What I Learned in Grad School

Week 1

My first week of school was not at all as I had imagined. After years of traveling via foot, bike, car, bus, train, plane through New Zealand, the US, and now Australia, and not coming down with covid, I certainly did not expect to get it the day before classes began. And that’s exactly what happened.

After the last few months of getting all my acronyms lined up (the USI for the CSI, the TFN for the ABN…) so I could officially be here in Australia and study, I did not anticipate that I’d be sideswiped right at the starting line. After the past few weeks of returning to Aotearoa New Zealand to reorganize and minimize my life in storage and connect with whānau to feel their love and support before getting stuck into studies, I did not think to be extra careful about my health. I took it for granted. Afterall, didn’t all those travels over all those years prove I must be hardy?

I don’t know about you, but when I “fall ill” it’s as though the physical fixation with repair is reflected in a psychological vulnerability. As though my boat has sprung a leak and the ocean of all my past failures (or at least what feel like failures) floods in. Just when the skies have gone dark over my little boat and the clouds obstruct the stars so I’m unsure how to navigate, that’s when the sea of negative thinking and recrimination overwhelms. As though each story senses when I’m weakest and incapable of resisting it.

That battle to me often feels like the real battle of illness—staying well psychologically while under attack from all the shoulds, woulds, and could-haves. In fact, maybe allowing them any foothold in the first place is what led to the physical symptoms, or at least susceptibility. Having returned to my things in storage and all the stories they held—good, bad and ugly—was no mean feat. Returning to the streets of the place I lived the longest in my life—Wellington—and being reminded by the geography itself of what I did “wrong”, of who I hurt, of who hurt me, of where I “failed”, took its toll.

So after months of setting myself up to be super ready for what feels like a big challenge—returning to university studies in an entirely new field 3 decades after the last time I was in such an environment—now I feel like I’m on the back foot and playing catch up.

Still, you can’t keep a good woman down. Plus, it’s all relative isn’t it? I met a lovely person at the postgraduate mixer (a room of maybe 200 people, many from overseas, and the likely source of my covid bug) in a wheelchair. He’s doing doctorate work in Occupational Therapy, which is what my mother studied, so I’m familiar with the level of science involved. He’s struggling a bit too with managing the orientation to school on top of moving from another state in Australia and into a place that is not built for his wheeled purpose. Imagine living in a world that is not built for you.

Illness generally makes me so very grateful for my health. I rarely get sick these days but when I do I come out of it with redoubled dedication to making the most of the aspects of my life that I can so easily take for granted. Like legs. I had a lot of head sickness (jokes aside) as a young child which is what led to my hearing loss, and the pain was intense. I suspect it was these experiences that led to me determining a long life at an early age.

When, in 3rd grade maths class, we had to calculate what age we would be in the far-off year 2000, I somehow decided I would live to 100 years on top of that—127. I knew this would seem rather fantastical for others so for years I didn’t tell anyone, but it has given me a means of orienting to life that I don’t see others possessing. You see, for me 50 isn’t even mid life yet.

I had a drive in school, and then in living, and then in running my own business that would often lead to burnout, but it was based on trusting the longer journey. I was banking on having more energy earlier in life and didn’t want to waste it on entertainment or idleness. I want to experience all of life, with gusto. This life to me is like one big play, where I get to be all the characters and try on all the costumes and stand in all the sets. Or, at the very least, I’m going to attempt it.

My grandfather was born in 1913 and grew up in an era when most women’s options were wife, nurse or teacher. Even though his own mother was an inventor. I tried to explain to him my overwhelm at the wide variety of options I had access to in the late 1990’s. I said, “When you grew up, there was only Quaker Oats and Cream of Wheat cereal, maybe Grape Nuts. Now, there is an entire aisle of cereal choices. It’s dizzying trying to choose, much less sticking to one.”

I feel I’m following in family footsteps. He went back to uni after WWII, after returning from the battle at Normandy when some of his comrades didn’t. He was in his 30’s. My mom was in her 40’s when she went back to uni. And now I am 50 when I return to try my hand at science after decades in the creative and healing arts.

So aside from these life lessons I’ve been re/learning this week while plying myself with ginger-garlic-lemon drinks and quercetin tablets, here are a few things I learned at the postgraduate academic prep course.

—The University of Queensland’s motto is “Create Change”, so a value of the organization is ‘applying creativity’. Being an effective communicator means being able to create change by convincing others to take action.

—Read for a purpose. Identify the purpose.

—The Cornell Formal Outline is the premium of note-taking styles. I have to say, though I had nothing to do with this means of study that was developed in the 1940’s, I still felt an irrational patriotism simply from having done my undergrad studies at Cornell. I’ve always loved Cornell, particularly that the founders stood for making a high quality liberal arts education available to all demographics.

—AI like Chat GPT might be helpful but each course has its own ruling on using it in any way. It’s better to generate your own structure first anyway. Plagiarism has always been an issue but now the very nature of who owns a thought is changing before our eyes.

—Developing your academic voice is your key task as a student. No pressure.

—Generating focus questions is key. While facilitators often say no question is a dumb question, in my experience it’s true that the quality of the question indicates the quality of the questioner’s thinking. This quote from Rainer Maria Rilke has been a guide for me since high school:

“Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.”

And a few things I learned outside uni this week:

—People are generous and kind. My hosts are preparing to travel and could very easily have cited their need to stay healthy, yet they were supportive and kind in helping me through the first few days of intense body aches. The professors I contacted expressed concern and support as well. And of course my friends and family have assured me I will survive the sickness and soon also thrive in the new studies.

—The online and remote systems that were set up during covid are beneficial going forward. While interconnectivity is key, being able to keep a distance when one is unwell is also key. Now we have means of staying connected and accessing services while protecting everyone’s health.

—The songs my elders entrusted me with are good medicine. When I was groaning and writhing (body aches being the main symptom for me, unlike others who’ve had sore throats and coughs) in bed, I played my drum over my heart and shifted the sounds into singing. If cats purr to heal themselves, I can too.

Thanks for sharing this journey with me. We’re all in this together, like it or lump it.

If you’re feeling flush and can spare a few bob for my uni fees fundraiser, here’s the link.