Important evaluation.

Today I finished my first week of grad school. As of now, I am very miserable. Before I continue, I beg of you not to see this as a premature, stress induced case of nerves. I am going to give very valid and strikingly strong concerns. That I have such strong feelings should be a red flag, and I urge you to listen.

The first thing I have discerned is that I very much care about issues of preservation and all associated debates and troubles I have thus encountered that the archives field is currently grappling with. So it is certainly not a case of having jumped into the wrong field of study. That being said, I have found myself much more satisfied in my archives classes than my general librarian classes. Those, I do fear I do not only have no taste for, but feel resentful towards and feel my time is wasted.

You may ask how I already have such strong negative feelings about what the professors of my general classes have chosen to teach. Well, that brings me to my next point. They have decided to throw so much reading at me that I have been forced to get up at 5 AM to begin my day's work. I have read several books and many articles, and have submitted two short assignments via blackboard this very week and have my first lab due next week, and my first paper the week after.

Now, before you feel the urge to warn that yes, sometimes we cannot read everything as closely as we'd like and sometimes to manage workloads as such you must skim, let me assure you, I am well aware of how one manages such enormous task-loads. It is not ideal but it is the widespread reality, one I am well aware of.

But skimming feels like a waste of my time. With a scholarly, dense article, how can one come aware with any comprehension much less a meaningful engagement with a text from skimming? Especially when one must move on to the next without allowing any time for reflection?

What, exactly, is the reward in skimming a text? That you gain a very base understanding of the topic, but certainly nothing deep enough to write anything more than a two-three sentence summary on it, and when will, in graduate work, that be what is asked of you? And what if you have to grapple for more time than you feel you have just to get that. My workload has given no time for the possibility of struggling just to grasp the basics.

Now perhaps, an alternative is to identify some very key statements, such as the argument and supporting evidence which you can form opinions on, and expand on, without reading and understanding every word. Well, again, I ask, where is the time to reflect? Where is the time to turn over ideas and approach them from different angles? And thus, even with the best strategies for taking something possibly useful away from the texts, if you do not have any time to reflect without a pile of papers looming over you, inducing a need to move on in order to gain sleep, it becomes a useless activity.

What I am asserting is that, even armed with the best strategies, I honestly do not feel I have any time to engage with my text. Which, in a best case scenario would simply be unfortunate. However, in this scenario, I am being asked to do my most engaged work yet and participate in both class and online discussions, write advanced papers, projects, presentations that require the ability to:

A) Read the required material and incorporate it.
B) Supply additional sources as proof of research ability, incorporate up anywhere from 6-20 of my own sources found via research depending on the assignment.
C) Provide a creative and original response to the literature that shows not only comprehension but engagement and the ability to bring together the various sources into a unified, structured argument.

Now this is entirely doable. With the right amount of time. However, at the rate I have been reading, I have found I have almost no recollection of what I am reading. When I sat down to think about what I have learned in my first week, I was met with a mental equivalent of grasping for straws. I could see my underlining and notes in the margins. I had read enormous amounts. I could not look at an article and tell you much. If anything.

I had retained and learned insanely little. Now, I did give some thought as to it being me, and not the work load. However, in my many years of being a student, reading retention has never been a problem. In fact, I am an active reader which helps me engage with texts as I read and thus remember them better. My skills and an English major should be more than sufficient to allow me to comprehend and absorb about texts of any sort, save for highly specialized ones of of my means of understanding.

I cannot imagine that my undergraduate career was so insufficient that I must be the entire problem.

Furthermore, who cares? Because the short of it is, even if I manage to squeak by I am not being fulfilled due to the sheer volume of work. The system of taking a full time course load along with a work placement for a masters degree to be completed in 11 months destroys much of what makes scholarship fruitful and fulfilling.

And sure, students have managed. I am disturbingly bitter towards anyone who wants to use that argument and use those who have preceded me to justify this issue. Because the truth is, I do not know how they did it and I suspect they perhaps were willing to sacrifice what made them love academia.

Furthermore, I have all my syllabi in hand, mapping out the next 15 weeks. I see no let-up, no change in pace to allow more time for working on papers. While this was built into those classes of undergrad to allow for students to focus on certain academic projects, this graduate program sees no need for the allowance.

And while I am reasonable sure I can manage, I am also reasonably sure I will be disgruntled, resentful and unable to do my best work. As a student who has always wanted to give my very best being stretched thin is perhaps a bigger issue than for most.

So even if I am, in your view, overreacting, I have included valid reasoning. I would stay up all hours and consume coffee til my stomach was eaten through (this may happen anyway) if only I had the time to breathe. Sit down. Think for a bit, without the to do list demanding constant attention.

I will of course, reevaluate this program as I am faced with the papers and projects. i will pay attention to if my predictions come true. but as of right now, none of that can change that I have been up since five AM and am currently extremely disinterested in and gleaning extremely little from my reading.

I do think that this would be changed dramatically had I taken the program part time and done it in two years, as most are done- even on a full time basis. Or perhaps if the standards for passing not quite so high as to keep me in constant anxiety over retaining my job placement and funding, I could relax a bit. But I cannot and I have, before posting any of these developing feelings talked to some extend with fellow "fulltimers".

I am not unreasonable in my high state of worry. In fact, many are scared. Not nervous, but in fear, already feeling the stress of the workload and feeling it is possibly unmanageable, or will take extreme measures to become manageable.

This is not only worrisome for my academic career, but disheartening, discouraging and depressing.

I can only hope in a few weeks, I can return with some change, but I am unable to foresee that at this point.

So at this point, while I am still investing in pursuing this career, the decision to do so under such rapid, concentrated circumstances seems to be a very unwise decision as it pertains to what drives me in academia.