DoaMS: Under a Cajun Moon
Right now, I will admit, I am having a time management problem.
This is because, instead of doing the required ten hours of reading per week for one course, followed by the require five hours a week reading for another course, I am attempting to 'subject specialise' - i.e. reread the reading that I'm actually going to be writing my essay on - instead of keeping current.
This is bad, I know.
I used to have, for want of a better word, a 'process'. Between the last go on the degree merry-go-round and now, I studied with a distance-learning organisation that may have previously been mentioned in glowing terms. To begin with, however, this meant studying at the same time as working full-time, and for each assignment I was given a day's study leave, which I bolstered with a day of annual leave, which meant I gave myself two days to write postgraduate level essays.
Surprisingly, this worked out fairly well, because, as I said, I had a process. In the week running up to the deadline, I would try to do the research, isolate the quotations, etc, and generally get an idea of what need to be done. On Essay Day One, I would drink fireside tea (a version of rooibos tea with some cloves and other herbs mixed in that I have since run out of), which needed to be specially brewed (or, at least, the way I did it it did need the brewing). Then I would sit down and write the first draft, and try to make it okay.
On essay day two, I would then take that first draft, and gradually rip it to pieces, then reassemble it like the Bionic Man of essay writing. And by the deadline, it would be ready, and submissible, and it would, it turned out, pass (except for one exception, although that came later).
Right now, I have four essays to write over the next three weeks, and my brain refuses to engage. I wish I could put this down to the lack of loose-leaf fireside tea, but it feels like something completely different; last year, for instance, I actively enjoyed essay season. This year, something's changed. Annoyingly, I can't put my finger on it.
Perhaps, frankly, I'm just getting older.
See, this is something I get teased about, because I deploy the "ah, well, I am old, and my bones are weak and my mind is feeble" around the Young People Of Today too much, because, frankly, I find it funny.
At the same time, recently - very recently, in fact - I'm starting to feel like an Adult. Not a Responsible Adult, by any means - that will come a lot later - but, at least, an Adult.
You may be saying, Well, you're over thirty, you're supposed to be an adult, not just feel like one. And that's true; you can make all sorts of socioanthropological arguments about the current delaying of adolescence in western cultures, which is going to hit the generation below me worse than my generation - and that's saying something. You could make all manner of arguments and hypotheses about how I have passively chosen not to participate in the market and mortgage-driven consumer culture, that by remaining free and single I am avoiding taking part in the patriarchal hegemony that still, sadly, rules our day-to-day interactions. You could say many things.
But, in truth, you would probably be wrong.
Here's the thing; at this point, I have to quote Margaret Atwood, who puts it better than I would.
"Another belief of mine: that everyone else my age is an adult, whereas I am merely in disguise."
Here's something that anyone, anywhere in society would find extremely difficult to admit, but I will: I don't know exactly what I'm doing.
I have this envy, a deep, abiding envy, of people who knew what university and what degree they were going to do at 18 because they wanted job (x) at 21, and who have their lives planned out. Not because it's a good thing - such a regimented structure wouldn't work with me, nor many people I know - but just because they make me feel exactly like I'm making it up as I go along.
The first time on the degree merry-go-round was, for me, taking a degree because it was the best thing to do at the time. It didn't improve my employability prospects overly much, and the first three years, well, I didn't even enjoy them that much, but then I Grew The Fuck Up, stopped Fucking Around, and sorted things out, then I graduated, and things, well... Things became a matter of doing the right thing at the right time, and if you missed that time, well. Hey. At Least You Tried. Case in point; I took the first proper job I could get because it paid off my student overdraft in a little over a year, which was pretty sharp at the time; but then instead of trying for promotion, or secondment, or moving onwards and upwards, I just kind of stopped worrying.
Take the paycheck, build up the DVD collection, and don't worry about relationships, or mortgages, or children. That sort of thing.
Then when the job dried up like a well in the desert, instead of getting another job, I made a roundabout decision, and here I am.
Conventional - and, occasionally, unconventional - wisdom portrays humans as seeds in the soil of time; our parents nurture us as saplings until we are strong enough to stand tall on our own, then it's up to us to figure out what comes next. At the same time, school and university are further caregivers to the human trees, protecting them from the world until they're ready.
I'd like to dispute this; I think, in some ways, that humans - as things stand - can be seen as Unspecialised Machine Apparatus when we start out, and education is just a way of turning us into Specialised Machine Apparatus. Once you're done with being educated, this wisdom states, you're primed, pumped and prepared to do something - some specific thing - and do it well.
This is even true for me; I was primed and prepared to be a 'writer', except that I didn't know what to write about. Still don't, as anyone who's read my short fiction will tell you. So now I'm adding even more parts to my soul machine, with the same amount of conviction that I know what I'm doing.
But some conviction, as they say, is probably better than none.
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