schweblog

Thanks to the encouragement of my friends, the prodding of a very special professor, and some stroke of luck, I’m finally carousing in the hallowed halls of the academy once again.  This is graduate school, though, where you no longer have to concern yourself with bullshit prerequisites like Public Speaking 101 and Watch a Bumbling Grad Student Make an Ass of Him/Herself 154.  It is pure, uncut serious business, laced with a little bit of stress (because, holy shit, you have to write a thesis) and a little bit of snoot (because, hey, you’re a graduate student…it just sounds official).

You can go to cocktail parties and give off an aura of smart by very virtue of your occupation, simultaneously despised and loved for being a card-carrying member of the intelligentsia.  You’re a serious candidate for a companion/benefactor position with some rich Santa Fe heiress that has an obsession with younger men and gaudy turquoise jewelry.  Maybe best of all, you can now bump elbows with your profs without worrying about raising eyebrows in the department.

It’s acceptable to drink more than three cups of coffee per day now without people voicing concern about your addiction to caffeine.

It’s all right to pick up some negative habits because you’re legitimately alienated and not just in that emo-write-in-a-notebook-in-the-corner-and-wear-emasculating-jeans way.  You’re spending a huge chunk of your life in books very few people have ever heard of, fewer still have read.  This is the real fucking deal.  Suddenly, Nietzsche hugging horses makes a lot more sense.

It’s suddenly OK to babble endlessly about postmodern philosophy.  Hell, it’s expected.  After all, you’re a graduate student.

Somewhere between standing up and introducing myself as a TA and listening to a lecture about Heidegger’s influence on Derrida, it sunk in: I am where I want to be.  For the first time in  two years, I am happy with what I am doing and where I am going.