The pendulum swings.

I've thought about it, and I doubt I'll be applying to graduate school.

Though K really inspired me, once I researched the programs in Montreal, the costs, and the intellectual limitations and rigid guidelines, I got real tired real quick.

My issue with graduate school is that there's so much stuff you have to do in order to do what you want to be doing. Required classes and lectures and work groups. And though I'm sure masters-level theory and research method courses can be very helpful, I also know they most likely are not.

I struggled a lot with my undergraduate thesis because it wasn't about my research, it was about checking off boxes and making sure the i's were dotted and the t's were crossed.

If the majority of the work I'm doing now is creative, thinking of reformulating any of it in order to adhere to ivory-tower standards bummed me out.

I'm not getting a master's degree in order to go up a pay scale as an engineer. I'm a fucking art-bum. Why pay so much for a degree; kill myself for something that has such limited application - when art itself exists well outside of official spaces.

What I'm doing now, trying to write, creating small pieces for Etsy - I did it for me. I do this for me. I need to let stuff out. I need to try and let stuff out, I am encouraged by people's reception of my work - all of this, all of this is for me.

I worry about compromising what it is I want to do for something so fickle. I have a tremendous amount of respect for education, for reading and the arts, for history and engaged critique. But now I also know that that doesn't necessarily live in institutions, and in fact, the halls of academia have been exclusionary than anything else.

Even "mad studies" lives within specific kinds of academic spaces. Spaces you need to pay a price of admission to access. Spaces where your language use and classwork is filtered through a professor's narrative. From my reading of the faculty websites, I don't see flexibility or radicalism here.

I do not want to spend the time I have, the little bodily energy I have and the intellectual and creative energy I have trying so hard to fit into another system that wasn't meant for me.

Let me be clear when I say "wasn't meant for me" I do not mean that this space was destined for specifics kinds of people of which I am not. I mean it isn't meant for anyone, really. It's meant for very specific kinds of knowledge and exchange. There is a given look to what the pursuit of knowledge is, and it looks like a research paper. It looks like deadlines and exams. It's impersonal and cold. And making it anything other than these things is work. Work for myself. Work that is undervalued and patronized.

I don't want to live in that space. I want more free time for my own creative endeavors. I want very little of anything else.

I want to explore things fully, through my own whims, not through pre-set paths off of school hallways.

Mad studies.

I had a busy weekend. On Saturday I trekked out to Victoriaville to visit a handful of antique places with K. I was introduced to K in Victoria when I visited my buddy there. K is in Montreal now, working on a master's degree in interdisciplinary studies, specifically disability studies.

Our day together had us discuss all sorts of things, much of it around disability studies, academia, access, mental illness, graduate work and just everything in and around those subjects.

When I talked to her about my Etsy shop, as well as my blog here, and what I focus on she was very encouraging as to my work being elaborated into graduate work.

She also pointed to an upcoming symposium on feminism and dark humor, as well as the field of "mad studies." Both things seemed so me. 

I'm going through a few "mad studies" links now:

This is a resource site. It seems to be based in Lancaster but many of the links are Canadian. It seems to have started in Canada.

It's linked me to the Centre for the study of Gender, Social Inequities and Mental Health in Vancouver, which sounds right up my alley.

From The Guardian UK, Mad studies brings a voice of sanity to psychiatry by Peter Beresford:

The approach embodied in mad studies offers us a coherent roadmap for rethinking our mental wellbeing by recognising people who have experience of mental distress as both service users and experts.

I'm surprised that with all the reading I've been doing I've not been linked to Ryerson or "mad studies" before today. The symposium was in 2012. Though in all fairness to me in 2012 I was too busy having panic attacks to be reading anything other than Ativan labels.

 From another article, The rise of Mad Studies: A new academic discipline challenges our ideas of what it means to be “sane” by Alex Gillis:

"Mad studies doesn’t reject medical models of madness [but it puts] them into a historical trajectory, one that shows that psychiatry isn’t an absolute interpretation of human mental states,” says Kathryn Church, an associate professor of sociology and director of Ryerson’s school of disability studies.

It contextualizes "madness" - and I hope the representation of actual "mad" voices and experience fill the gaps (and there are many) of the nuances of access, care, and experience. Like any history account, the majority of reading someone's history means negating the histories of others. Views are never fully three-dimensional. Much of our talk about mental health is extremely superficial.

The article ends with a call to represent yourself and your experience, and that's where I'm wading right now.

How best to represent myself and my experiences?

Is academia more limiting than it is a helpful framework?

Do I want limits to how I represent myself and my struggles?

Am I comfortable with a language-based approach?

Does my writing and creative work need to be shared, viewed, and recognized to be valuable?

Am I willing to make such a financial sacrifice, for a degree with no monetary return value?

Am I willing to continue living like a student / someone who is perpetually broke?

Can I afford graduate school?

Do I have the energy for it?

All things I'm thinking of. All of this, and more, of course.