Academia Blues
'i choose my friends only far too well
i'm up on the pavement, they're all down in the cellar
with their government grants and my i.q.
they brought me down to size, academia blues'
- lloyd cole
'perfect skin'
i am procrastinating. i can't get to work on my phd, don't know where to begin. should have done a coursework degree, had set reading lists and tasks! i do have a project i am meant to be working on for my supervisor, but i can't remember how i am supposed to go about it. totally lost. don't know why i am attempting this anyway. don't think like an academic. don't know any theory. have trouble remembering anything i read. feel like my IQ is getting lower by the second. can barely write. can't think clearly, moments of clarity are few and far between. tired, stressed, sickly. all seems hopeless. feel totally fraudulent, i shouldn't be here, i'm not one of them. i don't know what foucault thinks about anything, and most of the time i don't care. i attend seminars and conferences and barely understand a word. i don't know that i want to do this anymore, but i can't figure out anything else to do. soon it will be my yearly assessment, and i don't know what i have done so far. fuck all really, a literature review and six months of heartbroken crying and drinking. talked a lot about what i might do, and not done much of anything. i come to uni and stare blankly at the screen for hours, fluffing about on emails and blogging and sleeping at my desk.
yet when i speak about my work to others i am often very passionate. i can see the value of it, the quirkiness, the potential. if only i could realise it, put it into practice, get something happening. what is missing? discipline? willpower? direction? energy? vodka? coffee?
i'm up on the pavement, they're all down in the cellar
with their government grants and my i.q.
they brought me down to size, academia blues'
- lloyd cole
'perfect skin'
i am procrastinating. i can't get to work on my phd, don't know where to begin. should have done a coursework degree, had set reading lists and tasks! i do have a project i am meant to be working on for my supervisor, but i can't remember how i am supposed to go about it. totally lost. don't know why i am attempting this anyway. don't think like an academic. don't know any theory. have trouble remembering anything i read. feel like my IQ is getting lower by the second. can barely write. can't think clearly, moments of clarity are few and far between. tired, stressed, sickly. all seems hopeless. feel totally fraudulent, i shouldn't be here, i'm not one of them. i don't know what foucault thinks about anything, and most of the time i don't care. i attend seminars and conferences and barely understand a word. i don't know that i want to do this anymore, but i can't figure out anything else to do. soon it will be my yearly assessment, and i don't know what i have done so far. fuck all really, a literature review and six months of heartbroken crying and drinking. talked a lot about what i might do, and not done much of anything. i come to uni and stare blankly at the screen for hours, fluffing about on emails and blogging and sleeping at my desk.
yet when i speak about my work to others i am often very passionate. i can see the value of it, the quirkiness, the potential. if only i could realise it, put it into practice, get something happening. what is missing? discipline? willpower? direction? energy? vodka? coffee?
posted by Zoo at 12:13 pm
2 Comments:
I think everyone feels like this most of the time. I know I do. And I am always surprised to find that the people I would never have thought experienced that same frustration of not understanding/remembering/progressing actually do experience it intensely (it is now the ones who don't admit to the same feelings that I worry about!)
Without being embarrassingly gushy you are fabulously intelligent ms zoo. From reading this blog and knowing you, while you think you don't know or understand theory, you manage to convey an understanding that belies this opinion. And your writing makes me green with jealousy!
As I wish I could say with greater personal conviction fuck Foucault there are so many more interesting people out there to read and use!
thanks madam p!
the missing ingredient turned out to be coffee :) that, plus getting my arse out of the house and into the real world, and realising that all the admin i need to do for this project is actually a reprieve from the tyranny of theory...
hugs!
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