I did it - I have successfully finished one year of doctoral study! Let me tell you, those last couple of weeks there were just a question of trying to survive... Survival included no days off from spring break until the end of finals and my first ever migraine. Clearly, I'm getting that this whole doctoral training thing is not for the faint of heart (or brain). 

I took all of last week off to recover and seriously needed every bit of it. I couldn't handle listening to music for a few weeks there and haven't had coffee in almost a month (with the exception of that ill-fated migraine day). There was so much I was trying to synthesize and so much that needed to be accomplished in a small period of time, that I couldn't take any additional stimulation. Hell, the last day of finals, I ended up walking halfway across campus because I didn't know what to do with myself and then working out for a while before I could even take the nap I desperately needed. This is actually the first time I'm writing anything more complicated than a text message since finals ended. 

I was tired. 

It wasn't until I started dreaming again a couple of nights ago that it occurred to me that I'd stopped doing even that. My brain was fried and I hope not to go back to that again. Part of it is my own fault - I turned one of my final papers into a draft of a dissertation prospectus that I was certainly not ready to write but did anyway. It's not unhelpful - I have my progress review meeting this week and plan on talking to the committee about my initial dissertation thoughts to see if I'm heading in the right direction. 

Still. 

This is the first day I'm daring to get any work done and my poor little still-singed brain isn't super happy about this post, much less all the other things I will have to work on soon (like a grant application, a manuscript, and who knows what else at work when I make my way back into the office). 

It'll be like this for a while, I get that. I also get that rest is important. But as I make my way through this post, I'm also wondering how I'm going to do this summer. We've taken someone already biased toward action and put me on a steady diet of intellectual speed and academic angst. 


Awesome. 


And still, I'm plotting the books I'll read this summer once my brain is up to it, including what I'll reward myself with if I make it through the books I already own. I might be hooked...

This semester has undoubtedly been busier than the last one, in part because of a much needed elective, but also because I've gotten enough of a lay of the land to take on an extra project and brainstorm things for this summer and start thinking through a dissertation topic (as elusive as that continues to be).

Sadly, I'm currently working most weekends. Gladly, I can see in realtime the new methodological skills I'm gaining and the more complex theoretical reasoning I'm doing about problems. In short, I'm starting to adopt that researcher/PhD student label as an actual part of who I am.

I'm about one week removed from the end of my first semester of doctoral study. In talking with my sister a few days ago, she pointed out that I didn't sound like I had all that much fun.

Hmm.

Initially, I agreed with her assessment - I was tired, felt like I had little to show for a semester of never-ending work, and was in a department that had a vastly different approach to education from what I was expecting or wanted. 

But there was still nowhere else I would rather have spent the last several months. Trust me, I asked myself that question repeatedly throughout the semester and pretty much daily around finals...

So being the person that I am, I decided to make a list of first semester thoughts/feelings.

Things I feel like I learned this semester:

• How to write research questions and hypotheses in the department way
• How to take a more systematic approach to variables and measures
• The criteria for making causal inferences
• Strengths and weaknesses of various study designs
• A little about that Rose guy's thoughts on population health
• Some stuff about migration health that might actually help in my dissertation
• International development pretty much ruins countries (which in all honesty I strongly suspected anyway)

Looking at it, that doesn't seem like such a bad list. If another first semester PhD were to run off that list for me, I might even go so far as to say that was a solid list of stuff to have learned in the first semester. 

So what's my deal?

There's a part of me that feels like I have sooooo far to get in just a few years that I should've learned more, contributed more to research projects, and have made more progress toward developing my initial thoughts around a dissertation idea. Its even worse when I look at some of the things more advanced doctoral students in my department have done. Plus I had to do way more rote memorization that I believe in this semester (since I believe at this level I should be doing ZERO memorization). 

Sigh.

Ok, maybe it was a decent semester and I'm taking some of my own joy away and replacing it with illogical angst... 

You'd think I'd be more used to going from big fish-little pond to little fish-big pond since I do it so often. 

Well, at least I have a few solid weeks of sleep, celebration, and general recuperation before I have to jump back in again. After all, I continue to want this above all else.

I swear, sometimes grad school makes me feel like an untamed horse fighting against a bridle...

I managed to get my first bad grade of doctoral study over the Thanksgiving break, just in time to shake all confidence as I enter my first finals season of doctoral study. Sigh.

Now that I've spent the majority of the day letting myself be angry about what I consider to be a rote memorization and verbatim regurgitation approach to education, I can look (slightly) more objectively at the ill-fated assignment. It was basically an issue of detail and clarity (they wanted more of both). 

This is where my bad-student-ness comes in... I know I know the material. I don't think I should have to recite PowerPoint lectures back at people to prove that I can make a decision about an appropriate study design for a research question. At no point in life (except of course during the next two years) will I be asked to know any of this information from memory. Instead, I will be expected to know where to get the details I don't have top of mind and think through things critically. 

Obviously, I favor Einstein's notion that education should train us to think rather than focus on learning (read: memorizing) facts.

But alas, none of my pedagogical or ideological feelings about education (regardless of how passionate I might be about them) are going to change the fact that I am in the program that I'm in and that in order to get through said program I must prove that I'm a good memorizer and spitter-backer of things. I have to accept the bit and the bridle if I want the degree. 

And while I also spent a handful of hours today questioning my decision to pursue said degree, the sad fact still remains that I would still rather be here, doing this exact thing, than anywhere else. I even hit up the student store sale today to reinforce my commitment to the journey and program with some university swag. 

A little retail therapy never hurt anyone. Plus, it's almost my birthday. 

Funny thing happened on the way to a secondary analysis this week - I was triggered about a thing I didn't even personally endure (and therefore wasn't expecting).

Even now, I wonder whether I should write about it or not since part of me feels silly and another part of me just wants it to go away so I can get back to work. But I figure if I were a would-be doc student reading this blog, these little things are the kinds of things I'd want to know.

I'm currently working on an analysis of Latino teens' perceptions of power dynamics and how they can be altered when a child has more English proficiency than their parent (particularly when it comes to health[care] and stress). Many of the participants came over to the US as children and we're recounting their stories. Simultaneously, one of our classes was talking about migration this week in a class that I was to co-facilitate. Somewhere in the week, I had entered a funk that I figured was because of end-of-semester tiredness. That is until I was reading through one of the stories about a kid remembering the hundreds of graves he saw as he walked for days to cross the border. And I thought about our readings for class and that included an ethnography conducted in a migrant labor camp with abhorrent social and living conditions. Then I thought about the stories I'd heard growing up about my own family's trips to the states. Especially my father, who is one of the central people in my life. And I thought about him coming over a decade younger than I am now, not knowing the language, not being able to get in touch with the family he was supposed to find, and not really sure what to do since he had just left his (possibly pregnant?) wife and baby to come here. I've heard his story a few times throughout my life about how some stranger came along and helped him figure out that my grandmother's phone had been disconnected, get ahold of their neighbor, and get bus ticket to get across the continent to his destination. I'd always taken it as a story of my father's perseverance, the ways that seemingly small gestures can change lives, and the divine intervention and guidance that contributes to my belief that my family is special. With the aid of an anthropologist I've never met and a young person who reminds me of the kid I used to be, I saw the other side of my father's story - how scared he must've been, how hard that journey was on him, how frightening the escalating civil war was that pushed my parents to decide to leave their home, and how helpless someone can feel in a new place. My dad - the man who so often in life has been my rock, my rescuer, and my inspiration - was once just another scared kid willing to step out into an abyss for the sake of his new family. My brothers who made the trip with my uncles when I was three and they were still single digit ages. My aunt who came as a teenager and talked about having to cross a cliff that had her scared for her life. Any one of them could've been lost forever on the trip and I wouldn't be who I am.

Then of course I thought about how I read and discuss Freire greedily and openly whereas my father went to hear him speak once and was scolded by my grandfather because that simple single act of listening put the lives of the entire family at risk. My dad's cousin who apparently lived in the mountains in El Salvador for years as part of the resistance.

My family and countless others like us represent generations of hard choices, lives lost, and somehow still enduring hope. The weight of it all...

I wasn't ready for all that to hit me at once. I thought it was just another week of grad school. Hell, I was watching Netflix while coding the teen's story.

Just goes to show how much other people's lives can teach us about ourselves.

This past week there was just enough of a lull in the insanity for me to delude myself into thinking that I have the hang of this whole PhD student thing. One discussion about manuscripts and funding later and I realize that was a cute albeit naïve thought, but it was still nice. The last few weeks of the semester between Thanksgiving and finals will be insane, but I might actually be learning to prioritize appropriately and balance work and rest.

Just in time for my schedule to completely change again...

It's a bit after midnight in the middle of the week. I've just finished making an ungodly amount of broccoli cheddar soup that I will likely be working my way through for the rest of the year.

While the soup was simmering, I was reading through a book I just got from the school library that was recommended by my Theory TA (and personal touchstone). It's the kind of book I'll have to read with my notebook at hand because just the introduction has me stupidly excited and a little sad that I'm getting sleepy.

I can't be too sad, though, because I want to be rested for my morning meeting with a researcher who I accosted at a faculty-doc student mixer early in the semester and then spoke with more when she gave a talk about her emerging research agenda. Whether she knows it or not (and she's bright so I suspect she's got an idea), I've decided we need to collaborate and be friends. We have similar backgrounds, similar research interests (though she's pretty firmly in HIV whereas I have been less so in recent years), and she just exudes an excitement about the work that fills any room she enters.

Yeah, I'm excited.

Great book, exciting meeting, yummy (though slightly salty but that's ok because I'll be freezing it) soup, and the beginning seeds of a dissertation idea (Including a recent decision to commit to primary data collection).

This is it; I'm living the dream. Yes, there's the drudgery of midterms and memorization but there's also the love of new ideas and thinking about big concepts and so much potential.

It really can be a great life if you let it (especially if it sneaks up on you).

Mental note: remember this feeling when things are looking bleak.

After a month-long absence (immediately after committing myself to writing once a week BTW), I'm not sure which I'd rather write about - the pain of midterms or the notion of finding a voice that I've been thinking about for a little while now. 

Let's start with something concrete like midterms and see how things go...

So... they happened. I survived (barely) and even went on a lovely and much-needed fall break to see friends and family while also managing to sleep more than I had in months. Thinking back on them, I somehow feel like they shouldn't have been as painful as they were. I mean, I've done midterms before, more of them at once in fact, and had things not be so draining. 

But in all fairness, this is also the first time I've done them at the same time I'm working at the breakneck speed of a doctoral student. The pace is just kind of incessant. I was commenting to someone (right before midterms now that I think about it) that I essentially hit the ground running Monday mornings and then sprinted to Fridays, at the end of which I was exhausted and spent the weekend rebuilding the reserves needed to do it all over again the next week. But add on top of that big ticket items like a methods midterm or theory paper and I'll accept that it might've been a lot for a lowly mortal.

What makes it so busy? It is and isn't the coursework. As any current or former grad student can attest to, there are fewer classes but there's typically more outside work. Our readings are voluminous, the amount of material being crammed into our brains is vast, and the rate at which we are asked to translate that into our own work is pretty insane. Then there is the inevitable assistantship (for most of us in the cohort it is research) that brings with it an entirely different (but hopefully related) set of tasks, readings, and skills. And the manuscripts which I can pretty comfortably say everyone is feeling pressured to work on to start to build our own portfolio. Publish or perish and whatnot. On top of which we're being asked to think about career trajectories, personal and professional epistemologies, strategizing coursework, brainstorming dissertation ideas, networking with faculty, and managing the countless other big philosophical and life questions. Heaven forbid you be thinking about personal relationships or starting a family in addition to all of that. 

Alright, fine, maybe writing it out helps me process why it was such a draining midterm season. Thanks for that, Dear Reader. 

I think that's all I've got for now. I'm currently thinking about Freire, empowerment vs. liberation vs. revolution vs. critical thought vs. problem posing, what that means for the courses I should take next semester, and what that says about what I'll eventually consider my voice as a researcher (or academic???). That's the finding voice stuff I alluded to at the beginning and have (just now) decided to save for another day.