Running Out of Steam/ Academic Nostalgia

Yeah, I knew it was going to happen, that the trip would make it much harder for me to go back to work. I know my dear husband K will be really disappointed with me when I tell him (I'll do it before he reads this post) that I hardly worked from Wednesday to today. I added a sentence here and there, I read articles, but I didn't finish the chapter I had proposed to finish by today. And the worse part is that I don't feel bad about it. At. All. No guilt, no shame, nothing.

I am so ready to get done and I just cannot maintain the level of enthusiasm on the dissertation that I had last week. I know that this is just a "low" moment and that once I gain momentum again I may feel better and more motivated, but right now I'm frankly just tired of it all. It doesn't help that I'm having lots of conflicted feelings about this whole thing which are certainly normal. I hope that on Sunday I can get back to work and that next week I can finally proclaim that I AM DONE! Can't wait to be able to say that. Some other random comments...

One Another Big Blunder
You may, or may not recall that last year I absent-mindedly forgot to register in the "continuing enrollment" program and was temporarily withdrawn from graduate school. This ended up being a great blessing in disguise because it led me to send chapter drafts to my former advisor and that's one of the main reasons why I'm nearly done today. Well, this semester, I found out last week from a kind hand-written note attached to my graduation eligibility form that there was a bursar hold on me -- that is, I'd forgotten to pay the program fee!! Oh well, that happened in part because I only check my university email account every ten days or so, and a fellow grad student had reminded us that our tuition bills were due soon. I'd also received an email from the bursar about it. I already mailed the check and I'm 50 bucks poorer because of the late fee... Oh well. And the worst part is that this year there are no blessings in disguise attached to this.

Nostalgic Mode
While checking the university email two nights ago I found out that a graduate school colleague I met the year before I moved away from the university had his second daughter -- who received the same name I have (plus an extra L, obviously), while the first one was born about a year after I left. Looking at the newborn photos at the hospital I was overcome with emotion, tears, and saudade (the Brazilian word -- unique to our language that conveys homesickness, longing, nostalgia, blues, all rolled into one and much deeper), thinking that I gave birth to my boys in that same hospital, thinking of how for various reasons we didn't really fully enjoy our seven years there and that I'd love to live there now, to have my children play with the children of other graduate students (there were none at the time and now there are quite a few).

For some reason this past weekend in Nashville, playing with the boys in Centennial park across from Vanderbilt (in 2006 I didn't walk across the street to the park from the university, I was so absorbed in attending the conference) -- congratulations to Jo's husband Sean on landing a post there, BTW -- I felt this sudden tug from academic life pulling me back to it. I cannot even write about this now, I begin to tear up. And just this week K was a bit disappointed with how things are going at Big Pharma (you may, or may not recall, but his work there is merely temporary, he can be fired again any time) and he's flirting with sending academic applications again this Fall. Go for it, I told him, I'd love to live in a college town and go back to teaching.

On our drive down to Nashville, as we drove through Western Virginia, I looked wistfully from the highway to the beautiful buildings, some brand new, of the only university where K had a campus interview last year (he was applying to it this year again, but he withdrew his application because he was reinstated at his job). On the drive back I was engrossed in my reading of Susan's book and I missed seeing the university again. I called K a few minutes later to report on that and I said:

"Oh well, I guess if we really decide to leave academia behind, it's OK, I really shouldn't have looked back."

I don't know if we're ready to walk away and not look back just yet.