Reflecting

Thank you for the kind words of support that those who commented gave me.

I felt pretty bad about yesterday's post for the last 24 hours, but I guess I'm OK with it now. My feelings varied widely -- I went from feeling ashamed, stupid, and immature, just like I said I shouldn't be, to being angry and upset again. Then I felt anxious that maybe I shouldn't have written this, and the next minute frustrated because I actually wished more people could read what I wrote, that I thought I had some valid points, and then I ended up feeling stupid for thinking such a thing -- for who am I? just a nobody-ABD, and Does it matter, in the grand scheme of things, what I think?

I mean, the point here is not really my writing or this dissertation, which I am certainly going to finish, though it may have seemed that way. The problem is deeper and will probably not go away once I'm done (OK, maybe it someday it may if, by any chance in the universe, I do get an academic job). The problem is rooted in my ambivalent, complex feelings about academia in general. Most of the time I'm just numb to them, and almost forget that they exist, but since I went back to work on the dissertation, these feelings are back, sometimes with a vengeance like yesterday.

What I feel now goes like this: I may not be the smartest "Ph.D.-to-be" that ever existed, and I'm probably among the less smart, but, I have concluded that having these ambivalent feelings and a natural reluctance to conform (I've always been quite rebelious, though only intellectually, not in my outward appearance or demeanor) will benefit me and help me be a better academic if I ever do become one. OK, I know I am one, but an unpaid academic, and if this is what it amounts to - if I can only be an academic without being paid, then I'll probably quit.

OK, I'm just too random today, so I'll stop. I was supposed to write about something else entirely today, and I'll write another post about it shortly. Not that anyone will read this anyway (I am a defeatist as well, and a whiner, if you haven't already noticed). Sorry, but that's who I am. Oh yeah, and I probably should have kept on writing about Jane Austen and flowers, shouldn't I? ;-)