End of the quarter performance

Ohio State’s academic calendar is based on the quarter system, although, as those of us in curriculum development know only too well, that is about to change in the summer of 2012 when we will switch to semesters. This means that no sooner have you started a class, than you seem to be wrapping it all up and preparing for finals. This leaves me with the paradoxical feeling of being both exhausted from all the hurrying by the last third of the quarter, and also overwhelmed by how quickly things have progressed. For those of you who are runners, the quarter system is the equivalent of the 400m – short enough that you are supposed to sprint, but long enough that your legs and lungs feel as if they are going to explode by the time you get to the third turn. Just for reference, I used to run the 400m (and even held the dubious distinction of holding my school record for a few years), but not because I was a sprinter, but because I was a middle distance runner who was willing to push my speed a bit, and, frankly, because no one else wanted to run that distance.

This quarter, in particular, seems to have both flown by, and, dragged on. That means that I am not ready for the great academic version of “show and tell” that is otherwise known as finals. I mean, I guess I am “ready” in that I have learned everything that I need to have learned, and am ready to regurgitate it back onto the page to be judged by the esoteric standards of graduate school, but, in a more fundamental sense I am not ready to be done. I was going to say, “in an emotional sense,” but we had a big debate in my Qualitative Methodology class yesterday about whether “emotions” are just a social construction used to interpret our embodied performance in the world – I know, don’t even get me started on how pretentious and out of touch with the real world THAT all sounds.

I am rambling, and that, ironically, is kind of my point. I am in a meandering, introspective state of mind. Maybe, it has something to do with the fact that we have had three birthdays in our family this quarter – including the big 4-0 for me, and my oldest son’s 11^th birthday today, which brings back memories of my own transition into motherhood. Or, maybe it is the wet and gloomy English weather that we are having in Central Ohio, or the smoky taste of the Russian Caravaner’s Tea that I have found at a great tea shop in Columbus, which reminds me of the tea I used to buy from a market stall in Cambridge as an undergraduate. I suspect, however, that while those may all be contributory conditions for this morbid introspection, they are not sufficient on their own. There is something else about my current limbic state that seems to be making me vague, and dreamy, and thoughtful. None of which is very conducive to frantic, academic performance, whilst juggling a curriculum conversion, a household which produces dirty clothes at a rate that threatens to take over our basement laundry at any moment, and organizing a pre-teen birthday sleepover.

Yet here I am, in graduate school, as a wife, mother and professional educator, trying to perform. This is where the real work of a doctoral program kicks in – can you still strap on the tap shoes and dance, when all around you is chaos and mayhem? I am increasingly convinced that if you do earn a degree at the end of all this, it is measure of survival more than brilliance. Cynical, moi?