A Few Marbles Short

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I’m stubborn, it’s a well known fact.

I’m stubborn and I don’t walk away from much without finishing, unless I see it as pointless. And even then I will probably try to tie up loose ends because I hate unfinished business. I don’t really believe in failure, just opportunities to try again and get it right the second, or third, time around. I suppose that’s why I am surprised when people don’t finish what they start or give up before they’ve really given something a fair shake.

A few days ago someone I didn’t know that well, and hadn’t seen in about ten years, showed up. It was nice to see him again and find out what he’d been up to since retiring. He asked, “Did (so and so) ever get his PhD?”

“No” I replied, “ …walked away from it in the final writing stage.”

“Why?”

A good question. In this particular case I do know why. The person in question had asked me for some tips on writing the thesis and included in my advice had been “Find your story and tell it.” That may sound trite, but a good thesis does tell a story. The individual gave up shortly after and when I’d asked why, the response had been “The committee didn’t like my story.”

That’s it?

Well rewrite it then!

You have to be kidding me!

A thesis isn’t written in one shot. That’s what your committee is there for, to help you find the flawed assumptions, to poke holes in your conclusions, to find all the things you overlooked in your analyses. Basically they are there to make your thesis document bleed with red ink.

Why?

To make it better, of course.

A PhD is like walking a labyrinth. There are dead ends and some backtracking involved. But if you stick with it the circles decrease in size and you will eventually find the centre and make it out the other side, hopefully with your sanity intact.

The committee members also have their name attached to that final document, so their reputations are also part of the package. By the time they say it’s ready to defend then you know that you have met their high standards and, assuming you don’t blow the defence by freezing up and forgetting everything that you have spent the past five years or more becoming the world expert on, you will have demonstrated to them that you are academically prepared to be a part of that community; you have established that you have moved beyond the student stage to become a peer. It’s a process and, when I look back on it, it’s not a fun process. It’s a humbling process, at times a humiliating process. It can be a shitty process. It engenders anxiety and stress that can be unbearable at some points. For some people it is a mentally anguishing process and we should more actively support mental health in graduate students (Why We Need to Talk More About Mental Health in Graduate School). But if you stick it out and find a way through, it’s an empowering process. Anyone who thinks that doing a PhD is somehow avoiding the real world and slacking off should try doing one, better yet…try completing one.

It’s years of blood, sweat, tears, anxiety, sleeplessness, mental self-flagellation, and shitty income.

But oddly worthwhile. At least in retrospect.

I was astounded that one rejection had sidelined an entire PhD degree. How does one get that far into a program and never suffer the requisite roadblocks that make one a better thinker, that make one surmount challenges that serve to demonstrate the fortitude needed to successfully navigate graduate school. It’s not a ‘paid my fees get my degree’ sort of thing. It’s a process, not a product.

Different people do a PhD for different reasons.

Curiosity.

Drive to learn as much as possible about one topic.

Masochism.

Better income (good luck with that one).

Need to feel superior (I know a couple of those).

Just generally being a few marbles short of a bag……

Walking away seemed so…defeatist…to me anyway. Some people probably walk away because their goals change somewhere along the line. Or maybe they find a job that fires them up but doesn’t need the degree. But I still don’t think I could have ‘not-finished’.

“Couldn’t handle any criticism” was my response.

“Sounds about right” was his response.

Topic over.

We moved on to his criticism of a well known researcher, and my defence of the same individual, with acknowledgement that I had spent some time despising him before discovering a different side.

But the conversation highlighted something that seems to be less and less common; behavioural fortitude.

Why do some people find ways to overcome roadblocks through hard work and significant effort, while others just dismiss the process or the people presenting the challenge as soon as the wall is reached. I realize it’s harder to climb the wall than it is to look for an easier route, but sometimes the wall is worth climbing if for no other reason than personal satisfaction at succeeding.

We have become terrified of failure.

We fear being wrong.

We are scared of embarrassment.

Instead of curious and open dialogue, we dismiss, argue, or slander.

Instead of falling back and regrouping, making changes to our views or our opinions, we dig in and assure ourselves that somehow the failure was theirs and not ours; we tell ourselves that the other party couldn’t see our worth.

Well maybe they could, and maybe that’s why they were constructively criticizing, so we could improve and produce an even better end product than our first attempt generated.

We all have flaws, we can all improve, there is always some little (or big) thing that someone else can point out to enhance…..pretty much anything. But all some people seem to be able to focus on is the negative, all they can hear is ‘not good enough.’

I grew up hearing “That’s great, now if only you tried harder just think how much better it could be!” I hated those words, I hated how they made me feel. Never quite good enough no matter what I did or how hard I tried, even if they were preceded with ‘I’m proud of you’. But instead of making me give up, they made me try harder. Unfortunately they also stole a lot of joy from my achievements and gave me imposter syndrome, but that’s a different discussion.

Some of today’s youth grew up with participation ribbons, completion marks instead of letter grades, a backlash against report cards, hearing that they could be anything and have everything.

But we can’t have everything, no one can.

I spend a lot of time writing for work. If I was afraid of criticism I could simply never produce anything that could be criticized. Or I could spend too much time on any one thing, trying to perfect it so that there would be no criticism. Or I could write something and get criticized and then give up on that product. I work with someone who seems to use all three of those strategies to end up doing something that ranges between virtually nothing and comparatively little – he is utterly unproductive. He seems to think he is busy, or maybe just tries to seem busy, but he’s just “make-busy” and produces absolutely nothing.

I opt for the ‘do the best I can with the timeframe at hand and don’t ignore the other requests coming in’ approach and then field things out to colleagues to tear apart and find flaws while I cycle through the next tasks and wait for feedback on what’s out there. Outsourcing drafts to others tends to result in a better product than I could probably produce in complete isolation. Many minds and many experiences are collectively better than just mine alone. They bring experiences and perspectives that I don’t necessarily have a history in and help me be productive.

Criticism can help build better products, if only we can admit that we aren’t perfect and realize that others can help us grow and improve on just about anything we are working on. We just have to be humble and recognize our own limitations, and not give up at the first hint of opposition.