From the frying pan into the fire...

Let's see, another original post about how busy and stressed I am...

Well, c'mon! I'm a grad student in a PhD program dammit...isn't being stressed and uncertain written into the acceptance letter or something?

But still, it does seem like this term has been more stressful than most, if not for shear workload and feeling the grad school equivalent of some "biological clock" ticking away...hmmm, more like the "Doomsday clock" perhaps? Right at the point where you think you know what your resesarch is about, and you think you know how you're going to tackle it, you see exactly how much or really how little, time there is to achieve it and get moving before the inertia and sheer force of 'grad-dom' overtakes you and you never wind up finishing.
I think that's where I am now.

Add to that, our annual reviews of our progress in the progrem and tightening of the screws on our research interests and 'efforts at making progress toward an achievable' dissertation. You walk around feeling like everything is quicksand. Or in the case of Metro, where everything is um, 'challenging', there are more hoops to jump through. No, wait... ... Flaming hoops. Yes, flaming hoops, and my ass keeps getting singed on the way through.

For instance after my annual review, and discussions with Advocate and others of my faculty committee, there seem to be concerns about the direction I want to take my dissertation. Concern that I'm trying to study an area that I have no prior first-hand experience in, no working experience in, and therefore it's unlikely I'll be able to teach in it when I'm done (I'm in a very practically based discipline-- prior experience is key). No, unlike many other fields where doing the dissertation research is precisely what sets you up as uniquely qualified to teach what you've just spent a few years researching, living and breathing -- in mine, that's not enough.

No, I'm not even really whining here-- I understand that point and that necessity very well. I'm one of the first to agree that a professor in my field needs real life experience to go along with the research work in order to teach. Hell, I know that's my shortcoming here. Of course, so did Metro when they accepted me into a special program with a stipulation to teach in that field when I was done. But yeah, it's my biggest fear that I'll never have enough cred to get a teaching job when I'm done because of the lack of 'real' work in that area. It's what gives me 'hives' practically, and has me lie awake at night. It's what I've confessed to my shrink (when I had one), to my BF and to Astro, Mambo and the rest. That all this studying, all the research, everything will be for naught because in the end 'how can I teach something I never actually did'?!?

And because my research wants to look at this subset of my field, as a part, there is concern from my committee that it doesn't make sense.

Hell, if we all only did research on what we comfortably know, nothing innovative would ever happen! And if I only did research on what I did in my past, I'm not sure I'd be in grad school at all -- my past was just that, the PAST! And not terribly connected to where I am now-- sure, tangentially, and sure, it all builds like Legos. But it's not a direct-connect, and it's not something I will research.

So do I change my topic? Do I start over and look for new research questions? Do I try and make something out of my work for this 'new' web initiative that Metro has taken over from another college in my field? Are there real research questions there -- because all the ones that have come to my head just seem like marketing issues for this web thing. Do I ditch the topic revolving around history merely because I was never a historian, or a history teacher? Does that really mean I can't possibly understand the importance of new media and new resources in teaching this subject? Or in the power of inquiry-based learning, constructing new learner-centered knowledge from the powerful primary sources we have available? Do I put that all aside because I wasn't an elementary or secondary ed teacher, or a school librarian, or anything else that interacts with kids and education on a daily basis?

Where is the role of passion? of interest? of seeing a research gap? of wanting to fill that gap? of wanting to bring a new voice to the research? of wanting to represent the teacher, the student, the user of history? Is there no place for any of those roles in the research path they think I should tread? I understand their concern, I understand their caution. Really, I do. I want to believe in my heart that they said what they have because they care, because they want me to succeed.

But I'm left shaken, and uncertain. Standing on wobbly knees. Seeking answers from a computer screen, sending furtive emails, awaiting some gentle reassurance... which may not come.

I thought I saw a light at the end of the tunnel...
...
...
... but it turns out it was a damn train.