Last week I got the full draft of my dissertation boxed up and out of here, which was a big milestone. Although I face revisions over the next few months, I can now truthfully say the worst is behind me. When I started the blog two years ago, I said I wanted to have fun with the dissertation, and that I doubted anything good would come of it if I didn't have fun.
So, was it fun?
So, was it fun?
Well . . . parts of it were sort of fun, but not fun like a day at the beach or at King's Island. It was more like the fun you experience at the end of a run, when you feel good about what you just did but don't really want to go back and do it again.
When I was in the middle of my coursework, I sometimes imagined that writing the dissertation would be a luxury since I would "just" be concentrating on one project instead of juggling a class schedule and a job. The truth of the matter is that being in school was easier in some ways, namely because of the built-in deadlines, the regular trips to our beautiful campus, and the camaraderie of classmates. The end of that sustained contact with my cohort left me in a lonely spot, isolated at home with my books, like a female version of St. Jerome with a Starbucks card and a laptop.
In such a situation, it's easy to doubt yourself and wonder if you'll ever find a way to pull together all the disparate information you've been gathering into some kind of coherent whole, much less write the elegant and persuasive manuscript of your dreams. The more you read, the more you feel you need to read. You imagine someone poking holes in all your arguments and wonder if you'll be able to get through the defense without resort to smelling salts.
I hear stories from friends about life events derailing their research, and I'm grateful that at least I've got it all down on paper. A year ago, I was exhausted after writing the first two chapters. I just had to let it stew for a while while I traveled and cleared my head, thinking of the best way to get from Madison to St. Louis, or where to eat dinner my first night in Seattle, or whether to stay in a bed and breakfast or a hotel in New Orleans. Then, when I did start writing again, I had to fight my way tooth and nail out of the bog of Chapter 3, an epic struggle that makes me think I now understand how Jacob felt after wrestling the angel.
Was it that intimidatingly masterful book on the labyrinth and the Middle Ages that threw me? The remoteness of the period? My relative lack of expertise in medieval studies? Looking back now, I think it may have been a needling feeling that there was something I needed to unearth, a basic way in which I disagreed with some of the conclusions I was reading, which hadn't come to the surface yet. Eventually, it was an immense relief just to recognize that I disagreed with one of my experts and could stand my ground on it.
The fun parts of the dissertation came fleetingly, when an idea would occur to me in midstream, like the way The Woman in White showed up in Chapter 5 and Bruce Springsteen materialized in Chapter 7. I mean, seriously, who would have ever thought of Bruce Springsteen ending up in someone's dissertation on labyrinths? (He's in there because of Tunnel of Love.) I also had the pleasure of not only writing about A Midsummer Night's Dream but finding research that supported my decision to put it in Chapter 4.
When I finished the proposal, someone asked me if I didn't feel a sense of accomplishment. I said that I couldn't really relax because I knew how much more I needed to do to improve it. I have a similar feeling now, knowing where the shortcomings are and the places that could use a bit more work. It's hard to know when to stop with such a big project, but eventually you run up against that ticking clock, and it forces you, willy-nilly, to let go.
Maybe this is what it feels like to be a parent, watching that little one toddle off to school for the first time, convinced that he's way too young to be out there in the world. As you watch, considering calling him back for one more hug, he disappears into the building without a backward glance, and the door closes behind him. You're left on the sidewalk, waving vacantly at an empty schoolyard, wondering how in the world you got there so soon.
