Post 101: Why I'm Glad I Didn't Quit My Thesis!

I'm part of this excellent online thesis completion group run by Dr. Dora Farkas. It comprises both master's and PhD students from around the world: anyone who's struggling to finish their thesis, whatever the roadblock they are facing: crisis of confidence, lack of support, lack of motivation, procrastination, interpersonal conflicts with supervisors, what have you. It's a long list.

One question Dora recently asked us as a group is: Why didn't we quit our programs, especially when we constantly thought we would?

I thought that questions was a useful prompt, because for almost half my degree, I thought of quitting, and was varyingly closer and further away from making that happen.

Galiano Island monkey flower (I think!). :)

So, first I'll go through some of my main reasons for considering quitting (good to get those out there again):

1. It's hard to ask for help when you can't articulate what you're struggling with.
2. Interpersonal mismatch: I know that I likely wouldn't have done well with an over-zealous supervisor, but I also in some ways struggled more than I would have if I'd had a supervisor who checked in more often, or in the way I needed. My supervisor was very hands off, and at first the independence was powerful and I loved the trust that was placed in me, but in the middle of my degree, I struggled a lot with making decisions, uncertainty, and felt like I did a lot of my problem-solving alone (though this is linked to struggle #1). Not placing blame here: I recognize my own role in not asking for help, or getting to a productive place where I could ask for help. As usual, it was complicated.
3. Impostor syndrome: I've written several posts about this in the past, so I won't rehash it all here, but essentially, I've never felt more uncertain, and lacked more confidence, than during this degree, and I'm so glad that I've not let it stop me.

Hmm. I think those are at least the major reasons.

More Galiano Island succulents. Definitely some of my favs! 

So, reasons for why I didn't quit:

1. My outline of challenge #3 kind of got there already: I know that I'm a capable, somewhat intelligent person, who works hard. The lies that anxiety and impostor syndrome were telling me aren't true, much as I believed them for large portions of this degree. I didn't want them to get the better of me.
2. I wanted to prove to myself that I could persist and finish a multi-year project. In the end, I think this is the most difficult project I have ever undertaken, and again, in a few weeks when this wraps up, I will be more proud of myself than I already am, for sticking with it, and keeping at it, even when the going got really, really tough.
3. Finishing for finishing's sake! I like to finish projects (though I usually take on smaller ones), because I like that feeling of tying up loose ends.
4. The professional recognition: if I had quit, then I'd feel like I wasted a lot of my own time and money, as well as all the time and money that my participants, my supervisor and committee member, and my funders invested in me. I didn't want to let them down.
5. I didn't want to disappoint my parents and my family. This one is a tricky one, because I wasn't doing this degree for them, but I needed to finish it so I felt like I could continue to have their respect, as well as my own. In the end, I'm sure they would continue to love me either way, but it's better that I can face them having this finished, and being something that I am, in the end, proud of.

So, there are lots of reasons why I didn't quit, even when for so long I couldn't see the end of this degree. But you, like me, can do it, and surprise yourself, and finish up! :)

Post 60: Writing is a Constant Act of Courage, and of Failing

Sometimes random traverses on the Internet can be awfully rewarding when the traverse yields something that speaks to exactly the problem that you're dealing with. And I felt that way when I stumbled on to this really short interview recording with The Atlantic's Ta-Nehisi Coates, one of their staff writers. Several parts of the interview really resonated with me, and have stuck with me weeks after I first watched it earlier in August, so here's the blog post for it, because if it's stayed with me this long, it might be useful for you to hear his words briefly, too.

While he's describing his process and experience of creative writing, a lot of what he says really speaks to my experience of thesis and academic writing, too. Coates discusses the need for persistence in writing. He states that he believes that "writing is an act of courage—it's almost an act of physical courage." Considering how much anxiety I sometimes have when I sit in front of my computer, thinking about how much I continue to fail when I'm trying to describe the figures and images and connections that I see in my mind, but seeing how little of that fails to emerge in my writing. So I have to keep at it. This project is important to me, and bigger than me, and it deserves to be written.

Coates continues on to say: "You never really get—I never really get, to that perfect thing that was in my head, so I always consider the entire process about failure... and I really think that's the main reason why more people don't write."

Ta-Nehisi Coates screenshot from the interview segment.

He also emphasizes the importance of revision, which is a lesson that I took away from the writing program at the end of my undergrad. Writing is a lot of work. It can be really rewarding, but it is A LOT of work. I will be glad to wrap up this degree for sure. So for now, it's one sentence at a time, one paragraph at a time, revising and revising and writing and writing and revising and revising. The process needs to continue.

And of course, I have the support of my supervisor and my committee member to provide helpful feedback and revision directions as needed, so I can trust that process, too.

And a lovely photo of late summer crocuses that surprised me in the field near my office on campus: