Year 1: you made it into the PhD program. You can now relax. You tell yourself brilliance takes its time to show up. If you move to a different country, you travel around non-stop, show up at random classes making interventions that are incomprehensible to your own mind, meanwhile you move in alone for the first time, pile up dirty clothes in the left corner and pizza boxes in the right corner. You soon refer to them as the “Towers”, and think of writing a sequel to The Lord of the Rings. Maybe you will be one of those scholars who write novels, too.
Year 2: you still believe you have time, but even gallivanting gets tiring. You cut the traveling and the partying, promise yourself to never use the credit card again over $500 / month, imagine yourself swimming happily in your new life of reclusion, living on books and thoughtful solitary moments. In reality, you have subscribed to Netflix, Hulu, Disney, and motivate your writing with “one last episode”. On good days, you even compose a song under the shower on the theme “one last episode.”
Year 3: now time is getting short. Your advisor asks for results. You open your “work projects” folder filled with hope, until you realize that what you have falls within these three categories: docs with a single, vague sentence on potential research topics; random copy-and-paste paragraphs from sources that you are not even able to find; doodles of your classmates taken in class instead of listening to the professor. At the time you thought you had some talent. Now you cannot even tell if you were drawing persons or mythological creatures half-human half-animal. You thank yourself for not applying to art school and think of bad precedents set up by those rejected. You recall Dressed to Kill, and spend the next 5 hours watching Eddie Izzard’s stand ups.
Year 4: you apply endlessly for fellowships, justifying them with your love for research. In reality, you need time and money. And you have not used the #travelgram for some time.
Year 5: you are in a new university, working as "research fellow", a title that now makes you feel old compared to the fresh “exchange student.” You wonder if you should be in a stable, healthy relationship. Time to download Tinder? After all, there is only one Bright Lights, Big City, and you ain’t part of it.
Year 6: somehow, you have actually learned something. You spend one to two week wondering how; two more days depressed thinking how much you could have learned had you been a dedicated student; two more convincing yourself you can do it now. You sit down, start writing bits and pieces and somehow the number of pages keeps growing. You call it a “dissertation.” Your mother asks what you work about, you give a long-winded complicated answer to hide the truth: you have no idea. After 7 months, somehow it is submitted.
Onto the next job. The next 6 years of Sisyphos-syndrome.
Year 2: you still believe you have time, but even gallivanting gets tiring. You cut the traveling and the partying, promise yourself to never use the credit card again over $500 / month, imagine yourself swimming happily in your new life of reclusion, living on books and thoughtful solitary moments. In reality, you have subscribed to Netflix, Hulu, Disney, and motivate your writing with “one last episode”. On good days, you even compose a song under the shower on the theme “one last episode.”
Year 3: now time is getting short. Your advisor asks for results. You open your “work projects” folder filled with hope, until you realize that what you have falls within these three categories: docs with a single, vague sentence on potential research topics; random copy-and-paste paragraphs from sources that you are not even able to find; doodles of your classmates taken in class instead of listening to the professor. At the time you thought you had some talent. Now you cannot even tell if you were drawing persons or mythological creatures half-human half-animal. You thank yourself for not applying to art school and think of bad precedents set up by those rejected. You recall Dressed to Kill, and spend the next 5 hours watching Eddie Izzard’s stand ups.
Year 4: you apply endlessly for fellowships, justifying them with your love for research. In reality, you need time and money. And you have not used the #travelgram for some time.
Year 5: you are in a new university, working as "research fellow", a title that now makes you feel old compared to the fresh “exchange student.” You wonder if you should be in a stable, healthy relationship. Time to download Tinder? After all, there is only one Bright Lights, Big City, and you ain’t part of it.
Year 6: somehow, you have actually learned something. You spend one to two week wondering how; two more days depressed thinking how much you could have learned had you been a dedicated student; two more convincing yourself you can do it now. You sit down, start writing bits and pieces and somehow the number of pages keeps growing. You call it a “dissertation.” Your mother asks what you work about, you give a long-winded complicated answer to hide the truth: you have no idea. After 7 months, somehow it is submitted.
Onto the next job. The next 6 years of Sisyphos-syndrome.