I was recently invited to speak with York University graduate students about my experiences as doctoral student. Although I haven’t graduated yet, I am in (what I hope is!) the final stage of my PhD. The invitation thus provides a nice opportunity to reflect on my journey thus far.
Back in 2016 when I was asked to provide advice for new graduate students, I said:
If you’re struggling to choose a research focus/question/methodology, take the time you need to decide – but only that. We each contain multitudes and can potentially do an infinite number of projects; a graduate thesis is (hopefully!) just one of many projects you will eventually tackle. The sooner you finish, the sooner you can learn from your mistakes and make the next project better.
Looking back, I see how difficult it is to actually “take the time you need to decide – but only that.” Although I thought my doctoral research project was well-defined upon admission to my program, I went on to change supervisors, committee members, and research directions – the latter to a significant degree. Each change took time to work through. Some changes were out of my control, but most were rooted in my desire for perfection. Specifically, a perfect dissertation.
I wanted my dissertation to change the world (in its content) and challenge the Western academic conventional standards (in its format) and be engaging/accessible/moving/funny/beautiful/readable/you name it. I wanted to go beyond. I prepared an elaborate plan to write an ‘arts-based social cartography’ involving speculative fiction. To illustrate its complexity, I submitted one of my comprehensive exams as a ‘choose-your-own-adventure’ tarot card deck addressing the question: what is critical utopia(nism) as a method, rather than a goal? I agonized over the theoretical ‘contribution’ my perfect dissertation would make (I wanted it to be groundbreaking, of course!) and had imposter-syndrome nightmares about people reading it, years in the future, and discovering what I’d known all along: I wasn’t smart enough! I didn’t deserve a PhD! I was a fraud!
You might think this desire for perfection would be motivating, but it wasn’t. It was debilitating. I got stuck. And while I was planning my perfect dissertation, three things happened.
First, I submitted some fairly straightforward policy-related papers to conferences and journals, and they got accepted. They had nothing to do with my perfect dissertation, and deep inside I saw them as inferior scholarship. But I found them relatively easy to write, and some people found them useful. They were out there, for better or worse, whereas the perfect dissertation still lived entirely in my head.
Second, I got pregnant. Multiple times. My body didn’t handle pregnancy very well, and this impacted my academic progress. But two of those pregnancies eventually became two amazing children who quickly took up way more of my energy, both physically and emotionally, than I expected. When I told my supervisor I was pregnant for the first time, she said: “your dissertation won’t be your baby anymore.” I remember feeling incredulous. Nothing was going to come between me and the perfect dissertation! But she was right. Gradually, my quest for the perfect dissertation became a quest for a more manageable (but still almost-perfect!) dissertation.
Third, the COVID-19 pandemic hit. At the time I had a four-month-old baby, a barely-two-year-old toddler, and was in the thick of postpartum mental health challenges. Daycare shut down. An international border separated me from my family. My apartment was 700 square feet. Rainy Vancouver days were followed by unprecedented heat waves, which were followed by wildfire smoke. Although my situation was infinitely better than so many others’, it was the most difficult period of my life. And my quest for an almost-perfect dissertation became a quest to make it out of the fog with any dissertation at all.
Once again, my supervisor was wise. She urged me to think of the dissertation as a pass/fail test rather than a masterpiece. She also encouraged me to let go of the complicated, in-my-head arts-based social cartography and consider a manuscript-based (also called article-based) thesis option, using the policy-oriented papers I was publishing. Hearing this was both painful and a relief. She gave me permission to say goodbye to my mythical perfect dissertation and focus on the kind of scholarship and writing I found more natural.
As it turns out, my dissertation today really isn’t all that different from the original research I’d proposed upon admission to my program eight years ago. However, I needed to go through every single step to get here. In a way, I did take the time I needed to decide – but only that. It just didn’t feel like it along the way.
As I write this, I am in my office at work, and my partner is texting me. My kids are waiting for me to join them on the playground. I want to write more and to edit/perfect this writing, but I need to leave instead. Between my doctoral studies, my family, and my work, life is a constant juggling act, and sometimes a ball or two falls. But, as my partner lovingly tells me, I’m getting better at failing and accepting ‘as good as possible, given the circumstances’ over ‘perfect.’ That is the standard I hold others to; it is only fair that I try to treat myself with the same compassion.