Back to work (well...)

Cambridge students have a slight problem in terms of their online presence.  All that's really visible to the outside world -- our facebook friends, family, blog readers -- are depictions of us in black tie, hobnobbing like high-class toffs.  In our defense, that's the kind of stuff you want pictures of.  Hunching over one's laptop in the library doesn't tend to scream "Kodak moment" to most people.  (As an aside, do you think that expression will live on now that film is not the primary means of taking snapshots for most people, or will I just keep using it in isolation, the way my father still calls the refrigerator the icebox?)  In any event, there has been the usual array of such events to document in the past couple weeks.  Here's a snapshot version of them:

• Choir dinner.  Not nearly as much fining as last year, which is a good thing given I've been up to embarrassing shenanigans...
• MCR farewell dinner.  I laid off the alcohol but enjoyed seeing my friends celebrate the end of the year.  It was also following the one good day of bumps, so I was feeling good.
• Boat Club Dinner.  Pretty self-explanatory.  Lots and lots of attempted or real boat club incest to watch happening at the after-party.
• Downing May Ball.  Finally a may ball that lived up to its reputation!  A good group of friends, plenty to do, see, eat, and drink.  Happy!
• Trinity Hall June Event.  This remains the best event of the year, in my opinion.  Between the college grounds being so cozy and knowing such a high percentage of people, I can just wander carelessly until I bump into people I know, chat with them, go see some music or dance at the silent disco, or whatever, and then move on again.  Love it so much.

In the midst of not sleeping very much, I also threw together a paper for a conference on Sherlock Holmes.  It was an interesting and convivial gathering.  Almost no one -- even the "proper academics" -- was a specialist in Holmes, but all were fans of some ilk.  Some, indeed, joined us from the online fan community, and it was refreshing to have their razor-sharp knowledge of the canon and unabashed passion at hand to inform discussions.  And for all that, they didn't wield their knowledge to take the rest of us down a peg, as they might have done.  As you know by now, my research has nothing to do with Sherlock Holmes, but I thought it would be a nice distraction / chance to branch out.  And in reading through the stories, I actually did come across a throwaway comment by the great detective that I may work into my dissertation.  My paper was on a personal hobby horse of mine: "How Smart Is Watson? or, The Role of the Sidekick".  I ended up arguing that Watson is an intelligent person hamstrung by his author, who needs him to fulfill a certain narrative role.  I hope I didn't stray into surrealist theatre, but the answer to the title question really seems to depend on whether you look at the doctor from inside the fictional world or outside of it.  They're planning to publish some of the papers in a book, so fingers crossed!

And now it's back to the grind, if I can reacquaint myself with where I left my PhD.  Today I avoided the madness of graduation day (much love to my undergrad friends who are moving on...) by staying in my room trying to produce words.  Y'see, my supervisor and I came up with a schedule that should theoretically produce a full draft by Christmas.  The problem?  I could manage the volume if all I had to do was write.  Unfortunately, there's still a lot of hunting around to do.  Throughout the PhD, I've been much more comfortable dealing with the stuff that gives context for the fascination of philology (language history).  I'm really struggling to identify exactly where that influences Tennyson's poetry, as opposed to him just knowing and liking old-fashioned poetic words from, say, Milton.  Fortunately, the first chapter is all about setting the stage, so I can indulge in the "easy" stuff for a while longer.

A word from the captain

First Mays colours at last!

It's over.

Things I accomplished as THBC women's captain

• Putting together a full crew early in Lent and Easter terms, which stayed almost entirely consistent.
• Getting three women who had quit and sworn they'd never row again to come back -- and enjoy it!
• One of them is now going to trial for the university boat.  I'm taking credit if she ends up being a rowing super-star.
• Taking a full VIII to training camp in Henley
• Avoided getting spoons in both sets of bumps (just barely...)

You can know all these things and yet...  I also know that the women's second boat essentially didn't exist and was a joke in both sets of bumps, and that we're now dangerously close to falling out of the first division of bumps if next year doesn't do better.

Upon finishing my duties, I expected to feel thrilled, happy, released, or even just relieved.  I feel none of these things.  I mean, I did have an odd realization while checking my phone on Sunday that there was no possible way for it to contain a crisis I would have to fix; that was cool.  But on the whole, I just feel drained.  It's not that I'm sad not to be captain anymore; I'm sad that it's over without my having gotten any success to show for it.  There are any number of reasons and excuses for it, most of which I couldn't help.  But still, I wish my legacy had been more than going down three places in bumps both times and not much of any other racing to speak of.  Last year's captain and Martin the boatman have made it very clear what they think of my leadership and the results I brought about.  They are what make me angriest, because they have undermined my efforts in a number of ways and then been judgmental about the consequences.

Honestly, the biggest difference I made was also probably the least noticed in certain quarters: it was a shift in the atmosphere.  Under the previous captain, despite her very healthy opinion of herself, almost no one was happy.  Very few women wanted to be in the first boat, and all of the novices who started last year quit.  Every single one.  This left me with almost no one to build a crew out of.  Now, I don't want to be just a club that turns up for laughs; I want us to be competitive.  But no one is going to choose to spend 14 hours a week doing something that makes them miserable -- certainly they're not going to continue doing it for two more years.  So I've tried my damnedest to get the good vibes flowing again.

As I've been disgorging my woe to everyone lately, the same comments tend to come up repeatedly.  First, I probably learned a lot from this experience.  Maybe that's true, but I certainly didn't learn how to be firm or disciplinary or especially persuasive (which would've helped), nor did I learn to distance myself emotionally from the situation.  I did learn to ask people even when you think the answer will be no, because sometimes you'll be pleasantly surprised.  Second, they say what a great thing captaining will be on my CV.  I think that would be very true if the person reading it had any idea just how much work it was.  I'm not convinced anyone who hasn't done it themselves could possibly understand what it took.  Finally, I'm told I've done a great job in difficult circumstances.  That's nice as far as it goes, but I can honestly say I hope never to have to receive that dubious compliment again.

I have a strong sense of the history of the club, which is part of why I want to contribute to its glory, not some 'inevitable' ebb in its success.  So for my speech at Boat Club Dinner on Saturday, I focused on what makes me proud personally as a rower, and what I hope is also a point of pride for the girls in my boat who are new to rowing this year.  Women only started rowing bumps in 1974, and then it was in IVs.  I went through the crew lists and counted how many different women had earned first-boat colours (i.e. the crescent on my pocket, like a varsity letter) in May Bumps.  (And yes, I'm spelling 'colours' Britishly because it's a British concept/tradition.)  To date, only 165 women have gained that honor in the history of the club.  Six of them did it for the first time last week.  One of them was me.  My name will be on the honour boards that go up in the boathouse, and when rowers are looking up at them during core exercises 200 years from now, they won't know anything about the results or the tears or the petty jabs.  Hopefully they'll be inspired to be part of the big picture, too.