Every Sunday night, I decide which things I have to get done that week, which things I want to get done, and which things I'd like to begin if time permits. Then I map out my schedule to allow me to accomplish as many of these things as possible. With one full week to go before spring break, I was looking at my upcoming schedule and stressing out. I was due to attend a conference during break, and I hadn't yet finished writing the paper I was planning to present. (I've heard plenty of stories of people writing papers the night before or as they travel to the conference, but I need to plan ahead. Procrastination is not really an option when, on any given day, your toddler could start vomiting and change all your plans.) I also found myself feeling apathetic about teaching, even though we were set to discuss Katherine Anne Porter. That is when I realized I needed a break. I spent my entire winter break trying to meet an intense deadline, which gave me no time to prepare to teach a new class. Ever since the semester began, I've felt like I'm scrambling to keep up with the immediate deadlines without making much headway on my dissertation.
So I decided: rather than continuing to scramble, I would set a reasonable goal, reach it, and then give myself a break. For that week before break, I decided I would prepare and deliver my lessons, work my hours on the Porter project, and write my conference paper. I made an agreement with myself that whenever those things were finished, I was going to stop working, enjoy the trip to New York, deliver the paper, and then get back to work after the conference was over.
I finished my paper on Friday afternoon, so I kept Nora home for a mother/daughter day on Monday. Then I took her to day care on Tuesday so I could have a day to myself. A whole day to myself! It's amazing how much relaxation you can jam pack into a single day when you don't have a two year old following you around. I took a long nap without setting an alarm. I did some reading for pleasure. I worked on a craft project. I watched an episode of Shameless when Hulu foiled my plans to resume watching Scandal where I left off. I went shopping-- in a store! And tried things on! I got the massage that my mom gifted me two Christmases ago (thanks Mom!). I drank an overpriced smoothie because, on the very few occasions that I skipped class in high school, my friends and I liked to drive to Lake Oswego to get a jamba juice. On Wednesday, I dropped Nora off at school for a half day while I tried to pick up the house, got things ready for our trip, and continued working on my craft project. I'm planning to write a separate blog post about the trip itself, but it was a really great weekend.
On Sunday night at the end of break, I realized I had that old familiar Sunday night feeling-- that ugh, I have to get back to work in the morning feeling. I used to get that feeling every week when I was teaching high school, but I guess it is something I don't often experience as a grad student. Now, there is always some work task hanging over my head, so I live in a perpetual state of knowing I have more to do tomorrow than I can actually accomplish. I was hoping that my break would leave me feeling refreshed, recharged, and excited to resume my work. I am not there yet, but I feel much better than I did before I took the break. I've spent most of my time this past week preparing lesson plans for the next few weeks. I'm hoping this will free up my time and my energy-- both emotional and intellectual-- so that I can begin working on the dissertation again in earnest, and with enthusiasm.
Truth be told, I've done a lot of thinking about how I want to move forward since finding out my project was not nominated for a dissertation fellowship. Within the next month, I should know which funding options are available to me for next year, and some of them are promising. The way the chips have fallen, though, has made me reflect further on the necessity of charting my own path rather than hoping I can make my work fit into the model the English department proposes is the quickest route to degree completion and the best preparation for the job market. So I'm trying to be more conscious of deciding for myself how my time is best spent, and then spending my time in those ways. It's easy to get caught in the trap of trying to figure out what will make me most competitive for fellowships, what will be best for my job prospects, or what will make my dissertation more marketable. But I'm in graduate school because I want to learn, because I find the work rewarding, and because I think I have something to offer as a member of this profession. So from here on out I'm going to try even harder to remember that those are my top priorities.
