Managing Expectations

Going back to school has begun a transformation in me. So far, it's enlarged my brain and withered my soul.

I worked full time in property management for more than a decade. I wasn't on the front lines, where I would've lasted less than a week. Instead, I was placed in management, which is where people go when they are related to other people in management.

I have unlimited admiration for property managers and leasing agents. This is a profession almost no one gets into on purpose. It requires organizational skills and people skills; math skills and language skills (especially the ability to parse documents in Bureaucratic Mandarin for hidden meaning); time management and stress management skills; and a sense of humor. Most of all, it is a constant exercise in the art of crisis management. Which is to say, it's a lot like life, but not like living.

Apartment buildings are big, imperfectly built computers: assemblages of different, distantly related kinds of engineering, thrown together quickly and inexpertly and then managed and maintained (usually) so as to maximize revenue for the owner, well ahead of the comfort and "private enjoyment" of the "consumer" (aka, the resident).

Universities are kind of like apartment buildings. They are assemblages of physical and intellectual assets designed not for the benefit of the "consumer" (in this case, the student) but for the purpose of self-perpetuation. Graduate students understand this very well, entering into a business arrangement with the intention of furthering their own careers while helping the graduate school build its reputation and its balance sheet.

Being in graduate school is about managing expectations and appearances, and about forging alliances and connections. It would appear to be about gathering knowledge, but that actually takes a back seat to the work of positioning oneself for whatever graduate school is supposed to put within reach. There is fine work to be done, don't get me wrong: elevated thinking and experimentation, and energetic exploration and analysis, the development of lasting friendships and the reading of great works. It's just that none of that's really the point.

As you can see, just lately, I have become profoundly, deeply exhausted by being in school. I'm not talking about tired here; I'm talking about old to the bone. I'm talking about being done with ambition and the desire to remake myself or be something I always thought I could be but clearly am not. I have never been good at exploiting situations or relationships, even in the best sense of the term. I've tended, instead, to let myself be exploited, figuring that it's an honor to be useful to some entity larger than myself, and that besides, then I don't have to figure out what I stand for.

At this age, I am what I am. I am not elastic enough or plastic enough to remake myself. I entered into the Faustian bargain of a relationship with a fine university, and a well-known department within it, thinking that we could mutually benefit from the arrangement. It wasn't just a mid-life crisis, it was a last-ditch attempt to remake myself in the image I'd always had of myself in my mind's eye (OK, maybe that is a mid-life crisis).

But those images are dangerous things to hold onto. Institutions are not built by dreamers, and they are not there for the benefit of dreamers. Rather, dreamers are the fuel consumed in the furnace room of the institution.

Can you tell it's finals week?

I have barely been present to myself or my family or the work I still must do for these last six months. I've dwelt in a fog of abstract cogitation and Hebrew grammar (to which French has just been added, like insult to injury). I take up a space that could be occupied by someone half my age, who could really do something with the language and the coursework and the books that I waste. I will be 50 this year, and I will remain a work in progress whose progress never quite seems to be in the right direction.

I just want to be able to take my son to Dunkin' Donuts on a Sunday morning and hold tightly to my atomizing family and forget all the dreams that have distracted me ever since I could remember.

And then I want to go bowling.

--T.A.

Comments

[Danny]

Damn, that is one articulate post. I wish I could think and write about myself the way you do! The stuff about "ambition" and "dreams" hits very close to home for me.

I assume this was just you letting off some steam and that you are not contemplating leaving your program? Couldn't tell.

P.S. To hell with those people half your age. You aren't taking anything away from them and I have no doubt that you're not "wasting" a thing in this quest, however it turns out.

[Chavi]

"Ditto."

Okay, so I'm not remaking myself, but I am losing myself a bit. I'm finding it difficult to juggle everything at once -- relationship, Orthodox conversion, school, work, family, sanity.

But I have to second Danny -- you aren't thinking about stepping out, are you? I hope not. I need to know there's at least someone else out there who's doing this thing, too. By the way, do you know an Avi Finegold? Supposedly he's down there in the program. If you do, tell him Chavi says "hello!"

[david]

Danny and Chavi: I doubt I'll step out. I'll have to think long and hard about pursuing a PhD, though. Thanks for your concern.

Chavi: Don't think I know Avi Feingold. It's amazing how many people you can not know at the University of Chicago.

[amba]

This, which I wrote to a blogfriend tonight, seems obscurely related somehow:

Funny, it's this sense that . . . it has something to do with life under capitalism, which I wouldn't change. But that it's such a zero-sum game. So Darwinian. The strongest trees get most of the light. It's disproportionate. Feeds on itself, both ways. Nothing succeeds like success. Yet I wouldn't have Robin Hood or Barack Obama step in and even things out. The trouble is you get to thinking that the life people have is what they deserve. It's the measure, not of their virtue, but of their vitality and viability and vivacity. You start feeling obscurely malformed.

All this is in the Bible -- the race is to the swift, to him who has more shall be given, and so on -- so I shouldn't pin it on capitalism. Anyway, consider the alternative.

[amba]

The part that I somehow accidentally erased, that's probably most pertinent, said something like:

If for any reason you're unable to exploit your own vitality, you end up stunted, living in the shadow on what little you can get.

[amba]

Or is it "The race is not to the swift"? Hmmmm.

[Cvonie]

I hear you! And am unsettled/comforted (depending on the moment) to see the search can last until 50 and beyond. Better start putting energy in the reserves...