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Researching and Teaching Toward an Uncertain Future

Graduate Studies in the Time of Coronavirus, Part V

Edited by Didem Uca, with support from the members of the CSGSH

For the past few months, this series has documented how the COVID-19 pandemic has affected graduate students’ personal and professional lives. The contributors have reflected on the importance of building empathy and community in a socially distanced reality, addressed mental health struggles and survival strategies, discussed their activism and advocacy work, and shared the additional challenges experienced by international students in this moment. In this final post of the series, the contributors speculate about what their post-COVID futures might hold. In addition to immediate concerns––fall teaching and coursework, research, and progress toward degree––graduate students everywhere face existential questions. They wonder what our disciplines will look like as universities turn toward increased austerity measures; what job opportunities will be available when the dust settles; and, furthermore what they want their disciplines and careers to look like. Building on previous posts, the contributors also consider what forms of connection and community will be available to help sustain them during and beyond graduate school as we look toward another atypical academic year.

As these issues continue to develop into the fall semester, we seek contributions for our next series, “Grad Students Preparing for the Fall: Covid-19, Online Teaching, & Visa Issues”; you may find the call for reflections here.

Meggyn Keeley

Butler University, Master’s of Fine Arts in Creative Writing–Fiction student

The words “Giant Eagle” glow in red fluorescence in the dim of 7AM. I’ve never been scared of a grocery store before. We pack the car and spray every package down with Lysol in the garage with the care of diffusing a bomb. Maybe we are. The daily press conferences have become white noise in the background as I stare at my homework assignments uploaded online. My routine of jotting down daily tasks has become a long list of links to click on, new papers to write. Studying pedagogy suddenly doesn’t seem as immediately important when trying to rationalize the devastation possibly next door. The world outside mirrors my motivation: abandoned. 

I know that there will be a next. My professors, my family, we all adapt to the technology we are grateful to have. Reading posts on Facebook is the closest I come to seeing my classmates. My assignments keep coming, and each day I motivate myself to try to maintain the positive energy in my home for the sake of my family who can’t drown out the news. It’s easy to feel like my line of work is useless in the grand scheme of things. How does editing and writing fiction help anyone when people need doctors, engineers, builders? I try to remember that there will be a next. And as countless individuals find their days suddenly void of responsibilities, they turn to art to fill them, to distract them, to have white noise that isn’t this reality. 

In the Giant Eagle parking lot, another woman is reading a book in her front seat as she waits for her husband to return. We trade smiles and book titles across rolled down windows, and I try to remember that my focus on my craft may one day be another’s peace. None of us can pause. I cross off another item on my to-do list.

 

Mallory Jones 

Northern Michigan University, Master’s in English student

The coronavirus pandemic has caused me to become flexible and adaptable in a short time frame. In the spring, my university gave faculty and staff two days to transition their courses to online instruction, and I was left panicking about what I was going to do for the rest of the semester. My first-year composition students were still working on their second essay out of four, and I was left with the task of moving the course online with only one semester of regular teaching under my belt. I turned to friends and colleagues for ideas on how to proceed, but also considered all of the factors that would cause great challenges for students in the online environment.

Reflecting on my personal experience, I knew moving ten hours home and adjusting my academic life to this new location and schedule was incredibly stressful and that it has been a struggle to complete simple tasks. Other factors that I kept in mind was that some of my students may not have access to Wi-Fi, have difficulty managing their time on an open schedule, and have other responsibilities as they return home. This helped me realize that I did not want to ask my students to do a huge research project when they could not even access the library or stop by my office with questions. Ultimately, I decided to simplify the original essay requirements, which I believe was in my students’ best interest.

Looking toward the fall, I am still navigating how to stay organized as both an instructor and a student. During this challenging time, I am left wondering what the future of higher education will hold when this pandemic is finally over. 

 

Bailey McAlister

Georgia State University, Ph.D. Candidate in English: Rhetoric and Composition

As grad students, we constantly feel the impact of non-academic situations on our research projects. Every student’s education can be radically altered by societal pandemics. But graduate students’ learning paths are particularly vulnerable because of the transitional period we are all experiencing at different paces. While the COVID-19 pandemic has some students transitioning to online teaching during their first semester, it has others doing video dissertation defenses during the home stretch.

I happened to be composing my proposal for comprehensive exams during this pandemic. My committee was formed the week my school announced our campus closure, and my comprehensive exam intent form was due mid-April. COVID-19’s most prominent effect on my academic life is that it has given me a lot of time––perhaps too much time––to think about what my dissertation is going to be. This is my first time actually creating an outline for what this three-year project will look like.

For me, the most difficult thing about writing a dissertation is the freedom to create one’s own path. We don’t tell incoming undergrads, “Come up with a major––an overarching theme to define your research. Then, design all of the courses relevant to your major and choose which courses you want to take.” Instead, we define the majors––the career paths––and we design the courses. Then, the students choose their paths based on the outline we’ve created.

Writing a dissertation is showing my committee the path I am choosing based on an outline of my own creation. It is no longer someone else’s job to tell me the criteria for what I write; it is now my job to set the criteria for my own writing.

Whether the effects of COVID-19 are positive or negative on my writing, I feel that my reflection on these effects will allow me to understand the foundations of my dissertation project better later on. As a rhet-comp student, at the very least, this societal pandemic has influenced how I see my future audience and my intended purpose for this research. Entering the academic conversation during this uncertain time promises an interesting path going forward.

 

Cassandra Scherr

University at Buffalo, Ph.D. Candidate in English

Is it still a privilege?

I had assumed that I would always view living alone as a privilege. One of the things I promised myself when I decided to pursue a Ph.D. at 30 was that I would do everything in my power to live alone. “You’re too old for roommates,” I told myself. When I cut all luxuries to stretch my grad student income, I’d remind myself, “you will be able to focus and manage your time as you see fit, like a real adult. You’re an introvert, think how tiring living with someone would be.” And the thing is, for the most part I’ve felt good about my choices these last few years. On occasion, when I felt lonely, I knew that I would at least get to see my students multiple times a week. Yet, now as I face weeks on end with only occasional digital contact with my peers for companionship and guidance, I am grappling with not only my choice to live alone but also with the question of if this all really will be “worth it.” Because right now I am working harder than ever, with an abundance of the “alone time” I said I needed to accomplish my work and I am wondering what it is that I am actually accomplishing. When I was teaching in the spring, I would send my students the material they needed to develop new critical thinking skills each week, but they no longer have the community of classmates to apply them. I work diligently on my research, crafting page after page, but it feels like each word goes into an echo chamber of my own design. I work for the prize of more work, to earn a job that will pay me what I am worth, or at least enough to survive.  But now, after weeks alone, I sit at my computer late into the night wondering about the possibilities of finding this prized job in a market that was already grim and now will be further hobbled by the inevitable backlash of a country recovering from a pandemic. I try to find comfort, asking out loud, “will it really be worth it in the end?” And in return I get the silence I worked and sacrificed so hard for. Is it still a privilege? 

 

Ingrid Asplund

University of California at San Diego, Ph.D. Candidate in Visual Arts

When I got the announcement about UCSD going online, my first fear was about figuring out how to teach my TA sections online, followed with worries about taking my own graduate seminars online. What never occurred to me until it started happening was that so many of my friends would move back in with their parents out of state, in some cases permanently. While I am blessed to have an affordable living situation with a reliable roommate (in part thanks to my long commute), many of my colleagues haven’t been so lucky. As the COVID pandemic was beginning to escalate, so was the Cost of Living Adjustment (COLA) movement in the UCs, because many grad students pay more than they can afford in rent. When faced with the opportunity to live rent-free with their parents, many of my peers chose to return ten or more years after moving out for an indefinite amount of time.

One of the most gut-wrenching aspects of this process has been its suddenness. Many of my friends have moved away without saying goodbye to most of their inner circle. One by one, people in my social circle told me they were thinking of going away, and the pandemic finally became “real” to me when my best friend in San Diego came over for a grading session in the early days of social distancing. When he walked in, he said, “I’m glad you invited me over because tomorrow I’m moving away from San Diego forever,” and after a wave of shock, I felt hot tears spring to my eyes. He had been given a window of a few days to get out of his housing contract and told me that he couldn’t justify continuing to pay rent. I knew he was going to graduate in June and probably move away in the fall, but I had been counting on our last few months together. Grad school is a time of constant transition, but knowing that my proximity to my fellow grad students is temporary didn’t make it any less painful when this friend offered me a final parting elbow bump.

It may not make such a difference while all of our socializing is virtual, but when I think about a post-COVID world, it’s difficult to know who will be left in the social landscape of my city. Of the friends who are graduating, I wonder how many of them I said my last goodbye to without even realizing it. In addition to not being able to celebrate my friends who have graduated without ceremony, it’s hard not knowing how many of my friends will decide to continue their education in absentia. I have no idea how long it will take for us to collectively emerge from this crisis, and there are many things that I hope will never go back to “normal.” However, it is painful to think about returning to a social life with many loved ones missing and I expect that part of my recovery from this experience will include finding new connections in my community.

Seeking Empathy & Community

Graduate Studies in the Time of Coronavirus, Part I

Edited by Didem Uca, with support from the members of the CSGSH

The COVID-19 pandemic has radically altered all aspects of society in North America and around the globe, including higher education. The Modern Language Association’s Committee on the Status of Graduate Students in the Humanities asked graduate students to submit short reflections on how this situation has affected the core aspects of their scholarly lives––from coursework and teaching to research projects and dissertation defenses––as well as the impact on their broader selves: personal well being, physical and mental health, familial and domestic responsibilities, financial and living situations, and any other repercussions of this crisis. We received such a tremendous response from graduate students across disciplines and around the U.S. and beyond that we decided to produce a series of posts over the next several weeks on different themes, each with contributions by several graduate student writers. Our first post addresses recognizing the need for empathy and community, both for ourselves as graduate student-researcher-instructor-humans and for the students entrusted in our care. We are very grateful to everyone who was able to share their perspectives and are in solidarity with all of our colleagues around the world who have been affected. If you are struggling, we hope that these posts help you feel less alone.

 

Anonymous Contribution

I am a first-year doctoral student at an R1 university in the American south. I left my home state and traveled half a country away to attend this university, leaving behind my friends, my family, and my job security, all in an effort to achieve my PhD. I am a graduate teaching assistant at my university, on top of taking a full course load. On top of that, as I attend an R1, I am juggling the writing load of no fewer than 5 publications at any time. Nothing slowed down or stopped when we went “virtual”––if anything, people have assumed that I have more time than before, and have been asking me to complete tasks for them. I am busier than I have been in years, and most of it is the heavy lifting of other people’s needs. I haven’t had time to process how the quarantine has affected me; instead, I am setting up family Zoom meetings, editing other people’s work, and giving of myself because people ask me to, and because they are in need. I feel like that old teaching adage, where in order to light the way, a teacher needs to burn themselves out. I have nothing left, and yet I keep burning to give others light. 

Aside from my personal academic progress, I have my students to worry about. Some of them were forced to move back home to a place that is not safe, where they face food and housing insecurity, and where they worry about simply surviving. All of their classes don’t matter as much as their safety and health, and yet, I have to be that “jerk” emailing them about assignments that they need to turn in. I am one of the lucky ones, though. My supervisor and my department have been amazing through this entire debacle, and have given all of the GTAs the freedom to do what they feel is the best for their students. My supervisor checks in on me and the other students under her care, and I feel supported academically and personally. I don’t feel alone, however stressed out I may be. I don’t have anybody who I am immediately responsible for––no children or parents to care for. I settled my mental health issues prior to this, and because of that I am not reliant on therapy to function. I am one of the lucky ones, whose big complaint is that I am helping others and neglecting myself, and that is a luxury. But, this life is not easy. This is a heavy weight being placed on us all, and sometimes I want to crumble under my share of the weight. 

 

Kay Sohini

English PhD Candidate and Instructor, Stony Brook University

Twitter: @KaySohini

On March 7, when New York issued a state of emergency due to COVID-19, I was in Boston for NeMLA. It was in all likelihood the last academic conference that would not be canceled for the foreseeable future. On coming back to NYC from Boston, I stocked up on essentials and prepared to self-quarantine. My university went entirely online soon after. As movement became more and more restricted in my city and beyond, my summer research project—which required fieldwork and international travel—was canceled. It was a time-sensitive project that likely cannot be completed at a later date.

Luckily, unlike the 10 million people who filed for unemployment in March, I still receive a (albeit modest) paycheck in my role as a graduate TA/instructor of record. My university has extended our graduation timelines by one year. However, we have not heard anything so far about what that means on the funding front. Instead, there have been a flurry of webinars on the best distance learning practices and how to teach on Zoom. While these resources can be helpful, they implicitly create pressure to teach synchronously (which my university initially required, before eventually pulling back on it). In my experience, that is no longer a viable option. Undergraduate students are dealing with employment loss, have precarious living situations, and some even have to care for their families. I suppose it is important for universities to maintain a semblance of normalcy during these trying times, for both morale and fiscal reasons. Regarding the latter, perhaps we (graduate instructors, contingent faculty) are beneficiaries too, inasmuch as we would be the first ones to lose our paychecks in the event of universities losing money. 

Nevertheless, to insist on normalcy when there is a global pandemic, to assume that all students have the emotional (and technological) bandwidth to deal with synchronous modes of instruction compromises on the values that the humanities espouse. Over the past week, my students have told me that some of their instructors have assigned extra work because they are no longer meeting face to face. Some have told me that their internet connectivity is not strong enough for Zoom. One student has had to pick up extra shifts at work to make ends meet. Yet another informed me that both of their parents tested positive for the virus. Personally, I lost my grandmother this week to COVID-19 related complications. I am in Queens, which has the highest number of COVID cases in the New York area. The constant sirens outside my window are deafening, and it exacts an emotional toll. So while I want to do right by my students and do my best under the circumstances, I am acutely cognizant of the fact that these are not normal circumstances— and we must adjust our standards accordingly. I understand the need for structure (provided by synchronous learning) and that it even helps some people. I understand that we cannot suspend life and work until this is all over, since we do not know when this will end. However, I also believe that we as individuals and as a community need to cultivate more empathy and compassion. Especially now.

 

Heather Stewart

PhD Candidate in Philosophy, Western University

www.heatherstewartphilosophy.com

As I sit on my bed, writing from what has now become my makeshift office, comprised of a lap desk that hadn’t been used in years and a cat who is thankful for but perhaps also confused by my suddenly being home around the clock, I reflect on the ways in which the sudden changes brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic have radically shifted what it means to be a graduate student. Upon reflection, the thing I find myself most struck by is the sense of time––how at times it feels as if it is moving so slowly, as if I have been stuck in my one bedroom apartment for a century or more; at times it feels as if it is flying by, as I look at the clock after watching the third press conference or listening to the tenth news podcast of the day,  and somehow a whole day is gone and I feel as if I have done, or accomplished, next to nothing but still somehow feel exhausted. 

This confused sense of time––it’s being somehow simultaneously slowed down and sped up––is impacting graduate student life in myriad ways. Despite time feeling like it is frozen––like life itself is stopped in its tracks––our funding clocks tick on and progression milestones await us, unmoved. 

And while I worry about the loss of time, and how that loss ultimately presents new financial challenges or exacerbates old ones, I also reflect on how much more is being lost than time, and how reflecting on those various losses really helps to illuminate what it means to be a graduate student. Being a graduate student, stuck at home in isolation along with so many folks around the world, required to be physically distant from other people, makes salient the unique pleasures of graduate student life, which, perhaps we take for granted; but in their absence, we come to realize that these play a significant role in sustaining us, our research, and our mental health.  

If this experience of physical distancing and self-isolation teaches us anything about graduate study and the parts of it we ought to appreciate more deeply, it is that being a graduate student involves so much more than completing coursework and hitting progression benchmarks of exams and dissertations. The full experience of being a graduate student is about the creative stimulation that is driven by being part of an intellectual community and occupying communal spaces with other like-minded thinkers. It is about the feeling when you finally make something click for the student who has come to your office hours for the third time, having been ready to give up but feeling grateful that they didn’t. It is about connecting with the colleague you don’t see often when you happen to be making coffee in the department kitchen at the same time, and learning about their work, but maybe also about what their partners or kids have been up to lately. It is about your supervisor stopping by your office, not to ask about your research progress, but just to see how you are doing, as a human.

As a graduate student writing from home, disconnected from the intellectual community and creative spaces I perhaps took for granted, I realize now that so much more is being taken from me than the time that is being rapidly subtracted from my funding window. I am losing the graduate student experience itself. And like passing time, you can’t get that back. 

 

Anna Barritt

Ph.D. Candidate in English: Rhetoric and Writing Studies and Assistant Director of First-Year Composition, The University of Oklahoma

While sitting in a meeting with my writing program administrator—learning of the directives from upper-administration about the impending move to online instruction to combat COVID-19—my first thought was, “I’m going to be able to get so much reading done for my doctoral exams.” Two weeks of working from home would give me that much-needed time to focus and prepare without interruption. Though I was fully aware of the difficulties that would accompany this temporary shift, I secretly rejoiced at this time to study. 

A week into online instruction, it was announced that the remainder of this semester would be held online. My previous excitement quickly turned to concern. How does this affect my exams? How will I defend? How will I meet with my advisor? Like most institutions, we have made do by converting in-person meetings to Zoom meetings. In adjusting to this new digital normal, one thing has become clear to me: camaraderie is a grad student’s lifeline. 

So much of our career happens in isolation. We read, think, and write holed up in whatever quiet place we can find. But we come up for air to commiserate with our peers, to admit to our advisors that we’re behind schedule, to share our love of learning with our students. We desperately depend on fostering connections with the people around us to survive what is often a lonely life. This comes as a surprise to me, as I call myself an introvert and revel in the academic life of mulling over ideas while surrounded by my books. I didn’t know how reliant I was on my peers to get through the solitary environment of grad school. With every day that passes in quarantine, combined with the possibility of the fall semester also moving online, I am wondering how I can go on like this without the social aspect of talking about my research and writing. How does any of this matter if I can’t share my findings? What hope do I have of effecting change through my projects if no one hears what I have to say? My greatest insights come in spurts of kairos and are largely inspired by the people around me; I am not the island that I once thought I was. 

Sure, I’ve had more time and fewer distractions—but I’ve learned how valuable those distractions are.    

 

Jonquil S. Harris

Masters of Professional Writing Student, Kennesaw State University

Three weeks ago, life as I knew it changed personally, professionally, academically, and worldwide. I was slightly relieved when we received the call from my employer that we would be shut down for approximately two weeks. I would have a moment to catch my breath and focus even more on what brought me joy––my graduate studies. The excitement I find in being around like-minded individuals as we discuss our craft and our future as professional writers and gaining invaluable insights from professors and advisors makes the 90-minute commute to my university seem brief.

Then the reality of the pandemic sank in, and it took a week before my anxiety wore away. I couldn’t help but think about me or my family members becoming sick. I acknowledge my privilege during this time. I have a full-time job with benefits and sick and annual leave; and I have full capability to work from home until we return to a new normal. That new normal is what I cling to get me through this. Just as I am now working remotely from home, I am also attending classes remotely. I miss being in the same room as my colleagues and bouncing ideas off of one another so openly and freely. Viewing one another on split screens, trying to determine who should speak next, or losing each other to shoddy internet connections is not nearly the same as being in one another’s physical presence. 

However, I am thankful that we are still able to connect in that way, and I am now thinking even more broadly about what community means. I have seen the power of social media to aid freelancers and creatives in the way of fundraising and virtual book tours and readings.

I miss spending time with my parents, then having a long embrace before we leave one another. I miss engaging with my colleagues face-to-face. Virtual calls can only reach so far. But at this time, I worry less about being productive and more about persevering. I am thinking of resting while in a state of unrest. I am thinking about the impossible being possible.