A Writer’s Diary Entries From Mid-June, 2002
Saturday, June 15, 2002
12:30 PM. My appointment with Dr. Koncsol isn’t until 2 PM, but I need to unload some stuff now. I’m having a really hard time. This is sort of like that Friday night and Saturday of Palm Sunday weekend, when I was at my low point.
My sciatica hurts a lot, and I’ve been trembling with chills. I’m dressed and I’m lying under a quilt in South Florida in mid-June, and I still am shaking. Another heavy rain is coming down.
Last night I fell asleep around 11:30 PM, but I woke up before 4 AM, and for some reason, I decided to ruminate about my credit card debt.
With my student loans in repayment, and the cost of rent and utilities, and ever-increasing minimum payments on my credit card bills, I can’t make it even on a salary of $48,000.
I had promised myself I wouldn’t worry about bankruptcy until I made it through the bar exam, but this morning I couldn’t help myself.
How will I live without credit cards? I just feel so scared. It’s not like I can live with my parents the way I did in 1990 and 1991.
I’m also scared about the trip to Seattle. I don’t know how I’m going to manage. I can’t see myself being able to function in Seattle. When I tried to pack this morning, I realized that for a five-day trip, one suitcase isn’t enough.
I went to get a haircut at 9 AM; they cut nearly all my hair off in a buzz cut.
Afterwards I went to Walgreens and then to the massage center, where Angela tried her best to loosen up my piriformis muscle, but it didn’t really work. I gave her a copy of The Silicon Valley Diet.
Then, in the pouring rain, I went to Barnes & Noble, where I started feeling chilled even before I had the non-caffeinated iced rooibos tea.
I couldn’t read much of the New York Times, so I came home to get under the covers.
My life is such a mess. I feel cold because I feel pure terror and anguish. It’s very scary. This morning as I lay awake, I played a little of Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway, but it didn’t help.
I should be studying for the bar exam, not wasting time like this, but I’m just too nervous to study.
I don’t know if seeing Dr. K will make me feel better. I feel I’m at one of the turning points in my life, and it seems to me there’s no way to go but down.
*
10 PM. Seeing Dr. Koncsol didn’t help all that much. It seems as if we keep going over the same territory.
He said it’s okay to take Klonopin for those periods of intense anxiety, but he worries about addiction, withdrawal, and tolerance.
Still, it was good to tell someone of the pain I’m in, the annoying pain of sciatica, and the anxiety and terror I’ve been feeling.
Dr. K talks a lot about Freud and evolutionary biology, but I just want someone to help me with the pain.
Yes, I understand that my fear of losing control is paradoxical because I am the one causing the panicky, losing-control feelings and thoughts, but how does knowing that take away my pain?
Dr. K says I should be all right on the plane, and I guess he’s right about that. I look back to my diary for some of the trips I made last year, and each one was preceded by anxiety like the kind I’m having now – only then I didn’t have sciatica and GERD and the specter of the bar exam to deal with.
I did not study at all today. When I got home from the psychologist – our next appointment is four weeks away, but he said I could call if I needed him – I just lay down under the quilt until 5:30 PM.
Then I had dinner and drove to Borders in Fort Lauderdale, where I bought the Sunday New York Times – though I started reading it at the Plantation Barnes & Noble, where the lawyer and thriller writer Lisa Scottoline was giving a reading and signing books.
Since coming home a couple of hours ago, I’ve been working my way through the Sunday paper. I seem to have calmed down a little, and I took Flexeril and Tylenol and Triavil, although Dr. K says that using the latter drug to fight anxiety is akin to being naked and cold and putting on only a scarf.
I don’t expect I’ll sleep any better tonight – or the next two nights – than I did last night. Well, I actually slept fine, but for only four and a half hours.
I’m afraid tonight may be the night that pain keeps me awake. It’s frightening, but my sciatica seems as bad as it was back in March. It has come and gone in the last month or so, and I’m hoping it will subside.
I just feel so powerless and helpless. Maybe tomorrow I’ll stir myself to do stuff that I really need to do.
I can’t picture myself in Seattle. But then, I sort of felt the same way about the Ozarks last August, and that turned out fine.
Tuesday, June 18, 2002
8:30 PM. I’m in my piss-elegant room (1801) of the new Elliott Grand Hyatt, having just come from dinner in the International District with Ellen, Ted and Josh. It’s been a long day for me, but an exciting one.
Although my sciatica still hurts and may even be worse than it’s been in weeks, I feel good to have gotten away for one day from the pressures of my job and the bar exam.
Last night I slept less than five hours, so I should be exhausted now since I left the house at 6 AM, and now it’s like 11:30 PM to me.
Anyway, I need to adjust myself to Pacific time. Seattle is so far north, and I guess we’re around the longest day of the year, so it’s still light out now.
My morning cab ride to the airport went quickly, and the flight to Dallas took off on time and got in early, around 10 AM Central Time.
The next flight left late, but it got into Seattle only fifteen minutes after the scheduled arrival time, around 1:30 PM Pacific Time.
I didn’t have any anxiety on either flight, certainly nothing that I needed a Klonopin for. I always forget that I don’t really mind flying.
The worst part was sitting down for so many hours, which aggravated my sciatica, so I tried to walk to the bathroom as much as possible.
After getting my luggage, I found that a limo would be easier and only $5 more expensive than a cab, so I took one into Seattle.
The first view of the skyline and the Space Needle was kind of thrilling, as all city skyscapes are to me. It was raining when we drove downtown, but it cleared up afterwards.
This is a very luxurious hotel; I haven’t stayed in anything this nice since the Miami InterContinental when I was there for the 1993 Miami Book Fair.
This hotel, built last year, is state-of-the-art, and the bellman showed me how everything in my room works. After putting all my stuff away, I got a jolt of caffeine at the Starbucks downstairs as I finished today’s New York Times (which I’d bought at the Fort Lauderdale Airport) and then studied the tour map of downtown Seattle.
I walked around for about three hours, taking the monorail to the Seattle Center, where the Space Needle is, along with the Frank Gehry-designed Experience Music Project. I didn’t want to pay the admission fee, but I bought a Ramones poster in their gift shop.
Just now I went over to my huge window as the sun was starting to set; there’s an incredible view of the water and the city.
Anyway, I walked around a lot even though my legs throbbed. I liked the monorail and got back on it, taking it to its terminal at the Westlake Center right near the hotel.
Downtown Seattle has a lot of beggars, mostly African-American, and the usual young people with dyed hair, body art and piercings.
I watched some skateboarders and bought a t-shirt at the Bon Marché, where I used my credit card from that store.
Then I went to the Pike Place Market, which reminded me of the Fremch Market in New Orleans and Fisherman’s Wharf in San Francisco.
I ate some rice and Asian vegetables at one of the ethnic places in the Westlake Mall’s food court.
I had called Ellen at her office at Amazon, leaving a message, and by the time she got home, she returned my second call and said they would pick me up for dinner at Shanghai Garden in the International District (Chinatown plus Japantown, as in the Bay Area). Seattle, of course, has lots of Asian people.
Ellen looks good; I think the last time I saw her was in Florida over ten years ago, when she was still married to Wade.
It was nice to meet Ted, who’s been an architect and is just finishing his first year studying to be a naturopath, which is like being a medical doctor, only they can’t do some procedures and they learn a lot about herbs. (Ted told me if I have piriformis, massage should help, but I might want to try acupuncture.)
Josh is about 16, but as Ted said, he’s going on 45 (very different, Ted said when we were alone, from his older brother, “although both of them are very bright, and they seem to adore each other.”)
Ellen manages about 45 people at Amazon, and most of them are designers, so she says it’s like herding cats. She travels a lot for work, though so far she’s avoided Japan.
As we drove east to the International District, Ellen pointed out the huge pinkish building where she works.
Washington State has the second-highest unemployment rate (after Oregon), but there’s still a lot of money here because of Microsoft and other companies that aren’t vulnerable to the dot-com bust.
I just spoke to Dad. Although I’m not very articulate when I first tried to describe new places, the experiences stay with me.
Even though it’s after 9 PM, there’s still some light blue in the Seattle sky.
Wednesday, June 19, 2002
10 PM. I just got back to my room. I’ve been spending a lot of time talking to people at the LSAC Academic Assistance Training Workshop in the hospitality suite.
I can see that I’m going to learn a lot here and that law school academic support people are a pretty nice group.
I was one of the few men wearing a sports jacket; most of them dressed quite informally.
Last night I slept soundly but not enough, and I woke up with that feeling of dread that I dread. If I could view my anxiety with intellectual detachment, I’d be fascinated by the phenomenon of how it seems to peak in the early morning and wane by evening.
Up around 4:45 AM, I ate breakfast (uncooked oatmeal in a bowl of skim milk with a banana and raisins) and listened to the NPR news, and I watched Small Time Crooks, Woody Allen’s last good film, on HBO.
I took my complimentary USA Today down to Starbucks, where I had hot tea. It was pretty chilly (49°) for me this morning, so I bundled up in a sweater and jacket.
After the Barnes & Noble across the street opened, I got the New York Times, a bagel and iced tea there.
The Times had an interesting first-page story on a CliffsNotes competitor, SparkNotes, which is owned by Barnes & Noble, producing little guides not just to the classics but also to Harry Potter, Dave Eggers, and other contemporary books.
I’ve always wanted to make a CliffsNotes for a nonexistent book, and maybe one day I’ll do that treatment in my own novel.
By the way, the store had two copies of The Silicon Valley Diet, and it was nice to see my name on the books’ spines.
At Westlake, I took the bus tunnel to Pioneer Square, the neighborhood that seems at once both Skid Row and trendy.
The Elliott Bay Bookstore is a truly great store; scanning their poetry readings schedule, I noticed that Glory Simmons from Ragdale read from her first book recently right here in Seattle.
My sciatica has bothered me all day, but my stomach/GERD has really thrown me for a loop since mid-afternoon, when I got stir-fried broccoli at the Westlake Mall’s food court.
Around noon, I really felt anxious again, so I took myself to the Cineplex Odeon catty-corner from the convention center.
It’s a four-story multiplex where I saw Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood, a weepy chick flick based on the best-selling novel read and loved by middle-aged American women.
The movie helped me forget my anxiety about the bar exam, my credit cards, my sciatica, and this conference.
Unfortunately, soon after I ate, I began to feel sick. I had taken the bus tunnel back to Pioneer Square, but I got out and headed back to the hotel right away, afraid that I would vomit before I got back.
It was a panic attack, so I took 0.25 mg Klonopin and then started ironing my wrinkled shirts and pants.
At 5 PM, I picked up all my registration materials for the workshop, and at 6 PM I was downstairs for the reception.
Jane Cross was there, but I circulated and talked to people from various law schools. I ended up becoming chummy with Amy Jarmon, who’s just started her position at Akron, though if I’d realized what a bad cold she had, I probably wouldn’t have sat next to her at dinner.
We were at a table with three people from the new law school at UNLV (Las Vegas), two women from America and Santa Clara (Alisha and Susan), and a guy from Regent (Natt).
Just after dinner, Joe Knight, the dean of the University of Washington Law School, welcomed us with some inspiring remarks; the school where the conference is having most of its meetings, it turns out, does not have an academic support program.
(Seattle University, which I think is the official sponsoring law school, does have an academic support program, led by Paula Lustbader.)
After some people from LSAC made a few announcements, I went to the hospitality suite and talked for quite a while with three academic support veterans and stars of the field: Laurie Zimet of Hastings, Kris Knaplund of Pepperdine (formerly of UCLA), and Judy Vaughan from Loyola of Los Angeles, all of whom gave me lots of good advice, support, and information.
Well, tomorrow will be a long day, so I’d better try to sleep.
Thursday, June 20, 2002
5 PM. I just got back from a long day at the University of Washington Law School.
Last night I slept poorly. When I awoke at 3:30 AM, I immediately began to panic about the bar exam, and I knew I’d be unable to return to sleep.
Tonight I’m going to take Ambien and Klonopin, if need be, because I am exhausted. I also feel certain I’m going to get a cold.
I wish I could say that I feel reassured after getting so much good information from people who’ve done academic support for years, but I find that I’m feeling just that much more insecure.
Indeed, as I sat there watching and listening to the panel discussions and presentations, a lot of the time I felt that when I get back to Florida I need to go to Pat and tell her the job isn’t working out for me.
I don’t seem to have the same level of commitment as my colleagues here. The truth is that I’m lazy and unambitious. I haven’t wanted to start any new initiatives or make changes in the ARP program; I’ve been content to let things keep going on as they have been, haphazard as that may be.
Is it just that I’m not going to have what it takes to be a director of academic support? I don’t feel that I need to quit right now, but I am still feeling overwhelmed.
Is it my psychological problems? Well, I feel under a lot of stress because of the bar exam right now, and I can’t make decisions until I get through it. The trouble is, I don’t feel enthusiastic about studying for the exam, either.
On Tuesday I was fine because I was traveling and doing something similar to what I was doing most days in the last half of 2001.
Why can’t I fit in anywhere? I did think I fit in teaching legal studies at the undergraduate program at Nova, but I feel that I have let down the people at NSU Law.
Oh, I really need to talk to Dr. K about this, although I don’t think I’m getting much out of therapy with him.
Anyway, the morning session for newcomers was very informative, but as I said, all that information just led me to feel more overwhelmed, and the breakout session at the end of the day made me sound like I don’t know what the fuck I’m doing, which I don’t.
Unfortunately, there’s nobody I can talk to about that. My family and friends don’t want to hear about it.
I do find it interesting how academic support is treated at different law schools; the plenary sessions, led by Kris Knaplund and Thorny Ferris of UC Hastings, had us discuss our goals and the obstacles we have in achieving them.
After lunch, I found the section on data collection and evaluation very boring, as I kept obsessing about my own problems.
I know that even after the bar exam is over, I am going to be nervous about fall orientation, TA training, and the workshops that I need to do for the fall semester.
I also need to make changes in ARP. I’ve kept the students having their time cards signed by the professors because it’s less work for me, but I really need to take charge if I plan to stay.
Of course, my problem is that I’ve never planned to stay in any job I’ve ever had. But if I quit Nova Law, how would I survive? I know that one is never really boxed into a corner, but I feel that way a lot.
Friday, June 21, 2002
10 PM. I’ve just gotten in. After getting back from the University of Washington at 4:50 PM, I went to work out lightly at the hotel for a little while, and then I got a sandwich at Subway and read the New York Times while drinking the iced red tea at Barnes & Noble.
I was heading back to the hotel when I saw Jane and others who invited me along to dinner at a nearby seafood restaurant; I think it was called Oceanaire, and it gave off the aura of a 1930s luxury ocean liner.
There were two big tables of people from the LSAC workshop, and I was lucky enough to sit next to Marty Peters, who arrived today and gave me a big hug.
She showed me photos of her eldest son’s wedding; her youngest son, living with Don in Gainesville, is already 18.
Marty told me how happy she is to be at Iowa after her bad experience at UF’s law school.
I had a really good time at dinner even if I had only arugula salad and didn’t eat the scrumptious-looking desserts.
I really like the people I was with, including Laurie Zimet and Thorny from Hastings and David Nadvorney from CUNY Law, among others. (No one wore nametags, so I can’t recall everybody’s name.)
Last night I slept well, although I did have my usual anxiety upon awakening. But once I ate breakfast, the anxiety went away, and I didn’t take my first Triavil until just a few minutes ago.
I found today’s sessions empowering. I can see myself becoming a part of the academic support community, and I feel I need to make some changes in ARP and not worry about pissing off Nova’s administrators, faculty, and students.
Kris Knaplund’s workshop on using teaching assistants effectively gave me some ideas on how I can change the way our study groups work.
I probably won’t do anything until the winter semester, as I want to have meetings with faculty and staff to discuss this.
That is probably something I should have been doing this past semester. I’m starting to feel more comfortable now, so maybe I can do it.
I realize that just yesterday I said how uncomfortable I was among my peers at this conference, but maybe today was a turning point.
Back in Florida, I’ve been too deferential and too much of a people pleaser. You know, if I’m going to have to leave NSU Law, I might as well make some changes that will be beneficial and leave because I’m doing too good a job.
Not every first-year section needs to have an ARP teaching assistant, and I need to take control of the program from the professors.
In the fall, I’ll keep things where they are, but I want to shift the emphasis away from class review and substantive law.
What I really need to do is work harder. Right now I’m facing the obstacle of the bar exam, but pass or fail, once I get through that, I need to start putting my stamp on the program.
Once, as a fiction writer and seeker of publicity, I certainly had enormous confidence – or I knew how to fake it. Yes, I’ve always had a diffident streak, and that’s intertwined with my anxiety, but I really want to get over what happened to me in Arizona and get my groove back.
I probably sound a little manic now after a day of exciting panel discussions and workshops and lots of interactions with my colleagues. But let’s hope some of this is a real growing sense of confidence.
During the panel discussions on bar exam passage rate this afternoon, the first line of Dr. Spock’s baby book came to me: he’s telling new parents that they know more than they think they do. I’ve got to trust my instincts more and go with them.
Does all this seem like psychobabble? Our morning panel discussion, moderated by Jane, was great, especially because Vernellia Randall got really upset that only eight of us have programs that specifically target minorities – despite the fact that the entire field of law school academic support began when a lot more black and Hispanic law students started coming in in the 1980s and early 1990s.
I volunteered to be the reporter for my small breakout session’s discussion with Alisha from American University afterward. Although I wasn’t a great reporter, I wanted to push myself to get involved.
The people in academic support, like most of the people at NSU Law, are very nice, and if I let them see the real me, perhaps enough of them will like me so that I can make friends and allies who will be people I can go to for support.
I can’t continue to be so much of a loner. If I don’t like being alone on weekends, that’s when I should be training TAs and having workshops.
I can see getting excited about Steve Friedland’s orientation plans for the fall. Ideas are turning through my head now.
Anyway, I’m tired but not sleepy. I hope I can bottle this enthusiasm and use it liberally throughout the academic year.
I guess today in Seattle was like a revelation because I learned that others struggle and work hard and come up with different but essentially similar models for programs.
On the bus ride this morning, I got a clear view of Mount Rainier and later saw a lot more of the University of Washington’s lovely campus. I also listened to and told jokes and looked at photos of people’s kids, including those of the gays and lesbians who are parents.
Anyway, my brain is fogging over now – but I’m really glad I didn’t spend the evening alone in my hotel room.
Seattle has been exactly what I needed at this point of my life and my career. I see that I can take this job and do exciting things with it if I get myself out of the little mindset of fear and take risks the way I used to in fiction writing.
Damn it, I’m the academic resource program director. Jane told me that when I was hired, she tried to get me faculty status and tried to stop me from having to report to Pat. She said that I need to remember that I am autonomous.
Well, I’ll stop here, as I need to get to sleep if I can calm down.
I am now able to see my sciatica and GERD disappearing once I get a handle on this job and stop worrying about how others perceive me.
I need to be like Kris or Laurie or Vernellia or so many of the others. Maybe it would be easier for me to do that if I were a woman or nonwhite, but it just may be that they are naturally assertive while I am not.
Well, we will see how I feel after tomorrow.