Moments of peace have been rare for me in the past year, but a certain clarity has settled upon me today in Göttingen. For the past two weeks I have been participating in a German archival research program that would naturally lead to writing a dissertation. However, what I discovered while being here has only made it more clear that I don't want to do it anymore.
One reason is that working on large historical research projects makes me extremely unhappy. A few years ago, I was totally blindsided by abject misery brought on by my studies. Now, with more experience, it feels more like a slow, irreversible slide to the bottom. Crawling out of that hole takes months to get out of, and a little bit of me dies each time I have to do it.
Another reason that I do not feel inclined to write my dissertation is that it would take place in Europe. Though I quite like it here, I feel like I have already had some of the most phenomenal experiences of my life in Germany and Austria. Two more years of research and writing here would feel largely anti-climactic. In Latin America, on the other hand, my life experience has only just begun. So if I am going to make another major international commitment, it will be there and not in Europe.
Doing research day after day turns me into a person that I do not like-- myopic, irritable, unsocial, risk-averse, and depressed. I fall back into old patterns of behavior that I thought I had long left behind. The person that I like-- spontaneous, social, daring, enthusiastic, and adventurous-- is a carefully crafted identity that I have developed for over a decade. But when put under extreme duress, it tends to disappear. On the other hand, my love of teaching reinforces and further develops the person that I aspire to be. For that reason primarily, I am choosing to teach at Holton-Arms rather than research in Göttingen.
Let me now turn the tables and challenge you to reflect. Have you asked yourself recently, "Who do I aspire to be?" and "Does what I do on a daily basis push me towards or away from this goal?" Feel free to write or call me with your responses. I am not asking these questions rhetorically: I am intensely curious how you might answer.
I am extremely eager to get settled in Washington, DC this month and start the next phase of my life. I don't know what the future will bring, but the present will soon be very exciting.
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6 comments:
I know exactly what you mean. It's strange how pursuing your dissertation can sometimes seem so cowardly and passive. Congratulations on being brave enough to try something new.
Your questions are difficult, but necessary for all of us to answer...
hm i think i can definitely relate to what you are saying as i went through a very similar situation not long ago, but it took me a longer time to realize it.. basically like 3-4 month ago i started studying intensively, in retrospect way too intensively, for an economics exam that i had to write at the start of april.
As i liked some of the things that i was learning, i thought studying economics and social sciences maybe was a good idea and i had the feeling like it was the end of a journey that began quite some time ago and that i had found my place in this world and what to do with my life for the foreseeable future... so i started planning more and more things started doing a huge amount of courses in the university as well as a huge amount of sports courses at the same time, but of course very soon i had to stop doing several courses as it was just way too much... also i definitely had very similar changes in my personality as to what you describe like irritable, risk-averse, depressed and definitely anti-social :) yeah the most definite thing that i realized was that i was growing more and more bored of everyday things that i used to love and enjoy like conversations with friends or conversations with strangers, listening to music etc.. i felt like numbed, like a robot.. my problem with this was that i also used to be an insecure person in dealing with other people but this insecurity did not return, so the way i felt felt unique to me and i interpreted it as "growing up".. as like becoming more reasonable and relaxed about everyday things and focusing on more important things... well of course after some time i realized getting bored by all of life cant rly be "growing up" or if it were there surely must be other more healthy ways to grow up ;) also in my focus on the long/mid-term future on what to study etc. i had completely lost focus on the small things in life that may be bother me or bring me joy or wahtever, i started ignoring small problems like if i felt accepted by my study companions or not if that may bother me if i may be angry at someone for something small because every time thoughts like that came up i started thinking about "important problems " like what to study etc... but during all of this i grew more and more unhappy, uncreative and irritable... the first step out of this was definitely for me to drop some of the courses and just start doign less and the second step was for me to focus on my real problems in my real life right now again opposed to some illusions i had about what my future life might be like or might not be like..
well the only thing i dont understand or cant completely realte to is waht you mean by becoming more myopic as i felt for me it was becoming obsessively fascinated with my mid-term and long-term life what will happen in the next few years that made me become so unspontaneous, uncreative and antisocial and uninterested in the possibilities that my everyday life could open up for me all the time...
yeah right now i feel completely different very happy very spontaneous maybe even too much so and i have definitely learnt some things about myself that i have to watch out more for myself and focus on my everyday problems because i find thats where my anger my joy and everything rly comes form most of the time... and also to not ignore what situations i put myself in because i can always change things about myself, but if i strangle myself by studying 24/7 and then doing some more sports courses i dont leave myself room to breathe and to change and i cant compensate for eveything with my inner attitude or cahnge everything into good by my inner attitude :)
even my mother afterwards said that during this time she was scared because she was afraid i was becoming like i was before...
well for the future i hope i will, like you obviously did, recognize these processes faster when they happen to me and in me and i hope that i wont puyt myerlf in situatiosn like this again.. this is where i am a bit afraid of the move to uni maastricht where i did this applicationf or as they explicitely write of a demanding workload etc.. however i hoep that due to the fact i have alrdy done some courses it will bemore realxed for me and that may be the familiar atmosphere will make up for that... but we shall see :)
to sa yit agian your post was rly interesting i can rly relate to it very interesting to find someone making such similar experiences as for qutie some time during the problems i went through i thought i was the only one experiencing something like this this way :) i think teaching definitely sounds like a good idea i also like teaching its nice and it challenges one's creativity i think :)
yeah and also i think i wont study eocnomics its hmm not really challening or inspiring and rather confuses me and makes my mind focus on money and scarcity and competition when everything interesting seems to lie somewhere else to me, like love, joy, art, creativity etc. :)
well so much for that, best wishes,
robin :)
Sorry for the confused style of writing just wrote it very fast as it came up in my mind :)
Nevertheless best wishes,
Robin
Tom,
I'm glad to hear that your trip to Germany has reinforced that your choice to teach this upcoming year is the right decision for you. I think you will really thrive in that environment. I think you will really enjoy sharing your enthusiasm for learning and self-discovery with your students, and I think a job that allows you several weeks off in the winter and several months off in the summer will be perfect for you so you have plenty of time to continue your own adventures as well.
To answer your questions, it turns out that what I always thought I was meant to do, really does make me happy. Every day of my humanitarian medical trips to Cambodia this past year, I felt like I could be exactly who I wanted to be. I felt the same way when I used to work in the mobile Pediatrics van in downtown DC. My day to day general military pediatric job is certainly less fulfilling, but I still enjoy playing an important role in the lives of parents and children. Certainly, I look forward to being able to work full time internationally, or in an impoverished community, but for now, I am grateful that the military will allow me to be debt-free to pursue that when I am done paying back my time, and I enjoy making the difference that I can make in my patient's day to day lives.
Between my teaching, research and various hobbies and pursuits, I'm doing exactly what I want to do. In fact, despite all my daydreaming as a kid, I never would have seriously imagined getting this far this fast. My dissertation taps into a perspective I developed off the cuff as an undergrad, in a similarly "Wouldn't it be cool if..." daydreamy manner. I get to travel across the US, to Europe, and to Africa for my work, in museums and in the field - just as I always hoped for. I work on cooler animals than even I had hoped for when I first romantically conceived of being a field biologist in Africa. My more theoretical pursuits suit me too - the history and philosophy of science, evolutionary theory, epistemology, etc. I get to work on questions I have always been passionate about, whether or not I could formulate the questions articulately or not. I'm even developing new teaching methods for anatomy, and I love my teaching intensely. Pretty much I am - or am becoming - everything I seriously wanted for myself but never really expected to get fully. Pretty much all my work brings me closer to one or more of my long-term values - even *how* I do things is usually rewarding for me.
This all probably explains why, when I first discovered my branch of academia existed, I was hyper for three days. Literally. All the pieces clicked together almost instantaneously. It was like that line from When Harry Met Sally: "I finally figured out what to do with my life. And I can't wait for my life to get started."
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