Week 2

I used to believe that when bad things happened to me, they were usually the precursor to good things. But in recent years I’ve found myself growing a little more cynical than I’d like to admit and believing instead that when bad things happen they are just a part of life and you live through them and feel grateful that good things, whenever they might come, are also a part of life (see, I’m not entirely cynical).

So it’s been kind of a pleasant surprise that my really horrible week last week has been followed by a pretty good darn good week this week. A better-than-normal week.

The biggest part of the week, the part that made all of last week almost worth it (almost), was meeting with my advisor on Thursday. One of the hard parts about last week that I really didn’t mention to many people as it was happening was that all sorts of the doubts about my PhD that I really thought I had gotten over came flooding back in. It wasn’t completely my doing—there was a specific school-related cause for this, but I won’t take the time to elaborate right now. Suffice it to say that when this week came, I felt like all I could talk about with people was how much I didn’t want to go through with the next two years, how useless it all seemed to me.

But the truth is that I have been doubting myself every step of the way with this degree, and at every one of those steps something has happened to keep me pushing through just a little longer. You’d think I would have learned by now, but I hadn’t. I finally went in and talked to my advisor, and for the first time I brought up everything to her. Including the fact that I’m not even sure if I want or need a PhD to do what I want to do. And we talked about the fact that I don’t need to change the world with my dissertation (that’s a relief!), and that the ultimate goal is for me to do what makes me happy not what will make other people happy, and that there might be lots of routes to that, but that I can make the dissertation work for me to get me towards what I really want to do, and that I’m perfectly capable of it, and that I can do what I want to do with my dissertation, and that there is nothing wrong with me that I haven’t found a research group at U of M that interests me and am instead working in the math department and at the community college. Sorry, that’s a mouthful. But all of it was exactly what I needed to hear, and I have not had such a complete and sudden turnaround since, well, the last time I decided not to quit my PhD. Which would have been about eight months ago (that’s probably the longest I’ve gone yet!).

I sort of feel like I need to advertise this to the world, not just write about it in my journal, so that I’m not the only one holding myself accountable to the change I experienced in my attitude on Thursday, and so that other people can also help me remember how I felt this week when it gets hard again. I was talking to another PhD student in the ward this evening at a 4th of July barbecue, and he said, “You’re almost at the point of no return, aren’t you?” And it occurred to me that I really am. I’m kind of in it for the next year at least, because I have my work lined up for me at the U of M and at the community college, so I can’t back out right this minute. And once I’ve made it through one more year of work, I’ll have collected my data and be in the writing phase of my dissertation (presumably), and by that point why would I back out? So if I think about it like that, really I’m practically done and I just need to let the momentum carry me through this last bit.

Anyway, maybe this seems like a small thing (especially if you know me and know that this is not the first time I’ve gone through this), but it felt huge to me. Like I said, it almost made up for last week.

And though the rest of the week hasn’t been as amazing as that moment, it’s been really nice. I think one of the problems with last week is that I had a lot of down time, and with it came a lot of thinking time, and so it was easy to dwell on the negativity (especially because I was pretty stuck with work on my dissertation topic and feeling very frustrated with myself). This week, though, I had a lot of “people time,” from group activities almost every night of the week, to one-on-one lunches and phone conversations with several different friends, some of whom I haven’t seen or talked to in a long time. It kept my life pretty full, and gave me less time to dwell on what’s not right in the world, and more time to focus on other people and other things, or at least to talk through my thoughts more productively.

In fact, after a day of hiking with Sara (I think I may blog about that when I get pictures from her) followed by the 4th of July barbecue/unofficial ward activity this evening (both of which were a lot of fun), I actually decided to skip the fireworks and spend the last few hours of my evening alone at home alone, blogging, reading, watching Gilmore Girls, and cleaning a little, because I haven’t really had any downtime this week.

Anyway, it’s been a nice change from last week and I’m feeling pretty happy. At least life is keeping me on my toes right now :).