing what I think “I should know by now”

—You likely DIDN’T make the best use of your time in the past, and you absolutely must forgive yourself for this.

That I might never be able to grasp certain concepts, even if I try

—And you will never know, unless you try. The obstacle probably is the way.

That I might secretly NOT want to learn the concepts I am trying to learn

—That would indeed be a crisis of scholarship. Go on until you can’t keep going any more.

That I might put so much effort into learning something, only to forget it

Most things you ever learn, you forget. You have to keep reading similar things, to engraine something into your head. You have to live your scholarship, and then you will be able to keep it.

Being considered as someone who “doesn’t work” by my family. Or appearing to work much less hard than my hard-working family.

If I could just get over this hurdle, my fear of being secretly judged while they do tremendously well at not openly judging me at all…This fear exists mainly in my own head, and I must conquer it!

There, now that I have opened my new blog with ALL the fears…

This morning I woke up at 5.30 with Neville Longbottom on the brain. This probably happens to many people. You know, he wasn’t very good at things but he achieved success when he tried hard and found what he was passionate about (animate plants). He certainly deserved to exist, and even had a glorious destiny tied into the lives and plans of certain other heroes (and maybe I do too! Although I would rather be the lead…) But without going too far, thinking of Neville has helped me to continue trying. I know I will get discouraged again, but I will try again, and again, and just suuuuuck at it, until it gets better. I shall grow my own confidence, despite my self-doubt, like Neville.

Because it is not too late. It’s never too late until you are dead (or until you see the perfect job for you advertised, but you need to finish your thesis, and you have never taught anyone anything) –then you are too late for that job but not too late for the next one, and it’s not too late to stop suffering from self-imposed intellectual torment!

Have a great day, everybody!