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!"