hopes and fears

I have no real idea what i want to study in grad school, other than pretty much the same stuff I've been working on since Denning's FORMAC class four years ago with increased emphasis on cultural theory, globalization, maybe some Foucauldianism and its inheritors and critics from postcolonial perspectives. All of which means, well, i have no idea. And don't even ask about research topics or a dissertation. This strikes me as a very dumb way to enter a Ph.D. program. But let it never be said that I ever did anything intelligently. I think the last sixteen months have more than proved that. Although i do like my apartment, dead mice in the cupboard, stray waterbug, and all.

But i thought I'd use this space to recycle an old mainstay of USAY Coordinating Committee meetings, courtesy of the organizer formerly known as "snoopy," back before she had her picture in HEEB right below Rachel Weisz and Jennifer Conelly and Jake Gyllenhaal, and talk about what i'm afraid of going in to this and what i hope to do with it.

First the fears: As I indicated above, I'm afraid that I have no real idea what I'm doing. I'm pretty sure I want to be in graduate school right now because wen i've done other stuff, my inner monologue has frequently told me to get my ass into a PhD program for some inconcievable reason, but I really don't know what to do once i get there. I'm afraid that American Studies might make less sense than a History program or something that lets me indulge more transnational concerns, but i also think that having to acknowledge the problems and significance of theory from and in the metropole is important. I'm afraid that after a year I'll feel like i'm drowning and be so disillusioned with cutthroat academic smarter than thou bs that i'll drop out and then after i drop out want to be back in grad school. I'm afraid that by the time i finish my diss, assuming i do, new York's transformation to militarized/securitized yuppie theme park will be so complete that i won't be able to afford to live here or survive doing so. I'm afraid that grad school is going to be atomizing and lonely. Which i guess is where, if you believe Kathy Newman, the union comes in. But i'm afraid that if the AFL-CIO further collapses, some unions might abandon grad students at private universities until they can get the Brown precedent overthrown through the efforts of a not-yet-existent democratic NLRB appointed by a loned-for democratic administration and sacrifice immediate organizing for "long term" political work. This fear is probably unfounded and based on total ignorance. I'm afraid of starting to organize again and doing house visits and putting myself in a vulnerable position, but i'm also going to do all these things anyway, and not just because none of my friends would ever talk to me again if i didn't. I'm a little bit afraid that people will think i am A)stupid as fuck b) pretentious c)a fascist or d) all of the above.

Hopes: I'm hoping that i find new ways of integrating activism and scholarship, that i build on everything i learned in new haven and in boston and in the schomburg and figure out how to do work that is engaged and exciting and all that good stuff, and that GSOC gets recognized and the NLRB is all like "whoops, our bad" and that contingent academic workers can come together to radically transform the structures and assumptions on which the production of knowledge are ordered and reverse the onslaught of casualization and corporatization, that the futures of both New York City and New York University are substantially different from those imagined by their current rulers. I hope that i figure out how to be an adult at some point of my life. I'll leave it at that. Because it's late. And I may delete this whole thing in the morning.