Good Thing I Quit Grad School, Part 5299

I gotta tell you, folks. I didn't really think I'd be getting a new reason so quickly. I almost don't know how to react.

I guess it wasn't clear enough that grad school wasn't for me when my potential thesis imploded in my face. Oh good heavens, no. We needed a clearer sign, a more obvious sign.

Something that made me overlook the unbearable stress and the long hours and the lack of good ideas and the challenge of finding motivation and the frustrations of teaching and the pressure of publication. You know, all that made leaving seem like a good idea, but the payoff--oh, the payoff!--still seemed so sweet. Tenure! Research! Comfort! Leisure! Joy!

Sure, it's a bitch of a road to get to the end and finish your dissertation, but once that Ph.D. is superglued to the end of your name, surely the riches of the academic life are to follow. And how could one possibly resist the allures?

I'm sorry, what was that?...

...Yeah, that'll do it.

Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go pat myself on the back for a little while.

(Thanks to Karen of Current Rewind for the link!)

Good Thing I Quit Grad School, Part 5298

I am what you'd call a recovering academic. They say the first step is admitting you have a problem, but when you're an academic and you're stuck in a pattern of self-defeating soul-suckery, sometimes admission just isn't enough. When you're in that deep, you need to get out.

Fortunately, I've come out the other side and lived to tell the tale. And sure, there have been moments where I've had my doubts, wondered if I made the correct call. Today, however, was one of those days that reassured me I did, in fact, make the right decision.

When I was still fresh-faced and bright-eyed (i.e. first semester), I wrote a paper for a science fiction seminar on Coheed and Cambria. It felt like the right choice to me: it was sci-fi related but off the beaten path, and it allowed me to bring in multidisciplinary elements instead of merely writing about a book and some articles. As I developed the paper, the whole thing felt incredibly strong to me, and I was really proud of the ideas I was coming up with.

The general thesis, in two sentences, was that Coheed and Cambria--by utilizing music albums, online forums, comic books, and other nontraditional media to share their saga--were essentially the science fiction pulps of the new millennium. If writing was dead, or dying, in that millennium, their music represented both a rejection of writing and a vehicle through which sci-fi plots could be conveyed to the masses.

I loved it. I turned it into my Master's thesis. I had for a while considered revising it into an article. The only problem was, I had written it with only four of the five planned albums in the series completed. Then I left grad school before the final chapter was released and the whole idea was shelved.

Good thing. Today, Coheed announced the plans for the new record:

With “Year of the Black Rainbow,” we will be releasing a deluxe package that includes a NOVEL OF THE SAME NAME. Not a graphic novel, but a full 300+page prose novel, which will tell the origins of Coheed and Cambria, and much more. There will be no mystery to this story, you will be able to explore it like never before.

As a Coheed fan, I am stoked by this. But if I was still a grad student, I would be pissed.

A novel. Not a comic book, but a novel. Like, just words on paper. The most traditional storytelling medium ever invented.

And...boom goes my thesis.

Good thing I got out of the academic game! Otherwise, I'd be singing "What did I do to deserve this?" from now until the blood red summer.

What Happened to the Funny?

That's actually a hypothetical question.

I gotta tell you: I have no idea.

See, my two blogs operate in very different ways. With A Rapturous Verbatim, I tend to spend at least a day or two (if not more) ruminating on the topic I discuss before I ever sit down to start writing. So while I really do try hard to make sure that I post with some kind of regularity, the frequency of updates there is just not going to be that high. Truly profound things just don't happen every day, you feel me?

This blog, however, is and always has been about embracing the sudden, the random, the brief, and mostly the funny. It's lighthearted and unserious, and was started with the simple mission of allowing me to post things that didn't involve long stretches of contemplation. If I saw something and thought it was silly, or said something to someone that I thought was funny, then bam--Tournament time.

So it would seem logical to assume that, as it's been exactly one month since my last post, nothing funny has happened. That's not exactly true.

My focus has just been in a different place lately, is all. I pursued a job opportunity, which I eventually got (!!!), and have focused on steeling myself for the big transition.

I've also been trying to get back into the swing of my weight loss scheme, which has stalled out a bit lately what with impromptu vacations and the impending holidays.

And really, the funniest thing I've done lately is make a semi-drunken video of me dancing to Phoenix's "Fences," but that was also to make someone very special happy, so...that's more of a private thing.

So take heart, all two or three of you that actually read this. I have not abandoned you, and I promise I'll be back to form soon.