Pushing Through the Silence

Forgive me, dear readers, for I have not blogged in 19 days.

***A year ago I was sitting pretty: I had recently come back from CCCC, which had been a fabulous trip, and I felt on top of the world. Little did I know that in a year things would look and feel so different.

No one can prepare you for your last year as a Ph.D. student, and honestly if they tried I’m not sure you would “get it.” The last year has been full of ups and downs and sometimes it feels like mostly downs. It’s not just because the job search is such an emotional roller coaster either—there is just so much that goes on in this last year and the job search is only one part of it. There are times I wish I could simply sit in a dark room watching re-runs of Dawson’s Creek, dt Coke by my side, snuggled under my Florida State blanket with Trini on my lap. But where would that get me besides revved up on caffeine and teenage angst (not that that doesn’t sound appealing!). No, I know I must push forward even if the pace I’m pushing is barely a limp (which given the fact that I still--over ten weeks later--have a slightly swollen ankle is not to far off!).

There have been times in the last four months that I question my ability to write—does that happen to everyone or is it just some insecurity of mine…I really don’t know. There have been times when I’ve wished I was a different kind of writer—one that doesn’t jump in head first without looking back. There have been times where I look at my students and think “I’m just like them” wondering where this thing called writing is going to get me. And there have been times when I wonder how I’m going to finish because for me the writing process has been all or nothing (which is not the kind of writer I normally am). I’ve always been some form of a writer: I won my first writing contest when I was ten for a fire safety essay. I graduated high school with honors in writing (not in English—in writing) after I spent the year taking both an AP English class and the traditional English class because I loved writing. Then in college writing just seemed like a natural major for me. Now twenty years after writing my fire safety essay I question my ability to write because my dissertation keeps shaking her ugly/beautiful (either/or…?!?) head at me.

Questions, questions, questions. Fester, fester, fester. Uh, yikes!

Ten weeks. There is a countdown happening and there’s no going back now. No matter how many lists I make, and no matter how many times I revise those lists, I have a definite deadline. Ten weeks is either going to be a lifetime or in need of a lifeline depending on how it plays out. Based on my competitive nature I’m determined not to let her get the best of me, so in ten weeks I’ll be writing about the joys of completing and successfully defending a little thing called a dissertation.

Here's to her planting a vision inside my brain that takes hold and sticks: