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Sunday, March 30, 2014

Anticlimax and Discomfort as Doctor

On Friday, I defended my dissertation. It's the end of a journey, and I've struggled to process it. I'm writing this post to share with you two unexpected feelings in my first days in the liminal space between dissertation and life post-doctorate.

The most frequent question I have received in the past 48 hours is: How do you feel? In truth, I feel rather as I do any other day. Despite the fact that I just reached the summit of a major academic mountain, the whole process has been anticlimactic. When I finished writing a full draft of my manuscript, I took a breath, looked around to see if anyone else was present to share the moment, and, realizing I was alone, closed my laptop and walked away. There were no fireworks and no high-fives. Friends and family members, of course, were fantastically supportive and happy for me, but I didn't feel as though a weight had been lifted or some milestone had been achieved. On that day, just as I had done many of the preceding days, I wrote until I ran out of things to say. I didn't feel different.

My oral defense was similarly mundane. I presented to my committee and sat in front of them as they asked me questions and argued amongst themselves. I answered their questions and, generally, experienced little pressure. It was like a dinner conversation with academics. Though I knew in the back of my mind the full implications of the conversation, there was nothing ceremonious or dramatic about the process. I was in a classroom where just a year ago I had taken a course, not some concert hall in front of demanding audience. After the question and answer period, I waited a few moments in the hallway. My advisor asked me to come back into the room, before congratulating me and shaking my hand. That was it. Years of coursework and hundreds of pages. Sleepless nights and meager paychecks. All to end with a handshake.

I went out to dinner with my family and friends after the defense, and it was a wonderful time. There were a few toasts, and I was glad to share this experience with them. What I did not foresee was how uncomfortable it made me to hear them say they were proud of me. Perhaps because of how anticlimactic the defense was, I didn't feel as though I had done anything special. My response to being called "Doctor" has been even more visceral. Although I have completed all of the requirements of my degree, I have not reached a place where it feels appropriate to be Dr. McClure. Perhaps comfort will come with time. At the moment, I am haunted by an all-to-familiar feeling in academic life: Am I a fraud? What all of this may boil down to is feeling guilty. Guilty for being celebrated, when I'm not convinced yet that what I accomplished merits such praise.

I suppose on some level I wonder if others have likewise had conflicted feelings after reaching the finish line. Happy on the one hand, and relieved to be done, but uncertain of how to digest what it means on the other. I have been striving for so many years, counting the requirements to reach this moment. Now that the moment has come and gone, I have to reorient my life. I need to fill the void left by my finished dissertation. And, by all accounts, I should be happy. Yet what I feel isn't quite happiness. It's something close to happiness, with a twinge.

I don't at all expect that other PhD students out there will feel that same things that I have. However, it's worthwhile to prepare for a rather complex response to completion.

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