Grad School

A short post, to give a reprieve after yesterday's post, about how grad school makes me question my own identity. I think the biggest problem with being a grad student is that one doesn't fit in a broad category. On one hand we are students, and I still, for the most part, consider college students to be my peer group. However, I also am an instructor to said students so, at least with regards to the specific students in my classes, I do not consider myself their peer. When you consider them, I am much more like a professor, and indeed they sometimes call me a professor. However, I too have professors teaching my classes, so they are not my peers.

Another thing is that I am, sort of, not very competently, running my own life. I have a job, which gives me a paycheck, with which I rent an apartment, buy food, make my computer work, and all the other serious adult-y things that one might imagine adult-like people doing. But, as mentioned above, I still think of myself as a student, someone preparing for life, rather than living it (this might be worth an elaborating post in itself some time, but not now).

Sometimes I worry that one of the functions of grad school, similar to boot camp, is to break down the participants sense of self in order that I can be re-molded in the form desired by her or his superiors. Whether or not this is the case, I certainly have, in previous semesters, lost myself over the course of the semester. Granted, over the past few years, even before I came to grad school, I haven't had the strongest grasp on who I thought I was. However, I feel like it has been worse since coming to Michigan. Upon returning to Oregon over winter break this year I remarked to a friend that as I was leaving to walk over to his house I had the strangest feeling, as though when I had done the same thing last summer was much more immediate than anything that had happened to me in the intervening semester.

This is one of the reasons I try to keep up with the blog, it keeps me thinking important thoughts, and not sleepwalking through life. And I appreciate all those who are willing to share that journey with me. One last piece of advice, always go for the red pill!