A few weeks ago I woke up from a strange dream: I have been logging into student health
lately to follow up on my physical, and in my dream our former Department Chair contacted me to say that he had received a notification from the system that I
had dropped out of the program. Everything was fine, I should just turn in my key.
Apparently I had pressed the wrong button,
and inadvertently unenrolled from graduate school. I couldn't believe such a snafu had occurred,
and explained to him, “No no, I’m not dropping out. I must have hit the wrong button.” He didn’t try to argue with me, and didn’t even
feel we needed to have a discussion. Just like that, he alerted me that the system had informed him of my decision and by clicking a button by mistake, notice was
considered given.
In my dream I kept explaining to him it wasn’t intentional, that I
had just accidently pressed the wrong button. I was neither
relieved nor upset, just surprised at the kafka-esque notion that a button
pressed by accident and without any intention on a seemingly unrelated website
had been interpreted as my leaving. Leaving seems like such a big, hard, challenging and dangerous taboo prospect: this was anti climactic to say the least.
I woke up and thought that maybe
it was my way of realizing that I wanted to stay (yes, I was that deluded). I was still at a point where I thought I had things I wanted to say, and needed to say in an academic setting. Despite wanting to drop out almost my entire graduate career, I felt good about being in school.
At least, until that afternoon, when by the end of the day I was again questioning whether I should stay.
One of the unique things about graduate school is the degree to which we are psychological prisoners to our own cage. There is a type of Stockholm syndrome that sets in where we rationalize away things that when we talk about them later seem completely unhinged crazy to anyone outside our situation.
When I met with my adviser that afternoon, I had asked to reschedule since I was not prepared and didn't have major updates for
her. I planned on updating her on my other committee members' questions, and then having her talk to me about the exam process and her advice more generally. The meeting went south within minutes. She didn’t
like one of my committee member's questions, and suggested we replace him mid semester with someone else to head in a different direction. She wanted my exams to form my dissertation proposal, even though I had explained to her months ago that my data collection fell through, and people in my department rarely pull this off. We simply didn't have time.
I freaked out.
I was so angry and upset
I started bawling--flat out ugly crying, and I just completely
lost it. I told her I don’t think like an academic, and I didn’t want to. Between sobs, I declared that I didn’t fit in, and should just quit and leave now. I even went so far as to say that I felt like most of what we as academics do is, and I quote, "woo woo and
crystals and smoke."
Yes, I actually said that--woo woo and crystals and smoke--and I felt it was appropriate. What's more, despite my outrageous quote, I was holding back. After all, I bit my tongue to avoid mentioning that I no longer believed in the
discipline. This was my essential self speaking. All social artifice regarding what I should do melted away.
I cried so hard and could not
control myself. I felt like the only
thing I cared about was being ripped away from me. I just wanted one exam topic that would give me the time to produce some articles in the areas I wanted to work in, and would be one of the few things people would take seriously when I graduated into a non academic job. The idea that she would take away such an important piece of that made
me so upset.
My essential self came out that day--there was no holding her back. Typing this out, everything seems so obvious--I am on the wrong path, and I need to leave. But the crazy thing is that after this meeting, I left her office to go work on my reading. I met with other committee members, and we decided to move forward. Crazy. Absolutely crazy.
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