Receiving my master’s degree and completing my graduate program in literature at NYU felt like a massive accomplishment this month, and one that sprung up on me incredibly quickly. The past two years flew by. I took classes on war-time avant-garde literature, third person narrative devices, psychoanalytic theory on paranoia, James Joyce’s oeuvre, theorizing fiction in the early modern world, and more. It was a beautiful whirlwind of different voices and styles, a deep dive into the overwhelming power of the written word.
In some ways, I felt that I wasn’t able to fully immerse myself in my graduate education, as I was working full time throughout my program — first at a podcast production company, then (simultaneously) in early elementary education and bartending. There wasn’t time to attend extracurricular events or guest lectures, and I was often completely exhausted and depleted after a full day of class and work.
In other ways, I feel that combining professional labor with intellectual labor allowed me to reap the rewards of my graduate education more intensely than I would have been able to otherwise. I left the podcast production company because I was tired of working in business operations; the whole reason I left law school four years ago was to escape precisely the kind of work I had fallen into doing there. Afterwards, working two intensely social jobs (in both teaching and bartending) bolstered and enhanced my graduate work. Literary scholarship is centered around the complexity, strange nuance, and intricacy of human relations as rendered through language. How can one fully appreciate this locked within the confines of the university? The mystery of the novel reflects the mystery of life. To understand its function at its deepest level, it is best to interact with people — all sorts of people, people you would never find in Bobst or milling about on Division Street. Something amazing about the children I worked with over the past year and a half was their openness towards the world, their optimism and eagerness. Something amazing about the people I speak with at my bar is also their openness — only this time, it’s an almost tragic openness, a timid last-ditch openness often borne out of a deep loneliness.
Existing in the world — especially the world contained within New York City — gives me a better understanding of how to write and read the world. Close your laptop and go talk to people for 14 hours straight. THEN pick up your book and read at the end of the night. See how your relationship with the text changes. See how much easier it is to imagine that anything is possible.
