Far be it from me to give unsolicited advice to an intelligent (and, dare I say it, very cute, if memory serves) graduate English Lit student. But my ex-wife, and my last girlfriend before her, were both doctoral students in English/Old English literature, and too many of my friends were also grad students in English, and I was (technically still am) a grad student in English history myself, so I understand the territory.
Being introspective and shy is part of the territory for grad students of any discipline. I remember, when I was social secretary for the GCR (Graduate Common Room) of my old college, how hard it was to try to find anybody who wanted to do anything. The trouble is that we all spent so much time focusing on our own little worlds of academia that we found it hard to relate to each other. If we showed up at a get-together, we obviously didn’t want to talk about our studies, but we all did such little else that we didn’t have anything else to talk about. So, everything I ever set up turned into either 1. a drunk-fest or 2. an evening everyone wanted to desperately get away from. I haven’t read enough of your posts to say, and stop me if I am completely off-base, but it seems you lead a similar life to what we all did.
I’ll say this about doctoral students in the arts, and I can say it with some confidence, having been one: we are all messed up. Some worse than others, but we’re all a bit off the boil in some way. We have to be, don’t we, living hand-to-mouth, spending countless hours in the library, arguing frantically with our colleagues over some arcane bit of academic interest, all in the hope that one day we’d land a teaching job so that, hopefully…we could do all of the above for the rest of our lives, and be paid a bit for it. Now that I’m out of the rat-race, and I can look back at it, I can see how inherently crazy it was.
The one thing that kept me going, when the dissertation wasn’t going well and my marriage was falling apart, were my friendships and activities with people outside of the university. A great friend of mine once told me that, to get where I wanted to go in life, I had to surround myself with people who were already there. I would also try to mentally cut myself off from being a student for a while. When I played cricket, and I put on my cricket whites and gear, I would tell myself, “I’m not a student now, I’m a cricketer.” That was a better break than any vacation I could ever have.
I’m sorry I’ve been so long-winded here. I guess the point I’m trying to make is, make time for yourself to do things outside of the university. Have time each week when you can be AnnaLivia the person, not AnnaLivia the grad student. And don’t try to think about meeting a partner now, not right after that experience. Try to just make a few acquaintances first, then make friends. It’ll happen faster than you think.
