New Levels of Patheticness, One Semester Only!

Death by Grad School

I keep telling myself various unhel[ful axiomatic phrases. Mantras, if you will (but you probably won't). Like, "You chose this," or "You know you love it."
I am right on both counts: I did choose this "life" and I do love it. In fact, if someone gave me $20 million, I'd probably go to grad school forever. And write bad poetry. And learn every langauge in the world.
But I did not choose to be this stressed out; I did not choose to have such restraints put on my time and body. Here's Amy's Monday, and Tuesday for example.
5:50 am Wake up. Swear about the Yankees.
6:23 am On Bus.
7:00 am Starbucks for a cup of salvation
7:15 am In office, picking up stuff to teach with
7:30-8:20 Teaching.
8:30-11:30 In computer lab, grading, answering student emails, finishing up my own work.
11:30-12:20 Class.
12:30-1:15 Lunch while reading.
1:20-3:30 Back in computer lab, doing same as above. Mental breaks at 20 minute intervals
3:30-4:30 Class
4:30-5:00 Bus
5:00-6:00 Dinner, staring blankly at tv
6:00-9:00 Attempting reading, but half asleep.
9:00 Shower.
10:00 Try to stay awake for Daily Show. Usually fails, wake up with drool running down face at 10:20ish
10:30: Drool free, attempt to read again in bed.
Tuesday
1:00: Wake up with pen bleeding on pjs. Curse the Yankees. Try to remember if I took my pills.
1:45 Give up on reading; it's making no sense anyway.
5:50 am. Wake up.
Ditto through 8:30.
8:30 am. Realize I forgot to do something for Tarez. Spend next half hour frantically trying to finish it.
9:00-10:20 Mentoring. Room begins to spin at around 10:00.
10:30-11:45 Burke class. Most fun class of all. Like coming home.
12:00-12:30 Bus.
12:30-1:30 Lunch, with the missed Daily Show
1:30-5:30 Nap. Pretty much the only quality sleep all week.
5:30-6:15 Dinner. Assuming I can stay conscious enough to make it.
6:15-10:00 Various readings. Might look at dishes and laundry, but little chance of doing either one. Observe the chocolate wrappers on the floor with a zen-like calm.
10:00 Shower
10:30-5:50 Attempt to sleep. Wake up at 2:00 with guilt for not reading better during Monday evening.
Lather, rinse, repeat.
It's not horrible, I guess. But not much of a life.
It's 8:00 now, and I'm too sleepy to do what needs done, i.e. write the outline of my paper. The words swim in front of my eyes.
Theory has made less and less sense lately. That's a bad thing, because abstraction is usually what I'm good at. I just feel that it's going too fast, that if I could slow it down even a fraction, by 10% or even less, I could hold on to the things flying by me.
In my dream last night, I was in high school again, in band. Playing those damned (sorry Laura) bells. The xylophone was clean, though, and freshly coated. It rung nicely when I struck the bars with my mallets. And Laura looked at me and said, "Do you know this song?" and for once, I did. It was one of the songs from the gospel show, I know now. "It's in B flat," I told her, and played the song perfectly. She stared at me in shock. "When did you get so good?" she asked. "That's how it always works with me," I reminded her. "I suck for a long time, then magically understand it, all at once."
Then the dream turned in on itself, and we were in the band room. Everyone was still alive and unscathed. Riley Kloos looked at me and said something about my sudden improvement. "This," I tell him, "is the result of what Kenneth Burke would call occupational psychosis." The "this" however, had multiple referents; first, I was refering to my new found percussion abilities. Second, I was refering the the dream itself. "Those create terministic screens," I say cheerfully. Then I say something about desire that apparently did not transfer. I spoke in good post modern academic language, explaining the Burkean system to Riley. Kamp stood short and silent. Jeff, Derek and Nick were in the back by the cages shaking their heads. I was brilliant.
If my dream was really an example of occupational psychosis, then I must ask "What are symbols of what?" "Ability" is something that has been bothering me of late; the one talent I ever had inately, I think, was music. And when I tried to play percussion and couldn't-- the only time I ever really gave up due to disease--I doubted the ability in which I had grounded my selfhood. If musical ability, that is, the ability to "see" chords and harmonies and the pathos of music, is somehow in my mind linked to academic ability, then what I was telling myself was that I need to stop forcing myself into something I can't quite do yet. Because forcing it will only result in what happened before, with the percussion line.
I have, of course, grown up since then. I no longer have any intimations of sacrifice for some abstract cause, like "honor" or "pride." Believing that killing my body in order to achieve some sort of greatness is something better left to those in teenage angst. I am far too pragmatic to belive in a mind/body split.
Am I supposed to be making a point here...? Oh, yes. Patheticness. Tarez is now emailing me reminders about what I'm supposed to do. They are working in the sense that things are getting done that ordinarily would not. But seeing them makes me feel like I've failed somehow. Don't be stupid. That silly little 15 year old with the swollen fingers and bad limp is giving me a guilt trip. She wants some kind of public service award or medal of honor. She wants a Lifetime Story about her heroic struggle through graduate school.
She's such a bitch.
The "crip myth" of the courageous handicapped person overcoming adversity to achieve genius is really cramping my style. Once they label you, they can't unlabel you. I want to disable every 20/20 reporter who featured a parapeligic; I want to give fibromyalgia to everyone who's ever said, "Hang in there!" and then walked easily out the door.
I think this is an anger phase?
I can't wait for Harry Potter 4 to come out. I need a distraction from without.