Goddamn my department is a shitshow.  I really don't want to go into the details of the last night's grad student meeting.  Our department is at a major crossroads, on the verge of splitting apart, and at the same time, our graduate program sucks, choked by unneccessary requirements, and setting us behind in terms of careers.  Ugh.  It was so depressing because the students have been trying the same things for many years, and the profs don't listen to us, because they have no central leadership and no accountability.   The whole reason I was willing to come here, for which I had to sneak myself into an uncomfortable specialty niche, was to be a part of what seemed to be a great, cohesive department community.  WRONG.  It's a bad program.  I wouldn't recommend it to anyone unless they have a very strong research vision and the desire to work with a specific faculty member. So frustrating.

THEN I got my term paper back for Origins of Agriculture.  I got a B+, which was fine; in restrospect, it was probably a B+ paper, and I still pulled off an A- in the class because of test grades.  However, the COMMENTS....Dr. Meadow just shredded my paper to bits.  He had a few legitimate criticisms, but he nitpicked all my references and even my WORD ORDER.  My word order.  On several occasions it was clear he had actually misread or misunderstood the crux of my sentence.  Look at what he wrote at the end:

There are problems in this paper with organization, word choice, and referencing.  What you are trying to do in this paper is not adequately presented in the introduction, points are not well made nor evaluated adequately in the body, and use of evidence is not critical.  This is very much an undergraduate level paper and lacks the acuity expected in a graduate student effort.
Ouch.

Fortunately, this prof is a total asshole, not among my advisers, and someone I will probably never have to deal with again until generals.   But the trouble was, I was already so down on my department after the meeting that I was trying to choose another one to switch into.  This just reconfirmed how I felt about myself: a complete imposter, inadequate for graduate study in archaeology, lacking the passion and focus that everyone else has, and still trapped in the undergraduate mindset.  If I didn't want to switch to the English department before, I certainly do after reading that.

 I got really upset, mostly an aftereffect of the meeting.  The paper was just the nail in the coffin.  I kinda took more of my Ativan than I should have, though (as I read later), not nearly enough to cause a problem. I freaked Emma and Matt out a little bit when I wandered downstairs to tell them what I'd done and why.  They made me feel a lot better, and loved.  Despite the sedatives, I still woke up at 7:45 without my alarm, somewhat to my chagrin.

I was so sure it was worth staying here one more year.  Now the only thing that's keeping me here is my desire to live with my friends in a real apartment next year.  If I can just continue to treat this place as a job, and make the best of it, maybe I can stick it out the second year through generals to get the Masters.  Maybe.  After that I will have a secure home base and can apply for any job in Boston, even while I'm still in school.  I want to live with Emma, Matt, Philip, and Lindsey forever.   If I'd gone to UCLA, I never would have met them.  That's my only consolation so far.