#grad hell

[thequintessentialqueer]

omg y'all would not believe the week I'm having. so I've been working on an application for OGS (ontario graduate scholarship - it's $15,000 for one year, so like, big ass money in the land of academia), and it's going okay, ya know?? like I got my concept, got two profs to provide reference letters, finally figured out how to save what I'm typing into this shit ass pdf application thing, etc. I'm at the section where you have to fill out all your past and current scholarships, and I'm doing my current ones (graduate tuition scholarship valued at $8000/year, and a program specific scholarship worth $5750/year - which all sounds pretty good but each "year" is split into 3 terms and I don't get time off in the summer so I can't really take on a full-time job without sacrificing my education, so in practice, I don't actually get enough to match the cost of living in toronto and still have to get OSAP).....and I have to say whether each award is federal, provincial, or internal, and the only one I'm unsure about is the GTS, so I look it up.....and discover that "this award is not tenable with OGS" and a bunch of other major awards. so I check with the head of my department and the program coordinator and several random friends and everyone agrees that based on what it says on my university's official website, I am not eligible for OGS. so I go "fuck it" and spend the rest of the week drinking and smoking weed and attending punk matinees n shit. really having a good time.

then today, I get an email at around 1pm from the university's office of graduate studies. it's an official congratulations on receiving the GTS, which btw they never sent me when I initially received it - I only knew because my prof told me and I got the money in my account. this official congratulations goes on to inform me that if I receive OGS, I won't get my GTS funds for that year, but otherwise there's nothing preventing me from applying for OGS and potentially getting almost twice the funding! cool right???! just one fucking problem! I already told my referees about me not being eligible and fucked off instead of finishing the application!!! so I just spent all of today working on this as-yet-unfinished OGS app, when I had set this time aside to work on assignments due in fiction (tomorrow) and nonfiction (the day after tomorrow)!!! so now I'm here with a thousand readings open on capitalism, fascism, and climate change, with nothing ready for either class, crying on and off.....and all of this because I want to write a book of fucking poetry for my wretched fucking thesis project for my accursed MFA, and I need enough money to live, and that money necessitates that I spin my book into a goddamn research project!!! and I've got to do that before tomorrow!!! and one of my referees hasn't responded to me yet about this new fucking information!!! and none of this should have happened to begin with but the university and my program are so bad at communicating between each other that no one in my program knew how the scholarship they nominated me for worked!! so I also I didn't know and ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

[thequintessentialqueer]

I finished the final paper for plenary, worth 30%, between 3000-4000 words, and I was done by 2:59am and it's not due until noon tomorrow! that may not sound like much but for me it's a big deal. like I'm the #extensionqueen but I didn't ask for an extension this time and I wrote just over 3400 words so I'm like comfortably within the word count instead of pushing it over by like 1000 words min! on the downside I'm pretty sure my essay is absolute garbage cause I was truly baffled by the requirements and style......like I can write strong academic papers but this was like a "creative essay" responding to one of the readings from class and reflecting on how it applies to our own writing or some shit idk.......but you know what like.......fuck it at this point. I'm getting jaw surgery in a week and I just can't be dealing with this shit or taking it too seriously honestly. I'm not in this program for plenary anyway. it's just something we all have to do, but the main focus is on improving my craft as a poet and learning how to work within fiction and nonfiction. so ehhhh okay whatever lmao

[thequintessentialqueer]

ahhhhh I'm getting actually pretty excited to move??? I was on the ikea website looking at furniture and I know I can't actually afford to buy all my shit new (I'm looking on bunz and kijiji n shit) but I think I'm gonna buy a bed!!! I've never owned a new bed before and I think it's time!!! I'm gonna either get a double or a queen! and my room is 14×10 ft!!! with really lovely windows!!! I'm gonna actually have space for my new bed!! I'm gonna get one with sliding drawers underneath in either black or white, and I still have to decide between a foam or spring mattress!! I've only ever had futons or really shitty box springs so I don't have a great frame of reference, so I think I'll pick my mattress in person at the store!!! I'm so so excited I'm gonna have a bed that I actually chose!!! a new bed!! and then I'm gonna be broke!! but I'll have a big ass comfortable ass bed that no one else has slept in before me!!! ♥️🍾😍

[thequintessentialqueer]

my fucking piece of shit period causes me tremendous physical pain but I'm beginning to think the emotional disregulation is even worse. like literally every month without fail I just fall to pieces. I feel so deeply sad, so dysmorphic, so absolutely hopeless that I just want to stop existing, or tear my own flesh open to get all the Wrongness out of me. I can't focus on anything, my adhd meds become less effective, I make stupid and dangerous mistakes (today I cut my finger open trying to use a knife to open the packaging on some cheese, which I shouldn't have been eating anyway because of my lactose intolerance but). I lost my whole day to my period and I stupidly left all my readings for thursday to do today so now I have over 150 dense pages to get thru before bed and I have to get up at 6:30am and I just. I feel like everything is getting bad again and I know this is probably just temporary but also the dark and cold is coming soon and I know how badly that impacts me and gahhhhhhh why can't I be fucking stable. why is it so hard to keep the shifting parts of me in their proper places. I don't want to ruin this. this program is a huge deal and I can't fuck it up and I'm already fucking it up god help me and I'm just a crying disaster wasting even more time writing this damn post and I'm seriously considering skipping (at least part of) class but I Can't Do That holy fucking shit. I can't I can't it's worth 30% of my grade to be there and participate and I worked so hard to get here I can't miss anything :'( just. fuck. fuck me jfc and fuck my period specifically

[thequintessentialqueer]

I'm officially moved in!!! I now live in hogtown....the big smoke......charawna......and my room is hella grimy rn cause the last tenant made zero effort to clean and my Ikea bed came broken so I have to get the broken parts replaced.......but I built a desk chair by myself, I built a desk with my mum's help, and with a team effort from me, my mum, and my dad, my dresser is complete! I have books on my bookshelf, and a place to keep my weed, and a queen sized bed! I have a clothing rack with my dresses and jackets and long skirts! I have pots and pans and a box full of knitting supplies! I have two very lamps, and one of them is very stylish and cool! tomorrow I'm gonna clean and tidy and it's gonna be amazing! at some point I'll invite friends over and do a lil housewarming!

oh and my housemates are super nice so far! I was really really worried to the point of having a hysterical crying breakdown because they're all white and I was anxious about living with white people who I don't know/whose politics I don't know, but you know what! I think this is gonna be okay! and the place is already so much less messy than when I viewed it! the two people who moved out were the main source of the mess and now that they're gone there's no more clutter and the others have made massive progress in cleaning already! oh and I was able to supply a couch that I got for free, so we have a couch! and one of the guys is gonna set up some gaming shit in the basement for communal use and all of them play video games and they said they could teach me! they're also gonna reach me DnD!

so yeah! I'm super tired rn and ridiculously hungry and I've been having a rough couple days, but I'm really happy. also I've stopped wearing a full face of makeup every day! the last week I've gone out almost every single day with just mascara and a bit of bronzer to contour my cheekbones! and I actually feel good about my looks! and I am so glad I didn't wear any foundation today because it was incredibly, incomprehensibly hot, especially in this house. I've never sweated this hard in all my days but because I was not wearing foundation it actually looked kinda nice instead of gross! anyway I'm starting classes on thursday and I got a lot of reading to do to be prepared but I'm pretty pumped rn!

[thequintessentialqueer]

ahhhhhh I had such a good first day of my poetry workshop! there are only 7 students, and only 4 of us are specializing in poetry, so it's ridiculously intimate. we were asked to each bring in 8 copies of a poem to analyse together, and I had such a good time reading and discussing the poems! I feel like the possibilities of what poetry can be have expanded so much and I kept thinking of things I wanted to write and it was just so cool! I brought a Mahmoud Darwish poem ("Earth Presses Against Us") and while not everyone in the class had a super nuanced understanding of Palestine's struggle for liberation everyone was really receptive to the piece. I can't wait to start workshopping our own poems, and to read all the books on the syllabus, and to meet all the poets who will come in to lecture!!! I feel like......I feel like poetry was being crushed and obliterated at my slam poetry job. like there was so little stylistic freedom and so much emphasis on being appealing, and so little opportunity to say anything original.......I was completely losing my voice and feeling so shit about my work but now I feel so free. there are just so many ways to Say something with poetry and with this course I don't have to put being understood over what I actually want to say or do. like the class will actually put the work in to understand shit complexly! the one thing I'll say is that I feel really poorly read compared to my classmates, but that's a good thing: it means I have motivation to learn more!

and like i don't know how they'll react to my work but I do know that they'll actually put work into reading it and that makes me feel like their critiques will actually be valuable. I've spent a year being told to cut words because "normal people won't understand that" and "isn't it a bit early to be alienating your audience" and basically I've just been.......writing poetry with and for people who don't fucking like poetry.....who just like winning and getting paid and for the most part make no effort to engage with the discipline beyond things they can personally relate to. like we all know how I feel about eurocentric curriculum, but they literally dismiss every part of the canon as "shit written by dead white guys like Shakespeare" and I'm like.......but Shakespeare is actually good and even if you don't personally like a poet in the canon you still stand to learn a lot from reading and responding to them (like I have very polarized feelings about coleridge's work but I still wrote an entire poem in response to "christabel" lmao). but anyway, I can tell that this course isn't gonna be like that and I feel........I feel like I'm breathing properly for the first time in recent memory. I'm finally writing again. for the last year I've had the worst "writers block" ever by which I mean that every time I would try to write and all I could think about was how my poem would be received in slam and how my team would critique it and then I wouldn't be able to write anything. but I can experiment here. I can do something strange and understated and fragmented. I can play with form. I can be subtle. I can say things that aren't just agreeable political statements about being racialized or queer or a woman. I can write about small things and take on personas that aren't me. oh I'm so excited!!!

[neptuning-fork]

i keep in contact with my old PI by dropping pictures in her inbox and disappearing into the void

[neptuning-fork]

no because academia is great for me where else would i get flown around and paid to talk about my special interest for a few days. like. girl. you're paying me real life money to talk about my research when i would talk about it, unprompted, to anyone for-fucking-free. but like i mean if you're offering,,,