In
my last entry, I explored some of the bad habits I’ve formed regarding how I
think about writing and some of the things I might do to change that way of
thinking. For today’s entry I want to build on the idea of habit formation and
discuss how I have been thinking about the end of this process up to now. I
think a good way to get at my thought processes will be to examine how I think
about graduating.
I
don’t know how most graduate students feel about graduating and finishing
beyond the obvious. The road to graduation is a fairly long and arduous one,
and finishing brings a sense of completion (though I’ve also read this sense of
accomplishment can be accompanied by one of anxiety about what comes next,
since graduating is more of a transitional phase than an ending). I know in my
case that I would like to be done already. I chose to get a master’s degree
along the way. Most of the folks I came into graduate school with either
already had their MA or came in as PhD students (thus bypassing MA requirements). As
such, these people have finished their degrees and have moved on, while I’m
still here. In addition, while I moved through my course requirements in a
timely fashion, the dissertation process has been a lot more difficult than I
thought it would be. That is one reason I started this blog, so that I could
think through my process and voice my feelings about it while not denigrating
it or myself.
I
gave what I think about graduating some serious thought over the weekend.
Despite feeling that I want to graduate, I’ve realized that I have not been
imagining myself graduating. I mean a few things by this. In the first place, I
mean the simple idea that I have not been picturing myself standing next to my
dissertation director as she hoods me; walking onto the stage and receiving a
symbolic representation of my diploma; seeing colleagues about me and friends
and family smiling at me in the audience; and all of the happy feelings that
should accompany such a momentous day. I also mean the more abstract ideas
about graduating: starting a new phase in my life, which should be both
frightening and exhilarating; becoming a fully recognized member of the
professional academic community; working on new projects that have occurred to
me as I have gone through coursework and the dissertation process; and so on.
When I have thought about the end of the dissertation process, in fact, I have not
had very clear images of what that will mean for me. I have felt as though
there is some kind of post‑graduation fog that will come rolling in over me,
and that I will be unable to find my way out.
I’m not going to write that
these feelings of uncertainty have left now that I have begun to think about
them. But I do think it is important for me to recognize what I have been doing
to myself all this time without realizing it. It may seem obvious to point this
out, but imagining the end of this process in such negative terms has been a hindrance: at best I’ve been confusing myself, and at worst I have been
setting myself up for failure. Luckily, I think the first step I need to take
is a simple one. I've already written it down in the previous paragraph, in
fact: to begin imagining myself on graduation day surrounded by people who are
happy for me and feeling happy for myself. This will undoubtedly take some
effort on my part. I will have to devote a little bit of time each day to
imagining myself as a doctor, as an expert in my particular field of study and
as an educator who has something meaningful to contribute to academia. But it
takes every bit as much effort, at least until it becomes a habit, to not
imagine myself graduating. In the end, I think imagination is everything, by
which I mean I can continue to imagine myself being swept away in the fog of
the unknown, or I can choose to imagine myself standing on my own two feet with
my diploma in hand.
No comments:
Post a Comment