• • • low end theory

theorizin' on the cheap since '09. for more about me, go here. e-mail: lowendtheory [at sign] lowendtheory [dot] org.

Okay. I’m going to be honest and earnest for a moment, which means that this is a post that’s already well on its way to being deleted.  I feel totally overwhelmed by everything that needs to get done in the next three weeks or so: I need to write like five research statements, find a mentor for the postdoc that I really really really want and might even have a chance of getting, write a whole extra section of this chapter then edit the fuck out of it so that search committees don’t mistake it for an application for admission to Hater’s Ball 2011, etc.  

I feel like there’s so much to do that I can’t quite do anything.  And yes, I already know: step by step, one thing at a time, that’s how these things get done.

Sure.  But what’s on the other side of the mountain?  Last year, it was eighteen, or nineteen, or seventeen—whatever, I lost count—rejection letters.  In retrospect, while last year was a pretty good year personally and maybe even professionally, it was a horrid year intellectually.  I worked my ass off to generate these watered-down, non-threatening, intellectually domesticated research proposals for, essentially, naught.  

Anyway, what makes me think I’m so special?  People deal with this same stuff year after year.  The whole success/reward system that academia in general operates on ensures that those who are rewarded are made to feel like they deserve it and those who aren’t, well, there’s always next year.  But when you know that, how do you measure success?  It’s like, yeah, I’d be happy to get a job or a postdoc, but then what?  What do you do when you succeed in a system that you think is fatally flawed?  How do you proceed?

Ha. How wack is it when even your depression starts sounding cliche?

Notes

  1. ch-ch-chuffed said: also i think what curate said is true.
  2. curate said: no more watered-down proposals: not worth it if you get the job/postdoc; not worth it if you don’t. go on, meaning-maker!
  3. lowendtheory posted this
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