eve11 | On occasion of getting my bound disseratation copies (Reply)

In 2008-2010 I had somewhat resigned myself to the fact that even though I had promised myself I would finish and make it count, that I didn't really know how or if it would happen. I saw no path forward that ended well, no way to complete the rat-hole project I was in to any level of satisfaction that would warrant a degree. I had spent 6 years in grad school and 2-3 more at a job, ABD, with no dissertation done, a huge mess of code, a huge mess of writing that was unintelligible, and a project that I hated so much I'd not even looked at anything for like 18 months. My deadline for giving up crept forward and I just let it come. I don't think I could have gotten out of the rut on my own. I had an idea in my head that I would be a PhD Math Chick and I was poised to fail. I didn't want to be the person who couldn't finish. What the fuck was wrong with me? All of my friends finished, years ago. And yet here I was, running from this shit project because I'd screwed it up so badly. I had lots of little commitments that were eating away at me, and I was going to fail the biggest one there was. There was guilt, but I more got this brain-dead feeling whenever I tried to start work on it, where I blinked and discovered I'd been playing Minesweeper for hours. I couldn't focus.

And then I got coaxed out of it, kind of crisis-like, by the person who would become my new advisor. In spring 2010 I had an extremely nerve-wracking meeting with my ex-advisor and the head of the department, where I had to decide to abandon the topic I'd had brewing for six years, and start again with a project I'd been working on for work, for only a year. I panicked so much my head was light, I was crying so hard my eyes were puffy and my face was numb. And I think my ex-advisor knew i'd been having difficulties, but the head of the department . . . he had absolutely no idea how much my failure at that project had been paralyzing me. I think he was actually quite shocked. He had kept saying, "your first topic is so close to being finished" and I couldn't see it at all and was afraid that it would be "finish that topic or don't finish." But both my advisor and the department head basically said, "If you need to change topics to finish, then yes, do that." The longer I let it hang in the air--bad project, not a bad advisor but one that I wasn't compatible with, some lacking skills on my part, bad head-space--the harder it was to hit stop and re-route. If only I'd picked the right thing back in 2004, or not let it go for another 4 years of running, etc... But I had to do something, or I was staring straight at failure.

I changed topics. I abandoned the commitments I'd made for that research and moved forward. I felt so much better. It was a huge relief to say, "okay, that one... that one flew and I fucked it up and faced it, and I've learned from it and will do better next time." I had to show my face at the department again which was nerve-wracking because I still felt like a disappointment. I changed advisors from one who left me be on my own (so I could stick my head in the sand and run away from the work), to one who met with me for lunch every. single. week. And who made sure that even when I was feeling my wheels spinning, I had a plan for what to do next, and above all I was always moving forward.

The research and coding and minutia of the topic were less important than the skills I learned for organizing data, writing code, designing repeatable visualizations, keeping track of all the notation and stupid bits of my dissertation document, and keeping myself on track.

I had fic ideas rattling in my brain. I have a story I committed to for

livii three years ago that I've not gotten to yet, and it's still on my to-do list. At one point last year I was so hell-bent on wanting to finish my WIP-o-Doom (still WIP) for

clocketpatch and others--they were waiting; I'd posted parts of this story and it was taking up my brain and I couldn't set it down. I honestly thought, "I'm going to write a Doctor Who fanfic novel in my life and not a statistics dissertation. Fuck. Am I okay with that?" And of course, that looks ridiculous when I write it out. The commitments to my online friends, much as I love them, aren't at the same level as commitments to my future and to who I want to be.

I asked my advisor at one lunch date, "What do you do when you have an idea in your head and your brain won't let you think on anything else?" and he said basically, "Whatever do you mean, your 'brain won't let you'? I am the boss of my brain." He also said, in life, you should only have one to-do list, and everything goes on that list. Sometimes that worked for me, sometimes not. I guess I'm a little more of a romantic or daydreamer than my advisor, but I'm not a famous emeritus professor, and don't think I will ever be one. I think, however much I hate to admit it, that if it hadn't been for him, I would have failed.

So I did it, the way I had to. Built up piece by piece, dot the i's cross the t's, go back to all the stuff I thought I couldn't learn, and give it a big push at the end. Defended with 11 days to spare before my time ran out for being able to graduate. It's not perfect. It took 12 years and two tries, a fuck-ton of mistakes. There went the bulk of my twenties, and the first half of my thirties. My sisters both have kids; I have cats, and a dissertation entitled "Behavioral Modeling of Botnet Populations Viewed Through Internet Protocol Address Space" that no-one but my committee will likely read. The research is middling and completely impractical, and it will likely never be used.

I'm still stupidly proud of it. The way I got there is shite, but I can't dwell on it. I got there, the committee signed off, and I learned a set of things that I think the folks that go through straight in 5-6 years might not have learned. I just got the bound copies yesterday. I hate that they say 2012. I still wonder if it is "really" worthy or if it's some kind of make-do. But hey, the most important lessons I learned had nothing to do with what made it into those pages anyway.