Yes, plain old walking. Up hills, into parks, to places with views and fresh air. Noticing flowers. Letting my mind wander. Walking always clears my head and gives me perspective on life. Especially if it’s exploring new places, or rediscovering old ones. In college I walked in the arboretum near campus, especially when I was working on papers. So I’m going to walk this month, every day if possible.
Thinking about the future, how I’d like to be a professor, advise students, have my own research projects. Thinking about revising papers from journals, and having a regular writing schedule, and reading more. Orals are stressing me out to some degree but nothing like the feeling of what it will take to reach that future goal. I keep thinking about how I struggle with writing, and how much reading I’ve been doing for orals, and how both of these things–reading and writing–are the most central tasks of my craft. If I can master these two, having a regular reading and writing routine in my life, the rest of it (conferences, teaching students, administrative duties in my department, writing grants…) sounds easy, fun, something to look forward to.
Battling against the feeling of being alone in the pursuit right now, with only my own time to manage. Of not always prioritizing things in the right way. Of putting off dealing with feedback on a paper and not yet having my dissertation prospectus written. I’ve got plenty of notes and ideas, but it feels like such a commitment to put it all in 7 pages for discussion during orals.
Wishing I had a writing buddy, someone who I consistently got together with and did the writing part of my day. Maybe this is something I can find in my friends at school. Or maybe even with my writer friends. The point is that we support each other in meeting our goal of writing consistently, not that we talk or be writing about anything that is similar. If you’re interested let’s talk!
For now back to the solitary writing, going to try and get a draft of the prospectus sketched out before sleep.
Keep reminding myself that this is all worth it. That I’ve attained the goal of getting my fellowship, and therefore am one step closer to doing the study I’ve dreamed about doing. The painful learning curve stretching the bounds of my mind and pushing my tolerance for sleeplessness will add up to preparation for doing a better study in Spain. The harder I work now preparing these orals, linking the areas together, writing and drawing connections between ideas and areas of scholarship, the better prepared I’ll be for doing a good quality study.
Funny how we can usually go much further than we think we can. I find I’m ready to give in, throw in the towel for the night, just get some sleep, but then push forward and sometimes even do the best work of the day after midnight. It makes me think of marathon runners, mountain climbers, of young parents, of people fighting illnesses–small and large ways life tests us, and if we can find a way to push past that wave of exhaustion or loss of confidence, the growth comes.
Listening to shouts of the Mission as I write this, Saturday night revelers whose laughs bring to mind lighter, less work-centered times. In a little more than a month it will be time to revel a bit myself. Just need to push a little bit more.
How do you motivate or push yourself when you hit a wall with academic work? How about with other pursuits? What keeps you going?
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I just got news this morning that I made the first major cut in the selection process for doing a Fulbright in Spain next year! I submitted my application back in September, it went through an on-campus Berkeley review, and then it went to the Fulbright commission in New York. The odds in that round were about 16%; they accepted 27 out of 167 applications last year. I did my best on the application but that’s a lot of competition! So now that I’ve made this first cut my application goes to Spain and the committee there reviews it. According to the program they take 2 of every 3 they receive, so my odds just got much better!
Whether I get it or not, I feel really good at this point. Just making it past this point feels like a huge accomplishment, and doing the application at the beginning of this year helped me immensely in focusing my work this year. Whether I get it or not I’m now planning to do my dissertation research in Spain next year.
