The Punishment Book

Submitting to Correction

Those of you who follow my blogging in other places (el tercer ojo and my new calligraphy blog) will know that I'm presently taking a calligraphy class studying the Gothic hand.  The mixed ability (some students have been studying calligraphy for years -- others like me are taking their first class) class meets once a week for three hours.  

Like most art classes, the teaching style is very structured. Anyone who imagines that most art courses are about creative free expression hasn't taken many.  This is even more true of calligraphy, and within calligraphy, with learning a historical hand.  While there is a vague sense other ways might exist, my instructor only wants to see one way -- the way she's teaching us.  As we're learning a medieval hand, the teacher also tends to mention life of early scribes and student scribes and their floggings.  This, of course, prompted me to do a little burst of research to discover what a "palmer" might look like (see links for the images I found).  

At the second class meeting I was delighted to discover that our homework was being collected.  When I got home, Paul was pleased for me too, especially when I told him it would be turned back marked. The following week my homework was returned, with red inked corrections, at class a week ago Monday.  Not all the comments were positive, as you can see in the included images. In fact, except for a closing "Good Work," every red mark was negative (or constructive criticism as I believe they say in the biz).  While I blushed to see my mistakes circled, it was great they weren't being glossed over with a banal "Good Effort" or the like.

Last week I was actually called out a bit in class for not having practiced more during the previous week (it was not a lack of desire, but sadly other unavoidable demands on my time). Nonetheless I felt totally abashed at her slight disappointment, but again also thrilled because she'd noticed and thought it worthy of remark. I made no excuses for my lack of practice but simply promised to do better during the two weeks we have between classes due to various holidays.

Fear and Tawsing in Los Angeles

I got tawsed tonight.  Not for discipline, not to remind me to be a good girl, but as a punishment for not doing what I'd promised to do today.  You see, after a week of cruising along, doing more work than I'd even needed to some days (this included working after coming home from a day working on campus), I was supposed to transition to the next stage of my work. This next stage is writing.  Not writing ideas of others, but laying out my own. 

Fear stalled me. Not fear of punishment, as some out there who don't think What It Is We Do is a good for me, but my ever-present fear of not being good enough. 

Instead of fighting through my fear and forcing myself to work, I let myself get caught up in the fun of the first day of fall on Twitter and the Mad4Plaid day some of us were having. (It was great fun, marred only by the gnawing guilt I occasionally (but only occasionally) experienced as thoughts of my neglected text passed through my mind. There was time for both, but I didn't want to do the work and it didn't get done.

That was all well and good until the clock chimed 6:00PM and Paul got home.  I looked like a good school girl in my plaid skirt and a pink oxford cloth shirt, but it quickly became clear as we talked about our respective days that I'd accomplished no school work today.  Paul spent a while talking to me, figuring out where the problem was.  It wasn't just, as I first declared, that I didn't do my work today. It was partly because I hadn't thought about what I'd promised (an outline) and had no idea where to start work on the task.

We broke the problem down, bit by bit, teasing out what was insecurity and what was confusion.  And of course, the over arching issue of why I'd stopped dead rather than try and work through any of it. The talk was exhausting -- any criticism of my academic work makes me defensive and cranky.  I know Paul must have to put on his best armor to talk to me about it.  We ended up curled up together on the sofa, my head in his lap.

And then he said something along the lines of "I think we need to go into the bedroom and talk about this."

Spring Break, 2009

On Monday I wrote a post here which included the statement

I'm at a critical stage in my life as a PhD. student. You'll hear more about it as the weeks go on, but this is the basic situation. Six to twelve months of productive work on my part, and it's very likely I'll finish my degree well and will be able to land a research and teaching job. Without the hard work, it's likely in 12 months I'll be looking at leaving graduate school without completing my degree.

At the time I wrote that, I'd done a little spade work which included several meetings with my advisor, an assessment of what I've already written (140 pages, maybe half of which is good enough to end up in the final document), started learning EndNote and using it to compile a library / bibliography. Oh, and I'd ordered some books from Amazon.

And, probably most importantly, I'd explicitly asked P for help. Asked him to make sure I spent most of Spring Break working on my dissertation.

Thirty-Two Pages OR The Shadow Lane Knock-On Effect

I've been intending to write something about the way things are in our house since September (since we got back from Shadow Lane).  I did write this and Pab wrote his response, but that was before things in our house really started.   

Right after that, well, we started talking about the way things would be while I got some much needed work (meaning writing on my thesis) done. 

It (I'll explain more about it as we go) started the first week in September.  It's been just over a month now and things have gone pretty well.  As of this afternoon a chapter of my thesis that didn't exist at all on September 5 now has 32 pages. 

And today, well my bottom is currently so sore that sitting is painful.  Which gets to why I'm finally writing about this.  You see, today was not an easy day.