on grad school

January 2002 I made the socially punishing mistake of starting grad school mid-session, mid-team, mid-winter. Only one classmate would talk to me. Her name is E. We remain close. Her early relocation to Ottawa, recruited by the feds, facilitated our friendship- I was in the capital often enough for academic conferences to follow her emotional and professional process as faithfully as true friends typically do. At some point I met her sister, who I do not know if I would count as a friend, I admire her a bit too much for that to be possible. She’s older than us but delicate. She is serious but not brittle. She is, of course, an academic. In corduroy from Queen West’s Preloved and wearing woolen tights and insulated wellies, she joined E and me for a coffee one sunny frigid morning at Bridgehead. She’s been a doctoral student for at least as long as they flirtatiously claim it’ll take when you first start, beaming authoritatively at you and drafting a supervisory schedule in such hieroglyphic script you believe it might actually mean something.

E recently put in a Phd app. I recently ran off from a program. E’s sister is staying the course. She has other pursuits to break up the long self-analyzing moments between chapters. She has a peculiar layered fringe over her forehead, a small face, child-like eyes that dwarf her other features. Letting her latte cool and breaking apart a pastry, she explained:

The popularity of grad school among young women- and at least half of the faculties are at least half full with women- is attributable to the “post-feminist” threat of their otherwise entrance into the workforce. To keep these ceiling-hungry, entitled and intelligent (and often gorgeous) women out of power, credentialism and academic elitism has shifted into a feminized overdrive. Grad school is a perfect pressure cooker: an average of ten years of social disassociation, from both productive and reproductive labour, alienates women when they finally defend an otherwise unread thesis and enter either realm…an alienation that can push them right back into the ivory tower.

Did I mention I want to go back to school?