Stepping Into the Abyss
As with most aspects of the doctoral program, defending and uploading your dissertation
do not give you a roadmap back into civilian life. Directions and Doctoral
Student are never part of the same utterance. People want to call you 'Dr.' and
someone is perpetually asking, "Is it official, yet?"
When the defense ends and everyone hangs up from the Zoom call, there are an
array of texts pinging on your phone. You type quickly, "I think it went well." or
"At least Dr. Dodds liked the found poems." Also, "Yes, there are revisions and
I have to add a sixth chapter." Eventually the pinging ends and your husband is
hugging you with the wine glasses in his hands. You toast, drink, and he buys
you something from the internet. There have been gifts for each of the milestones.
You needed them.
Swearing to yourself and other cohort members that you would jump right on the edits
after your defense now seems like a bad dream or a minor case of possession. Even though
your chair took nice, simplified notes, even though you've written a couple hundred
pages in academic writing, even though you wrote the literature review at least three
different times, your body freezes whenever you even catch the slight silvery glint of
the MacBookPro. Each time you take the writerly pose and settle with your fresh cup
of vanilla bean french press, your body starts slo-mo convulsions, a cold sweat appears
across your forehead, and the smell of fear sinks you into a post-defense-paralysis.
Each year, there are mythic tales told about previous cohorts. One girl went
through two pregnancies and she still defended and uploaded on time. Someone fought
off cancer. Others lived in their cars and finished the program. No tales exist of
a student passing with a brilliant defense and then suffering from late-onset dysgraphia.
Somehow you fight through the weeks (maybe months) of desolation and attack the
edits head-on. It is not as bad as eating the cold spinach as a child that you stared
at for at least an hour. Some of the edits are fun. Finally, your chair is satisfied
and she sends out the GS-13 from to your committee members. You upload to ProQuest
and you wait for that final confirmation. Something more must happen. It is anti-climatic
to the degree that you don't post anything to your socials. You are left with the same
question that everyone at work has been asking, Is it official, yet>
keywords
- unknown
- paralysis
- desolation
