Welcome to today’s Friday thread, where I offer a few questions to continue discussions begun earlier in the week.If you missed my conversation with Dr. Kelly J. Baker earlier this week, you can listen or read the transcript here.
A common theme in the stories I’ve gathered from other academics is that graduate school socializes us in ways that we must recover from later. If you are an academic or have watched a friend or loved one go through graduate school, what are some of those unhealthy lessons that M.A. and Ph.D. programs teach emerging professionals? How did you unlearn that education?
Kelly and I are both recovering academics, but my sense is that our stories might overlap with those from recovering lawyers, recovering physicians, recovering chefs, and more. If you are a reader of this series but are not a recovering academic, yourself, what echoes of your experience do you hear in ours?
If you have weathered a major life transition, what were some of the behaviors or choices that helped you through that grieving period? Did you create any new rituals tied to the transition, as Bruce Feiler suggests? Did you give up any old habits? Did you try something like Kelly’s friend, who made a list of the identities she intended to give up and another list of aspirational identities or roles?
What else would you like to discuss about Kelly’s story? If you have a similar story to tell or know of someone who I ought to consider for the podcast, please let me know in the comments or privately at dolezaljosh@gmail.com.
This is my equivalent of the NPR fund drive, where I remind everyone that paid subscriptions primarily support a modest stipend for podcast guests. If you’d like to continue hearing stories like Kelly’s, please consider upgrading. Thanks to everyone who has already done so. Once we have a larger number of paid subscribers, we’ll also be able to have some conversations on sensitive subjects like this one with private threads.
I learned a ritual in graduate school. It helps with the transitions.
I used to work in coffee shops and wrote my entire dissertation in one.
Coffee has become my ritual. Throughout my life I've switched continents, civilizations, careers, class divides, ... my life is more about change than sameness. So I find rituals to be centering, and that includes finding "my" coffee shop, buying coffee, a doing work. The whole experience of finding one, getting to know the baristas, the daily trip, etc. is important to me. Even now, when that option is not available due to COVID concerns and escalating coffee prices, I perform the ritual in my office. It changes form.
Later, I learning artisanal furniture making, light construction, gardening, and landscaping as methods to help cope with the transitions of the academic life--going from job to job with little control over my employers or destinations. But nothing has displaced the ritual of coffee.
Especially appreciate your point about how the coffee ritual survives by changing form. One of my favorite lines from Leslie Marmon Silko's novel Ceremony comes from a shaman named Betonie. He says, "Things that don't shift and grow are dead things." Betonie is the only healer who is able to help Tayo, a WWII veteran who is part Laguna Pueblo and part white. This is because Betonie makes changes to traditional ceremonies to account for changes in the world. The scale of destruction that Tayo has witnessed, the terrible power of nuclear war, far surpasses any conception of evil in indigenous stories. And so the ceremonies must be changed to match the evil they intend to cure.
Especially appreciate your point about how the coffee ritual survives by changing form. Earlier this year, I wrote about my running ritual. Almost immediately after I published that post I suffered a toe injury that I didn't allow to heal properly before leaping back into exercise. And so just before Christmas I discovered that I'd fractured a sesamoid bone in my foot. I probably have another six weeks yet before I'll be able to run again. Non-weight-bearing exercise still gives me some of what running did, but it's not the same. Resilience requires some adaptation. I suppose it's heartening that I haven't plunged into melancholy while I've been laid up -- maybe running wasn't as much of a crutch as I thought it was. But I'll be happy, indeed, when I can slip back into those shoes and hit the trail. Nothing like it!
I got through grad school by playing 3 soccer leagues simultaneously, including 1 FIFA registered league. Nothing mattered but the team and the moment on the field.
FYI, soccer running is vastly different than distance running.
I’m there with you re: the coffee and especially the coffee shop. My “local” was the place where I got most of my best work finished, at least the first drafts. Now I live elsewhere and I’ve found pubs to be the replacement, but there is something about coffee in particular.
I learned a ritual in graduate school. It helps with the transitions.
I used to work in coffee shops and wrote my entire dissertation in one.
Coffee has become my ritual. Throughout my life I've switched continents, civilizations, careers, class divides, ... my life is more about change than sameness. So I find rituals to be centering, and that includes finding "my" coffee shop, buying coffee, a doing work. The whole experience of finding one, getting to know the baristas, the daily trip, etc. is important to me. Even now, when that option is not available due to COVID concerns and escalating coffee prices, I perform the ritual in my office. It changes form.
Later, I learning artisanal furniture making, light construction, gardening, and landscaping as methods to help cope with the transitions of the academic life--going from job to job with little control over my employers or destinations. But nothing has displaced the ritual of coffee.
Especially appreciate your point about how the coffee ritual survives by changing form. One of my favorite lines from Leslie Marmon Silko's novel Ceremony comes from a shaman named Betonie. He says, "Things that don't shift and grow are dead things." Betonie is the only healer who is able to help Tayo, a WWII veteran who is part Laguna Pueblo and part white. This is because Betonie makes changes to traditional ceremonies to account for changes in the world. The scale of destruction that Tayo has witnessed, the terrible power of nuclear war, far surpasses any conception of evil in indigenous stories. And so the ceremonies must be changed to match the evil they intend to cure.
Especially appreciate your point about how the coffee ritual survives by changing form. Earlier this year, I wrote about my running ritual. Almost immediately after I published that post I suffered a toe injury that I didn't allow to heal properly before leaping back into exercise. And so just before Christmas I discovered that I'd fractured a sesamoid bone in my foot. I probably have another six weeks yet before I'll be able to run again. Non-weight-bearing exercise still gives me some of what running did, but it's not the same. Resilience requires some adaptation. I suppose it's heartening that I haven't plunged into melancholy while I've been laid up -- maybe running wasn't as much of a crutch as I thought it was. But I'll be happy, indeed, when I can slip back into those shoes and hit the trail. Nothing like it!
I was never into running ... but ...
I got through grad school by playing 3 soccer leagues simultaneously, including 1 FIFA registered league. Nothing mattered but the team and the moment on the field.
FYI, soccer running is vastly different than distance running.
I’m there with you re: the coffee and especially the coffee shop. My “local” was the place where I got most of my best work finished, at least the first drafts. Now I live elsewhere and I’ve found pubs to be the replacement, but there is something about coffee in particular.