Please, please can I just move into my dissertation phase?!?

45 minutes until my Internet and Civic Disengagement course. Just finished rereading a few chapters from Joe Trippi's book for class discussion, which again got me *massively* excited. Class today is going to be great.

It's an interesting juxtaposition, though. I spent the morning advising PSCI students on their midterm essays. It felt a lot like senior year at Oberlin, running those gigantic tutoring sessions and staying up for 11 hours helping people with their papers. Loved it. Then I worked on Internet stuff, which is what I eventually want to research. Loved it, and had 40 ideas that I would like to address further. After class, I'll have to drop it all and read almost a whole book on structural realism in about 4 hours. Death.

Once I'm through the dissertation phase, I'll be spending a lot more time with the first two. Once that's over, my profession will be the first two. The third one only runs from now through late August. It's not that I'll never read anything I don't like again, but my reading will be related to my research agenda -- either moving it upward or outward -- and that is where I honestly think I'm at my best.

On another note, I got back on to the pokerroom site this week while I was recovering, and again yesterday during a tv break from my reading. Finally cashed out again, for the first time this month. That's +$3,750 lifetime. I genuinely believe if I dropped grad school today, I could make $2,000/month playing cards. And that wouldn't be a bad life -- I sure don't think I'd end up writing posts about how the lifestyle was "killing me." But economically it would be a stupid move, b/c I can do almost as well as a grad student on fellowship if I make $500/month playing cards, which is a realistic goal for on-the-side play at this point. So I'll keep going through hell now, get better at cards, and by the time I'm good enough at cards that I could make a lot more doing that, I ought to be into my dissertation phase and actually ENJOYING academia again.

'kay, break time is over. Oh, I also need to work on my setlist for tonight. DJing again at the local swing dance. Sooooo glad I've started doing that again.

Frustrated

The theme of this semester is, "my life as academic hazing, or: how graduate school is killing me."

The specific problem this week was my health. All last week I knew I was fighting off a cold. Sunday night, that turned into a stomach flu. This was AFTER spending all day Saturday at a Congovcom meeting which happened to be in Philly -- very interesting, but it meant getting no reading done. So no reading was done on Monday OR Tuesday, though that eliminated International Political Economy from the mix (there is no excuse in the world as good as "I have the stomach flu," btw). Nonetheless, I'm still far away from my best and just feel physically and mentally exhausted.

With that said, the latest treatise on International Relations Theory and why it hates me:

This week I'm reading about structural realism. Last week it was strategic choice in International Politics. The class is certainly living up to its billing as IR *Theory.* These readings really wouldn't be killing me if I had had ANY previous training in IR. I know what sort of books I'm reading. They're not offering empirical insights, testing theories, or comparing theories with real-world situations. They're critiquing major works and offering syntheses for potential avenues of improvement in the discipline. That's not such a problem so long as you've ACTUALLY READ THE MAJOR WORKS. Otherwise, it's like trying to read Beowulf untranslated. Or in my case, trying to speedread Beowulf untranslated. I mean really, it took me an hour and a half to read the *overview* of this week's book. Granted, part of that is my having taken anti-histamines on Monday afternoon, and the ongoing saga of how anti-histamines completely fuck my shit up. But I'm reading this stuff and I can TELL its the part you're supposed to skim through -- the part I DO skim through in American Politics -- but here I can't because it's absolutely new to me. I haven't read the major authors, so I need to focus in on that paragraph or two about them. And then go back and read it again.

This is an academic hell dimension. And what's worse is I know that under no circumstances can I ask a prof for help. The idea is to fake my way to impressiveness. It involves coming up with a new trick every week, basically. Last week it was applying my previous knowledge of rational choice theory to IR. A few weeks before that, it was leaning on my background in Philosophy of Science. Every once in awhile, I get to dip into the one previous course I took in IR, Strategic Studies last semester. Asking for help is a sign of weakness as a potential PhD. And signs of weakness aren't a good thing, especially if you want to be pathbreaking. And I want to be pathbreaking, because otherwise what really is the point?

It's already occuring to me that this semester will be nothing compared to prepping for the comps this summer. I plan to survive/succeed, but that might just be my stubbornness talking. Meanwhile, in my Internet and Civic Engagement course, I continue to generate testable hypotheses and insights into my potential dissertation. "Please sir, may I have another!"

Fucking E.L.F...

So I'm at a folk show on Monday night, and the guitarist mentions that he could hardly get there b/c I-76 was completely blocked. Didn't think anything of it at the time, but then I find out from the local news that it was all because the Earth Liberation Front planted a fake bomb along the highway. Go ELF, way to protect the planet.

Now I'm all for a diversity of strategies within the movement. We don't all have to be the Sierra Club, and we probably shouldn't all be the Sierra Club. I have often said that the Club needs Earth First!, Earth First! needs the Club, and we all need to show each other more respect.

But...

I'd like to make a modest proposition about our tactical choices. As a benchmark, IF YOUR TACTIC IS DESIGNED TO PISS OFF THE FOLK MUSICIANS, DON'T FUCKING DO IT.

That is all.

Somewhere I got off track

For any friends who eventually actually read this blog: every once in awhile, if a group of us are together at a bar or something and you see me zoning out, sort of staring off into space, let me give you an explanation of what's going on. I'll look tired or drunk. I might be, but that's not it. When that happens, I'm "in it" (as they say in Garden State). I'm contemplating something very personal, something that has suddenly come up (or has been creeping up for some time) and that needs my attention for awhile.

If you want to know me well, wait until the group is breaking up, then take a walk with me and ask me about it.

This happened a week and a half ago, Friday night at a bar with the other grad students. We'd just seen Shaun of the Dead (which was surprisingly good) and were talking about something or other at the local pub. And, sitting there on Friday night, surrounded by my closest friends in Philadelphia -- who, relative to my other closest friends, really aren't that close at all -- and I had the distinct feeling that I'd gotten off course...
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I formulated a theory back in high school that, if the fourth dimension is a time line, then the fifth dimension must be a time plane. What I mean by this is that we exist in one line of events, a continuous stream of choices, causes and effects, if you will. But we could have made different choices, gone on different lines. And all these potential lines spread out across a plane of time. Real original, huh? What do you want from me, I was in high school. Anyway, this framework stuck with me.

I used to ruminate on this, thinking about all the tremendous things I was getting to do. I mean, if not for an errant letter from Jenn Kirby, which almost never reached me because of a lame environmental club sponsor, I never would have found Larry Bohlen, never would have started MCSEA, never would have been up-and-coming in the SSC... My life has been riddled with little choices like that. And for a long time, it seemed like all the choices had led me to the best of all possible paths. MCSEA. SSC Trainings. SSC Director. I was making decisions that mattered, making a real difference in people's lives at an age when you simply shouldn't be able to do the things I was doing. Life wasn't perfect, there was a foundational loneliness that was with me then just as it's with me now, but I was living a life that I loved and that no one else gets to lead.

At the bar, I realized that I'm no longer on that track. I'm a grad student now. Sure, I'm on the Sierra Club Board, but my Sierra Club work is half-assed now. EVERYTHING I do is half-assed now. It has to be. I've realized that I'm smart enough to do well in my PhD program, but there aren't enough hours in the day to do that and give all the other parts of my life the time they need. So the Sierra Club suffers. Dancing suffers. Friends and community suffer. Yes, even my poker game suffers. I can't do it all well, so I do it all not-so-well.

I know the choice that set me on this path. The rule is "win when it matters most." No one wins all the time, but win it matters most, you have to. In Bob's office, June of 2002, sitting through a "conflict resolution" with John Kamp, I lost. And I knew what that meant. I wanted to deny it, I thought it could be remedied and in some ways it has been. But make no mistake: in some other time line, I won that day. Or that day didn't come to pass at all. In that time line, I'm not in grad school. In that time line, I'm not on the Sierra Club. But that is the path where I am my best self.

I still have a good life, not really one I should complain about. But I did get off track, and I can't help but think this is not the life I was supposed to lead.

Time for class. Robert Keohane, Regime Theory. What am I doing here?