At this point

At this particular point in my educational career, I have to finish up an 'incomplete' from last semester before I can start thinking about taking my doctoral exams. The course was a specially approved directed study designed to fulfill my last remaining Ph.D. coursework requirement.

Why couldn't I take a real class intead of a directed study? Because the class I needed wasn't offered, and it looks like it may never be offered. My department fell to peices about a year ago, and one of the many casualties was our prestigious "rhetoric & composition" program. For specific reasons I dare not type (including faculty infighting, sexual harassment grievances, misuse of funds....) we lost most of our rhet/comp faculty, and thus, most of our classes.

Some of our graduate students followed faculty members to other universities, and some are just gone. I'm still here though -- far enough along in my program that going to a different university would have meant tacking on a few more years until I'm crowned a "doctor" (and screw the hood... when I graduate I want to be crowned). So I am one of a few lone graduate students in rhetoric and composition at my school, which is a terrible position to be in. There is only one faculty member that is willing to work with me, and to the rest of the department, I'm virtually a ghost -- a reminder of a department that is no longer with us. I don't know the new faculty or any of the new graduate students. I'm so absent from any departmental happenings that when, by chance, I see someone I used to know, they look at me as if to say "Is that her? I thought she left..."