So today, I'd like to use my own corner of the internet to offer a hearty CONGRATULATIONS! to my friend and classmate Catherine, who successfully defended her master's thesis yesterday. Like Catherine, I completed my master's degree while holding a graduate assistantship, and I seriously doubt whether I could have done this while also rearing two delightful little girls, as she has done.
Catherine, thank you for helping me to imagine otherwise in a field where doing serious work and committing yourself to your family are often seen as mutually exclusive acts. Your encouragement, support, and example have provided me with so much peace of mind over the past few rollercoaster semesters. Thank you for reminding me to take my time and for reassuring me by showing me that another smart, thoughtful, and caring person shares my priorities. I'm so thrilled to see you reach this major goal and can't wait to see what you take on next, even if I have to watch it unfold online.
And Nora says congratulations, too. : )
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Well, this made me cry. In a really good way. Thank you so much for the encouragement. It really does mean the world.
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure if you attended the Walter Benn Michaels lecture several weeks back. But he basically made a case against affect in terms of art, and argued against the impact made by emotional investment in social movements and their attending aesthetics. (His claim was that celebrating difference reifies difference in damaging ways. So, the upshot was that affect should be minimized or completely left out of art and the study of art in order to address more *important* issues.) And this post's sort of connection and affectation (in a good way) reminds me why I left his lecture so heartbroken. The emotions of experience *do* matter, and the ways we affect, celebrate, and encourage each other has great merit. It is some very important work, in its own right. Thank you so much for everything!
I can't wait to see Nora tomorrow around Tawes. Thank you, thank you, thank you.
Yikes. I had been feeling sorry about missing the Benn Michaels talk, but it sounds like my time was better spent at home. If that's his vision for literary studies, count me out!
DeleteFew things bother me more than unacknowledged privilege, so one of the things that irritates me the most about fellow graduate students is when they complain about the work load or act as though graduate school is a "means to the end" of securing a professorship. I am in graduate school because the work itself is reward enough for being here. Getting to spend my time reading, thinking, and writing beside people who also find this type of work rewarding is icing on the cake, but is also an important part of the experience. If it hadn't been for the personal relationships I developed with classmates and professors as an MA student, I never would have considered the PhD. And if it wasn't for the intellectual generosity of friends and mentors, I would be much less inspired to get up and continue this work every day. If Walter Benn Michaels would say that my affective relationship to my work means I don't belong in graduate school, I'm just thankful he didn't have a say in whether I was admitted to the program.
Can't wait to congratulate you in person tomorrow! : )