Academic Blues and (Un)Motivation

I'm glad that it is the beginning of a one week break. I just completed a set of exams, and finally managed to submit an overdue term paper that involved two excruciating weeks of painfully trying to write something that was coherent. I think I have reached the stage where I have rather lost motivation with the course - one of those existential moments where you attempt to ask yourself exactly what is the point of writing a paper on the end of the Cold War or on U.S. grand strategy. For me, academia was also supposed to provide an end in itself. I am not doing this to earn a piece of paper, or to gain a Master's per se. I am doing this because I want to learn more about U.S. Foreign Policy, about the Cold War, about International Relations. So losing my intellectual interest (did I even have it to begin with?) is akin to losing the raison d'etre for doing the entire Master's program itself.

I told myself that the Master's would provide a perfect opportunity to think and to read. Not necessarily just on International Relations but on a whole host of other things. Certainly, it has been a delight browsing around the Humanities and Social Science library borrowing books on such random topics as film studies, ethics, euthanasia, random fiction, equality, and much else besides. But if you seem happier watching and critiquing movies and researching classic film criticism, and if you are more engaged in a book like Why Read Marx Today? as compared to a homework assignment, then something has certainly gone off tangent.

It is quite galling to me, how the whole of January and February has now passed without my having made any substantial headway on my thesis, not to mention my struggling with a smaller workload than the other students (because I am taking less classes due to the thesis). I feel like I've sunk into some kind of mild disinterested torpor which is very disturbing indeed.

I was more and more convinced recently that I should pursue the path of the Academy. To go and get a Phd and find a job as a professor. There were always nagging issues in my mind, though. Could I, the arch generalist, the gadfly, possessing not so much a short attention span as one that is simultaneously occupied by a dozen different things, find and work on one single topic that would occupy and satisfy me for the better part of 4 years? What then afterwards? More papers, read by learned colleagues, a merry-go-round of point counter point. Given my current frame of mind, a Phd is out of the question - it would be a tremendously foolish undertaking.

Perhaps, it comes down more narrowly to determination, setting goals, being motivated. But it is not as if I came into this term unmotivated. I did like the classes I had chosen and I was rather enthusiastic over my thesis topic. So what happened? As for setting goals and being determined, that flies out the window once you lose your motivation. But perhaps the whole point of being detemined is to not allow yourself to become unmotivated.

I shall attempt to concentrate on the narrower issues first. A first draft of my thesis is due very soon indeed, in a matter of weeks. If I throw all my weight behind it, I might just be able to churn something out, before the deadline. There is the further deadline of the actual submission date to meet. Let this be a test of character then, of any tiny lingering remants of academic ambitions that I might have. I pray I survive it.