a big stack of love on the table

Those of you who know me know that I am the reigning queen of overcommitment. It will not surprise you to hear that I have somehow managed to find myself hosting dinner for twelve this weekend.

That aside, I also volunteered to read nominations for a mentoring award in my discipline. I have a stack of paper on my table (amidst all the other stacks of papers) that are the nomination letters, written by current and former students of the nominated "senior or mid-career" scholars. My volunteering for this is somewhat symptomatic of my current fieldwork freak-out, wherein I feel very cut-off from my discipline, and I'm having a hard time putting what I'm doing here in the context of the larger project that is my graduate school career. I don't really feel like I have a career right now. This, along with some other voluntary reading and writing projects, is an attempt to give myself some professional context.

The length and quality of the letters seem to vary, but what unifies them is their tone. It's somewhat akin to reading love-letters or, perhaps more accurately, like reading the kinds of things children write about their parents when they make Mother's Day or Father's Day cards at school. There's something of the "I love my mommy because she always kisses me goodnight, even when I've been bad, and she helps me tie my shoes" genre to them. It's a bit embarrassing to read, as a third party, accounts of such devotion. But it's also very touching. The advisor-advisee relationship is such that we -- I lump myself in with the advisees here -- probably never really get a moment to express to our advisers what we feel for them and for the help and guidance they give us. There's really no forum for it. We know what we mean when we gush, or when we see other people gush. But there's no room for declamations in this relationship, at least not of the I-thou variety.

So, even though it's one more stack of paper I've piled upon the table to get done between now and next Tuesday, I'm rather glad I asked for it.