Inactivism

I met my friend Ben last May, when I started volunteering with a group that protests against mass incarceration and the American prison-industrial complex. We became friendly while working together to assist a formerly-incarcerated member of the group find employment and deal with his legal affairs (as best we could). I became less involved with the group as my doctoral exams drew near, but Ben and I continued to hang out. We now have a regular Sunday ritual of brunch followed by a few hours of binge-watching HBO dramas (first Ben showed me Game of Thrones, and now I'm showing him The Wire). 

While I cannot overstate how much I enjoy watching TV with Ben, I most value the conversations we have before and after the show--while digesting the meal or the episode we just watched. Our discussions are far-ranging. We take turns as each other's therapist and catch up on the past week. Ben teaches me about home repair, sculpture, and lion dancing. I show him my knitting projects and tell him all of the funny things that my partner's students (first graders) have said lately. We also talk a lot about activism, advocacy, privilege, vulnerability, and the awkwardness of race and class and gender.

This past weekend, I expressed to Ben that I feel lost, self-absorbed, useless... I can't figure out how to insert myself into the important conversations nor how to participate in the hard work of making change. I just sit at the computer, avoiding interaction, completely absorbed in the academic bubble in which I live. My activities are circumscribed to two square miles of Pittsburgh's East End, where everyone has a Masters degree and a MacBook. 

This conversation was spurred by an encounter my partner and I had in Baltimore over Thanksgiving. After a grueling drive through snowy conditions, we decided that it would be most convenient to eat dinner at the bar adjacent to our hotel. Understandably, the place was slow the night before the holiday. We struck up a conversation with the bartender, who was generally a lovely guy with an interesting life story. The discussion segued to college, specifically paying for an expensive education. Within this context, the bartender made a comment that took us by surprise. Alluding to his own name, Israel, he remarked that it wasn't surprising that he was as stingy as the Jewish State. I regret that I did not respond with a gentle rebuke, but by the time I processed what he said the moment had passed. I never managed to put the right words together... it was said without menace, to build a bridge with humor, and I did not want to jump straight to accusations of anti-Semitism. This guy was tactless, not a skinhead. 

It was this element of the interaction that surprised me--why did he think it was something appropriate to say in unfamiliar company? I'm aware that anti-Semitism exists. It only takes quick review of any comments section in a major newspaper to find yourself inundated with this kind of deeply hateful speech. Even though it's pervasive on the internet it has been a long time since it affected me in my non-digital life, and I more commonly find myself in situations where I have to courteously refuse an appeal to convert to Christianity. The last incident I recall was from middle school, when my parents took me with them when they went to buy a new car. During the negotiation, the salesman told my father to "stop Jewing him down." Needless to say, we did not buy a car from him. Living in the South, though, anti-Semitism was not particularly shocking. There are four churches within a mile radius of my parents' house (and that's only along the longitudinal radius).

Over the past decade, I've lived in two cities with large Jewish communities and have predominantly orbited within academic circles. Without even trying, I somehow spent the two years between college and graduate school working for a Jewish university. I can't seem to escape! The result has been that no one I come into contact with would make this comment. Either they would find it offensive, or would recognize that inevitably someone within earshot would find it abhorrent. 

The bartender's tactless remark made visible the boundaries of my social life, and it bothered me to discover that what I perceived as a welcome mat was actually a moat with the slimmest of drawbridges. I shared my dismay with Ben. I told him that although I regretted this predicament, I felt like it was also how I kept myself sane. I don't have the energy to write a dissertation and fight the good fight; I don't want to meet new people so that I can dispel them of their -isms. I felt--and still feel--like a big hypocrite. I judge but do not act. 

Ben and I have had similar conversations in the past, about philosophies of activism and the tension between self-preservation and advocacy. Ben patiently listened while I unloaded all of these thoughts and feelings on him. I did not really expect any sort of resolution, just sympathy, but his response really resonated with me. He said that I should not discount the value of asking the questions, of seeking answers, of empathy and openness. Action happens on the foundation of learning, and Ben reminded me that it's not a cop-out to spend time thinking the big thoughts. 

This insight reminded me of a quote I found recently in one of my documents. I noticed it because of how it was used to support an argument against Jewish Centers, but I read it very differently after reflecting on Ben's response to my nagging insecurity.

“Learning, education must not be equated with a curriculum we complete upon graduation. No one ever thinks that entertainment is a stage in one’s life which is completed once a person has passed the test of being entertained. The meaning of existence is found in the experience of education. Termination of education is the beginning of despair. Every person bears a responsibility for the legacy of the past as well as the burden of the future.”
— Dr. Abraham Joshua Heschel (March 27, 1960)

Heschel was the epitomal scholar-activist, and made this statement during a speech he gave in 1960 at a White House Conference on Children and Youth.  It appears to be a simple argument, but there are a lot of ideas packed into this short paragraph. What exactly did Heschel mean by despair and why does he see it as the foil to education? And why is the future necessarily a burden? Couldn't it be an opportunity? And goodness, what to make of the meaning of existence?

I spent a lot of time trying to unpack the depth. I was most confused about the fourth sentence, "Termination of education is the beginning of despair." What exactly are these two states, and how do you distinguish the before and after? I usually associate despair with sadness and heartbreak. Did Heschel believe learning was a romance of the mind? Probably not, but that thought reminded me that despair evokes how you feel at the end of a relationship. If we understand education to be the practice of building connections and relating one idea to another, the end of learning would be despair; like the break up of a partnership, learning stops when there is no longer any effort made to forge a connection. Despair implies futility, a future that no longer warrants the work needed to build it. 

For Heschel, then, an education was not an end-state. Education was the means to an end, specifically a future of possibilities and opportunities. Herschel argued that a meaningful human existence carried the responsibility of learning how the present came to be, so that decisions can be made about the future. 

I find comfort in these words. Education is a commitment required of citizenship in a democracy, and knowledge is the glue that binds an individual to a community. I research the past so I can make informed choices in the present. I seek what I do not know so that I can better understand the people closest to me and those separated from me by color, class, gender, sexuality, or by the passage of time. I educate myself in order to be an educator, and it is my responsibility to share my knowledge in the classroom, in conversation, in my writing. Ben (and Heschel) helped me to see action and engagement in my solitary, sedentary pursuits. No effort is wasted, and when I am ready to help bear the burden of the future I will do it with the strength I built during this time of questioning and exploration. 

Getting a Good Read on the Situation

I struggled to get out of bed this morning. I partially attribute this to the darkness of the early hour, and partially to intimidation. I have a long to-do list this week! I let a few tasks simmer on the back burner over the past two weeks while I focused on a time-sensitive project. I'm excited to get moving on a few of these tasks, like planning my travel for January through April. Inherent in planning this travel, however, is deciding what I will research, and where, and for how long. So many choices!

Although my heart's true desire was to spend the entire day in bed playing Bejeweled on my iPad, I declared today a dedicated reading day. Reading seemed like a decent compromise between productive efficiency and total evasion of responsibility. Reading is the most inert activity in my profoundly sedentary profession, and it's like green eggs and ham: you can do it in a bed, you can do it on a couch, you can sit stiff as the dead, or bend over in a slouch. 

The first three years of graduate school are heavily weighted towards reading, with a side of writing. Coursework in history usually demands you read a book a week per course. Preparing for doctoral exams forces you to read a book a day for about five months straight. After that, you read on an as-needed basis.

I've really struggled with incorporating reading into my life as a dissertator. I started out slow, and introduced fiction back into my routine. I rationalized that it would be easier to muster enthusiasm for stories about vampires than for stories about the past (though sometimes those interests combined in magical ways). Now that I'm getting further into the dissertation research, though, I recognize that I have to keep up with the history books (and articles) on the subjects I'm writing about. I'm finding it hard to switch gears from reading documents to reading a book, especially because I prioritize the former activity. I try to devote my most productive morning hours to the mountain of evidence that I'm digging through, and by the time I'm done it's hard to concentrate on a book. The consequence of this is that I haven't done much reading lately....

So, what is the point of this story? It's just a reminder to myself that a day spent supine is not a day wasted, as long as there's a history book in my hands. 

I'd love to hear other researchers strategies for tacking between research, reading, and writing! Do you have any personal rules or self-imposed structures for finding this balance?


Thanksgiving

Today I am thankful for: my beloved friends and family, my witty partner, my wise professors and advisors, my dynamic colleagues, my former coworkers (from whom I've learned so much), the historical profession, writers of transporting fictional works, coffee growers and ethical coffee sourcers, database software designers, high definition cable television, and everyone in the past who saw value in what they wrote and produced and saved every scrap of paper and donated them to archives so that we in the present can understand the contours of their lives and learn from the choices they made, the responsibilities they felt, the repercussions they faced...

Clocking Out

In a more traditional job, paid time off is a benefit that follows a strict procedure. Vacation days are accrued over time. Employees submit requests to their managers before they take these vacation days. These requests are explicitly approved or denied. When you take those vacation days, you leave the office behind and you fly off to Aruba without a care in the world. At least ideally.

When you are your own manager, it's hard to know whether to approve time off. Have you worked enough to accrue vacation days? Will the project get done on time without you? Is this a good time to leave or would it be better to wait and take a longer break later? When you do take time off, it's also more difficult to leave the work behind... the trade off of managing yourself is that the manager comes along on your vacation.

It's really important to take breaks away from work (and to leave behind the manager when you're off the clock). First of all, it's a chance to scale back from the nitty-gritty. It's easy to overemphasize the importance of the task you're hacking away at, whether that be a dissertation chapter or a set of documents or a stack of secondary readings on a particular topic. Leaving behind that tight focus for a few days provides a chance, upon your return, to reflect on the project as a whole. It's helpful to remember the relevance of that particular slice and to return to it with a renewed sense of purpose. 

Perhaps even more importantly, vacation is a time to heal the body and mind. Writing a dissertation is an extreme mental workout! You have think deeply AND exercise an enormous amount of self control. Vacation is a break from harnessing willpower; it's a few days to be impulsive and spontaneous and lazy. Vacation is also a few days to stretch out the spine, rest the eyes, decaffeinate a bit (just a bit!), and maybe even expose the skin to sunshine. 

I make a case for vacation in the interest of both the manager and the worker. Happy, well-rested graduate students produce more and better quality work. In summary, clocking out occasionally is an investment in the dissertation and not a detriment. 

Positivity

When you are the boss of yourself, you have to be the one to motivate and reward yourself. Rewards are easy. I've bribed myself with myriad things over the years, most egregiously with an embarrassingly expensive makeup brush. I simply wanted the brush badly enough that I stayed committed to my goal of writing every weekday. 

Motivation can be trickier than providing an incentive. It seems like it would be easier, and certainly cheaper. I find it much more difficult, however, to consistently tell myself that I should sit down to work because I am awesome at what I do and because I love what I do. Both of these points are  compelling and true. When other people remind me of this, I feel buoyant, confident, and enthusiastic. It's really, really hard to maintain this state on your own. Partially this is because telling yourself that you're fabulous feels inauthentic, and partially this is because I forget to practice positive self-talk until I've descended into a dark place of self-loathing and despair. It's much more difficult to dig yourself out of that pit than it is to keep your confidence riding high. 

I've been working really hard at practicing positivity. Here are some of my strategies:

1. Make a list of everything you've done today or this week or this month. Put down absolutely everything that required more than minimal effort. That includes loads of laundry, any form of cleaning that improved your quality of life, important emails sent, books read, pages written, lesson plans prepared, all incidents of exercise, and any meetings pertaining to your work (particularly those involving your advisors). Marvel at the labor it takes to move through life.

2. Go to a coffee shop or a yoga class or a bar--anywhere that you could feasibly run into a stranger who asks you "what you do." Explaining your work to a non-expert always makes you feel really smart. You know things!

3. Listen to your anthem on repeat. Internalize the message.

4. Pull out the first graded paper you wrote in graduate school and compare it to the most recent page you've written. Even the clunkiest page of your dissertation will look brilliant next to that first attempt at coherence. How could you not compliment yourself after facing this evidence of growth and intellectual maturity? 

5. I'm not above asking my partner or my parents to tell me I'm smart, pretty, kind, thoughtful, and a net-positive addition to society. I don't dig for the compliment because it feels desperate and then I feel loathe myself even more. I just ask someone to pick up their pom-poms and start cheering for me. After their rah-rah-rah I can usually rally for a few rounds of "2-4-6-8-who-do-we-appreciate." I have no shame. 

Ultimately, it's less about what you do than how often you do it. It's healthy to be self-aware and self-critical, but you have to balance it with a daily dose of self-affirmation. 

I CAN DO ANYTHING GOOD!