An Education.

I fell in love with learning because it was just that: learning.  And I’m still just as much in love with books and everything as I always have been.  But my school has ripped the learning out of it and made it about numbers, and to be honest I think that’s what most grad schools do.  And I know that now, after nearly 12 solid months of school.  I know that I’m not cut out for this place because it will never be about that for me, because what I want is something that no university will ever give me: an education.   I want to read books because I love them, not because I need to get an A in a class or because getting into a conference will make my department look better.  I want to pick up books and look at them the way I did before grad school started making me sick to my stomach.  To hold them and feel the weight of their words, to smell their bindings and be in awe that paper and glue can make my stomach jump and my eyes water.  I want to read things and feel as though little bits of me become better for it.  That is something I never thought I’d lose, and I need it back.

This is not to say that grad school is all bad.  I’ve learned a lot here.  But most of what I’ve learned is far from academic.  I’ve learned that friends can be people you never thought you’d have anything to do with, and that people you thought you’d know forever can suddenly disappear from your life.  I’ve grown up a lot in the past year.  I’ve learned French, I’ve learned Spanish, I’ve learned how to teach things and how not to teach things.  I’ve learned that advisers don’t actually advise you, most of them just criticize your decisions.  But more than anything I’ve remembered how to be me again after everything that happened last year.  And none of this is anything that I’d trade.  All these things make me who I am.  What I’m beginning to learn is that who I am is not who I thought I’d be.  In fact, its anything but.

I got a Spanish test back this evening, with a grade that did not reflect the painful hours of studying that I put in.  I sat in my seat, though a movie, through a presentation, filed with the knowledge that I’d never get into a PhD program.  And then, in the middle of the midterm it hit me: I don’t want to be in a PhD program right now.  This life that I’ve wanted since I was 15 is suddenly seriously unappealing to me.  Not because I don’t want to be a professor or because I’m not willing to work hard in school but for one simple, indisputable reason: I’m not in love with it.

My classmates get tests back and study them to see what they’ve done wrong.  They check out supplimental reading materials from the library.  They find authors and websites that pertain to our courses and bring them up in class.  They get genuinely excited about what we’re studying.  And you know what?  Never once has it even occurred to me to do any of these things.  Not once.  I leave class and I’m gone, I don’t think about it until I break out my homework, and then I do what’s on the syllabus and not a thing more.  I’m simply not in love with schoolwork the way that they are.

And that’s ok.

What’s not ok is for me to continue on in the academic world acting like I am.

I’m going to finish this degree, but at this point I’m finishing simply because I started.  Yes, I know there are things about this last year in school that will be good, but I’m now filled with the knowledge that this is in fact my last year in school.  I’m not going to go on.  So now I just have to figure out what the heck I can do with an MA in Comparative Literature…