Day 46- A Year Later

Receiving an inordinately expensive piece of paper

A year ago today, I convocated at Western with a Bachelor’s degree in English literature. The next day, I submitted my SSHRC application—a 25-page document for a scholarship worth up to $105,000.

Today, I should be crossing the stage with the other members of my cohort to receive my Master of Arts Degree from Western. Instead, I’m sitting in a flat in Scotland, working towards my PhD at the University of St. Andrews, courtesy of a SSHRC scholarship and generous funding from the university.

It’s been a wild ride. I’ve read thousands of pages, written 45,000 words, cried at rejections and jumped with joy at the acceptances that meant everything. The Masters year wasn’t always fun. Nothing about it was easy. But it was so, so worth it.

To be corny and cliché, it was the people that made my Master’s experience enjoyable. I owe so much to everyone I interacted with that year: the family I lived with who were there for me through the string of rejections, the professors who helped me with proposals or wrote references or just listened when I needed to rant about the stresses of grad school, and, most of all, the wonderful MA and PhD students who made classes so enjoyable.

I might not miss the long nights struggling to finish marking, or the mornings waking up at five to read 90 pages of Freud before class, or the 12 hour days writing three papers in a week, but I definitely miss Wednesday evenings at the grad club and Friday mornings grumbling about the uselessness of bibliography class and afternoons in the “bunker” chatting about everything from the definition of “English” literature to the meaning of marriage to Victorian mummy unwrappings.

Final day with the MA cohort

I wish I could be there to convocate with everyone this morning. I’m so proud of everyone who made it through the year, as well as those who had the courage to drop out when they realized that the program wasn’t for them. I’m so thankful for the intellectual discussions and the Doctor Who evenings, for people who love both Shakespeare and David Tennant.

To everyone convocating today, I wish you all the best. Whether you’re heading on to a PhD or running away from academia as fast as you can, know that I’m thinking about you and praying for you.

Enjoy your thirty seconds on the stage this morning—I might be in Scotland, but I’ll definitely be there in spirit… and possibly lurking the video livestream… J

Success and Rejection

Forest near my home

I'm so bewildered right now. My life could not possibly have taken a more dramatic turn in the past few days. 

Just over a week ago, I took the bus to university nearly crying. I'd been rejected from two universities and the other two weren't providing me with enough funding to afford to attend. My papers weren't going well. I was looking for jobs, but even with a Masters it seemed like I wasn't qualified for anything.

And then Friday Afternoon happened. 

I can't release details yet, not until everything is finalized, but I now have the opportunity to go do my PhD in the UK next year, which is what I've hoped and prayed and worked for all this past year. 

One big yes began an avalanche of yeses, all happening so fast I could barely keep track. I went from a burnt-out MA student uncertain if I'd ever enter a classroom again to a desirable PhD candidate with grad chairs at prestigious universities casually saying they'd love to have me and graduate financial managers suggesting we meet up for drinks and world experts in my field chatting in my office and offering to help in any way they could. 

It's wonderful. It's crazy. It's utterly beyond what I could have expected.

Moonlight walk the evening I heard the news

It’s also, quite frankly, a tad uncomfortable. I’m exactly the same person I was a week ago, but just with one highly important piece of paper in my hand. And now everyone wants to help me out. I’m the go-to success story that makes my department look good. I’m the rags to riches fairy tale.

I always assumed that people doing PhDs at prestigious universities with sizable scholarships had it all together. They were the best of the best. They were smart. And hardworking. And somehow magical—everything worked out for them. They could sit in their comfy office chairs with all their applications and grant proposals comfortably behind them and smile because they had succeeded at life.

But that’s not how it is. Maybe for some people, but not for me. I was rejected. I was burnt-out. I was so lost and confused. If there’s one thing I know about life, it’s that I most definitely don’t have it all together.

There’s a lot of hard work coming. I may have gotten the PhD position of my dreams, but actually getting the degree won’t be easy. And then there’re postdocs. And adjunct positions. And maybe, sometime in the future, a professor’s chair.

Western

I certainly haven’t written my last application or received my last rejection. Life is not all sunshine and rainbows from here on. I may have gotten accepted where it counted most, and I am beyond thrilled. But I am still the same person who was rejected.

I want to be the person who learns from those rejections rather than the one who pretends it’ll never happen again. I want to remember how hard the road has been so far so I can be more empathetic towards the ones travelling behind me and more respectful of the ones ahead. I want to sincerely thank everyone who has supported me so far and in turn support everyone I can.

I want to grow, yet not become a different person from last week, before everything went right. My worth as a human being does not depend on what one scholarship committee thinks of two pages I’ve written. I want to work hard and trust God and move forward knowing that I am not defined, ultimately, by either my academic failures, or my successes. 

1 Admin vs. 70 Grad Students: Who Really Works at Western?

My convocation, featuring Amit Chakma (left) and the late Chancellor, Joseph Rotman (right)

On Monday morning, Western’s student newspaper informed me that Amit Chakma, Western University’s president, made nearly a million dollars last year. Apparently his salary is capped at $440,000, but he chose to work through a year of paid leave, earning bonuses which brought his salary up to $967,000.

I’m normally not the sort of person to complain about other people making a lot of money, and I feel very blessed to receive nearly $20,000 in research grants and TAships from Western. To me, getting paid $35 an hour to fangirl about The Hobbit makes grad school the ultimate job and I don’t care that my salary is technically under the poverty line, because it’s plenty in my current situation.

So why do I feel the need to write about Chakma’s salary? Not because I think that there’s something inherently wrong with a human being making a million dollars, but because I attend a publically-funded university that’s cutting arts programs and replacing faculty with sessional instructors in order to save money… and that same university just released a list of over 1200 people (admin, faculty, and staff) who earn more than $100,000 every year.

As a grad student, I know money talks. OGS (Ontario Graduate Scholarship- $15,0000 for one year) and SSHRC (Social Science and Humanities Research Council- $20,000/35,000 for 3-4 years) carry enormous weight. If I was to win a SSHRC (I won’t know ‘till May) I would be accepted by virtually any university in Canada (potentially even ones which had previously

rejected me) because funding is just that important.

SSHRC applications work in two stages: you apply to your university, and they forward the best applications to the Canada-wide competition. I discovered in January that I had been forwarded, but I’ve yet to hear of anyone else from my 60-person department who was. Through the grapevine, I know that there can only have been one or two other applications sent on. This means that, absolute best case scenario, the English department at Western could receive three new SSHRCs, totalling $105,000 next year. Worst case, we’ll receive nothing.  

Western currently offers 278 OGS scholarships every year (heavily government subsidized), which amounts to approximately $4,000,000 in funding. That sounds like a big number, until you realize it’s only four times what Chakma made last year. Chakma’s salary alone could fund almost 70 graduate students. In fact, since these scholarships are so highly government subsidized, UWO only spends $1,400,000 on OGS’s, or approximately Chakma’s salary plus the next top earner, Michael Strong (Dean of the school of Medicine and Dentistry, $462,125). Are these two men doing more for the university than nearly three hundred grad students?

Full disclosure: I was just rejected from UBC (University of British Columbia-- known for being one of the best and biggest English grad programs in Canada) because they only had enough money to offer four funded spots this year. Funding for graduate programs is obviously in crisis.

I don’t care that Amit Chakma makes at least fifty times what I do (100 times, if you count the fact that half my salary goes towards my tuition). He’s got a lot more experience than I do. I’m perfectly happy with my current salary.

But I do care that arts programs are in a funding crisis, unable to offer spots to graduate students, overworking underpaid TAs and sessional instructors, increasing class sizes, and ultimately hurting students at all levels. And while instructors and programs are being cut, lowering the quality of education students are paying for and our government is subsidizing, the top dog is making a million dollars.

Seventy graduate students leading tutorials. Thirty sessional instructors giving dynamic lectures. Ten full-time faculty conducting ground-breaking research.

Or one head-honcho speaking at convocation about how valuable our Western degree is.

This isn’t about Chakma. This isn’t about him making too much or me too little. This is about my university, which, when money was tight, chose to more than double the salary of an overpaid administrator rather than hiring the teachers and researchers who form the backbone of the university. And that is a decision which I cannot agree with.  

Day 365: I'm going... Home?

My flight leaves in two hours. I've all but left Scotland- Edinburgh airport doesn't really count as part of the country I've called home for the past year. I've said goodbye to England, to Scotland, to my friends, to St. Andrews... All that's left is to board the plane, sit back, and let it take me across the ocean. 

Am I excited to go back to Canada? Yes, of course. I do miss my country, my friends, my university, my family... I'm looking forward to seeing everything again and it'll be great to start my MA at Western. 

Still, I don't want to go. Over the past year Britain has truly captured my heart. St. Andrews has become my home, the town I know and love best in all the world. When I'm there I truly feel alive, like I belong. 

Going back to Canada doesn't feel like going home- it feels like travelling. Maybe it would be different if I was heading back to PEI, to be with my family, but flying straight back to Ontario, which I'm not particularly attached to, feels almost a little alienating. 

I'm not trying to downplay Ontario, or Western, or my friends there, or Canada as a whole. God has blessed me with twenty wonderful years in that country and I have so much to be thankful for. To all Canadians reading this, I'm not trying to imply that there's anything negative or lacking about our country. I'm proud to be Canadian.

It's just that travelling complicates the idea of home. After living in Britain, gaining the accent, and travelling Europe, I cannot be solely Canadian anymore. When I've lived in more than one place for so long, finding just one place to call home becomes pretty much impossible.

Maybe I'll go back and discover that Canada really is where I belong. Maybe I'll want to settle down there and content myself with occasional visits to Europe. 

But maybe I'll return to find that it's really not my country anymore. Maybe going 'home' will cement my sense that actually Britain is where I want to live long-term. Maybe Canada will be just as amazing as it always was, but I'll want something different. 

At this point I really don't know. I've got my one year MA ahead of me, but then my PhD could be anywhere. Canada, the US, Britain, Australia? Who knows? At this point I'm up for adventure, trusting that God will eventually show me a place I can call home. 

Day 193: I'm Going to Be a Master's Student!

I’ve been accepted to the MA in English Literature program at Western University!

For those of you who don’t know me IRL (or who haven’t taken the time to memorize every detail of my endlessly fascinating existence) Western is the university that I attend back in Canada when I’m not gallivanting off to different continents on exchange. Though I attend King’s College (a smaller campus about ten minutes’ walk from Western) I’m still a Western student, and it’ll be nice to return to a familiar university for my first graduate degree.

One condition of doing my exchange in my fourth year (rather than my third, like most sensible people) was that I have to return to Western next year and do either a fifth year of undergrad or my MA. I really don’t want to do a fifth year, since I feel like I’ve learned pretty much all I can at the undergrad level. However, Western has a great MA program and I’d have wanted to do grad work there anyways, even if I hadn’t been ‘forced’ to because of my exchange.

Receiving the acceptance email completely made my day. While I’m not surprised I was accepted, it’s still a huge relief to actually receive the offer. It’s one thing to be confident that you meet the standards of the program, and quite another to have the acceptance letter from the application committee!

Perhaps the most significant thing to me about this acceptance is that it’s confirmation that I’m on the right path. I didn’t plan on going into academia when I started university—I intended to get a college degree in journalism, get a day job, and write books.

Then I started studying English literature, expecting to hate essays and to find Beowulf and Paradise Lost boring. But I didn’t. I absolutely loved studying literature, even the endless readings, and the rewrites of papers, and the research in the library…

I just loved academics so much, and sometime early in my third year I realized that I didn’t want to stop. The idea that after fourth year I’d be done with readings and writing essays and discussing books in class wasn’t a relief; it sounded awful! I didn’t want to get out of university and enter ‘the real world.’ To me, university was (and is) a big part of the ‘real world.’

Now, as a mere four weeks of class (plus two weeks of break and three of exams) separate me from my undergraduate degree, I still feel the same way. The idea of being a graduate student, of continuing to engage with texts but at a higher level and helping undergrads to do the same, makes me so excited. I’m dreading leaving St. Andrew’s at the end of this year, but having an MA program waiting for me back in Canada makes me so much more enthusiastic about the future.

To those curious few wondering about the program: the MA at Western is composed of two sessions of coursework followed by another semester (the summer) of writing a thesis (at least, this is my plan for the year; there are a number of options.) I plan to take a variety of courses in different areas, but my thesis will likely concentrate on Milton’s court masque Comus and how the masque form serves to both reflect and create reality. This will allow me to read a lot of Renaissance literature, dramatic and otherwise, which is a favourite literary period of mine.

In short, I’m thrilled to be accepted into Western’s MA program, and I almost can’t wait to start… but I still plan to savour my last few weeks of undergrad. 

Not Quite Graduating

This is the way the world ends

This is the way the world ends

This is the way the world ends

Not with a bang, but a whimper.

---- T. S. Eliot “The Hollow Men”

To begin on a cheerful note, the lines I just quoted from Eliot’s brilliant poem kind of reflect how I’m feeling right now. I have just a week left of classes, and I’m done at King’s forever. I’ll never have these profs again, or go to classes with many of my friends. When exams end in a month, I’ll never return as an undergraduate.

There should be ceremony. There should be speeches, and prizes, and fancy black hats, and flowers. Instead, I’m just sort of leaving. After all, I’m only done third year. I’m not even graduating. And yet, because I’m going to Scotland next year, I might as well be.

Maybe this is one of the reasons they don’t advise going on exchange in your fourth year (aside from the fact that getting all your required courses done can be a headache). There’s no closure. There’s no recognition of everything I’ve accomplished at King’s. Even next year I won’t be at the May convocation with the rest of my class since I’ll still be writing exams in Scotland. I’ll have to graduate in the fall, with all the kids who needed summer school to finish up. I’m just sort of slipping away.

I don’t regret deciding to go to Scotland. I’m beyond excited to head off, and I know I’ll have an amazing time. BUT… leaving King’s is a little bitter-sweet. I’ve only been here for two years, and it feels like I’m not really quite done yet. I could do another year.

Maybe it’s a good thing to leave now, when I’m still going to look back fondly on my years at King’s. I see so many of my fourth year classmates sighing “I can’t wait to get out of here!” and I completely understand their perspectives. Four years at the same school could get a little old. For me, I’ll have attended four different universities by the time I’m done my undergrad. I’ve had so many opportunities, and no time to get tired of anything.

I’m excited to move on, but I’ll definitely miss King’s. I guess that’s how life is, constantly mediating between the past and the future. But for the present, I’ll enjoy my last month at King’s, even if that last month is spent frantically writing exams. :)

Welcome!

I am Elanor Lawrence, a Young Adult author currently seeking representation. In publishing lingo, that means that I haven’t been published yet but I’m seriously working at it. I also love acting and I write and direct my own plays as well as take Musical Theatre classes. I’m seventeen years old and was homeschooled for most of my life, but now I’m in my first semester of University. Hopefully in four more years I’ll end up with an BA, majoring in English. Right now I live on Prince Edward Island (Canada) and go to UPEI, but hopefully next year I’ll head over to the University of Western Ontario in London, ON.

Jesus is my savior, and I try to do everything for him. While I often fail at that, I pray that he will use me for His glory. This blog is part of my effort to live for him; everything I write on here will be from a Christian perspective. My book/movie/music reviews will all have a section dealing especially with the religious themes in the art. While I will try to be understanding of other people’s views, I will not compromise my beliefs.

What will I be talking about? As I mentioned in the previous paragraph, I will have reviews of books, movies and music, as well as keeping you up to date about my writing and the road to becoming a published author. I’m a member of the website inkpop.com, and occasionally I will feature users or project from that site, as well as writing tips that I’ve learned from critiquing over 400 stories. I’ll have a column of interesting facts that I learn at University and the scoop about how I, as a homeschooler, got into University in the first place. I might talk a bit about modest fashion trends, and tell anecdotes from life on the Island and my experiences in the arts community of PEI. All in all, this is going to be a blog with a lot of different posts.

My schedule for the first while:
Tuesday: Book Review
Thursday: Writing Series (How to Create Interesting Main Characters)
Saturday: Life of a Homeschooled English Major on Prince Edward Island

Feel free to comment; I’d love to hear your thoughts about anything I post. If you have any questions, or would like me to address a specific issue, then let me know and I’ll do my best.

Thanks for reading,
~Elanor