The Strange Side Effects of Getting a PhD

The PhD experience has been, for me, basically a series of existential crises. The problem with getting a PhD in the humanities is that you go all in on a very insecure future. You leave your friends, your family, your beloved town in the mountains, and you arrive in a swampy new city, missing everything you left behind. Professors warned you that the job market was terrible, that the jobs themselves were scarce, and that, even if you got the job, the workload was intense and poorly compensated, but you were too used to being the exception, the exceptional one who got the awards, the scholarships, the teaching positions, the acceptances to PhD programs, so you block it out. But then, each month that you spend in this new swampy town that you just can't quite love or feel at home in, reality sets in just a little bit more. As you see classes of PhDs graduate and only one might get "the job," or you watch people walk away from the program entirely and you're just a little envious, or you notice that the people who are getting "the jobs" are going up on the job market for 3-5 years before they get a position, you start to question and doubt everything. I mean, you've put ALL of your eggs in this basket, and its a shoddy basket. Meanwhile, while your future looks bleaker and more insecure, you watch your friends buy houses, travel, start families, etc. and you are plagued by FOMO. Again, professors warned me of this, but I just wasn't mentally prepared for it. Few people know this, but when I passed my exams, I reacted by hysterical sobbing. It all seemed so meaningless. I put so much stress and work into getting to this moment and it seemed like such a waste of time. Needless to say, I was not in a good or healthy place then. I wasn't in a good or healthy place for much of the last few years.

I've spent a lot of time in my PhD program looking back over my shoulder, turning into a pillar of salt, as I berated myself: I should have gone to U of A, because then I would have been close to my family and friends while I had these existential crises. I should have gone to Illinois State, because their program prioritizes teaching more and I now know I prefer teaching to research. I should have never gotten the damn PhD. I should have looked for jobs after the masters. I should have become a high school teacher. I should have become a lawyer. You name a past decision I pondered, and I thought I should have done the other thing. The thing that did not put me where I am.

I thought about leaving, but my ego didn't want to have this move, all of these crises, be "for nothing." I needed the degree to justify all of those choices I now regretted. And so, I then responded by shutting down any of my hopes in this career plan. I am not going to apply for anything in academia, I said. I want job security! I want work/life balance! I'll become a librarian, a HS teacher, anything that will hire me. All of these things are true. I do value work/life balance. I do want job security, but it is not necessarily true that you can't have these things in any job in academia. I was being hyperbolic out of self-defense because I did not want to put myself up for something with such a high rate of rejection.

In the mean time, I responded to my constant crises with some soul-searching. In my first year here, I had a crisis of faith, and left the type of churches I grew up attending. Now, I am perfectly at peace in a new church home, one that is progressive, that welcomes doubts and intellectual challenges to dogmatic beliefs, and allows for mystery. I am now a person that does yoga almost daily and believes in the power of reciting mantras and setting positive affirmations. I meditate. In other words, it is well with my soul. I also started making an effort to stay in touch with those back home, sending notes and little cards, letting them know that I think of them often even though I am not with them often. And that helped. I adopted two more animals. I'm not saying that it was done for healthy reasons, but my pets also bring me a lot of joy. And I started to realize that all of these things matter to me much more than any career. Finally, finally, I was able to come to a healthier place of peace and self-forgiveness this past Spring semester. The constant meltdowns of being in a PhD program pushed me to do so much work on my self and find ways in which I am in control of my own happiness and not relying on outside markers of status and success that I was finally able to stop berating myself for pursuing the PhD in the first place.

Once I reached a better place, where I am at peace with my faith and spirituality, with my family and home life, with my dreams of the future, etc, my productivity returned. I'm back on a regular pace of writing. I presented at a conference. I'm back into the groove of things, and, with that, my ego returned. Last week after the conference, I got a follow-up email from a professor I've never met but have a lot of respect for about the research I presented. It was one of the moments when I think, okay, sometimes I am good at this academia thing. I love teaching, and I think I am good at it. I hate the constant rejection and revision of the research side, but sometimes, like when I submit a dissertation chapter that I feel pretty good about, and I've sent off the final proofs on a chapter in an edited collection, and I receive positive affirmation about a conference presentation, I think I can do this. So, of course, because I am me, this resurgence of my confidence caused me to panic. I had already decided tor reject this! I don't want to want this. I don't want the rejection of the academic job market. And so, I vision boarded, like the true introspective hippie I've become.

When I reflected on what components I need to be happy in the future, to be secure, the answers came easily. I need a steady spiritual practice and I want to grow in my convictions and right actions in that arena. I want to live in a landscape I love. I need to see the sky. I need elevation changes on the horizon. I need to see mountains, and I'd love to be in the mountains, because I want to spend more time outdoors, but I am a picky bitch about which outdoors landscapes I enjoy. I don't like flat land and I do not care about beaches. I want a home. A place that is our own, with a small yard for the dogs, and space to host visitors. And I need to be closer to my friends and family. Matt and I have set a goal of no more than 15 hours of driving time away from Gilbert, so that we can put all the animals in the car and get home in one day of driving. And as far as the job goes? I'd like to still teach or work directly with students. The only thing that I need out of a job is the feeling that I am impacting someone or something. That my skills are helping someone directly. That's why I like teaching. So, I'll apply for some college teaching jobs, some secondary teaching jobs, and some college advising positions, and I want to learn more about Children's Librarian programming positions. If I don't get the fanciest jobs, that is totally FINE because what I've realized is that what I do to pay the rent and get health insurance matters so little to me in the scope of things.

These are not things I knew or thought I needed when I chose to leave Arizona for a PhD program in Florida. I was going to be the career woman who didn't marry until my late 30s, if at all, who moved across the country in pursuit of ambitious career goals. Of course, Matt came along way too early for my plans, so I accepted that I would be a young married person, but I still thought career goals topped everything else for me. And now, thanks to four years of breakdowns, and yoga, and meditation, and general navel gazing, I know that what I need is to just live somewhere I love, somewhere I can go outside and enjoy nature, somewhere with good local food and closer to our friends and family. I am motivated to finish the degree, not for the career opportunities it will bring, but because it means we are free to move on and find the right place for us.

Being in a PhD program was so much harder and stranger than I ever could have imagined, but it turned out to be the perfect reason to sort out my priorities, and for that I am grateful.