Friday, September 21, 2007
Second Verse, Better or Worse?
After four full months without a single lecture or discussion section, the beginning of my second year of graduate school felt like the emotional equivalent of performing a bellyflop from the top of a regulation Olympic diving board. Readjusting to the normal appointments and assignments, configuring my class schedule, and preparing for the looming threat of general exams have all left me feeling physically and emotionally drained. I had hoped that with fewer actual courses under my belt this semester that my stress level would decline, but I should have expected that my work would somehow expand to fill the void. It always has in the past. Why should it be different now?
As mentioned, on paper my courseload this semester appears to be significantly lighter. I am enrolled in only two courses, covering the histories of biology and technology respectively. I have not had the opportunity to work with either of my professors before; one was on leave and the other just joined the department, and so far both seem quite friendly and knowledgeable, which is really all I can hope for at this point. (Though in the interest of total disclosure, I should note that one professor's decision to substitute weekly reading responses for a large final paper doesn't hurt either.)
Given that I am taking two classes this semester, as opposed to last year's average of three, and that the syllabi for those courses are both balanced so far as total workload is concerned, one could legitimately wonder what has me so on edge so soon in the semester. First and foremost is general exams. Although I have basically hammered out what my fields are going to be with my professors, I did not expect to start reading for exams until the second half of the semester at the absolute earliest. But, at least so far as my field in modern science is concerned, it seems that I was mistaken. I had agreed, along with the other two students who are also taking an exam in this area, that since my advisor would be living "das Gute Leben" in Berlin all year, that we would try to keep ourselves on pace with our exam reading. I had thought we would wait a week or two into the semester before we dove into this material, but we started bright and early, as it were, with a meeting on Wednesday and a decision to try to get through three books a week for the rest of the semester, taking us through approximately 1/3 of my total major field reading list. Wonderful in theory, perhaps, but after spending seven hours today reading about the history of solid-state physics, I'm not sure how long I'll be able to keep up that pace.
This concern is compounded further when I consider that I will need begin finding material for my second year research paper. Allow me to clarify...my (ahem) mandatory research paper without which I will not be able to even TAKE my general exams, earn my master's degree, and move toward my dissertation. And guess what? I have hardly any ideas for paper topics, much less how I am going to find time to conduct archival research since I'll be so bogged down reading for generals. Last year, my research paper wound up consuming the entire month of January, and I had hoped to avoid that this time around since I'll have an additional 100 or so books that I should be reading at the same time.
The prospects for finishing that paper quickly, however, do not seem too promising given that I am still polishing my previous year's work for its first public presentation before my department. I hope to eventually submit it for publication in a journal, but first it needs to be suitably eviscerated by the astute, but occasional brutal, criticism of my fellow scholars. This will be my first such presentation and I think that my anxiety might be contributing further to my stress.
Add to that the German language exam for which I should be practicing, the two additional lecture courses I'm auditing this semester (modern German and modern American history), and the conference I'll likely be attending in late October, and my once seemingly sparse semester now seems positively jam-packed!
But, like I wrote at the start of this post, is any of this really different from normal? No matter what job I had, if I were just coming back from a vacation, especially a long one, I would probably be feeling overwhelmed. Maybe it's because I've just finished reading biography of Werner Heisenberg on Wednesday, but my instinctual reaction to this situation is to hope that an awareness of the problem may in some way facilitate the moderation of its symptoms. In other words, I may be stressed, but at least I know WHY I'm stressed, so there is hope to change things for the better. (Maybe even expand upon my Germany travelogue.) Or at least, that's how it seems to me at the end of this first week, which appropriately enough ended on Yom Kippur, a holiday devoted to reflection, atonement, and self-improvement. What are the odds?
After four full months without a single lecture or discussion section, the beginning of my second year of graduate school felt like the emotional equivalent of performing a bellyflop from the top of a regulation Olympic diving board. Readjusting to the normal appointments and assignments, configuring my class schedule, and preparing for the looming threat of general exams have all left me feeling physically and emotionally drained. I had hoped that with fewer actual courses under my belt this semester that my stress level would decline, but I should have expected that my work would somehow expand to fill the void. It always has in the past. Why should it be different now?
As mentioned, on paper my courseload this semester appears to be significantly lighter. I am enrolled in only two courses, covering the histories of biology and technology respectively. I have not had the opportunity to work with either of my professors before; one was on leave and the other just joined the department, and so far both seem quite friendly and knowledgeable, which is really all I can hope for at this point. (Though in the interest of total disclosure, I should note that one professor's decision to substitute weekly reading responses for a large final paper doesn't hurt either.)
Given that I am taking two classes this semester, as opposed to last year's average of three, and that the syllabi for those courses are both balanced so far as total workload is concerned, one could legitimately wonder what has me so on edge so soon in the semester. First and foremost is general exams. Although I have basically hammered out what my fields are going to be with my professors, I did not expect to start reading for exams until the second half of the semester at the absolute earliest. But, at least so far as my field in modern science is concerned, it seems that I was mistaken. I had agreed, along with the other two students who are also taking an exam in this area, that since my advisor would be living "das Gute Leben" in Berlin all year, that we would try to keep ourselves on pace with our exam reading. I had thought we would wait a week or two into the semester before we dove into this material, but we started bright and early, as it were, with a meeting on Wednesday and a decision to try to get through three books a week for the rest of the semester, taking us through approximately 1/3 of my total major field reading list. Wonderful in theory, perhaps, but after spending seven hours today reading about the history of solid-state physics, I'm not sure how long I'll be able to keep up that pace.
This concern is compounded further when I consider that I will need begin finding material for my second year research paper. Allow me to clarify...my (ahem) mandatory research paper without which I will not be able to even TAKE my general exams, earn my master's degree, and move toward my dissertation. And guess what? I have hardly any ideas for paper topics, much less how I am going to find time to conduct archival research since I'll be so bogged down reading for generals. Last year, my research paper wound up consuming the entire month of January, and I had hoped to avoid that this time around since I'll have an additional 100 or so books that I should be reading at the same time.
The prospects for finishing that paper quickly, however, do not seem too promising given that I am still polishing my previous year's work for its first public presentation before my department. I hope to eventually submit it for publication in a journal, but first it needs to be suitably eviscerated by the astute, but occasional brutal, criticism of my fellow scholars. This will be my first such presentation and I think that my anxiety might be contributing further to my stress.
Add to that the German language exam for which I should be practicing, the two additional lecture courses I'm auditing this semester (modern German and modern American history), and the conference I'll likely be attending in late October, and my once seemingly sparse semester now seems positively jam-packed!
But, like I wrote at the start of this post, is any of this really different from normal? No matter what job I had, if I were just coming back from a vacation, especially a long one, I would probably be feeling overwhelmed. Maybe it's because I've just finished reading biography of Werner Heisenberg on Wednesday, but my instinctual reaction to this situation is to hope that an awareness of the problem may in some way facilitate the moderation of its symptoms. In other words, I may be stressed, but at least I know WHY I'm stressed, so there is hope to change things for the better. (Maybe even expand upon my Germany travelogue.) Or at least, that's how it seems to me at the end of this first week, which appropriately enough ended on Yom Kippur, a holiday devoted to reflection, atonement, and self-improvement. What are the odds?
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