I graduated!

Pics on the family blog.

Things went well. I was a little stressed with Doodle up on the front row of a balcony with a rather low railing, but all went well. Very well. She went to the bathroom no fewer than 3 times! She watched some episodes of Doug--now available on iTunes!--on Brother's iPod. Chiclette fell asleep. And I found myself less stressed after I crossed the stage. Coincidence?

Reading Modernism as an Adult

When I entered grad school, really I thought I'd be working with Victorian poetry. Perhaps Modernist poetry. Maybe Yeats. I did not think I would be working on prose and I certainly didn't think I would be working on Modernist fiction. Except that the only grad course I took on Victorian poetry was really, really boring. And the courses I took that included poetry generally did so out of a sense of obligation rather than interest, and I was really never taught how one writes graduate or professional-level papers/articles about poetry (and though my undergrad prep was good, it's not the same). Still, I toyed with the idea of doing something with metaphor or something with ecocritisism. But it just didn't take off, because that's not what I was really doing in my seminars. Two trends emerged: my papers confronted feminism on the issue of motherhood, especially using gothic literature, or they did this literacy thing. And, well, the literacy thing felt more innovative, and could be applied more broadly. Besides, I didn't want to teach Mary Wollstonecraft (gothic) and I didn't want to teach American Lit (poetry & American gothic). So I rediscovered Modernism. That was where most of my coursework was anyway. Even so, though, I hate Henry James, Ford Maddox Ford bores me (though he might have some Catholic issues to explore), wasn't too keen on Lawrence, didn't like Woolf. . . But I like Forster. And I like Huxley. So they were a starting point. I also like WWI. A lot. It caused an intellectual crisis of huge proportions. Anxiety. Loss of faith in civilization. . . . a heap of broken images. . . Whoopee! That's what hooked me on these guys to begin with! Except, well, I don't revel in despair anymore. Though I still like W. H. Auden's poetry. But I like expressions of despair, and of human continuation in the face of despair. So anyway, it seems I'm a Modernist, having just written a big 'ol dissertation on these guys. (Really, I like Modernism. I promise.)

So after talking to my committee member on Friday, I am settling down to read some of what I need to read to get me up to speed. (Funny thing. . . Woolf is my least favorite, but I am told--not surprisingly--that that's what most people will want me to teach. Ugh!) Most of what I have read of the big Modernist novelists I have done on my own. I read A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man in high school, for example--loved it. Stephen Daedalus is all about teen angst. And I was in my anti-Catholic phase, so that was O.K. When I reread it for prelims, I hated it. The Catholic stuff was interesting, as I now had a context from which to understand it, but Stephen Daedalus needed to get over himself in a big way. I understood that now as I did not when I was 15. Go figure. Of course, Dubliners is brilliant, but it's not in fashion anymore. It's like "Joyce for Dummies." Real scholars read Ulysses. Really really real scholars read Finnegan's Wake. Maybe one day when the kids are grown up. Until then, I have more important things to do with my time.

So I'm reading Lawrence's Women in Love. It's supposed to be one of his best. Which is good, 'cause it's 400 pages and Lawrence generally needed to learn when to stop writing. Perhaps this one will be different. Sons and Lovers is in my dissertation. I've got some short stories under my belt (read "Horse Dealer's Daughter"?--hated it). I read Lady Chatterley's Lover, like so many adolescents, and felt utterly cheated. Although I did latch on to a phrase or two about things I had no idea about at the time. And I'd look back and think, "Hmmm. . . was Lawrence right?" not knowing that Lawrence is generally wrong. In a big way. But what strikes me now is not his wrongness, or his frustrating tendencies, or his inability to find synonyms for the word "hate," but his absolute silliness. His self-conscious (oh how he hated self-consciousness) attempts at sensuality, eroticism. Especially masculine-flavored eroticism. It makes me giggle. And it was so scandalous at the time. And I would have felt differently 15 years ago. But really, all this talk of muscles and maleness and moustaches, hair and skin and animals, fountains and jets and streams. Really, I can't help but chuckle. Has the writing always been this absurd, and I can just see it now? And if so, then why didn't his contemporaries dismiss it as such instead of being scandalized? Or is my "maturity" and the culture's acceptance of Lawrence in all his over-sexed silliness just a symptom of our desensitization in the area of sexuality? I pause more now over his declarations about God's non-existence (which he--unlike Joyce--takes as a given, or tries to) than over his erotic imagery. Does that say more about me, or about the writing?

Good News for Next Semester! and Thoughts on Answered Prayers...

I found out yesterday that because one of the goals for the department is to lower writing courses (Intro to Lit included) to only 21 students, and because this involves making sure all open sections are as full as possible, my course has been canceled. Instead of teaching, I was offered a position working in an administrative office with revisions to Intro to Lit. Yay!! Not only do I enjoy the course design aspect of teaching, I will be able to do most of my work from home (a mixed blessing, but more good than not), with as little as 2 hours/week in the office.

I'm not very good at waxing poetic about blessings and answered prayers, mainly because I've always kind of felt that it was arrogant to suggest that something happened as a result of prayer. Some people do manage to make it a matter of arrogance; they were just so darned holy that everything they asked for--the promotion, the new car, the great sale on designer shoes--was provided by God specifically for them. I met a lot of these people at various churches I attended when I was young, and it left a bad impression. I developed the idea that humility (though I didn't have a name for it) involved thinking oneself too small to merit such favors. I wasn't thinking about that one lost sheep, I guess. That insecurity of faith (which I guess is the best way to characterize it) is a hard habit to break. I also don't want to fall into what I still see is a kind of arrogance. And yet I can't deny that this is an answer to my prayers of late. I just didn't know how I was going to make it work--the teaching, the family. . . My prayers have been of the "You have given me my family, and allowed me to pursue this career. Show me what you have in store for me--how I am to make this work, or what my alternatives are. . ." variety. Well, this certainly feels like an answer to that. At times, as well, my prayers have focused more specifically on what next semester would hold. This is a subtle reminder for me to trust in God, a topic I have been reading about on Et-Tu, Jen? She speaks directly to my persistent anxiety.

What I wonder is, after being in the habit of relying solely on oneself for so long, how even to contemplate turning it all over to God. Though I called myself a Christian (of sorts) for most of my life, this was a concept that was alien to me. Now I find I am called to that kind of trust. I think this is more characteristically Catholic than Protestant, especially as family is concerned (though not exclusively). I sense a long journey ahead, but lessons like this one certainly ease the way!

Pregnancy & Grad School: Are We Behind the Times?

By "we" I mean the university where I currently teach/dissertate. Apparently, I and the other grad student moms are not at all behind the times! In fact, we are doing exactly what we are supposed to be doing, much as our early-wave feminist professors were doing as they were supposed to be doing (and as, in many cases, they think we should be doing) by waiting until their careers were well established before having their families (if, indeed, they ever did choose to have families--whether they just never confronted the choice, didn't have time, or chose consciously not to have families). I actually feel fortunate at this university that so many of the female faculty in my department do have children, if I haven't mentioned it before in quite this way.

So how, then are we behind the times? Well, while I was poking around seeing how people found me on sitemeter, I came across someone who did a Google search for "grad" and "mom" (or something similar). In addition to my own post, which likely didn't really fit what the person was looking for (Google is good for that), I found a few articles of interest. First, it seems that the Chemistry department at Stanford implemented a "pregnancy policy" in 2005, providing for pregnant grad students who held assistantships with the department to have “a 12-week period intended to accommodate late-stage pregnancy, childbirth and the care of a newborn"; though the article does not specifically mention whether the stipend would continue to be paid, I thought this was the implication the first time I read the article. Concerns raised were the exposure of the mother to chemicals and breastfeeding, and admirably, the question of whether 3 months (a WHOLE 3 months!!) would be enough time was addressed. Equity among graduate students as professionals-in-training, who should be treated in a manner analogous to postdocs and faculty, was a motivation of the department, as well as encouraging and maintaining women in the profession. On the whole this surprised me, given that it was a branch of the sciences rather than the liberal arts that was choosing to codify this policy, even though the rationale (chemicals, etc.) makes sense.

In 2006, only a few months after the first article, The Stanford Daily reported on a university-wide pregnancy policy for grad students, "a new policy with six weeks of paid leave, automatic deadline extensions and a way to maintain full-time student status." While acknowledging that the policy could offer a competitive edge over other grad schools for some (really, really special) applicants (the average pregnant prospective student wouldn't be courted by Stanford, after all), the paper seemed to think that this was a gesture toward respect for mothers rather than an attempt to attract students. I liked this statement on the subject:

The new pregnancy policy is a perfect example of how the University shouldn’t be making excuses about women in the Ph.D pipeline when the University can do things about it. This policy won’t just attract women who are planning to have children soon; it will attract women — and men — who value a true commitment to diversity.

Interesting to hear grad student families evoked under the heading of "diversity." MIT is mentioned in the article as having such a program already.

Our school's newspaper wouldn't find such a thing newsworthy. Pity. But that could be the culture. When many undergrads are looking for husbands so that they don't have to use their degrees, how would an undergraduate-centered publication even have a frame of reference from which to address this topic? *sigh*

Stony Brook State University of New York passed a related initiative on September 26, 2006, the Stony Brook Childbirth Accommodation Policy. "SB-CAP includes provisions for academic extensions, relief from regular teaching, research, clinical and/or training duties and interim financial support from the Graduate School for students that receive stipend support as Teaching Assistants, Graduate Assistants, or Research Assistants."

Excellent! So when is our turn?

I have been fortunate, finally, to receive some support, though the arranging of things was very stressful and contributed to my overall lack of progress during my first trimester, when I was kind of frozen in shock, wondering how this would work. The department decided, for continuity's sake, to hire a lecturer as a substitute for my class (in part so that my students didn't become too disoriented). I will continue to operate aspects of the class via the online course interface--hopefully, there will be some online discussion of the final work on the syllabus. Then, there are poetry presentations, based on their first papers, to cover a bit more ground in poetry. My substitute will be primarily responsible for taping these. After the presentations, my sub will oversee 2 peer workshops to help the students finalize their research paper drafts. And that's that! I have still to comment on paper topics & thesis statements, working bibliographies, grade an annotated bibliography, a research paper, and a final exam (which I will be writing sometime in the future). But I won't have to set foot back in the classroom.

That is, until January 14. That's going to roll around fast. I think I'm depressed now. *sigh*

The good news is that I teach at 5:30--after my husband gets off of work. So he will watch the teeny-tiny, the toddler, and the big brother while I am in class 2 days/week. Also, I am teaching the same thing as this semester, and doing it the same way, so very, very little prep (aside from reading/re-reading the things I didn't read/re-read this semester). But being away from that teeny-tiny is really going to be a bummer. And I will certainly have to bend my no-bottle policy and pump so that my husband isn't left high and dry (hah!) if the nursing schedule doesn't work out exactly right. It's very daunting. Maybe I should just focus on waiting for the teeny-tiny right now. She'll be 2 months when classes resume. Oof.

And I'm supposed to graduate in May? Good luck.