Hi. It’s been awhile.

My life has felt a bit like a whirlwind the last 6 months – getting and recovering from top surgery, leaving my job, moving out of Chicago, starting school…

And then I landed in a small town, in an apartment with pale blue walls, in a mostly quiet neighborhood (the exception being the neighbor's 7 barking dogs, a reflexive cacophony that begins at 7am most days). I have lots of plants and art and tea cups. I am learning more than I can reasonably fit into my brain – about the content of my classes and research, but also how to act with new people, the inner workings of the academic hierarchy, as well as my role in The Academy. In other words, what exactly I signed up for in starting this PhD program.

I am hesitant to laud the unique experience of a PhD program.* It is, afterall, a job. But this environment is certainly different from anything I have experienced before, with its own language and difficulties. I am learning and re-learning how to be. The most immediate barrier is understanding how to present an academic argument in writing; unsurprisingly, art school does not teach you how to construct an academic argument. And academic writing is quite different from art writing.

Though it may be imposter syndrome, I feel that I am catching up to my peers, learning something that they already know. I am reading so much. I am writing when I need to. 

Despite this pervasive feeling of uncertainty, I am grateful to get to spend time learning and reading, changing and growing, and remaining critical and cautious of falling into some imagined academic archetype.

My hope for the future of this newsletter is that it will be a way to exercise my extra-academic writing and maintain my voice. The newsletter will continue, just perhaps at a slower pace.

♡ emrys

* There are plenty who have done so better than I could. If you are curious, check out PhD comics.