Damn, Grad School Is Hard.

I remember saying once, a while ago, that I hoped grad school would be challenging. Well, kick my ass and call me challenged. So much reading. So much analyzing. Just so much.

Not that I'm complaining. It's amazing to be surrounded by fellow grad students. In seminars, every single comment is well articulated, relevant, interesting, and stimulating. It's fantastic.

Some of the things that have dominated my thoughts every waking hour of the last month:
neoliberal rationality; all forms of capital; visual culture; political philosophy; feminist/queer theory; necropilitics; power; biopolitics and biopower; ideology; hegemony; spectacle; media democracy; globalization; activism and new social movements; identity politics; the nation state; sovereignty; agency; consumerism and commodity; diaspora; literature; the concept of culture...

My profs are all fantastic. And hilarious - big bonus.

I even have a kind of academic star-struck-ness: one of my profs actually knows, and is in regular correspondence with, people like Zygmunt Bauman, bell hooks and Jacques Derrida. Jacques Derrida!! jesus christ. Although, despite having known bell hooks for over 20 years, he says they don't talk anymore because she's a bit of diva (!).

On the flip side, I have keys to an office, I hold office hours, and I have a mailbox. I'm (partially) responsible for the education of 36 students. I have 36 essays on my desk to read and mark.

It's really difficult to cultivate a certain professionalism, yet remain accessible and, for lack of a better word, cool. The other TA's and I have shared stories of inappropriate (and entertaining) things said in tutorial, and worries about misinterpretations and misunderstandings. At least we're all figuring out the same stuff together.

It makes me nervous though - you know how sometimes I say things that are deeply ironic or sarcastic, not to mention politically incorrect? Yeah...apparently I can't just turn that off ha.

It's all a work in progress. Things are cool right now (I think) but who knows what will happen when I hand back the first assignment...nothing like a room full of people silently hating you. Should be fun!

Hamilton still blows. 7 months (of incredibly stimulating intellectual activity) to go.