Two axioms.
- Grad school is tiring. It's still somewhat puzzling to me. Before grad school, I was a dancer. Sometimes dancing 15-20 hours a week, it made sense why I was continually exhausted. Sitting in front of a computer or a stack of books for 6-8 hours seemingly should be less tiring, yet somehow it isn't. The combined stress of assignments, teaching, lack of social life, + the strain of distilling high French theory into something readable and double-spaced = melted brain.
- I am not inherently a socially adept person, especially when I'm tired. I've never really mastered that fine balance between too much personal information and banal niceties.
"So how are you doing today?"
"Man, I'm utterly exhausted. I stayed up so late last night that I was feeling dizzy"
"uh, wow."
In my mind, the added bit of anecdotal information (a) proves that I am actually talking to the person, not glazing over and letting force of habit take over and (b) is kind of funny - when is someone falling over (except in case of stroke or other medical malady) not funny? Yes, I have that sense of humor.
Now, I've learned in general when to let loose with the above tmi and when to smile and nod. But when I get tired, I tend to forgot that series of hard-earned social lessons that have helped shape me into the somewhat more successful social interactor I am today. I've tried making myself lists, but I always lose them.
Case in point. The other day, I attended a reading group for Rhetoric, which at my university straddles two departments. I was very interested in the piece we were reading and forced myself to attend in spite of extreme fatigue. In retrospect, it feels like I would have been better off not going. But I won't say that, because the uncomfortableness the ensued led to both time spent with God and a better understanding of my responsibility in social situations.
I won't go into a blow by blow of what happened, because quite frankly I can't remember. An outline of the contextual and affective details should suffice though.
Normally at this reading group, faculty are invited and attend. This time however, it was just six grad students, three from the one department, three from the other. The room was a large conference room with the tables set up around the perimeter. As people are drawn to like, the three students from the one department sat directly opposed to where I sat with my colleagues. Especially if your area of study has anything to do with materiality, I'm sure you can tell that the physical setup was not exactly conducive to hugs and Kumbaya singing.
From my perspective, I was attending because although I liked the article we read and found it very useful, I also thought there were some internal contradictions that I wanted to tease out. Emotionally, I was both excited about tearing into the piece and passionate about extending his point of view to connect with my own. Yet because of the room setup, everyone's general fatigue, and lack of faculty to intervene (and without their authority to lend weight to people's objections to the piece), the discussion devolved into a round of verbal boxing between the man who had proposed the article we all read and the rest of us.
I of course being the shrinking violet that I am, nodded, took notes, and generally tried to stay out of the fray. Uh huh. No, instead, I fed into the general feeling of hostility by directly engaging with the man who brought in the article, let's say Mr. C, in a round of back and forth where he patiently laid out what he found was great about the article and where I sarcastically poked fun at the author's publishing strategy and criticized his use of theoretical terms.
I do think I had valid criticisms of the piece, all of which I thought of on the bus ride home. Yet they somehow got lost at the point of entry. All of the above narrativizing is to show how much not being silent in certain situations, at least for me, can be harmful to both your piece of mind and intellectual relationships.
I was struggling all the way home and after with feelings of anger and frustration. My points were valid, and I hadn't done any name-calling or general vituperative phrasings. But what was my role supposed to be as a Christian in that situation? As someone who is just recently exploring what it means to have a personal identity, feelings and all, the idea of 'stifling' myself seemed extremely unappealing.
So, I finally turned to the Bible after several rounds of internal self-recriminations and feelings of anger at the other participants. I mean, why can't the other person be the bigger guy, right? But in Proverbs, the verses that leapt out at me were ones, surprise surprise, about the value of staying quiet. Not just in terms of social congeniality, but also in terms of who I am as a person.
There are several that I noticed, but I found two in particular especially relevant.
A prudent man conceals knowledge.
But the heart of fools proclaims folly. - Proverbs 12:23
followed by
The one who guards his mouth preserves his life;
The one who who opens wide his lips comes to ruin. - 13:3 (NASB)
So the whole ugly mess was a good reminder of the wisdom of God. It was a painful lesson to learn, but it's true; sometimes it is better to stay quiet. You'd think I'd realize this, being in Rhetoric. The likelihood of me or anyone changing someone else's mind in an hour is... null.
This is not to say that I don't still struggle with the ideas set forth in the above two verses and elsewhere in the Bible. After all, the whole of academia is built around the idea of vigorous engagement with others' opinions; to some extent, staying quiet is removing one's self from the conversation. But at least some times, especially when tiredness and emotion are in the mix, holding my tongue is a good option.
