Grad school doesn't work without blogs

Okay, so I'm going back to doing this because I've got too much crap in my head and I think my head organizes itself better when it can get stuff out of it. What I really need to be doing is writing down some thoughts on a bunch of randomly disconnected shit that theoretically might have something to do with what sort of seems to be my dissertation topic v5.9 or something -- my first three ideas were rejected out of hand by my advisor for feeling like she didn't know enough about them to guide me in a dissertation, and now that I've finally picked a manuscript to work on, she told me that she didn't know much about it (still) so that I'd have to figure out all the important stuff and do all the research without her being able to help me really. So I'm not sure why working on this manuscript is suddenly better than anything else I'd thrown at her since she seems to be just as sidelined, but whatever. I then got a lecture by her and the only other person possibly on my committee that if I'm doing things like laundry, cleaning the apartment, or worrying about anything non-dissertation in my life, I'm not doing enough work. The basic message is literally that if I'm even taking the time and energy to make sure my bills get paid, I'm not putting enough time into my dissertation. So... the end result of that conversation three weeks ago was to put enough stress on me to functionally incapacitate me - I've gotten significantly less done since then and spent significantly more time stressing out about what I haven't gotten done. For some reason the advisors would like an annotated bibliography of everything I'm reading - this ISN'T a requirement for the dissertation proposal and I can't figure out why they'd like everything annotated, especially as I can't figure out where the hell they think I'm going to be getting the time to read through everything and annotate it when I'm also supposed to be finishing reading a 982 page manuscript in an old London dialect I can barely comprehend, coming up with an argument to help make sense of the manuscript's random collection of religious and romance materials that is uniquely my argument and not just based on what other people have said, yet also taking that argument and putting it in a scholarly context and helping illustrate the place of my argument in the overall scholarly milieu of the twelve things ever written about the manuscript... I feel like I can barely comprehend half of what I'm reading to the point of doing much of a real lit analysis of it, and that if I had a bit more time I'd be able to sort through the difficulties and start really thinking through everything as opposed to just trying to get the plot down. But I was supposed to have this done a week ago, so....
And it's still not done, and what little I sent last Wednesday for a supposed 'deadline' merely got met with "this obviously isn't enough - what are you doing with your time" and suggestions that I spend more time working.

Meanwhile, instead of teaching freshmen this semester I'm teaching senior English majors and grad students at a college almost an hour and a half south of here. I was initially excited about this, but it turns out that after one week, I've already had a complaint made to another professor. Basically, I'm supposed to be teaching Ancient and Medieval lit. I based the level I was dealing with the first class on the posts the students put on blackboard, which were almost (with one notable exception) exclusively dealing with plot. No analysis, just plot. I expect more from freshmen. So I adjusted what I was planning on doing with the class to the sorts of posts that they were making. We had a fun discussion... but one grad student bitched behind my back that she felt she wasn't being challenged enough. I'm assuming it's the one person who's demonstrated capability of really thinking on a higher, more organized level than her peers (and everyone else in the class). I would LOVE it if this person would speak up more in class, but she seemed more content last night to just glare at me from under her eyebrows and assume herself superior to anything I said. I was going over methods of how oppressed groups often participate in their own oppression and ways to understand that so that we could usefully talk about the role of some slaves in the Odyssey... and then I split the class up into groups to talk about which model might help us understand the slaves that are loyal to Odysseus v. those who aren't. The ENTIRE CLASS totally ignored any of the theoretical models I outlined for them and came up with something different and significantly less organized or in-depth, and one of the grad students literally refused to so much as move her desk to even pretend she was going to be involved in group work. So I feel totally disrespected as a teacher and like I'm not sure what to do to get them to understand this stuff and work with it better - I'm emailing a couple of other professors to ask what sorts of suggestions they have. Because I don't see the point in assuming that they understand things if they refuse to demonstrate any understanding... but I'm really pissed at the idea that if the class isn't "up to standards" because I can't manage to get the vast majority of the class to ANALYZE anything, much less work with theoretical models, the originally bitchy student is just going to continue to badmouth me to other members of the department. And given we've had two classes, I just don't feel that that's either fair or deserved. And I can't motivate the rest of the class to work on a higher level if they're going to flat refuse to. Though if we get through another week where we're supposed to be working with theory and applying it to the text and they're completely resistant, I'm going to ask them what they think the point of the class is and what they want to get out of it, because a rehearsal of plot points isn't going to get any of us anywhere.

So I'm spinning my wheels a lot, being really unproductive because I can't get either of the above problems out of my head long enough to actually solve either of them, and really, really really really really wanting to quit grad school seriously for the first time. The reason I got into this was becuase I was hoping it would be a way for me to do work that was somehow meaningful to me and make me not feel like all I was doing was selling away portions of my life to a company I didn't care about in return for a paycheck. And now I'd rather do that, because it's stable and there's the possibility that I might be able to only work 45 or so hours a week and occasionally have a moment of mental peace. And stop crying so damn much because I'm so frustrated with everything in my life.

Thank God for Tony - he's only holding up marginally better but he's being a really wonderful support.... and Nunk won't move off my lap when I'm at home now - I think she's decided that I need help so she's been purring on me a lot lately.

Is it next June yet? I'd like to be able to stop putting off my life for school and get on with the wedding already...

PS - Thank you Mommy for the lovely plates and sheets!!!