quitting tender square the first time i wanted to quit my mfa program: thursday, august 22, 2019 “i have cried so much yesterday and i’m crying again right now. i am so upset about what they are having us do for teaching.” we got called in for a 20-hour orientation the week before school began to start our pedagogical training. we were asked to read some texts in preparation and they gave us a sample syllabus for the composition course we’d be teaching. i believed that we were being presented with a fully designed course, since none of us knew the material, and that this training we were embarking on was related to how we could adjust the unit assignments and grading to suit our preferences, as well as to give us techniques to find our teaching style. it wasn’t until the third day (!) of orientation that i realized that they wanted us to create our own syllabus for the course from the ground up, using the sample provided as a *guide.* “we are only being asked to design the first few weeks of class for our first unit of study. we will build the remaining parts of the syllabus schedule (!) based off a skeleton we give to the students as we move along in the semester. i am so angry about this. the wrong impression that was given to me, and that i think was a natural one to have, was that we would follow the sample outline provided and that we could implement *supplementary* information as we saw fit. why did you give us this example so early only to take it away from us? how are you expecting us to design a course with our teaching style when some of us have *never taught before*? i am still in stunned disbelief that they are asking us to do this. it makes me not want to continue, yet i must.” i continued to lament, “i haven’t even started taking my own classes yet! i just can’t reconcile how i’m going to do any writing in this period of time. they are expecting me to be available to students all the time, to be prepping for class all the time, to basically give my energy to any vampire who wants it, to anyone who will bleed me dry. then you expect me to have the energy and inspiration to write after?!” they told us in all our orientations that we were “students first.” “BULLSHIT WE ARE. i am livid. michael warned me about grad school and i did not listen. i know i am doing this to get the piece of paper but i don’t see how that will be enough motivation for me to keep going. michael was trying to calm me down because it is very upsetting. i can’t even picture myself getting to the end of the semester, let alone a year. all i can do is focus on what is immediately in front of me, what i can do right now toward what is due. i am already behind and trying not to think about that. i am already having difficulty reconciling these two identities they are expecting of me. i am praying—praying!—that my classes are great and that they are what keep me tied here. my cohort and the people i’ve met are great (FUCK YOU NEIL [neil was my pedagogy professor and my supervisor]) so that has been a silver lining so far. i can’t ask how am i supposed to do it, i just have to do it. i apologized to michael yesterday saying, ‘i am so sorry that i did this to our lives.’ i miss the way things were, yet something was propelling me to do this that i can’t explain. that same feeling was with me on sunday before this shitstorm started: ‘i’m where i’m supposed to be.’ i need to remember that. i need to keep asking my guides for help. i need to keep taking excellent care of myself so that i can get through this as best i can. i will give only the minimum of what i am supposed to give. i am trying to keep an open mind. i did want to experience this so i have to stay open to the experience and see what happens, if there’s some kind of rewarding moment for me.” there’s a second-year mfa fiction student i mention, neru, who works as a program assistant to guide us incoming instructors and i write that she makes teaching sound so easy. “she’s so enthusiastic, it’s contagious. i want to be like her, embody her attitude as i move through this.” that attitude quickly shifts back to reality: “it’s just so much bullshit. i honestly, honestly thought that we were building next semester’s class in our pedagogy class. i feel like that would have been more appropriate. i do hope to share my feedback with someone about this at some time. oh, neil was a dick when i left yesterday’s optional session too. ‘we’re going to break out into the next session *but if you don’t think you need it, you can go.*’ it’s fucking *optional.* you’re not paying me. if it was so important you should’ve covered in the mandatory portions. he has seen me leave twice now and i’m the only one who didn’t stay behind. he also emphasized ‘there is no optional session tomorrow.’ thanks fucko. they invited us all to some bowling night on friday. i rsvped no. i’m not going out an hour after all this to spend more time how they want me to.” the following day i wrote in my pages “i’m not crying this morning like i was yesterday. good god, how i cried!” the second time i wanted to quit my mfa program: in march of last year, michael and i had planned to spend my march break in houston caring for his mom as she went through chemo, to give his sister, anne, and brother, david, a break from the care that they’d be providing her. about a week and a half before we were scheduled to travel, leigh ann called to ask us to come up as soon as possible; david was in the midst of caring for her but was having a mental-health crisis and she didn’t feel that he was up to the task. we rescheduled our flights for a couple days later and i notified all my professors and students that i wouldn’t be there the week before break. when we arrived in houston, david was still hanging around mom’s temporary stay apartment acting like everything was normal. “how are you, david?” i asked when i saw him. “oh, i’m just surprised that i’m still here,” he said. i didn’t know what that meant. he had been invested in bernie sander’s campaign for president, convinced that he was going to cinch the nomination, and in the days prior he’d withdrawn from the race. i thought david could have been referring to what that blow had done for his idealism. it turned out that he meant that he was “surprised” that he was still living. michael and i took a trip to get groceries the following day with mom’s car, leaving david to care for mom alone for about an hour. before we got back to the apartment, we got a call from mom. she was in an uber with david and heading to a mental health facility; he had been sobbing in one of the walk-in closets on the phone with his therapist. after we dropped the groceries off, we met mom and david at the clinic, along with anne and her husband jim. when we arrived, david was pacing in a room with a psychiatrist. his mood was erratic; he was laughing, he was yelling, he was crying. anne said that before we arrived, he had been on the floor sobbing. anne told me this was called rapid cycling, where someone moves through a whole gamut of emotions very quickly. once he was admitted, we walked david to his room at the facility and he started joking with nursing aides like everything was fine. it was one of the most bizarre displays of behavior i’d ever seen, and david saw the reaction on my face. everything was happening so quickly with the crisis and his shifting emotions that i couldn’t understand what was transpiring. as the week wore on, i did all i could with caring for leigh ann. i drove us all to the hospital for her daily radiation appointments. michael and i cooked dinners together. i brought her drinks and snacks and tried to make her as comfortable as possible. i kept the apartment clean by doing the dishes and the laundry. i sat beside her and watched tv. she kept telling me to work on my school assignments but i told her that being there for her was more important. because it was. from my morning pages on monday, march 16, 2020: “i did something bad last night. michael was right for calling me out on it and right about my motivations, which makes me feel bad. i put him in a position for looking bad, and i didn’t do it to make myself look better but i did it to pressure him into making what i thought was the better decision (and it wasn’t). essentially, following mom’s appointment on friday we all realized that care will be required post-treatment. leigh ann can expect the same lethargy she has now for about a month after. the reason is, as her cells go to divide, they will die and she’ll be left with the debris, causing her chest to feel like it does now, inflamed. none of us, even her, expected this.” we thought that after her chemo therapy and radiation treatment had finished, she’d be fine to live in pensacola alone like she had been. “michael and i had been talking the night prior as to what caring for mom may look like. david is out of the picture and can’t be relied upon and anne is already stressed. when david gets back from hospital, he likely needs anne to be heavily involved given how close they live to florida. to try and relieve that pressure, i suggested given that my courses are all online [due to covid] that we be the ones to do this in front of his mom—go down to pensacola and help. maybe for a month, maybe a few weeks. it just felt like the right thing to do and i feel like michael was resilient because he didn’t want to do that. i am bringing my own family baggage into this—i see how caregiving often falls to women in the family when there are boys and i was trying to protect anne from that while also having michael step up. yes, i’m going to bitch. it’s not a competition, but i’ve been doing more than michael has around here by a lot. he says i’m too quick to do things and maybe he’s right about that, but he also got downtime that i don’t get because there’s always something happening. yesterday, i asked to nap in our room alone and why shouldn’t i? i never get time to myself in there. he came back a half hour later. i’m pissed about this on top of the fact that i think i’m going to be packing more than he is [to move to ann arbor] when get back. i’m annoyed. i’m just as tired as he is and yet i don’t get to stop. maybe that influenced my push, on top of the baggage i’m bringing in. it was wrong either way.” the other solutions that were posed were that mom move to austin to be closer to anne and jim, and david when he was stronger. this would make it easier for mom to get back to md anderson for her follow-up appointments, which would be three hours away. “if mom goes back to pensacola, she’s too far from everyone and aunt sue can’t stay with her—it would be too much for anne to get out there. no to mention, we probably can’t fly (michael is worried about me with coronavirus and rightly so [because i’m asthmatic]) which would mean three days of driving (which i would solely have to take on). he’s right that it doesn’t work. i bowl over michael a lot and i think i do that because he’s quiet. i’m pushy with him and bossy about things i think are better. it’s not a good color on me and it doesn’t do our relationship any good either. i thought he was being selfish about wanting to go home, move to our new house, and work on his book. but it’s more than that—mom can’t come to michigan and we can’t go to florida (or texas) with coronavirus. we’re moving in less than two weeks [from ohio back to michigan] and i already couldn’t balance class on top of caring for mom—how the hell would i do that in florida? the truth is i can’t and it makes me wonder it i’m looking for a way out of the mfa, something noble, because i think it’s bullshit.” there was so much bullshit happening in my program at that time. a bunch of mfa students formed a “united front” to complain about experience with bgsu in the midst of classes being moved online because of covid. they were pissed because they paid “face-to-face” fees—they didn’t. they were complaining that they couldn’t use the gym and couldn’t get a refund. i wrote, “it’s a sunk fucking cost! it’s not just bgsu—it’s the whole fucking country, have some goddamn perspective.” michael and i were dealing with real fucking problems. dealing with my degree felt so frivolous at that point in time i just wanted out. i wrote, “my niceness gets me into trouble—it happened when terri was going to guelph [for recovery at homewood], i asked brea ‘should i go?’ when it’s not something i could manage to do. this week [of taking care of mom] has felt endless and we have a few days to go still. the cass heart is too big and i offer more than i’m capable of doing. i can’t help others by running myself into the ground, it’s not feasible.” in that moment, i wanted self-negation in order to be there for someone else in need. this isn’t the way. this happened to me when i was working at cjam. the third time i wanted to quit my mfa program: after my easy-going studio semester, i was looking forward to hopefully having multiple days off during the week so i could continue writing. this was not to be. even though i had fewer classes that semester than i did in first year, i was still required to attend something for school every day of the week. i was also teaching “craft of poetry” for the first time and the department enrolled 35 students, which was 10 more than i had in my first-year composition classes. this coupled with having to prepare for my thesis defense brought me back to the levels of stress that i experienced that first year, levels of stress that were horrendous. from my pages on wednesday, january 13, 2021: “man, i cried three times yesterday. first, i cried reading over materials for larissa’s workshop class. why? she’s very abstract and she has us working on writing prompts that immediately got my guard up because abstract thinking is not my strong suit. so immediately my thought was, ‘i can’t do this’ when i’m sure it will be fine. my second thought was ‘of course i have to face this in my last semester.’ i’m trying to tell myself it’s okay to be uncomfortable and that i will survive it.” “i got frustrated before bed because i read over my school email and had a student say they ordered the textbook today and it’s not arriving now for another week. i didn’t respond back to them, but immediately i had attitude about the whole thing: ‘i already said i wouldn’t copy more of the text!’ and ‘why are they waiting so long to get the book?’ and ‘what am i going to doooooooooo?’ wah wah wah. honestly, poor michael—i’m annoying to myself right now! he was like ‘you’ll probably have to copy it.’ i was so angry, i punched a wall in the bathroom (i don’t think he knows that) and i cried out of frustration (not pain). my immediate reaction to any stressor is anger, and my stress level feels like it immediately went to 100 yesterday, as if i never left first year.” “michael asked what came first—my frustration or my feeling of being overwhelmed by the big picture of it all—he says they’re feeding each other and he’s right. another thing, i’m criticizing my mom for acting this way toward me right now in a different situation when i’m doing the same damn thing toward school. michael was like ‘you learned this from somewhere.’ it’s exhausting to do this, i want to change this. it may be silly, but i’m going to breathe deeply when i immediately feel stressed and i asked michael to remind me to do this when i’m spiraling out of control. i let myself get hooked by small things. i won’t last the first few weeks of january if i keep behaving like this. i need to take it like i take sobriety, one day at a time.” “michael asked me what i’m worried will happen and it’s this big vague thing like not finishing the program. when he probed that he asked, ‘concretely, how would that happen?’ ‘not doing the work, i guess?’ i answered. ‘just keep scheduling like you did before.’ and i know i can do that. i know i’m going to do the work. so knowing that, how would i fail? my other answer: ‘my attitude.’ ‘well, change it,’ he said.” the next day, i started carrying an obsidian stone and a piece of amethyst in my pockets to protect me every single day. having that bit of ritual felt like a security blanket that worked to push me through the challenges. 210930 ... unhinged (i sleep with a piece of obsidian in my bed) i got so anxious my last semester of grad school i literally couldn't eat. the only things in my fridge condiments and a carton of cigarettes. a fight club refrigerator. i spent a night hiding in my bathroom with the box cutters i used to cut myself with in the other room of my tiny studio apartment. i was literally curled in a ball on my bathroom floor hiding from an inanimate object. grad school should have a health warning label 210930 ... tender square unhinged, i felt your post intensely. thank you for sharing what it was like for you, too. i’m so sorry you experienced such low points. i’m grateful you left school and prioritized your health; i am grateful that you are here posting today (and looking forward to watching gbbo with you later, friend). michael cautioned me that grad school was going to be awful. the only thing i can compare my flippant attitude about it to are the folks who think that having a kid is easy and then are proven horribly, horribly wrong. i honestly thought that because i was an organized and hardworking person, that my grad school experience would be easier different than what michael experienced when it parts of mine were worse. grad school should absolutely have a health warning label. since mid-september i’ve been carrying lapis lazuili and obsidian in my pockets. i came across a website called “tiny rituals” that said these two stones work wonders together; “lapis is a lullaby of truth…known for sharpening the mind, inviting inner reflection, and being able to connect to others through bringing compassion and authenticity to your own story”; and “black obsidian is…a powerful tool for those seeking protection, grounding, deep-set healing and tearing the fabric of falsity to find the truth.” i don’t go anywhere without them. ever since you mentioned that you sleep with your obsidian, unhinged, i have been following your guidance and doing the same, thank you. 211003 ... unhinged higher education was bad for me in a lot of ways. i struggled with my neurological disorders at that time because that just seems to be when the first serious onset of most disorders manifest. the pressure of six years of music school didn't help. i am finally learning how to turn off my anxiety and do several natural things to manage my depression. quitting things that make me unhealthy was a pivotal lesson 211003 ... unhinged (the place i buy my crystals from recommended sleeping with some if you have trouble sleeping so i figured it couldn't hurt) 211003 ... epitome of incomprehensibility I wish I could share a better experience of grad school! It wasn't all bad, but there are things I still feel bitter and/or sad about. On the school's side: a) Cramming the English Lit MA into 1 year instead of 2. b) Graduate program director's inflexibility (from my perspective). On my side: a) Immaturity. Oh, some people starting it were 22 (to my 23), but I wasn't ready. b) Un-dealt-with anger problems. c) Undiagnosed ADHD. The first crisis was after winter holidays, when I was late with multiple papers. The director thought this was evidence I wasn't trying and suspended me, wanting to kick me out. This message came by letter in my mailbox - I rolled home like a kicked ball. Next day or the day after, I called another prof during office hours. She'd taught Intro to Critical Theory; the social-justice parts weren't just meaningless words to her, it seemed, and I trusted her as a person. She did more than I expected, commiserating and laying out the steps for me to file an appeal. The appeal worked. Along the way, I got seen by a neuropsych who'd given me an evaluation for "learning disabilities" a couple of years before; the message was "well, you don't have anything like dyslexia" and then "hey, wait, you might want to follow up on something..." and that something, in early 2012, he pinpointed as ADHD. (From what I've read, I'm quite sure the diagnosis is accurate. My problem is with the name. I'd call it Attention Regulation Disorder, because it affects time organization and impulsivity. There's very little attention *deficit* as such. Maybe one problem is that doctors are relying too heavily on observations of children with the condition.) Anyway, I won the appeal and was let back in. ...This is silly, but I'm finding the second part stressful to talk about right now. Besides, I'm taking too long, as usual. But let me just say: a) I think there should be practice making syllabi before actually planning classes. David did this for jobs he was applying to and it was quite fun. Having it suddenly pushed on you? Not so fun. b) I find I keep drifting to back to education, both as a learner and teacher, in what I've done for the past fourteen years. I guess I consider it a secondary vocation, besides writing. And I was grateful for the TA position I had. That was one of my better experiences. 211004 ... e_o_i I finished this in the_education_of_e_o_i because I didn't want to derail the thread to be about me. On a lighter note, I love "fucko" as an insult. It's the "o" at the end. Like, if you call someone a fucker, they could reason, "Are you accusing me of sexual activity?" and feel neutral-to-positive about their fuckery status. But "fucko" is gloriously dismissive. It's like, "Bucko, you don't even rate an word-final consonant." 211004 ... e_o_i "an word-final consonant"??? I dunno. Maybe "w" is a vowel. It's a glide - close enough. Linguistics FTW. 211004 what's it to you? who go blather from