work ethic
Four weeks from today, prelim. If I pass it, I’ll be ABD. I should be nervous, twitchy, frantically studying, and I’m not.
There is a lot of work to do, but mostly it isn’t overwhelming. There are times, hours or days at a time, when I find myself unable to work, and put aside books and computer in favor of other activities. I’ve enough experience with my own work habits to know that if the time ahead doesn’t feel productive, it won’t be; so there’s no use in trying. So I read books, see my friends, then dive in again.
The question is always there in the back of my head: is this wrong? Am I overly cocksure, setting myself up for failure? Is this feeling of “there’s only so much I can learn in a given time period” an excuse to not push myself?
Perhaps it is unsettling that this research is not as difficult as the research I did in the Italian Studies track. Yet, I am learning more now. Perhaps it isn’t as difficult because I seem to have found my Subject. But there are no guidelines, except for what my committee and I have come up with. There is no trial by fire, no hated rite of passage, only work.
I push, when I need to. (It gets me in trouble sometimes, this toeing of the dead-line.) I sleep and work at odd hours. I navel-gaze in a public forum (this one) and then go back to work. The hard part is, work is never certain. There is little to compare it to, there are few standards. But then I shrug, and decide again and again that I am willing to make a fool of myself.