On those last three miles...

             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 20^th *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.