Sigh. I needed to remember a name for the newsletter, so I cracked open my dissertation for the first time in years.
It is so heartbreaking to revisit, because I'd written it twice before discovering that committee was absolutely not the right fit. One prof was a very defensive Christian who seemed to think I'd chosen to study literary responses to the rise of stellar evolution just to pick on Christians. That hurt my humanist heart. But this was GOOD work. I should have been allowed to defend.
@MLClark I feel like I can perhaps relate to some of the trauma there... My chair became very abusive and when I refused to bend, she fired me. I found another chair, tried for 6 months to get back into it, with his direction. But every day felt like a retraumatization. I ended up leaving, ABD
Good on you to work through it and complete it. 💜
Well, I completed the dissertation - but I didn't get to defend. I'm ABD as in "all but defense", not "all but dissertation".
I'm so sorry you were traumatized, too - and I know that is EXACTLY the right word, because it's just so awful to be caught in those nebulous professional power plays. Absolutely nothing like them. I hope you're doing better now. I'm so sorry you were in such a toxic department, too.
@MLClark yes, thank you, I am better now. Though I do look back and struggle with regret, at times.
I'm doing something now that doesn't need a PhD, but now that I'm back in school and taught by PhD's again, I really miss academia - I loved teaching.
To give so much of oneself (and 5+ years of my life) to something... to have all the wind taken out of my sails and my legs swept from underneath me... yes, traumatizing.
It was agony to cut out that part of my life. It was a huge part of who I was, and what I'd been working toward all my twenties.
I now try to make good use of all my scholarly instincts and humanities education (i.e., how to hold ideas in balance, even when the world wants to rush to conclusions), & I *love* a good research deep-dive, plus the language-learners I teach...
But it's hard to think what might have been.
I see you, Merlin.
Any community with you in it is lucky indeed.
@MLClark 😊
Yes, numerous qualities and skills I took from it that I continue to use today as well.
And your communities too, very fortunate. I’ve appreciated getting know a bit more about you today.
And I sorely appreciated the safe space to share. Thank you.
I'm surrounded by folks in my neighbourhood with far more immediate problems - lack of shelter, lack of food, lack of humane treatment - so I often feel terrible for not having my sh(aving cream) sorted out better at this point in my life.
Thank you for sitting with the unscheduled vent, for sharing from the fount of your own sadness, and for just being such a perfect example of what higher learning *should* be about. 💛
@MLClark with the insight you bring, all you intelligently create and the stories of all you do for those you’re surrounded by (I’m also certain there’s even more under the surface shown here), you’re an inspiring humanitarian - the sh(aving cream) you do have sorted is damn impressive.
Por todo lo que me inspiraste y más por presenciandome... Gracias tambien 💜
@MLClark your work is incredible and more than good enough. The luminaries and scholars raised up by future generations often struggle against the prejudice of the old, the now and the biased. Please never stop fighting. We need your voice!
@MLClark working together we will help the world be that much better. You matter and everything you do matters.
...And I know, I know, I can still turn the fun parts of this piece into a pop-sci book on the rise of the theory of stellar evolution in the 19th century. I should.
But sometimes it just breaks my heart to think how different things might have been if I'd been allowed to defend, and to get that pesky "PhD" next to my name. So many doors in publishing would have become easier to step through. No one gives a rat's ass about a scholar without credentials.
Ah well.
In another universe, perhaps.