bits of this and that: graduate school, part 2

Around October of my first year of graduate school, I became something that I had never truly been – promiscuous. I was promiscuous when it came to my personal relationships in just about every way possible. I was also promiscuous when it came to my work and to my self. I began drinking a lot more than I wanted to and pitied myself a lot more than was healthy. I kept to my regular schedule, up at dawn and down as late as possible, but my waking hours were filled with less and less work, and more and more procrastination and slacking off. In a way, however, this wasn’t all bad. When I began graduate school I was so gung ho that I thought I could do everything as I had always done and still manage school as well. I even drove home to Atlanta for both Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, a combined seven days of travel. I also agreed to work as a production assistant for a show that my then advisor was directing/adapting. I took on much more than I should have and by the time I lost it in late October, I was so jaded that I really didn’t care at all about being in school anymore. And to think, it took just three months. So, what was the positive thing about all this? If I hadn’t gone through all of that, the rest of my graduate career would have most likely been marked by a whole lot of very uninteresting work.

Here’s the scoop: My promiscuity didn’t allow me to get very close to too many people (those that I did get close to, I have remained dear friends with and probably wouldn’t have made it out of graduate school without…I very well might have just run home). It did, however, get me out of the house almost every night where I drank and chatted with a lot of different people. The fact that I didn’t embarrass myself or others too much during that period helped make it so that a lot of people knew me enough to know that I had a decent personality and could be fun to hang out with. It made it so that when I eventually did have my shit together, I found that there were a lot of people who would at least hear me out, if they were unable to help in other ways. Basically I ended up with a lot of people who I could draw on for a variety of reasons. I also ended up with a healthy amount of distrust and cynicism towards graduate school and communication studies in general. This was and is by no means a total distrust. It is, I believe, necessary in any field to question what it is you are a part of, and to know that it will always be larger than yourself and fairly uncontrollable. It should be kind of like skiing a double black diamond. You know that you can do it, and you love doing it, but you also know that at any moment the mountain might turn on you and swallow you up.

I passed the winter alone, house sitting for one of my advisers. During that month I read a lot for pleasure and spent many, many quiet nights alone. During many of those quiet nights I thought back to the previous semester, my determination to stay in school, and what doing so might mean. Primarily, I realized, it meant that I had to conquer those parts of me that wanted to run like hell. I had to find out what they were and confront them to the best of my ability. Though it might sound corny, I had to confront my demons. To help me, I had my new friends and acquaintances, my distrust for what I was about to do, and a commitment to do something that I wanted to do, and not what I was told I should do. Though people had been telling me that I should do what I wanted to do since I began graduate school that fall, I never truly believed them. It wasn’t until I had that time to myself to reflect on that awful semester that I realized that if I didn’t do what I wanted to do, I would really lose it.