2008-05-11 - 10:06 a.m.
I am done, done, done with classes for my first year of graduate school. In a few days I�ll be done with work as well. I have big plans for the summer and my next entry will be about how awesome Nya is for handling the voluntary surgery she had Wednesday. But for now I wanted to talk about how happy I�ve been in grad school.
I know there are a lot of people who are not at all happy in grad school. I�ve heard it painted as a woeful, thankless lot. Often, few people appreciate or even understand the work that you do. And the peripheral tasks you undertake (often just to make tuition), like assistant teaching classes or drudging in a lab, can be lonely and isolating.
That has not been my experience, however. First of all everyone can at least relate to my thesis subject. I�m examining transportation for people with disabilities (specifically the difference between friendly Chicago and brutal New York). Everyone has used the subway or taken a cab and so can understand transit issues.
I also haven�t found my time in school isolating. I have a whole new source of friends and class peers. We are �bonded�, if you will, because we have similar academic interests. Furthermore, Disability Studies is a diverse enough field that we are not all studying the exact same thing. Each of us is pursuing a unique interest.
Finally, it�s simply a thrill to just be learning. Sure, there�s a lot of knowledge that�s high-level and erudite. But, largely because Disability Studies is a relatively new field, there�s a lot of material (like the social model of disability) that anyone can and should understand.
My secret hope for Disability Studies is that someday, like all Subject Studies, it won�t exist anymore. Eventually, all subjects will take people with disabilities into account. This is already happening to an extent with Women�s Studies. Back in the day, women weren�t really incorporated into history, literature, science, etc., so Women�s Studies filled the gaps.
Now the field is often called �gender studies� instead. And as gender is being increasingly considered in other subjects, hopefully even that subject will become unnecessary as a distinct category. Likewise, Urban Studies, my major as an undergraduate, will eventually be incorporated into other fields.
I have a friend who has a PhD in African-American Studies. But really, she has a PhD in history. Her thesis was on the history of racial violence in America and at one point this simply wasn�t considered in �mainstream� American history. African-American Studies got scholars to pay attention to issues like this.
So eventually disability will be included in all fields. Eventually and inevitably. Someday soon.
� 2008 Geoff Gladstone
If you�ve ever enjoyed my writing, please donate to the Accelerated Cure Project for Multiple Sclerosis and/or the Montel Williams MS Foundation.
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