PhDing: justification

One month from today, I move to Montreal in preparation for starting my PhD in English at McGill.

I read daily about the state of academia and the PhD process, and as anyone else who reads such material knows, the vista awaiting grad students, adjuncts, and scholars trying to get tenure and grants can resemble more of a zombie wasteland with the half-alive bodies of our former comrades stumbling about and just trying to make it a few more steps than the ivory towers and grassy knolls of campus.

An exaggeration? Perhaps. However, resources like 100 Reasons NOT to go to Grad School,  Pannapacker's Graduate School in the Humanities: Don’t Go, Schuman's controversial Thesis Hatement, and Skallerup's excellent and unapologetically honest College Ready Writing series exist for a reason. And these texts are hardly the beginning; Googling "should I go to grad school" is overwhelming.

I feel, therefore, like I need to justify my choice to go to grad school. This decision isn't just because I'm scared of doing anything else! I've thought it through! In a way, I feel like a truant child; I want to be part of my favourite adults' party, but they're telling me that for most of the members, the party is actually pretty wretched.

I don't necessarily want to be at this party for the long term, but I think I could at least hang out for a little bit.

I did both my undergrad and MA in English at the University of Saskatchewan, in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. Saskatoon, the largest city in the province at about 240000 people, has been my home during my degree; before that, I lived in small towns of around 700 people.

I did well in my undergrad, due in no small degree to the excellent faculty at USask. In particular, Dr. Allison Muri took me under her wing, recruiting me to English during my first year, helping me get a job in the Library in my second summer doing digitization work, and hiring me as an RA for my senior years of my undergrad. I can say, quite frankly, that I would not be where I am today without her mentorship.

Because of my high marks, but also, I suspect, because of the amount of research I had built up by the time I applied to my MA, I was awarded a SSHRC to do my MA. After living on student loans, scholarships, and a bit of money my (lower-middle class) parents had saved up for me and my siblings' education, SSHRC felt like an outrageous amount of money.

During my final year of undergrad and my MA, I was planning on going to do a PhD, except for the few months early in my MA when I had an existential crisis (WHY am I here, what am I even doing, does this matter, am I good enough, ack!). With a publication under my belt, a clear research goal going into my MA that built off my undergrad research, and, of course, good marks, I applied to SSHRC for PhD and to 6 institutions in Canada.

I was accepted to five of the six institutions and, as I discovered a few months ago, awarded a SSHRC.

I had better financial offers from other institutions, but chose McGill for a couple reasons. First, I will be supervised by one of the top scholars in 18th century literature. Secondly, they have a solid digital humanities group developing. And, third, McGill is in Montreal.

For a small-town prairie girl who hadn't been on a plane until last summer, Montreal is a big deal and a big draw.

So, summary: I can live in Montreal (where, as an anglophone, it would be very difficult for me to live otherwise), study at one of the best institutions under an amazing scholar, and be making more money than I have ever before. I will be able to live well above what I have in the past.

Well, but what about after? you ask. And a good question it is.

My answer? I will take it when it comes, just like I decided I would after doing English as a major in my undergrad.

I know the state of academic jobs. I am not going into this commitment expecting to get a tenure-track, or even adjunct, job afterwards. My tentative plan if I have no job prospects after is to go teach English overseas. My identity is tied to academia right now, but I know I've done enough volunteer and summer work in other areas to know that there are other things that I would also be happy doing the rest of my life.

Grad school can be isolating and competitive, but I am outgoing enough and am so oblivious to drama that I think (hope?) I will be fine. I know only my supervisor and a not-yet-met cousin in Montreal, so I know it will be lonely at times at the beginning - but isn't making new friends and groups part of the adventure?

Nobody will read your research, you say! Well, nobody read my material during undergrad except for professors and I was the only person doing 18th century and, to a lesser degree, DH in the grad program at USask. I'm used to my research not being understood or relevant to my friends, never mind my cohort.

Grad school is full of angst and depression and doubting oneself. Maybe. It is for some people, and isn't for others.

Grad school can drag on, though - what if you go on past your funding period? What if you are a grad student FOREVER? Well, my supervisor is retiring four years after I start and will supervise me one year from retirement, so I have extra incentive to finish it on time. I finished my undergrad in four years and my MA in one, so I have some good precedents set, at least?

Hopefully, I won't look back at this post in future years and shake my head at my naïveté.

Or, rather, I will, but I will also recognize that it was worth it.

Wizard of Oz Shoes - Critical Making

From January to April of 2013, during my MA, I was in an awesome grad course called The Book as Object: Fine Printing, Artists’ Books, Chapbooks, and Graphic Novels (taught by the amazing Dr. Jon Bath). 

The course included several critical making assignments. I'm planning on posting about all the ones I did and on the benefits of critical making in general, but for now, here is the one where the constraint was to make one textual object out of another textual object.

I've always wanted to make a pair of shoes that had a text of some sort on them, so when this assignment came up I was prepared. I had an old pair of ballet flats, mod-podge, and even a text picked out: The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, in which, of course, shoes figure quite prominently.

I found a copy of the first edition of the WWoO online (go check it out - it is gorgeous!), did some planning, and then got to work.

My general plan was to use quotations I liked as a background, with favourite images overtop. The planning is where the majority of the "critical" part of the making comes in: what quotations do I choose? Do I arrange in chronological order? What images are appropriate to place with which textual material? I ended up going more by the shape of the text and where I needed it than placing it in context - the constraint of using the shape of one form on the other was more difficult to maneuver than expected. In some places, like with the one scene of the Tin Man, I tried to place a quotation near him; however, since you would not be using these shoes to read the text primarily, I took aesthetics and practicality as my first concerns.

I quickly found it was more difficult than I expected. Because I was doing this basically in a one-off making session, I didn't have time to try arrange everything; I had to estimate as best as I could. Furthermore, mod-podge didn't stick especially well to the faux-leathery material of the shoes, but I discovered the key was to apply liberally and then give it a lot of time to dry.

The most difficult part was definitely fitting around the curves of the shoes.

I did the work in layers.

  

Luckily, I printed off double copies of the textual material. It was really hard to judge how much I would need to cover the shoes, and ended up using nearly all the text I printed off, even just to use as a kind of filler underneath other layers so that the original shoe wouldn't show through.

Of course, predictably, the whole process made quite a mess.

But the finished product, I think, was worth it! Unfortunately, I'm going to have to modify them a bit more, because the paper along the edge made them a bit too small to wear, but overall? I think they turned out lovely.

I later took a black marker to color where the paper went over the edge of the sole. 

Ignore my funny coloured feet - poor circulation, a cold day, and a weird flash/colour thing going on don't help!
But you can see how on the side I placed the images. In the future, I would place more, I think.

Clarissa: pt. 1

Clarissa is a long book.

I have the Penguin Classics edition, and it clocks in at just under 1500 small print, large size pages, not including any of the periphery material. I knew it was one of the longest novels in the English language, but I thought, eh, I've read my fair share of epic fantasy, this can't be so bad.

And then my brick came in the mail.

For the sake of comparison.

I'm reading it for a grad class that starts next January (insert "good thing I'm starting it now!" joke), but also because it is a standard of 18th century literature.

However, I've actually enjoyed reading it thus far, even though I feel like I'm making hardly any progress.

My thoughts overall?

Argh! The plot is so frustrating, but in a way that enhances the work. I'm right in the middle of L21, and Clarissa is struggling with her family, particularly her mother at this point, because she refuses to marry Mr. Solmes. The narrative is told through series of letters, and the system has thus worked very well to express Clarissa's emotional hardship. I can't imagine such a text being done in a different medium; what I would find contrived and self-indulgent in a more traditional narrative comes across as organic and sincere.

Anna Howe, Clarissa's closest friend, has written a couple letters and has been the receiver of most of Clarissa's, but I am intrigued to see how other characters, particularly Lovelace, are portrayed through their writing.

I keep translating Clarissa's experience to a modern context and stereotyped (but obviously not always occurring) teen experience: "Agh! So frustrating! Odds are stacked against her, and she has awful parents and family, and she should just tell everyone to #(*$ off and go live on her dairy farm!" I have this thought multiple times on a single page. Of course, I often have to reread certain sentences in order to make sure I actually understand what is being said, so that textual frustration kicks in too.

Compared to the other (very limited) 18th century texts that I have read, though, Clarissa is in many ways far more accessible, a factor mostly due to the highly personal and sincere tone which, in turn, is influenced by the letter format. 

I started Clarissa on June 1. It is now the 11th and I'm on page 115. If I have any hope of reading anything else this summer, I'm going to have to amp up my reading speed and time.