#OccupyingComps

Around the time the #occupy movement was really rocking things on the streets of NYC, Chicago, SF, Oakland, and other cities, I, and several of my colleagues entered into the weirdest year of a doctoral program - comprehensive exams.

In his great insight and hilarity, he nicknamed his journey through this season of grad school, #occupycomps.

Admittedly, I have been avoiding active progress on my comps since the end of October.  I'm still examining out my stubborn insistence to figure out why my usual tactics of self-motivation continually fail me . . . and why I am continuing to fail myself.

I mean, graduate students, by and large, are not the most disciplined creatures in the world.  Surprised?  Think about it.  We have been in school for forever, and the one glorious thing about school is that there is a structure into which one can insert oneself to ensure that one does what one must do in order to achieve one's goal.  There are scary professors, deadlines, penalties, etc. all of which help keep us, otherwise lazy but curious, individuals hurtling toward the end of some dark tunnel.

Well, on the way down that tunnel, some of get stuck.

And apparently when we get stuck we end up occupying, or residing, within that section of the tunnel.  This occupation one might say, is not the ideal, because instead of passing through, we simply stop.

And comps is an ooey-gooey sticky place to get stuck.  In an attempt to dislodge myself from this goopy mess, I've joined a writing group that will attempt to hold group members accountable to actually doing something each week or two.

So, here's to #notoccupyingcomps, but rather getting the f#ck done so that I can move on and subject myself to writing some obscene number of pages of stuff that will somehow be my dissertation!