Thoughts on my PhD

Well, the paperwork is all done, the edits were approved, the graduate program approved everything, and I’m all done.  (Well, I will still be writing up my research and submitting to journals to try to get it published.  But the required stuff is all done.)

I still can’t believe it!  It has been a hard road.  I was getting really discouraged there at the end – I actually almost took a leave of absence in January because I felt like I had no energy left, but I decided to just do half-time research instead.  The first couple years, pre-kids weren’t too bad (although I was pregnant with Andrew my entire second year of grad school) though the coursework was tough because I think my undergrad was a little less rigorous than most of the foreign students.

But I knew once I had kids, that I wanted to be, for the most part, a stay at home mom.  I was planning on quitting with my Masters when he was born, but then there was a kink – I was awarded a National Science Foundation graduate research fellowship.  They are really prestigious and I just felt like I couldn’t pass up the opportunity.  Especially since my advisor was so understanding.  So, I figured I would give it a semester.

The first semester was AWFUL.  Andrew had severe separation anxiety, and I would only leave him at the sitter when I had class (I had two classes after Andrew was born … I really was mostly just doing research), but he would cry the entire time!  The entire time.  By Halloween, the babysitter had quit.  I mostly quit attending class and just managed to get through the semester.  Yuck.  Thankfully, the last class I took was an evening Public Policy class and that wasn’t a big deal at all.

But every time I would try to quit, my advisor said I should think it through and keep trying.  I am a really bad quitter, so that is pretty much what I did.  It was REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY hard.  I didn’t complain TOO much on this blog, but I complained all the time to Katsu.

Except for when Andrew was 1-2 years (so about one year) when we had a regular sitter for 9 hours a week, I had no consistent babysitting.  Just now and then for meetings with my advisor.  And of course, by the time we moved here, I did those all over Skype.  And that is what I wanted.  I wanted to be a stay-at-home mom and I didn’t want a graduate program that I didn’t completely love to get in the way.  There are parts of my research that I really liked – the calculus, some of the coding.  But it is definitely not my passion.  I love teaching, but I never did much of that in graduate school because I always had fellowships (thank heavens – I don’t know when I would have time to teach).

But trying to get in 20-30 or more hours of research in a week without any babysitting (or very little) is REALLY hard.  With Andrew it was easier.  He took 3 hour naps on my lap every afternoon and I would work then.  Sometimes, I would try to get 2 hours of work in before Katsu went to work.  And I worked every weekday evening and every Saturday.  Almost every single one for the past 4 years since the kids were born.  I would work till I was so tired and it was time to crash every night.

With two kids, it was much much harder.  I worked some mornings but not once Andrew started preschool.  It was too hard.  And I worked every evening.  And I got more and more tired.  Plus, I lived states away and that it makes it much harder to be motivated.  And two kids and pregnant and trying to finish the dissertation … yikes – that was really hard, but thankfully, a sister in the ward would watch the kids while I worked in her basements most mornings for a month or so there.

And now it was done.  I thought I would just be embarrassed when I was done.  It took me 6 years (it’s supposed to be 5 years, but actually 6 is still pretty common, that includes the Masters as well), I still don’t feel like a total expert on MRI (although I feel like I have finally got a good grasp of MRI physics … yikes, MRI physics and me have been struggling together for a good 5 years), my dissertation is pretty straightforward and not too exciting, and I still don’t know what I am doing for the rest of my life. 

But you know what?  I am so proud of myself.  It was really hard, but I did it, and I did it my way – while still being at home with my kids.  And no matter, as someone in my department said, you can’t take a PhD away and usually you only ever get one of those in your life (thank heavens).  It’s a big deal.  And I’m proud.