Roughly 1/70th finished with my masters...or, Grad School: Week 1

16th century rebound

I'm still kind of in shock that I'm actually a grad student. It feels like this unattainable plane of existence, like it's up there with the land of the Beautiful People. But here I am, student ID and all, with a week of classes under my belt. I walk around campus, with old buildings nearby and giant edition of Shakespeare in hand, and feel like the people in The Theory of Everything or Gaudy Night. AND DID I MENTION I HAVE AN OFFICE? Well, I share it with two (lovely) people, but......still.

My college (which I like referring to as Mayberry) was very conservative, so the transition to my new gig has been fascinating and entertaining and occasionally bewildering. I'm now in the world of trigger warnings and fluid gender identity. The religious skepticism isn't unfamiliar though, from the Cambridge-University-divinity-lectures days. So for the time being, I'm trying to figure out the nuances of this new environment and how I can fit into it, with the strongly conservative theology of my research interests.

My experience in starting grad school has been very different from starting college. The latter sometimes felt like a continuation of highschool: Constant social activities and low probability that more than 1-2 close friends share the same major. Now, the only people I have met have been in my department. Since academics is the focus, I haven't really felt the need to "find" friends, because we're all down in the basement together and it's happening organically throughout the day.

The tower of my building reminds me of Ely Cathedral AND IT MAKES ME VERY HAPPY

Also, a point of existential struggle: I have no idea what to make of the homework. The workload, per class, is rather astonishing (Monday: read two Elizabethan plays by Wednesday, k thanks bye), but I only have 2 classes. So I think I'm living out what I dreamed of in the trenches of senior year; gone are the days of being distracted by 6 competing classes (=trains of thought). If this keeps up, grad school is looking to be easier than college. (I anticipate future me laughing/crying at this statement)

This may be a failed experiment a month from now, but I've been thinking of writing more about my academics here, both to have something to look back on, and also as a way to think through some of our class discussions more thoroughly. We'll see.

• My first class deals with romance, war, and classical reception in Medieval literature. Not too much to report on yet, except the beginning of what could become a very incendiary discussion on the ethics of writing about experiences that are not personal or first-hand. On of my classmates was vehemently opposed to the idea of monetary gain for writing someone else's story. There are several assumptions in that statement that make me inclined to take the other side: first, that the end of writing is financial or social limelight; second, that the only people qualified to accurately depict an experience are those who lived through it (as opposed to careful research, including consultation with witnesses, by an outsider); third, that people can "own" experiences; fourth, that it is better to leave some stories untold (for lack of a witness's willingness or ability to write it down) than to have them written by someone else. It seems like a very low view of the relationship between imagination and truth.
• My other class is on Shakespeare. A big point of discussion is the theme of greatness. I have a seminar-length (20-25pp) term paper for this one, so I'm already brainstorming potential theses (I think I've narrowed it down to the relationship between greatness and altruism/public good). Anyway, this past week, we compared Henry VI.3 and Kyd's Spanish Tragedy. I think I'm a little fixated on Margaret in 3H6. She has Lady-Macbeth capacity for ruthlessness, but isn't motivated by personal ambition or devoid of human feeling. I can't figure out if she's sympathetic or not.

To be continued.