Today I had a brunch/coffee hangout meeting--what do you call these?--with my favorite advisor. I was about 40 minutes late due to gps and multiple locations for this fabulous little coffee/pastry shop. We had about an hour of really wonderful discussion about life and art, the reflective process of education and behavior, and how we break the mold to really be creative. A lot to think about and a lot to process.
Several different things jump up in my mind to be considered--as it usually goes. First is how frightening real freedom looks at the beginning and second how exhilarating it is once you get the hang of it. Institution and instruction most of my life has been a structure in which one person (and their cohort of professors, administrators, and adjudicators) determine the merit and value of my choices. I have been extremely lucky to be very good and meeting and exceeding their demands, tests, and expectations. Many are not so lucky. The interesting thing is that this has left me a little adrift when I am asked to actually do my own thing. I wonder where the value determiners are--when I'm gently reminded that there are none, I often feel a twinge of panic. This is most evident to me in two areas--first my dissertation.
Dissertation Blues
I began my course of study towards PhD-ness because I wanted to write a dissertation. I wanted to spend a bunch of time writing and exploring my own topic and developing a body of writing on said topic. I can crank out pages like no one's business. Especially under a deadline. I enjoyed do it in class--final projects, research and analysis, literary criticism. These were totally jamming to me! Especially in grad school where the choice of topic was left exclusively up to me--provided my content and analysis dialogued in some way with our course material. Done! I enjoy the work and the pressure at the end of the semester to produce my thoughts in a communicable text document. I enjoyed especially reading professor's dialogue on the page when I received the graded document back.
As I moved through my PhD courses, I continued to experience this joy in the work and satisfaction in dialogue (where it was available, some professors don't really dialogue). But when I was released from coursework to do my own study. To work on the dissertation, I floundered.
I encountered real freedom for the first time in my academic career. Freedom that said, "Your work, your schedule, your trail, follow where it leads and bring it back when you're ready."
Maybe I missed something through my academic career, but I felt totally adrift. What? Where are the deadlines? Who will tell me when it's ready? Where is the end of this tunnel?
::crickets::
Then the paralysis set in. Grinding my work to a halt. The gaping hole of the future without structure without oversight beyond an advisor keeping the gate between me and my committee for efficiency and protection, this whole seemed insurmountable, not because I couldn't break it down, but because my own success depended on my practices instead of a professor's estimation of my ideas and expression. Work on your stuff and bring it when you're ready. How is this such a difficult task? It removes the barriers created by semesters, course restrictions, and syllabi.
Freedom. And it made my skin crawl. How was I supposed to judge when it was ready? Don't I just make it and had it in by said date? No, I am now my own professor in a way, my own project manager.
The second area I feel the fear of freedom is in Acting.
Acting Atrophy
For the first 3 years that I was in Michigan I acted minimally--performing perhaps one time over 1095 days. Over that time I was not practicing my performance. I lost the ability to tell if I was any good at it and feared that this lack of doing was detrimental, that I would never recover. [Catastrophic thinking patterns, btw are destructive] When I did have the opportunity, I frequently passed it up out of fear. I watched actors, directed actors, learned from directors for all this time, but I did not do it myself.
During this time, I went to Russia and studied acting at the MXAT. It was a mixed experience for me. I had studied already with the MXAT through the Stanislavsky summer school program at Harvard, but this time, I found myself not taking chances, not jumping forward. After all, I was there "as a PhD scholar-director student, not an acting student"--these are the words that I would hear in my heart which held me back. At the end of the session in my meeting with my acting instructors, they pointed out that they wished I had been more assertive about doing exercises etc. They noticed me holding back, and I noticed me holding back.
My fourth year here, I decided that enough was enough. I missed acting in my bones and although I was terrified, I knew I had to do it. So I auditioned and joined an improv team with whom I rehearsed/performed every weekend. Every opportunity I had to work and perform with them, I took. I didn't know whether I was good at the beginning. But all that time in front of an audience was worth it. The performative practice helped immensely. It led to me auditioning for a fantastic little movement based company, learning mime and tumbling, creating a performance of 4.48 Psychosis, performing in an amazing all-female production of Hamlet, and (beginning next week) playing Jane Eyre in a really fantastic production of Polly Teale's adaptation in RI.
How does this relate to the fear and exhilaration of freedom?
The processes of each of these recent acting experiences have been exercises in freedom: whether through open ended creative processes, using building blocks to create and hone my own show on Reintegration, freeing my expressive body, working in a show with minimal hands off direction, and improv--where the rules are made up and the content doesn't matter. Each of these performance processes have been difficult because they required so much of my creative input without a lot of oversight or specific outside adjudication (read teacher/director approval). I need to put in work in the directions that were interesting to me and the only requirement I had was to share it with collaborators and audiences. To try things and build things and share them.
Writing and Acting
So why the dissertation paralysis and the acting exhilaration? Would it be fair of me to point to my isolation as an ABD PhD candidate vs the together-ness of theatrical creation? Probably. B/c that's definitely part of the reality of the process, but the real difference that I've noticed is the practice.
Practice. Consistent practices--crappy rehearsals, great rehearsals, rehearsals, experiments, short ones, long ones, shared ones. Thinking about it, writing about it, even a little bit at a time. The constant practice gave me confidence even when I failed, because I knew what I could do. I required myself, regardless of pre-feelings, to work on it and as a consequence I knew what I could do. I shared it, whether it was ready or not, I was ready to share it because I'd explored the terrain of it through practice. This meant that rather than staring at the void, I was actively bumping my way through, lighting matches until they burned my fingers and rubbing together the sticks I found until I could make a bonfire.
Where does this leave me today?
With the knowledge that my dissertation paralysis perpetuates itself through my lack of practice. Not working on it creates fear of working on it which leads me away from working on it: vicious cycle really.
So let the work begin--Trusting (through fear) that these terrifying fumbles through my academic freedom will eventually transform into exhilarating revels of freedom in the project that I have loved and hated for four years now.
Cheers! Here's to 1 more year to completion!
Several different things jump up in my mind to be considered--as it usually goes. First is how frightening real freedom looks at the beginning and second how exhilarating it is once you get the hang of it. Institution and instruction most of my life has been a structure in which one person (and their cohort of professors, administrators, and adjudicators) determine the merit and value of my choices. I have been extremely lucky to be very good and meeting and exceeding their demands, tests, and expectations. Many are not so lucky. The interesting thing is that this has left me a little adrift when I am asked to actually do my own thing. I wonder where the value determiners are--when I'm gently reminded that there are none, I often feel a twinge of panic. This is most evident to me in two areas--first my dissertation.
Dissertation Blues
I began my course of study towards PhD-ness because I wanted to write a dissertation. I wanted to spend a bunch of time writing and exploring my own topic and developing a body of writing on said topic. I can crank out pages like no one's business. Especially under a deadline. I enjoyed do it in class--final projects, research and analysis, literary criticism. These were totally jamming to me! Especially in grad school where the choice of topic was left exclusively up to me--provided my content and analysis dialogued in some way with our course material. Done! I enjoy the work and the pressure at the end of the semester to produce my thoughts in a communicable text document. I enjoyed especially reading professor's dialogue on the page when I received the graded document back.
As I moved through my PhD courses, I continued to experience this joy in the work and satisfaction in dialogue (where it was available, some professors don't really dialogue). But when I was released from coursework to do my own study. To work on the dissertation, I floundered.
I encountered real freedom for the first time in my academic career. Freedom that said, "Your work, your schedule, your trail, follow where it leads and bring it back when you're ready."
Maybe I missed something through my academic career, but I felt totally adrift. What? Where are the deadlines? Who will tell me when it's ready? Where is the end of this tunnel?
::crickets::
Then the paralysis set in. Grinding my work to a halt. The gaping hole of the future without structure without oversight beyond an advisor keeping the gate between me and my committee for efficiency and protection, this whole seemed insurmountable, not because I couldn't break it down, but because my own success depended on my practices instead of a professor's estimation of my ideas and expression. Work on your stuff and bring it when you're ready. How is this such a difficult task? It removes the barriers created by semesters, course restrictions, and syllabi.
Freedom. And it made my skin crawl. How was I supposed to judge when it was ready? Don't I just make it and had it in by said date? No, I am now my own professor in a way, my own project manager.
The second area I feel the fear of freedom is in Acting.
Acting Atrophy
For the first 3 years that I was in Michigan I acted minimally--performing perhaps one time over 1095 days. Over that time I was not practicing my performance. I lost the ability to tell if I was any good at it and feared that this lack of doing was detrimental, that I would never recover. [Catastrophic thinking patterns, btw are destructive] When I did have the opportunity, I frequently passed it up out of fear. I watched actors, directed actors, learned from directors for all this time, but I did not do it myself.
During this time, I went to Russia and studied acting at the MXAT. It was a mixed experience for me. I had studied already with the MXAT through the Stanislavsky summer school program at Harvard, but this time, I found myself not taking chances, not jumping forward. After all, I was there "as a PhD scholar-director student, not an acting student"--these are the words that I would hear in my heart which held me back. At the end of the session in my meeting with my acting instructors, they pointed out that they wished I had been more assertive about doing exercises etc. They noticed me holding back, and I noticed me holding back.
My fourth year here, I decided that enough was enough. I missed acting in my bones and although I was terrified, I knew I had to do it. So I auditioned and joined an improv team with whom I rehearsed/performed every weekend. Every opportunity I had to work and perform with them, I took. I didn't know whether I was good at the beginning. But all that time in front of an audience was worth it. The performative practice helped immensely. It led to me auditioning for a fantastic little movement based company, learning mime and tumbling, creating a performance of 4.48 Psychosis, performing in an amazing all-female production of Hamlet, and (beginning next week) playing Jane Eyre in a really fantastic production of Polly Teale's adaptation in RI.
How does this relate to the fear and exhilaration of freedom?
The processes of each of these recent acting experiences have been exercises in freedom: whether through open ended creative processes, using building blocks to create and hone my own show on Reintegration, freeing my expressive body, working in a show with minimal hands off direction, and improv--where the rules are made up and the content doesn't matter. Each of these performance processes have been difficult because they required so much of my creative input without a lot of oversight or specific outside adjudication (read teacher/director approval). I need to put in work in the directions that were interesting to me and the only requirement I had was to share it with collaborators and audiences. To try things and build things and share them.
Writing and Acting
So why the dissertation paralysis and the acting exhilaration? Would it be fair of me to point to my isolation as an ABD PhD candidate vs the together-ness of theatrical creation? Probably. B/c that's definitely part of the reality of the process, but the real difference that I've noticed is the practice.
Practice. Consistent practices--crappy rehearsals, great rehearsals, rehearsals, experiments, short ones, long ones, shared ones. Thinking about it, writing about it, even a little bit at a time. The constant practice gave me confidence even when I failed, because I knew what I could do. I required myself, regardless of pre-feelings, to work on it and as a consequence I knew what I could do. I shared it, whether it was ready or not, I was ready to share it because I'd explored the terrain of it through practice. This meant that rather than staring at the void, I was actively bumping my way through, lighting matches until they burned my fingers and rubbing together the sticks I found until I could make a bonfire.
Where does this leave me today?
With the knowledge that my dissertation paralysis perpetuates itself through my lack of practice. Not working on it creates fear of working on it which leads me away from working on it: vicious cycle really.
So let the work begin--Trusting (through fear) that these terrifying fumbles through my academic freedom will eventually transform into exhilarating revels of freedom in the project that I have loved and hated for four years now.
Cheers! Here's to 1 more year to completion!
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