Hi, friends!
It’s been a long time since my last blog post, and it’ll probably be a while before I can write again. As some of you know, I’m in my last year of graduate school, which means free time feels a bit like a distant dream right now. There are so many stories I can’t wait to share with you all from the past couple years of my life. The Lord has taught and blessed me with so much over the last (almost) 2 years, the biggest blessing being my husband, Brendan. I hope to write snippets of our love story after I graduate, but today, I want to record some of my thoughts about graduate school as I approach my last semester. My words will probably be rough and unpolished. As much as I adore words, they take up most facets of my life at the moment, and there aren’t many words left for creativity at the end of the work week! I want to record this moment of time, though, while I’m still in school.
I’m in my second year of a master’s degree in English. My focus is on Rhetoric, Writing, and Linguistics, which just means I love teaching and studying how we can effectively communicate and why ideas and stories are worth telling in the first place. I specialize in medical rhetoric, which encompasses anything about the language of health and medicine. I’m lucky enough to be a Graduate Teaching Associate, which means I receive a full scholarship and a small monthly stipend in exchange for working for my university. This year, that means I teach a couple sections of English 101 in the fall and a couple sections of English 102 in the spring. Overall, graduate school has been such a strange experience—it’s choosing to do something that brings a lot of pain and a lot of joy.
Graduate school unfairly demands too much time, effort, and health from anyone, regardless of their circumstances outside school. There isn’t enough time in the day to take multiple courses, teach multiple courses, research and write a thesis, and be a human. Something always falls to the side, whether it’s not being able to read all 400+ pages of readings your professors assign each week (on top of working towards the 40+ pages of research you have to write by the end of the semester, the dozens of sources you have to read to write those papers, and the presentations you have to give on that research); only being able to grade 20 of the 40+ student essays you need to leave feedback on (while also lesson planning, grading the smaller assignments, scheduling one-on-one conferences, designing the Canvas courses, emailing students, etc.); not being able to make much progress on your thesis (oh, not to mention the fact that you also have to pass an oral reading examination to graduate, which consists of every assigned reading from the entirety of your time in graduate school); or having to miss that family member’s birthday party, pull an all nighter, struggle to find the time to make dinner or do chores, or worry about finances because your salary is far below the federal poverty level. Add half a dozen disabilities to the mix, and it often feels impossible.
And yet, I’m so thankful. I’m so thankful that the immense difficulty of attending graduate school while experiencing health issues has led me closer to the Lord, as I truly have to lean on and borrow from His strength each day. I’m thankful for the way it has required me to lean on my husband, too. He so lovingly and unconditionally cares for me, and that care draws me closer to both him and Christ, as I know that marriage is an earthly representation of God’s great love for us.
I’m so thankful for coffee study dates with grad school friends or the times we’ve met up at someone’s house to grade papers together. I’m so thankful for the days we’ve met up just to be humans, too, even if they’re few and far between: the days we played board games or ate sushi and went ice skating. One of my graduate school friends even came to one of my wedding dress fittings so I wouldn’t be alone after my mom couldn’t make it because of chemo!
I’m so thankful for the flexibility in both my schooling and my job. I’m so thankful for professors who have worked with me so I could still submit assignments and attend lectures amidst health issues and that when I had a medical emergency in the midst of this semester, I only had to send one email before I had multiple colleagues doing everything they could to help make sure I was taken care of so I could continue teaching my students. I’m so thankful for my students! I absolutely adore teaching, even on the days no one does the assigned reading (haha), and smile every time I get an email addressed to some variation of Professor/Mrs. Eaton/Howell.
I’m so thankful for the opportunities this degree has offered that I never would have experienced otherwise! Last winter I received a scholarship for a class called Drama in NY where I got to spend 8 days in New York and saw 7 Broadway shows, something I never would have been able to do on my own. And I still can’t believe that I’m to the part of my coursework I get to research the things that matter to me and tell the stories I most want to tell. After spending years wistfully reading research papers, thinking of how incredible it must be to research medicine and language, I’m now the researcher on a medical rhetoric project!
And none of that includes how, more than anything, I’m so thankful for every single day with Brendan and Piper (our golden retriever). There’s nowhere I’d rather be than curled up on our (far too small) couch with both of them as I respond to students and annotate texts that just a year ago would have felt like gibberish but now make perfect sense. There are many moments I wish I could fast forward through graduate school, which, if you’ve ever gone to graduate school, I’m sure you can relate to! But I would never really skip through this part. These might be my last semesters ever as a student, and I want to take full advantage of all there is to learn so that I can continue to improve as a scholar and a teacher. I’m thankful to have found a career I love and one that can fit in this stage of life and all the next ones.