Third Culture Kid(s)

Reading

Or, more accurately, not reading. One of my biggest stumbling blocks on the way to the PhD is my absolute terror of reading stuff in my field. It’s not that I’m afraid I won’t understand it - that’s a terror for the first year of grad school - and it’s not that I’m afraid I’ll be wasting my time. The terror is in opening that first page, reading just a few sentences, and feeling my mind flood with ideas and fears. The ideas are usually generative, but the fears - that other people are out there writing such good stuff, that there’s so much I haven’t read yet, that I’ll never be this good or well-read enough - they’re paralyzing.

I’ve been working hard to just get past the fears and quiet the ideas (because too many ideas rattling around in my head makes it impossible to read for the purpose of researching something specific), but it’s hard work. The best I can do right now is have a specific question that I’m trying to answer/research, read, find it, and get out of there before I get too distracted.

Writing

It goes. Slowly, and with much trepidation. I sent off the longest draft I have of the first chapter to a dissertation support group I’m participating in (from afar - the professor who runs it was kind enough to let me participate even after we moved 700 miles away), and the comments sent me into a micro-tailspin last night. Not that they were bad - in fact, I asked for and got validation that I’m not hopelessly stupid or otherwise spinning my wheels - but they bugged me, and it took most of the day today to figure out why.

I finally had a bit of a breakthrough while I was ironing (not all housework is done at the expense of other work!), and I realized that what was bugging me was the perspective that some of the questions were coming from. What I want to do in my dissertation - and what I’m going to have to state clearly and unequivocally - is shift the dominant theoretical paradigm through which what I’m looking at gets seen. Or, rather, I want to shift what we’re looking at a little: the topic necessarily talks about “Japanese women,” but I don’t want it to be a dissertation about “Japanese women.” I’m neither an anthropologist nor a psychologist, and I cannot presume to know what makes “Japanese women” tick (although I’d argue that anyone who purports to understand “Japanese women” is not in touch with any actual Japanese women, who are as diverse as any other women, and thus deserve better than being lumped into one homogenous group). And that’s not what I’m interested in anyway, except to the extent that it informs the thing I am talking about.

I’m grateful for the questions everyone asked since they’re helping me to crystallize my argument, but I’m still nervous about setting it down on paper. Or screen, as the case may be.

‘Rithmatic

M’s off at his first grad school class - Stats for Business. I felt like I was sending one of my kids off to kindergarten for the first time when he left. He was nervous and excited, all at once - it was very sweet. Class is supposed to go until 10:00 pm, so we’ll see what time he actually makes it home. It’s kind of nice having the house essentially to myself; MM’s in bed, I’ve had dinner, and now I’m just kind of puttering around. I could work…but I’m scared to start.