Wednesday, April 23, 2008

There's a different me inside this student

I'm new to this bloggy world and, in some sense, looking over the blogs of other academics, I am slightly terrified. Those ahead of us in academia--farther down the road, however you want to put it, tend to be rather intimidating. It's frustrating that even in a pseudonymous world I am likewise intimidated. I don't know where this complex comes from, but it must be part of the mandatory bipolarization of a graduate student--to be completely humbled by our professors and published authors, yet able to enter in and converse with them intellectually; to be confident and sophisticated in front of our students so we don't reveal how unqualified and untrained we are (I often feel like quite a fraud when it comes to grading time); and finally, to be cavalier and brash wtih our colleagues and cohorts while we commisserate in the trenches. I think that list actually requires us to be tripolar, but lets not get picky.
What I'm trying to get at is that I'm fairly new at this whole game and just trying to learn the ropes. I don't want to sound whiny and overwhelmed but, well, its the end of a very long semester. I will be a much different person by next wednesday when I receive my grades and figure out if I managed to pull this semester off.

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