A Reconsideration of Work

Recently, I've been reminded about some of the difficulties faced by first generation college and graduate students.

In a sure slip of the tongue I realized that at least one of my family members imagines that, as a (graduate) student, I have nothing to do since it's summer.

Like most of my family members this particular person has not been in school since high school, so it makes sense that this is what she imagines my life is. I mean, there's nothing a student loves more than summer and, hey, even as a graduate student I appreciate summer, just... not for the same reasons I did when I was in high school or even like I did as an undergraduate. But I'll get back to this later.

When I realized her misconceptions about my life, I might have been angry but in all honesty I was not surprised.

As an undergrad I understood fairly quickly that even though my family supported me as best they could (emotionally and in some cases financially), they really had no idea what my day-to-day life was like as a student.

On the one hand, some of my family members questioned why I wasn't in school 5 days a week. On the other hand they thought that because I had MWF or TTH classes it meant that I must have been slacking off on the other days.

But the most pervasive misconception, which has apparently persisted from undergrad until now (as I hopefully approach the completion of my PhD), is that I live a life of leisure.

Sure they are willing to concede that I read, maybe I turn in a paper or take an exam, but generally I don't do much of anything, especially when compared to their jobs (mostly 9 to 5) and their lives (at this point in my life most of my family members have children). And in the summer they think that of course I must hang out all the time because I don't have classes (and who really wants to take classes in the summer anyway).

There are obvious problems with this. I mean what do these people imagine I do to make money and pay my bills? If I happen to travel (which is highly suspect considering the financial life of a single graduate student), how do I pay for it?

Basically, I've realized that for many first generation students their family and friends who have not gone to college have a hard time understanding that education is work and (for graduate students) a job, even if it rarely provides the financial compensation of full time employment.

This can be frustrating if only because it means that our families do not understand us and, even if they want to be, they are not as sympathetic to our problems as we might hope.

What's most troubling about these assumptions aren't that they're untrue (because obviously...) but rather that people develop them with little to no input from the actual students.

If this family member of mine had asked me (or even my mother who I vent to on an almost daily basis) she would have known that this summer I did a number of things including (but not limited to) teaching a 10-week course in 5 weeks (probably one of the hardest things I've ever done), written and revised my first article for publication, completed some research, done considerable reading for my dissertation while completing two moves and mentally preparing myself to go on the job market. These are, clearly, the highlights.

My day-to-day life may not be full of an eight hour shift and of course I don't have to clock in or out or take my lunch at a particular time. My time is what I make it. But if I make nothing of my time, I have to bear the consequences. And only me.

To someone with a more structured day my freedom might seem appealing (and I completely understand why). The problem would be to assume that my lack of formal structure indicates a lack of responsibility or work.

First of all, teaching is difficult. If you respect teachers at all please do not assume that teaching is easy. Never presume that a teacher's day begins when her students walk in the classroom and ends when they leave/at the end of a school day. Time in class is often the easiest while the prep for that lecture is time consuming and draining. Grading sometimes seems to take forever. But this isn't the worst.

If you don't teach you may never appreciate the blow to your self-esteem/self-worth that can accompany a batch of bad papers or mediocre midterms/finals, because the automatic reaction is not to blame one's students (no matter how much we complain). We all, always, blame ourselves. When my students fail (even if it's just one) I wonder: did they get it? could I have made it easier to understand? what did I do wrong? Add student evaluations on top of that and... well, let's just say that graduate students don't drink/eat/shop/exercise to excess for nothing.*

Second of all, I would gladly trade writing my dissertation for watching one of my family members' children (at least for a little while- let's be real, I don't have kids for various reasons. One of them is choice). I do not want to diminish how hard it is to raise children (and I can't even begin to understand the experiences of my friends who had children while students) but... IT'S HARD WORK TO WRITE A DISSERTATION.

Sometimes I wake up at night thinking about the documents I still need to process, wondering where I will find the money to fund another research trip, fearing that one of my advisors will ask about a primary source document (or source base) that I cannot access or don't even know exists (not for lack of trying), or worrying if I'll have enough time to read all of the books I should.

And for me there's nothing harder than believing that I know exactly what I want to say (my argument for a chapter or why my project is different from anything else in the historiography) but not being able to fully express myself in words. Honestly, I've been close to tears of frustration when I get notes from an advisor or kind friend who has read my work and wondered: "but what's the point?"

To be real, until you have had to produce an entire dissertation of around 200 pages (more? less?) you have no right to tell me or someone else in this position that I don't work. (This is also why I would never presume to tell a UPS driver, welder, or chef that their jobs are less difficult than mine. Because I don't know.)

I freely admit that my life is very different from my family members. I have a serious netflix addition that would be hard to maintain with another sort of occupation. But I work. I wake up in the morning and I don't get ready to go the office. Instead I walk into my living room and there is my office, there is my work. That pile of books, files, stack of essays... that is my work. Those newspaprs I read all the time- that is also my work. And sometimes those movies I watch... that's work too.**

I've known a lot of grad students who have complained about working in their bedrooms/beds. In fact about a year and a half ago I had to stop myself from doing this because my high school insomnia had resurfaced and I was so fried it was scary. My mother has pointed out that the job that "you don't take home with you" is a myth and while she might be right, it is a little different to go to an office to work and living, more or less, in your office.

Summers are time for research. For graduate students summers are often the only time we can devote to our own work. My last two summers were an interesting display of how odd the life of a (graduate) student can be. And tame examples at that:

After I passed my exams last year I had 2 weeks of rest and then I was off to New York for research. Glamorous in theory, but in reality I slept on an air mattress in a friend's studio apt (conveniently located 2 blocks from my archive), because that was the only way to make the trip affordable. Then I went home and read while I processed some research. At the end of the summer I went to London for 2 weeks. Even more glamorous! Except I stayed in a dorm (don't even get me started) and it was... a dorm. It had its ups and downs and while a wonderful research trip, I was dismayed that I'd somehow managed to spend two weeks in a city I loved without actually loving it. :/

This summer I taught, packed, read, wrote and moved. I'm not kidding. The only real break I've had from my life as an academic were.... these past 2 weeks or so wherein I moved back to California (which included transporting 2 beloved cats), revised that same article I told you about earlier, read, written an abstract for an essay and... well prepared for the job market. Another phase of the process, but maybe one that my skeptical family will understand. But, more importantly this is some but not all of the things I've done this summer because I can't even begin to explain to you the time I've spent thinking. 

And this is where I want to end.

It's so easy to dismiss the process of thinking, to suggest that thinking is not work. bell hooks has spoken of this throughout much of her work, more eloquently than I ever could. But I just want to say that even though so much of my time is spent thinking through my dissertation- THAT THINKING IS STILL WORK. And, frustratingly, it is often work that I feel I have failed at because I have a very hard time translating that thought into the written word.

So please, do not belittle the energy that students put into their education. Just because you may not understand the process or the goal does not mean that it's not work.

This goes both ways. The family member who sparked this comment is a hard worker. I respect her job (at work and at home) and realize that I would have a hard time doing the same. I wish that she would give me the same respect.

But this must also go both ways. I don't owe her any kind of understanding that she is unwilling to give me. Nor should I prostrate myself because I went to college and graduate school.

Just as I don't feel inadequate because I am single and without children, I will not be made to feel indigent because I don't turn in a time sheet at the end of the day or week.

My job is difficult. Sometimes I hate it. Sometimes I love it.

But it deserves respect. As do I.

*I dont want to say that all graduate students do these things to excess, what I'm really saying is activities like these can be used to de-stress from our work. 


** While this is absolutely true for people who study things like popular culture or cultural criticism, I also just mean that some people (like myself) spend a lot of time analyzing a variety of texts, including movies/tv shows/novels/music which may not seem like but may be intimately involved in our dissertations or teaching.