Cain Hall

(This is Stop #11 in the Texas A&M Building Writing Tour, my attempt to motivate myself on my dissertation by writing in every campus building before I graduate.) 

This past weekend, I wrote in Cain Hall. This is Wofford Cain Hall, not to be confused with the James J. Cain Mechanical Engineering building, on the other side of campus.

(I did write in the James Cain Engineering building back in April, shortly after drafting my write-every-building goal, but before I decided to document each building-writing session in my blog. So, I will have to revisit the Cain Engineering building, and prove my presence there with a photo and blog post.)

My reason for spending Sunday afternoon in Wofford Cain Hall is that I am a Grad Camp counselor, and Cain Hall was the site of a scheduled counselor training session. Yes, at the age of 43, I volunteered to become a camp counselor. As a teenager, I never dreamed of such a thing…why would I do it now?  I am already struggling to find sufficient time to work on my dissertation. I start data collection in two weeks, and I am way behind in job-related duties. I have recently undergone at least two dissertation-related meltdowns. It seems the height of folly to give Grad Camp two precious days of my summer vacation, plus two half-days for training. 

However, I have made an important discovery on my meandering dissertation journey: time spent connecting with campus, and other graduate students, is a good investment. For me, every round trip to campus means three or four hours on the road (depending on whether I leave from home, or from my community college job in Houston). Those hours more than pay off in increased motivation. (The correlation between driving hours and dissertation productivity probably only holds for a certain interval—if I drove to Texas A&M ten times each week, I wouldn’t get much research done.)

Actually, I am the perfect grad camp counselor. All the other counselors are super-motivated, super-productive people. They will whiz through their coursework, ace their prelims, and finish their dissertations right on schedule. But presumably, some of the new graduate student campers will be normal people, with no supernatural powers. They need a counselor they can relate to. For at least six of my eight years in the doctoral program, I have been the perfect model of how not to do grad school. My hope is that by seeing me, the grad campers will be motivated to avoid my mistakes.

My biggest mistake (besides merely hiding from my dissertation) was failing to see the importance of writing. During my "interview" for the counselor position, I mentioned that many graduate students struggle with writing, and that I'd like to tell the campers about the university’s writing resources. My interviewer, the camp assistant director and a mechanical engineering robot-making genius, looked at me as if I was crazy--he said he'd never had any trouble writing, and didn't realize it was such an issue. Perhaps he's right...I don't actually know for a fact that most graduate students struggle with writing--my writing professor has told me so, but maybe she's just trying to make me feel less alone.

Anyway, wisely or unwisely, I am committed to be a camp counselor. The camp is next week. If I survive, and if I’m not fired for lacking party game enthusiasm, I’ll post a Grad Camp report. 

You can't tell from the picture, but my cozy writing nook is in a sunken pit around
 the non-functional fireplace...it's nice!