I enrolled
in a doctoral program in the summer of 2006.
I have always been overly achievement motivated, and I was in a bit of a
career rut in the sense that I felt like I was out of ideas when it came to
helping certain students. But most
importantly, after 18 months of infertility I was ready for a new goal. I was tired of living by cycles. I thought a new goal would refocus me. Four days before my first class began I found
out I was pregnant with Avery. I stayed
in regardless of the then irrelevant real goal.
In the past year, as I have struggled to complete comps I wondered if I
made the right decision. I felt like I
had no real reason not to quit except for the need to save face.
A PhD
program is broken into three stages. The
first is course work. You take 75 plus
hours of graduate level courses. For me
this meant spending 1-2 nights away from home to sit and discuss scholarly
articles. Sometimes this felt undoable,
but looking back this was one of the easier parts. The discussions and chances to write were
invigorating. The readings caused
ongoing paradigm shifts. If I allow
myself to be totally honest, the socialization and snacks made for a nice break
from the challenges of home life at times.
Most importantly everything had a deadline imposed by someone else with
clear instructions. The summer I
committed to going part time at Oakland to knock out this course work I found
out I was pregnant with Tessa.
The next
step was comps. About two and a half
years ago I got five questions that I was supposed to answer through lengthy
writing after reading numerous texts.
This is supposed to take about six months. I could make many excuses for taking as long
as I did, but it all came down to simply not putting any effort into the
task. I would dabble here and there, but
ultimately I put anything and everything before this tedious task. Self-motivation is the hardest of all
motivations. Finally I told myself I was
calling my own bluff this summer. I gave
myself until the first week of September to finish because, really, when it
comes to goals you have to eventually say, “If not now – when?” The past months I have been locking myself up
Friday nights, leaving the family on Sundays and not turning on the TV after
bedtime. Last weekend I wondered if I
could make it. I kept thinking of marathon
runners. I wanted to know how you push
yourself to run the last three miles when the first 23.2 sucked the life out of
you. I reminded myself of my personal
conversation I often had with myself that guided me since I picked up books my
first semester as the song about being in over your head came on the radio…
like a warning. I was pregnant and
working full time at the time. I told
myself I may be in over my head, but I would do this the same way the old cliché
tells you to eat an elephant – one bite at a time.
Now I still
have a new marathon to run – the dissertation (assuming I pass my oral defense
of comps on the 20th *crosses fingers) – and I am pregnant and
working full time AGAIN J
, but I have realized that I can do the things I decide to do. Comps were never going to be any harder or
take any longer than they were going to be/take. The question became whether I was willing to
do the time and the work. I am glad now
that I was. I look forward to an even
greater elation when I walk across the stage with my hood NEXT winter. As a celebration, I wanted to share my final
paragraph of one of my comps questions:
Final Thoughts
As
I type the last lines of this last comp on a perfectly temperate Sunday morning
to the sounds of giggles and swings seeping up from the porch, I ask myself if
missing so much has been worth it. Were
the lost tuck-ins worth it? Were the
moments when I told the girls that I could not play dolls this evening worth
it? Were the days when my patience with
them had been worn thin by over commitments they did not ask for worth it? And then I realize that if I can help make
literacy education in Columbia a little better for all kids, I make it a little
better for my kids as well. Isn’t that
an important goal? I know I am not sure
of much, but I do trust that I have thought about some things in ways others in
the racing train of education have not given themselves times to think
about. Just last week, the principal at
my daughter’s elementary school explained that they don’t see the value in
giving the STAR early literacy test to kindergartners because it won’t teach
them anything they can’t learn from sitting down next to students and reading
with them. This reminded me that there
are voices of reason, or perhaps even more importantly, ears of reason in this
age of accountability and standardization.
Someone said the right thing to the right person to allow Ridgeway to be
an autonomous school. On this brisk fall
day, the sound of children playing reminds me that all of this thinking has
been worth it and will continue to be as I seek more answers and more
questions.
