Graduate school and drowning have more in common than you might think.

Graduate school is structured to demoralize you. By design, it takes a gaggle of people who have long had a certain level of confidence in their ability to tackle academic pursuits, and kicks them in the knees, then spits on their faces. In theory, if you withstand the abuse, it does something really nice to you at the end? I’m not sure – I’m still sitting on the floor crying over my bruised knee caps. (This seems to be a running theme; perhaps “bruised knees” deserves its own special tag?)

Feeling incompetent might be my least favorite feeling in the entire world. I know, I only speak in grand superlatives like the middle schooler that I obviously am. Rather than just saying that I moved and it was annoying I had to say it was the worst thing ever, because I haven’t escaped this narcissistic tendency to view each immediate hurdle in my life as the hurdle to end all hurdles, like when I went to the store after publishing that moving post and I couldn’t find Ben & Jerry’s and OHMYGOD that really WAS the worst thing ever…

I’m just trying to tell you how the world works. I am Clarissa, and I am explaining it all. Don’t mind my weird friend who seems to lurk outside my bedroom window so that he may climb into it at randomly opportune moments to dispense sage tween life advice.

Special Report: 20-something problems are actually just as trivial as middle school problems.

Setting aside the fact that my credibility has been shot to hell, I really do hate feeling incompetent more than most things and I have admittedly avoided more than a few things in life because the prospect of making a public spectacle out of my stupidity seems like a thing to be avoided at all costs. That Mark Twain quote comes to mind – “It is better to keep your mouth closed and let people think you are a fool than to open it and remove all doubt.”

So I started a blog – I can give up any and all pretense of being a competent human being, now that I have an entire tag dedicated to my inability to do basic things like walk. Multiple lengthy stories are now permanently logged in various internet archives to attest to the fact that I can barely walk a straight line without falling into a gutter. Now there is no reason for me to avoid anything, right?

I spent a year working random jobs and watching my friends appear to “do things with their lives” (what this means, I can’t actually say; it seemed like such a valid comment last December). Since nobody seemed to value my ability to interject tangential (dated) pop culture references, I decided that graduate school would somehow reassert my sense of belonging in the universe.

School and travel had been fundamental to my sense of identity for years and I seemed to be doing neither of those things. Surely, doing both of those things would make me feel whole and complete and, of course, competent.

While I probably make at least eight stupid cultural mistakes or linguistic blunders in a given day, I expected that. Making an ass out of yourself comes with the territory, just like getting hopelessly lost on the regular.

This is where school was supposed to come in. I was always so good at school! Grad school is supposed to be less tests and more papers? Fuck yeah, I can write papers! Awesome! I’ll rock this grad school thing!

Sometimes Elmo, NPH, and I celebrate our epic student status with dance routines like this one.

The reality seems to be that each passing day of graduate school demoralizes me a tiny bit more than the one before. I end each day with an even greater sense that I am an idiot.

The struggle isn’t so much that I don’t understand any of the readings (all right, there are a few that I might start a bonfire with. Can we go back in time and keep Martin Heidegger from ever writing anything? What a dick.) It’s this larger sense that I am somehow incapable of doing all of the things that are being asked of me.

Of course, most people that go to graduate school are those very people who shared that sense of, “But I’m so good at school!”

The more I talk to everyone else in my program, the more I see that I am not the only one who feels this way. Graduate school seems to exist to say, “Oh, you got a BA? That’s cute. The fact that you think this matters just proves what an idiot you are.”

While I’m outing myself as an incompetent fool, I’ll go ahead and out myself for being a bit of a jerk: it is ridiculously comforting to know that I am not the only one who feels like they’ve purchased an overpriced ticket for the Titanic.

I love you and all, but there is just no room for you. Sorry.

The competent one is then the one that knows how to find the life boats. Or secure a door or piece of plywood or whatever the hell that was that she couldn’t seem to share with her supposed new loveofherlife.

New life goal: don’t drown.

Tagged as: grad school, I might be a real person