It’s been a full day of Ridiculous over here.
I met with the graduate department chair at OU this afternoon, and had a really nice, informational meeting about the program, about funding via teaching assistantships, about the application process. I felt really at ease and comfortable and left there thinking…”I can totally do this.”
Being on the OU campus, I had a nice little walk about tour and an after meeting coffee break with my Mr. and then squatted the rest of the afternoon at his house to finish writing my profile paper for literary criticism that’s due tomorrow. It was really a lovely day.
Until. . .
I got the critique of my 19th C paper back from my professor which called for a major re-write, re-organization as well as additional research.
I thought I was going to vomit. I still might, but I’m not giving up the delicious pasta dinner we had for paper stress. No way man.
After spending what could have been a minute or an hour on the side of the bathtub working my way through a meltdown/huh-huh-huh ugly cry, I’m better. I’m not great. My voices have decided to use it as a call to arms and are absolutely screaming in my head, all sorts of shitty things.
“You can’t write a paper and you want to be a professor?”
“You were going to use THIS as your writing sample for the application? You are NEVER getting accepted. You aren’t smart enough. Not even close to being smart enough to do this.”
and the succinct yet substantial:
“You suck.”
I’m doing the best I can to stick a ball gag in each of their mouths. I really really am.
I’ve re-arranged my work schedule for Thursday to allow for the entire day to be spent writing. The paper isn’t due until 5:00 pm on Friday. My professor has given major chunks of criticism and suggested edits. These things, I’m hoping with a dose of space and time added to it, will all morph into an acceptable A paper for this class.
The thing that really really sucks…
I thought it was good. I knew that organization wasn’t perfect and citations weren’t polished, but I thought that I had really grounded my argument in theory, had shown credible and intelligent proof of that and had finished with content that was really, without needing too much editing, a pretty good initial product.
So. There’s that.
I really really really cannot wait to look back on this post and smile with the relief that it all worked out. Because right now…meltingdown is the only thing I’m really sure that I can do.
Misti Ridiculous 
Deep breaths. Deep draughts of a potent brew. This is a learning experience. If you already knew completely how to do it, why would it be necessary to take the class. And remember, it is ONE person’s opinion. Your paper could BE all you thought it was. Sometimes, you have to try to make that ONE person satisfied. Get BACK on that broom and soar! 😉
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They are just fucking with you! You can DO IT!!!
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You should listen to Mr. Guy. Misti, you are smart and a good writer. The fact that you have gotten this FAR, days from your last semester, with so many successful papers is validation of your intelligence and effort. You will hunker down, with supplies of hot tea or coke or whatever, and you will write. And you will write well. We all have voices inside, spirits of doubt and defeatism that try to steal away what is goodness and light. Tell them to hush and write with boldness. Go back to when you cut my hair and that conversation about faith.
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Mr. Guy is absolutely right. The teacher gave you a critic of how he/she would write the paper. It’s their class, so you write it the way they want. It doesn’t mean that the idea or original paper wasn’t good. No author sits down and writes a perfect novel. There’s no such thing as perfection. Grad school with test your faith in yourself, but it will only test it, not define it. Only you have that power.
Now pull up those big girl panties and go kick this paper’s ass.
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As you know I’ve been getting bitch slapped by this sort of crit a lot in the past few months. The thing I’m beginning to see is that, a lot of the time, we get this when we’re jumping up to a new level. So, in your case the paper was good, great, as held against the standards you’d been held to before but now the teacher is suddenly deciding you’re in a different league. You got bumped up from Off-Broadway to Broadway but NOBODY TOLD YOU. And that’s the part that sucks. As always I could be wrong but I bet that’s what’s going on here. You’ve just been too good leading up to this and they’re leveling you up with no warning. If you’d had warning you’d be in a different place.
Go get ’em! xoxo
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You have such smart friends chiming in here. I’ll just echo their sentiments. There is no doubt in my mind that you are doing exactly what you are supposed to be doing. Hang tough, woman!!
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