Looking Backward

This week, I got a note on facebook from my high school friend Ashley. It's time to join the group she organized to plan our 10 year high school reunion! This did not sneak up on me. I began to be conscious of the fact that I was a member of "The Class of 2000" around the age of 8 or 9, so I can't not be aware of how many years have passed since we left WLHS.

It did make me realize, though, that I have been going through the PhD application process exactly 10 years after going through the college application process for the first time. I can remember well the anxiety it induced the first time through, and this made me feel a little kinship with my 17 year old self. We're not so different, she and I.

I also began to wonder if I would have been pursuing the PhD had I not had such an overwhelmingly positive experience as a Master's student at UMd. The whole thing feels a little serendipitous. How many people decide to go back to school and find that they have one of the top 35 programs in the country in their backyard? When I returned to classes, I felt like I was drowning for about two weeks. Once I started making friends and getting to know my professors, it felt like a place where I belonged. Two of the three professors I had that first term are still two of my favorite ones. If I'd chosen to get my required classes out of the way in the first year, instead of taking all the classes I thought were interesting and leaving the requirements to be completed this year, I don't think I would have fallen in love with graduate school.

And what about the people?

What if Anne-Marie hadn't sat down next to me in one of my first classes and said something like "I noticed that you're married; when was your wedding?" I have convinced her take a class with me every semester since. After having two classes together that first term, it is hard for me to imagine how I would get through a semester if we couldn't talk to each other about the books we're reading and what's going on in our lives. I am constantly plagued by the feeling that all my classmates are further ahead in their thinking than I am, and Anne-Marie always assures me that I, too, have good ideas.

What if the GA I had to work with hadn't been Katie? Katie once told me that she can summarize our personalities as follows: She is the one likely to walk into the office on fire, and I am the one likely to calmly get the fire extinguisher to put the flames out. What would the application process have been like if she and I hadn't been able to debrief how we were feeling about it almost every single day? I'm not sure she realizes that the one with the extinguisher needs the fire as much as the one with the fire needs the extinguisher.

And for some students, the English graduate student pool is their social network. They work within it, study within it, socialize within it, and date within it. It seems to work for a lot of them, but I know it wouldn't work for me. Some days I just need to GET OUT. Luckily, I get to come home to my little townhome every day, where Billy is interested in how my day went but never utters the words "hegemony," "discourse," "exigency," or "representation." It's refreshing. I need the break. In undergrad, I used to wonder how much better I could do at school if I wasn't worried about "boy drama" all the time. A lot better, it turns out. The semester I was with Billy at Valpo was the only one in which I earned a perfect 4.0. Since then, he has not only offered an escape from the "boy drama" and the "classmate drama," but he grounds me. Without that firm place to stand I absolutely know I could not keep up with all of this precarious reaching.

And all along the way, everyone who knew me long before I was a "grad student" checks in to ask me how things are going. To remind me that I have always found ways to be successful. To tell me they are proud of me. To encourage me to keep reaching. Yesterday, one of my classmates from American Studies had to present his paper, and he brought so many of his classmates with him that our professor called it his "entourage." I mentally pictured my entourage. It's pretty spread out, but it's impressive.

Back in 2000, I was really worried about how everything was going to turn out. At 27, I wish I could go back and tell my 17 year old self: "There's nothing to worry about. Some things will go wrong, but many things will go right. You'll make the most of your good fortune, and you'll make things happen for yourself." And perhaps, most importantly, "The people who have been there for you will continue to be there, and you will continue to find new people to add to that foundation."

I have been imagining my 37 year old self telling me the same thing right now.

(Looking Backward by Edward Bellamy is an "utopian novel." The protagonist lives in 1887 but one day wakes up in the year 2000. In 2000, everything that's wrong with the world has been fixed, so this narrative structure allows Bellamy to offer social criticism of his own time. It's pretty fascinating to think about the "solutions" Bellamy imagines... but a little depressing to realize we are still so far away from that ideal.)