Recharging the Batteries

Well, another week come to an end. Yesterday was “University Day” at school. Graduate students in the Art department were asked to come out and help with “Art Day,” a series of workshops designed to showcase the art program and introduce the faculty to prospective students. So I show up at 7:45 and listen to the office workers complaining about how there has been no advertising of Art Day so we are going to get about twenty students and what a monumental waste of time this is. On top of that, they said, the faculty are embittered by the low turn out and don’t even want to be there. “It should be turned over to the graduate students,” is the sentiment. “They don’t do enough around here anyways.”

Listening to people complaining is the best part of waking up, especially after having spent a week juggling a full time job, and school and family and then waking up early on your Saturday to drive for an hour to donate your time to a University that thinks you are nothing but a slacker. Needless to say I spent the better part of the morning bitching to anyone who would give an ear before sneaking off to my studio before lunchtime.

I came back at lunch and chatted with another office worker about the purgatory that is Graduate school. She recalled a conversation between two professor who were joking about one particular graduate student that wanted to move through the program quickly and how these professors were going to make an example out of him. My lunch sat in my stomach like a cold stone as I could only imagine that this story was about me somehow.

Afterward, I went back to my studio, thinking about every conversation I had ever had with a faculty member. Art School is largely a subjective enterprise, and one can easily make oneself crazy trying to divine a course though the quagmire of personalities. I know that my own expectations were, in large part, making me crazy. After all, why not try to make some kind of plan for graduation? Still, in trying to plan a life for myself outside of school, I have tried to figure out every conceivable way of shortening my stay at the University. Not so much looking for shortcuts, as trying to be expeditious about my use of time. I ask you, what is wrong with that?

In retrospect, working yourself into a depressive frenzy and then going off and sitting in an isolation chamber for 5 hours was probably a bad idea. They turned off the power to the building in the afternoon. Probably working on the electricity at the construction site next door. I cleaned myself up and jumped in the car for the hour drive home. The depression fairies were working overtime.

I got home J. had had the same long week I had, only hers was punctuated with a newborn, small children, shuttling our daughters to school and swim meets and grocery stores. Hers is the definition of grace under fire. After dinner she graciously offered to put the kids to bed. As I curled into bed, I vowed to sleep until noon the next day and recharge my batteries. (No T.V. and No beer make homer something something.) Does recharging your batteries mean you have to be wholesale selfish about your needs? I think I thought so going to bed, but work up in the morning with the two toddlers and got them breakfast and entertained them for a while before I realized that a little family time and a little, just taking it slow is really all I need.