February 18, 2012 10:30pm

I am throwing you into the middle of things, because no story can really begin at the beginning.  You've missed too much; there's no point in trying to recap.  I'll just have to fill in the blanks for you as we go along.  Trust me, if it's important, you'll figure it out. 

10:30 at night, my hands are aching, the hum from the generator that keeps the nearby indoor skating rink cold is going to drive me mad.  I'm all fired up; I'm indignant; I'm passionate.  I'm wondering about the "way things are done" and trying to figure out whether it's that weirdos like me can't always cope with the system, or whether it's the system that can't cope with weirdos like me.  I'm in the second year of my PhD and I'm on the fast track, months ahead of schedule, according to my supervisor.  She is not pleased with me because I had a bit of a freak out and, as she put it, turned my schedule into her emergency.  I can feel the resentment wafting off of her when we meet.  I'm asking too much. 

Am I really asking too much?  I'm asking for straightforwardness in a process that is muddy at best.  It's ridiculously illogical.  I am finalizing the reading list for my candidacy examinations, and I want to know when those will actually happen.  I want to make plans.  I have a life outside of grad school.  She is irritated because she doesn't want to look beyond the very next step - have a little lookey-loo at what's on the list so far, mull it over, tweak it a little bit, lil more mulling, lil more tweaking... I am pushing for a date.  When can I get out of limbo and say, "this is what my schedule will look like for the next x months and this is when it will end"? 

She says the list must be approved by the committee "no later than three months prior to the examination" - but the date of the examination doesn't have to be declared until one month prior, so we don't have to worry about that right now.  I stumble over my words, my brain moving too slowly to figure out what the problem with that statement is until it's too late, the meeting's over, and I'm at home stewing about it.  Finally, it hits me: how can you know if something is three months prior to something else without having that latter thing fixed in time?  It doesn't seem logical.  "Three months prior" means "count backwards three months".  You can't do that without an end point. 

Now I'm angry.  The program is illogical.  This small fault of logic is just one minute example of a broader system that simply isn't working. It's full of inconsistencies, unstandardized, unequal.  It unbalances me.  Some days, it unhinges me.  

And I'm angry, because I am a critical thinker being trained in traditions of critical thinking, but my very own life is apparently out of bounds.  My supervisor scoffs at my inclusion of autoethnography on my reading list; she calls it 'confessional', attention-seeking,  But I'm thinking that the rejection of autoethnography might mask the denial of experience.  Perhaps it's easier for her because she has the damn power.  I am the one making claims from the underside.  I am the one on the margins.  I'm the one who experiences, painfully and humiliatingly, desperately and terrifyingly, the consequences of all those little idiosyncrasies that add up to things not being fair. 

It's been a long time since I've been in a situation where I was constantly surrounded by people who had a higher status than I did, simply by virtue of their having finished a degree that I am currently working on.  It didn't matter so much in undergrad - or during my M.A. for that matter.  I wasn't focused on living in the adult world.  My undergraduate life was about getting through classes and hanging with friends.  My M.A. was about sharing with my colleagues the joys of developing our  intellectual abilities; teachers were secondary to our own self-discovery.  But since then I've been out in the world, working, being treated like an equal whose contributions are valued and desired, earning my living, producing work - applied work, work that my academic field devalues as 'disconnected' without knowing anything about it - building a life.  Now I'm back in school, and surely I can't be the only person with a working history, a career to go back to, returning to school for professional development, and being shocked at the sudden demotion that comes with being "just" a student.

The system is designed for apprentices, not equals.  We're supposed to think, develop our own scholarship, publish or perish, work hard, get financing, do something really great - but not too great.  We're certainly not supposed to see our own work as of comparable value to that of our professors.  But the closer I get to them, the more I realize that their pedestals are just cardboard boxes, sagging under the pressure, about to fold.  They're standing on air.  They're not better than me.  They just got the credential first. 

In my department, we are constantly getting lectured about how 50% of us won't find jobs in academia.  What they seem to forget is that some of us may never have intended to.  I want to be a public scholar, an independent thinker, a voice that anyone can hear.  I want to be a voice that doesn't require an advanced education to comprehend.  And I want to live my life flexibly, balance work and school and family.  I don't want to immerse.  I want my education to bend to my will instead of sacrificing my soul for it.  And although I don't have any evidence of it (yet) I truly believe that I am the wave of the future.  More and more, there are going to be students like me, people with careers, people whose lives are already in full swing, looking for doctoral programs that can fit into their lives instead of programs that they have to fit their lives into.  These people are going to come in assuming, as I did, that as grown ups with professions and lives and minds of their own, they are just entitled to have input into the processes they will undertake as their professors are. The system will have to adapt if it wants to keep attracting students. 

And that means the interpersonal dynamics will have to adapt.  My supervisor, in trying to slow down my fast track, told me today that "this isn't how it usually works", and that most students "don't have anything other than school going on" - that they are not "supposed" to have anything other than school going on.  I got caught up in the power dynamic, as I have been doing for the last year and half, since I started this degree. I swallowed up all of the brash, abrupt, bitchy things that I say when I'm complaining to my friends and I agreed with her even though I disagree vehemently.  She isn't doing me some favour by supervising me, where my asking for more might be pushing some social boundary of obligation.  She's doing her damn job.  If I want to dictate the pace, I should be able to dictate the pace.  If I want a straight answer about the timeline, I should be able to ask the question. And if the system isn't set up to provide straight answers, equality of experience for all students, and some measure of predictability, well... as a critical researcher, shouldn't she be wondering why the hell not? 

I know I am. 

11:05pm.