At some point, usually multiple times, most of us experience procrastination. Whether it’s doing some household chore, making a difficult phone call, or working on a challenging project, we’ve probably all encountered something we didn’t want to do, and found ways to put off doing it. Not surprisingly, this happens a lot in graduate school, and it’s something I’ve been experiencing recently. So today, instead of talking about any writing or research, I’ll share how I’ve been working through this recent bout of procrastination.
It may sound peculiar, but a busy work schedule was what initially allowed my procrastinating tendencies to take root. Between my assistantship with the Cohen Career Center, my ongoing curatorial work with the Barry Art Museum, conference paper preparation, forthcoming publications, taking on more service-oriented roles, and other developments I’m not ready to share yet (no, Brandon and I aren’t having a kid and we’re not doing any kind of wedding planning), my schedule has been busier than usual this semester. Keep in mind, all of this is on top of the dissertation, which is supposed to be my main job.
So here’s what’s been happening. While I haven’t stopped working on the dissertation completely, I’ve been allowing my mornings, the time I’ve set aside for dissertation work, to get consumed with other obligations. Sometimes it’s a staff meeting with the Cohen Career Center, other times it’s an on-site trip for the Barry Art Museum. The issue isn’t a lack of working; it’s working on things other than the dissertation.
But that’s only been one side of the issue. As I’ve mentioned in previous posts, I periodically look at museum jobs to maintain a sense of the market in terms of availability and requirements. Usually I only do this every few weeks or even months, but recently I’ve started looking up jobs on a weekly or even biweekly basis. What’s more, I’ve started looking more seriously at the listings, noting in particular the ones I’m qualified for and have a good chance of securing. There’s even been a listing I dubbed “Roswell 2.0” because it was the same kind of job in a similar kind of setting, and the only reason I considered it for more than two seconds was the impressive salary.
Again, what’s made this kind of procrastination so insidious for me is that it’s veiled through pragmatic concerns, in this case financial. It probably won’t come as a surprise to you (or rather it shouldn’t), but graduate researchers don’t make a lot of money, and I took a substantial reduction in salary to come to William & Mary. I’ve been lucky in that I’ve been able to mitigate that loss of income in different ways. A two-year recruitment fellowship helped a lot. So did my summer teaching with the Keio program. Most recently, my work with the Barry Art Museum has been supplementing my stipend. These side jobs are temporary though, and since being back in graduate school I’ve been worrying about money in a way I haven’t in years. Since I know I can make a lot more money working in museums then, the idea of going back to them full-time and hoping I have the willpower to finish the dissertation has its appealing qualities. Yet as much as my concerns are grounded in financial questions, deep down I know that’s not the only reason I’ve been looking at museum jobs more seriously recently. Imagining myself working full-time as a curator again offers a way out of doing the dissertation.
So why have I been putting off the work? A lot of it is the usual: knowing that revising this first chapter will take a lot of work; fearing change because the dissertation is moving in new directions; fear of criticism for said changes. It’s nothing I haven’t experienced before though, and I knew I would encounter these things, so these concerns alone aren’t stopping me from my work.
There’s something else going on: my cumulative frustration with the pandemic.
Brandon and I have been fortunate. Thanks to our privilege, we’ve weathered the pandemic pretty well. We’ve kept our jobs and didn’t have to take any kind of pay cuts. I’ve been able to work largely from home, while CW has taken protocols to keep Brandon safe. We both got vaccinated as soon as we were eligible and have so far managed to avoid getting the virus. We live in a place that has taken the virus seriously and taken appropriate measures to keep people safe. All things considered, we’re doing well. But we’re still in a pandemic, and even if we are doing well, we’ve still been feeling its effects. After more than a year and a half of this, we’re both feeling tired, frustrated, and in my case primarily, irritable.
This frustration became apparent when we finally got a break from it. A couple of weeks ago we went to Orlando to attend a friend’s wedding (and before you judge me, yes everyone was vaccinated, yes we took our own car, etc.). After the wedding, we drove to St. Augustine because it’s the one town in Florida my mother has visited and she’s been insisting that I check it out for as long as I can remember. And what a wonderful excursion it was. We spent the day outdoors, taking advantage of the city’s walkability. We sat alongside the waterfront and enjoyed the ocean air. We marveled at the number of restaurants and shops, and lamented that we were only staying a day instead of a week. It was a great trip, but we also realized it had been more than two years since we had taken an overnight trip to explore a new place together. While we’ve traveled both together and separately since the pandemic, these trips have had other obligations attached to them, whether doing work or visiting family. Those kinds of trips are definitely fun in their own way, don’t get me wrong, but you’re also beholden to other people’s schedules or your own work commitments.
Visiting St. Augustine reminded us both how important traveling for the fun of it is to maintaining our well-being. When we lived in Roswell, we periodically took weekend trips to Santa Fe, Albuquerque, and other places when we started feeling restless. When we first moved here, we spent weekends in DC, Roanoke, and other places to get a better sense of our surroundings and leave work behind for a while. Traveling for ourselves helps us stay committed to our routines by periodically shaking them up. We haven’t done that since the pandemic though, and as a result, I’ve been changing my routine in other ways. Sometimes it’s looking at job postings and imagining different lives. Other times it’s letting other tasks take precedent over the dissertation because they get me out of the house or doing different things. What they have in common is that they’re keeping me from the one thing that will actually enable me to complete this degree, and that’s writing the damn dissertation.
Does this realization mean my procrastination will magically go away? Of course not. I may recognize that my other priorities can eat into my dissertation time if I let them, but they’re still obligations I need to finish. Until William & Mary decides to pay all its graduate workers a living wage I’ll still worry about money. And even if the pandemic had never happened at all, writing a dissertation is still hard work, and sometimes I just don’t want to do it. The pandemic certainly hasn’t helped though, and even if we’re doing well all things considered, it’s important to acknowledge how it has impacted us mentally and emotionally.
In the meantime, here’s to (eventually) getting back to work.