Really gotta move that last post down the page

I've talked here before about the difference between being a student and being a learner - that student is a social position that subordinates you and creates certain behaviors you wouldn't otherwise engage in. This summer I realized another thing about being a student - it makes you passive. 

When you're sitting in class, the minimum that you have to do is simply sit there and endure until the session is over. Obviously, this isn't the ideal - ideally, a class makes you participate, or you're able to make yourself participate, to stay active and engaged in what's going on. But if worse comes to worst, you just have to sit there. (Part of me even wonders if all the net-surfing and chatting and so on in class isn't a kind of natural response to the enforced passivization of most classes. That might be going a little far, though.)

Now that I've hit my last week at work, I can see this student-ness in myself. Some days, I find myself sitting there twiddling around with something, not really working, just waiting for the day to end. I think of this last week as something, like a class near the end of the semester, that I just have to wait out, and then I'll be done! and free!

Thing is, I have actual projects to do at work. I won't really finish at the end of the week if I don't get the projects done; I can't just wait them out. Plus, time goes much more quickly if I'm actually doing something than if I'm just waiting for it to go by. But it's the end of the summer, and I'm a little tired; and being a student has re-trained me to sit and wait for something to be over, even if that's not really what I should do, and I have to take the consequences later.

(I should add that I have enjoyed my job this summer - it's a great bunch of people with interesting work. But I didn't really take any time off after classes, and last week I decided I might have decided to work just a couple of weeks too long - I kind of need a break; my brain is tired! Plus, as my time comes to an end I start to expect some kind of evaluation or summing up, and it makes me nervous. It's not that I'm worried about getting an offer - this firm doesn't do offers at the end of the summer, for a variety of reasons - but I start to worry that I haven't been meeting their expectations and no one's wanted to bother to tell me before now.)

Comments

[anonymouse]

Thank you for this post -- it has given me some real insight into why finishing my PhD is just dragging on and on. I believe now that you're right, that subconsciously I seem to think if I can just stall enough, get through enough advisor meetings, endure enough... it will end. Of course it won't. It just extends the time I go without being paid well!

[BrightenedBoy]

It honestly just depends on the professor and the subject. If the class is boring or the professor disagreeable, I think a person is perfectly justifiable in waiting a class out.

I would never wantto have a job where I could just be passive, though.

That's what I like about reporting: it keeps me going.

[BrightenedBoy]

Woops, meant to say "justified," not "justifiable" in waiting out a boring class.