A Not-So-Glorious Return: Reflections of a PhD Graduate

It’s been a while! 6 years it seems since I last wrote anything here. There have been many times I’ve wanted to jot something down, but as will be the theme of this post, I’ve been pretty busy.

PhD programs are difficult! This might be obvious to most of you but what can I say, sometimes mountains look like hills from below. But against all odds, I seem to have made it to the peak (at least that’s what the “official email” from ProQuest seems to suggest.)

As the title may imply, it’s all felt a bit anti-climactic. For some context, at this time last year, my graduation requirements were essentially to finish my final two Breadth Requirements (CS 131, Programming Languages, and CS M151B, Computer Systems Architecture) and then file and defend my thesis, which was more or less complete since it had already been accepted for independent publication. Each class I had attempted a few times already but just given up partway through because either research was more important, the coursework got too difficult, or I just wasn’t interested enough.

Even though these are undergraduate level courses, they’re notoriously difficult and dense classes with little to no theory component, which is my strength. Not to mention the reason I was taking them in the first place is that I majored in math, meaning I don’t technically even fulfill the pre-requisites for these classes. Oh and did I mention I have to get at least a B to earn credit? And if there’s no room in the class (often the case) I have to audit the course and base my entire grade on exam scores, making that B even harder to get.

So guess what, I failed! A lot! I think over the course of the entire program, I must have attempted each of these courses at least 5 times. And I felt worse than awful. Not only was I terrified of delaying my graduation, a huge reason I wasn’t succeeding in these classes was that my mental health was in serious decline. I was going through a difficult breakup, some close family members were having significant health issues, and this on top of all the normal grad student stresses of research deadlines, money, etcetera, I was running on empty.

Needless to say, I was desperately looking forward to the light at the end of the tunnel that was graduation. The idea of building up the life that I want (starting with a real paycheck and some 9-5 structure) became what I felt like I needed to “fix” myself.

Eventually I backed myself into enough of a corner to buckle down and earn the credits I needed to graduate. I always was good under pressure. And slowly, one-by-one, the dominoes of “graduation” started to fall. But, because of my string of failures, the chronology was a bit awkward.

First, before I even knew the results of my final CS 131 exam, I had my graduation party, which had been planned by my wonderful mother months ago. Without knowing any results, I felt no real relief from the mountain of stress I was under, but being around my friends and family was very healing.

The day after that I walked at commencement. It was a bit boring, as usual, but my family loved it (which is the point). I wasn’t able to participate in the doctoral hooding ceremony because I delayed my coursework for too long, which delayed my thesis submission, and Grad Division is apparently “a stickler about these types of things.” That one hurt more than expected.

Mostly these things felt empty to me. I was just focused intently on filing and defending my thesis over the summer. I had originally planned to graduate in the Spring obviously, so I was hoping to take the summer off to prevent burnout before I started full-time work, but that plan dissipated when I realized I’d need more money to actually relax. So I signed a GSR contract and committed to do research for the summer while I worked on my thesis.

Once the good news of my exam scores finally came in, it was time to schedule my defense. Fun fact about academia: getting an entire PhD thesis committee in the same room at the same time is infinitely harder than actually defending your work! After six weeks of not-worth-explaining scheduling nonsense, we landed on a date at the end of August.

The defense came and went (that part was easy, I’m a teacher after all) and I encroached upon the final step, filing. This should really be the easiest part, right? Make a few proofreading edits, add a new style template, and turn it in. But I couldn’t do it.

I passed my defense on August 26th and then spent two weeks unable to even bring myself to the computer to work. All this time I had fantasized about graduation, denied myself any sense of pride because I “hadn’t earned it yet”, pushed toward this goal with everything I had. But now, for some reason, I couldn’t take the final step across the finish line.

Part of this had to do with my breakup. Without getting too personal, graduation had been a milestone I was looking forward to sharing with her, not to mention getting a job afterwards and starting a life together. But it also felt like more than that. It felt like an unwillingness to allow myself to be happy. It felt like fear.

Of course I filed my thesis once I realized the deadline was approaching (pressure, my dear old friend) and after dealing with the consequences of my apparently-not-solved tuition issues (administrative offices are an archaic concept that should be abolished), I now sit here having officially earned my PhD from UCLA.

Unfortunately, and maybe expectedly for a wiser reader, this was not a magic pill that has “fixed me”, whatever that means. I still feel the fear of moving forward, of allowing myself to create something new, something good for me. Rather, graduation feels like a bit of space and time to figure out what that looks like.

I am still looking forward to starting full-time work (I am looking for opportunities as of this post) but I’m more excited about having a new therapist that works for me. I’m happy that my family is starting to heal, and that I’ve grown enough to prioritize what I need over what I want.

To those who have been by my side throughout this journey, I sadly don’t have the words to express my gratitude. Even though these past 5 years have been incredibly difficult, they’ve bettered me in ways I would never take back.

The future is bright 🙂