What Now?

Mood: Uninspired
Song: Black - Pearl Jam
Units of Caffeine: Working on my 3rd
Days until Graduation: 63

It's Friday and logic dictates that I should be thrilled by this, but in fact I feel quite... blah. This whole week has been shit and I have the entire spectrum of emotions surging through my body right now to the point it has quite honestly tired me out. Fridays are such crap days at work, too. This doesn't help. You see, I work at probably the only university that does not hold classes on Fridays. So, not only am I sitting on my ass at work doing a whole lot of nothing, but there is nothing that I can accomplish on Fridays as a student. Of course, right now I am wavering between apathy and pure panic: on one hand, I just want to do nothing for a few days in order to wash everything away and let my brain "reboot". But on the other, I realize that there are only eight weeks left within the semester and I don't know what I'm doing anymore. I guess that's it. I wouldn't mind just taking a couple of days to regroup if I knew exactly what I was doing and could just dive right into it a few days from now, but I don't.

I had a meeting with the Chair yesterday and it did not go exactly as I had hoped. She is understanding as to what happened and is willing to work with me on whatever I decide to do, but she was really pushing me to treat this semester as a wash; drop my class and do another project next semester. I thought about this for about half a second before saying, "Absolutely not." Not only would I lose all of the tuition I paid this semester, but I would have to return my scholarship from Student Life; I would also have to pay for another semester of tuition and throw out all of the work that I have completed thus far and start from scratch. It seems as if I would get punished for something that is totally not my fault. I spoke with a friend of mine who graduated from the department this past Spring. He is a really hard worker who gets things done; (the type of person the department lacks these days); and he has worked as a student assistant to Chair for several years. Not only do I value his opinion, but he knows how Chair ticks. He told me that Chair is not one to make students stay on longer than they absolutely have to. Actually, I'm in agreement with this: I've had a few talks with Chair about continuing with my education in order to get an MFA or perhaps even a PhD. She didn't discount those options, but really felt that I am ready to get out of academia and move on to the "real world." In fact, something she has said to me, not only in the past, but even at yesterday's meeting was that she could actually see me working as a producer or executive director; but the only way I could continue to work toward those goals is to get out and learn by doing; I have learned all that I can from the classroom. So, why then would she suggest that I stay on for another semester? My friend told me that Chair more than likely feels that I have been slighted by the University and that I am compromising my project a lot. He feels that Chair wants to give me the opportunity to do a project and see it through to completion with the department and University's full support. This actually does make a lot of sense : up until yesterday I felt that she was being extremely supportive of me and then just plopped something unexpected into my lap.

Yes, I do feel slighted. Yes, I am compromising my project with whatever it turns out to be, but I am so ready to close this chapter in my life and move on and move out (of Texas). My friend told me that this is no time to keep any information from Chair and told me to be completely candid with her about how I feel and what I want to do.

I have another string of meetings next week, beginning with the oldest member of the department who is going senile, Dr. Ding-Bat. I have seen Dr. D-B do lots of great things, but after seeing almost everything about her deteriorate over the past few years, I think she seriously needs to hang it up. But, she is the graduate advisor and is really the only one qualified to discuss academic papers - so, I am going to meet with her (hopefully on Monday, because God knows it's not going to be today) to talk about how I can create a paper that is both graduate student quality and a fair amount of work, based upon the work that I have done since January.

In the meantime, I plan to go out this evening to get some gin and vermouth and relax with a few dry martinis tonight.