Graduate School, Year One: A Recap

Still in the top three days of my life, that February 1.

Every now and then, I think back to that day and I wonder how it is that I got so old so fast. I mean it,… seriously old. I look at myself in the mirror sometimes and I can’t believe who I’m looking at. I mean,… it looks just like me,… only really fucking old. I can’t be about to turn 44 years old, can I? It’s just dumbfounding to me that I can remember things that happened in 1982 so vividly, it’s like it was last week. And I wake up one day, and Dorian Fucking Gray is looking back at from over the bathroom sink.

Just a minor – really depressing – observation before we move on to the subject at hand (you can’t go very far in this blog before you hit something depressing,… or observational,… I find it humorous,… you might not,… what the fuck are you still reading for, then, douchetube?). But my age does serve as a nice transition to observations about my first year in graduate school.

Remember,… I’m old.

I didn’t sneak into graduate school – nobody really does. But my undergrad grades were pretty exceptional when I finally got around to finishing my degree. My GRE scores were pretty high, too. I thought getting into my program would be pretty much of a slam dunk. It was,… but only after begging a professor to please send my letter of recommendation (that she had offered to write two months prior) in by way of email on the last day of the application period. And she wasn’t pretty,…. Sorry,… just had to get the word “pretty” in this paragraph for the fourth fucking time. (Don’t you know any other adjectives, John? You dummy!)

So I got in. The problem turned into how to handle it. I spent the summer preparing myself mentally for the challenge,… by going to the pool and watching marathon sessions of “24” while eating Publix sub sammies with my kid. Seriously,… I think that’s all we did in the entire month of July. I knew that the workload of my first term in grad school was going to be daunting – I wanted to put that off for a bit. Plus there was all that shitty “crazy” part going on in my head that comprise the early part of this blog at the time. “How to handle it” turned into “can I even try?”

By the time my first class rolled around in late August, I was still pretty much bat shit crazy. Angry, depressed, skinny, ugly…. Okay, I threw in that last one as a sort of editorial comment. But on Tuesday night, I walked into my first classroom. Only eight other people in this class – nowhere to hide.

I can’t really talk any shit about the people I went to school with, because they might actually read this blog in a moment of sheer panic at the prospect of actually dying from complete boredom. But, honestly, even if I wanted to talk shit about them, I really would have no basis for any sort of argument to that extent. But that night (and Thursday, too, when I got into the other class with fifteen students) they scared the ever-living piss out of me. I knew they would be smart and articulate, but they were smarter and,… uhh,… articulate-r,… than I thought. I knew they would all have a significant scholarly background in history, but their knowledge of history and historiography exceeded my expectations. I knew they would be young, BUT THESE FUCKERS NEEDED FUCKING DIAPERS! Holy shitcake, did I feel old when I got in there. Now,… to be fair (to myself, fuck everyone else), there were two students in the class that were older than I. Shocking, I know, but still true. But these other ones,… Jesus-Christ-on-a-pony, these fucks were young. And then,… just to make me feel completely ill-suited,… the most profound, prescient, well-thought-out points came out of their little baby-like mouths. I truly wanted to punch somebody in the testicles. (Isn’t “testicles” a great word?) It made me feel like my knowledge of history consisted of, “I like old things that happened.”

And then there were the professors,… now I’m CERTAINLY not going to talk shit about any of them. But, again, no grounds to do so. These people are brilliant. I mean top-ten history-program graduates. Published writers. Ivy-Fucking-Leaguers. Together, they could build a generation of superkids. Which is helpful, because some of them are married to each other. (I really might be giving too much away about these people, but I’m saying nice shit about them, so I think I can get away with it. Fuck it.) Anyway,… the point is,… I was intimidated.

Both classes that week were just introductory,… letting students know what would be expected of them for the next fifteen weeks (so they were relatively short). And, ever-so-briefly I thought, “I might be able to do this.”

And then, the reading started.

I’m not saying it’s a lot of work, but you read 500 pages about the nascent days of what we consider to be the modern era of U.S. foreign relations and the historiography of the budding professional historian in the first week and tell me how you fucking feel then. So,… yeah, I guess I’m saying it’s a lot of work. It was so much work that I actually e-mailed one of the professors and told her that I felt I was underperforming and was unsure I was good enough. Well, she gave me real encouragement and strongly suggested I gut it out and do my best. So I did. In that first semester, I read thousands of pages. I wrote thousands of words. I spent thousands of ten-minute intervals doing work to prepare. (I can’t say “thousands of hours,” because that just wouldn’t be true,… and “thousands of minutes” just sounds stupid,… then again, so does what I actually wrote.)

And I learned a ton. I learned about trends in historical thought. I learned about methodologies and theoretical schools. I really learned how to read better and with deeper, more-thorough understanding. But most of all, I learned that I did belong in graduate school. I DO belong in graduate school. I’m not saying I’m as smart as some of the baby-faced motherfuckers in the department, but sometimes I keep up with them. Plus,… I can kick most of their asses,… so I got that going for me.

But that first term was devoid of something that really would fill out the whole graduate-school experience. I kind of insulated myself, and didn’t make any real friends. I could talk to people and maybe exchange a laugh or two, but I didn’t have any sort of real connection with any of the other students. In fact, I probably felt more comfortable with my professors than I did my classmates.

That was something I had to rectify in the spring.

Here I am, twelve-hundred words in, and I haven’t even gotten to my second semester yet (some of you fucks knew this was coming, too, didn’t you? I can be a long-winded prick).

We’ll pick up in January when we all come back to the rodeo. But I have to end with my little literary trick:

That cold day in January, I had a boner the size of New Hampshire.

Next Time: Graduate School, Year One: A Recap, Part Two – or – Johnny Spreads his Wings and Drops a Hunk of Birdshit on Your Windshield.