On milestones
In every graduate program, there are milestones that we work towards that help keep us accountable and track our progress, an otherwise difficult task in the world of research. I defended my thesis proposal a couple weeks ago - this is the last milestone before the thesis defense, which is essentially the final presentation that needs to happen for one to graduate.
When I started college, I remember going on this hike during orientation week before classes started. Leading the hike was our orientation leader, a junior or senior in college, barely a few years older than we were (the group of 5-6 first years following him) but already seeming so much older, maybe due to the scruffy beard he sported. Scrambling over rocks and trying not act out-of-breath in order to solidify my status as a Boulder native, we stopped somewhere along the way (not even at the top) as our guide imparted some wisdom onto us. The years will fly by before you know it, he said, and told us to look at the stars and try to capture this exact moment. Cliché or not, it obviously worked because here I am, 8 years later, still thinking about that moment. I rarely feel the weight of big, important events, like finishing college. In fact, it didn’t even really register that I had graduated until I received a book in the mail from our undergraudate program director, the same story book that we read the very first day of classes in our first year - then it clicked all at once, a feeling reminiscent of jumping into a refreshing lake after sunbathing, warm and a relief.
Putting words to paper (or my LaTeX files, in this case) took about a month, but I have been writing this proposal for much longer. Ruminating in the shower, rolling over phrases in my mouth, flashes of panic during movies tangentially related, scrambling for a notebook or phone screen or voice recorder in the dark. There is a beautiful, manic, consuming privilege in making one’s work so close to one’s core. Over the last eight years of my higher education, I have sensed these threads of intuition, spinning and pulling and wounding. Along the way, I learned to see, follow, entangle these whispers of thoughts, entrusting that time and experience will crystallize them into something tangible, rather than reacting with a panicked frustration over the nebulousness of these inklings. The montage of me typing into my computer - watching snow falling, with a cup of tea, on a plane - has created the first cohesive, sturdy product of my beliefs. I imagine the immense satisfaction and feeling of accomplishment much to be like watching a baby take their first steps - an awe for the intricacies of life that has brought this moment to pass. Some might balk here at this metaphor, but I have indeed watched many babies take their first steps, and I will say - it felt even better to have finished this document.
In the last year, I have been working on being kinder to myself. It’s not something that comes naturally, and in fact, I think being self-critical was a saving grace in my early adolescence. The heightened sensitivity I have toward other’s reactions, especially those exuding disappointment (real or perceived), makes it incredibly difficult for me to take criticism - or worse, critique without action. Just the other day, I spent a whole two hours of class disconnected and upset because my teacher had sighed “no” and shook his head when I asked if I had made this pottery feature correctly (granted, I think that was a pretty unempathetic reaction to someone who is learning, but my point is that I took it more personally than I would’ve liked). For the whole day after my defense presentation, I was fixated on the way I had answered two (out of maybe 20) questions (one antagonistically, one with half the answer) and the congratulatory messages and affirmations from my committee felt fake, ladened with hidden judgement and disappointment. There is such sadness in thinking about all of us in this way; them for being the kind of person who would offer false niceties, me for being a failure because I was not perfect. I don’t predict a solution to this tendency, besides recognition of this pattern and seeing that the recovery to reality is shorter and shorter every time. I’m glad that two weeks later, I was able to sit in my advisor’s office and receive a compliment on passing the defense with flying colors, and feel really, genuinely proud again. One of the important cognitive development leaps for college students is the ability to recognize themselves as an authority in their life, one who can make choices and decisions for themselves, even when it contradicts with other authority figures. In ways, I feel as if I’m still learning that skill. Listening to myself feels terrifying - if something goes wrong, I would have to take responsibility for my decisions, and there is a deep shame associated with making a mistake, of not thinking things through (I can practically hear my father’s voice here). Making a decision that went sideways (due to my control or not) feels inseparable from being wrong.
As I’m growing up (and I truly feel like I aged 5 years this semester, or maybe it’s being 25?), I’m learning to place more trust in my ability to overcome challenges than my ability to avoid them. Self-trust has been a major theme, and I heard once that intuition is something that will be lost if you don’t listen to and honor it. That made me fearful, then confused, because maybe I never had an intuition in the first place? Is that possible? For every thought I have, there’s another, almost immediate, and just as loud, that disagrees and says well, what if? And then to that thought, there’s another, and so on. Sometimes it feels a bit like social pressure - the voice one learns to internalize - vs. my true voice, but then other times it becomes virtually impossible to distinguish the two. So I do feel like sometimes my intuition is something that is quite hard to grasp, but probably there, and all the time like an aloof presence I’m trying to court. Related to my struggle with self-critique, I think the lack of intuition is in large part due to my deep discomfort with making decisions and the need to evaluate all my options carefully; the other part I chalk up to being a Virgo-Libra cusp. I even think this indecision (or anxiety around decisions) is something that has gotten worse with age, as decisions become more important and time feels like it’s running out for all us 20-something year olds. Back in college, taking one internship over the other just meant that I’ll go somewhere else next summer. Now, decisions alter finances, career, and life in sometimes very unpredictable ways. And now here’s the other voice coming out: isn’t it wonderful that we live a life full of unpredictable possibilities?