Self Help: The Expensive and Time Consuming Road to Crushing Disappointment.

I am sitting in my office on campus, settling down to finish up my visual culture readings and preparing my tutorial lessons for Monday. I have just searched the campus entire for a desperately needed cup of coffee. It seems the sale of coffee is somehow forbidden in this complex, or at the library, or in the business school, after 3pm. However, I found one ruddy-faced young man at the "CountryStyle" kiosk who sold me a large with milk under the counter.

Well, OK, maybe it isn’t forbidden, but it is damn rare. Yet another slight joy of doing my PhD at Wilfrid Laurier High School!

Still, I don’t want to give the impression that I am dour today. Actually, I am in a pretty good state of mind. I am feeling really optimistic and energetic towards the work I have to do this weekend, to gear up for another exciting week of learning! (Sorry, I just made myself gag with that line… Give me a moment…)

Well, maybe I don’t have all the rhetoric of educational-enthusiasm down pat yet, but, nevertheless, you are reading the words of a changed woman.

The Holly you knew is gone, and I have turned over an entirely new leaf. Ashamed of my childish term papers from last term, I am attacking the new ones with gusto, and actually trying to do something important with them. With my diversity paper, I am applying a term from Buddhist diaspora studies to Jewish North American culture, and analyzing it in conjunction with Open Source Judaism. It’s very new. Very “innovative.” So much more at the level I should be in PhD. The days of Holly grinding out Mickey Mouse papers are all gone. Now I am in it to win! (I realize I am not naturally a winner, but one has to keep one’s eye on the prize, right?)

All excess energy is being poured into work: Instead of just complaining about not knowing anything about Foucault, Derrida, Geertz, and the crew, I am now actually reading their stuff and taking notes.(Fixing problems instead of whining about them. What a strange, New Age concept, huh? It’s almost bizarre enough to work…)

I am forcing myself, even if I have to drag myself, kicking and screaming, by the scruff of my lazy neck (read: arse), to grow up. I am in the process of toning-up my life as well as my transcripts. It is a whole process of sorting priorities and setting goals. I am throwing away useless trash from my skull, and filling it with better furniture. The scaffolding is up, and the builders are named Asad, Marx (Groucho as well as Karl- I’ve not gone completely rigid), Adorno, Hegel, Baudrillard, and so forth.

Now, as long as there isn’t a worker’s strike or a zoning problem, by 2007 there should be a whole new Holly in place… Or an academic equivalent to mini-mall, with a couple more A’s where Holly’s sense of humour used to be.

One or the other.