PhD Defense – Part 2: The Public One – Or from Amazonian Queen to Idiot to Humility and Fierceness

 

"I didn't feel like a big fat idiot anymore. And I didn't feel like a hard-ass motherfucking Amazonian queen. I felt fierce and humble and gathered up inside, like I was safe in this world too."

Cheryl Strayed – Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail

One year ago today I received my PhD. At EPFL, where I did my PhD studies, you have two defenses. The first one is the private one and it is also the real defense, where you are in a room with your thesis committee only and the committee decides whether you pass or fail. After you pass the private one and perform the changes the committee asks for in your thesis, you would have your public defense.  The public defense is the one where you get your PhD diploma (and title) officially and it is more like a party for friends and family.

While the first part of this post (PhD Defense – Part 1: The Private One - Or from Peggy to Scarlet to Marianne) was about my private defense and is private, as was the defense, this second part is about the public one and my PhD experience in general.

If I wanted to write down how I felt the day of my public defense, I wouldn’t be able to put it as well as the quote above. I find it funny how completely different people's lives resonate with me sometimes. Unlike Cheryl Strayed; I wasn’t born in the USA, I wasn’t raised by a single parent, my mother isn't dead, I haven’t been married, I didn't get an abortion, I didn’t study in a social field, etc. But most importantly, I don’t like hiking much. I would enjoy hiking with my close friends, because I love my friends. But if I am alone, I would rather randomly walk in the streets of a crowded city or walk barefoot on a beach for hours. Mountains and trails aren’t my kind of land. However, these differences didn’t prevent Cheryl Strayed’s memoir about her self-healing hike on Pacific Crest Trail from becoming one of the things I can relate to the most when I think about my PhD journey.

During the first half of my PhD, I wanted to quit more times than I want to remember (see [5]). Once I reached my third year, though, I felt like it was too late to quit. I was either going to get out of EPFL with my diploma or I was going to pull a Tyler Durden at EPFL (which is my way of saying "I will burn this place down").

I felt lonely most of the time and found different ways of coping with it (see [1], in my case it wasn’t just books, but also films and series). No matter how many friends you make or people you work with during your PhD, your PhD thesis will only have your name on the cover. This naturally requires you to be alone for long hours focusing on your own PhD work and eventually alienates you from many other people that might be physically surrounding the space you live or work in. Even though, I cannot claim that I got over this feeling of loneliness completely over time, I think I learned to accept it in a better way (see [4]).

As a female PhD student in the department of computer science, there were times I was really fed up with being surrounded by too many males. I never felt that way during my undergrad despite still being a minority as a female in that environment. I loved boys very much not just as boyfriends but also as friends, I always had great male friends, I always wanted an older brother so that I could always have a boy to hang out with, I studied in male dominated classrooms, I once even lived in a house with five other boys. I had never thought I could feel uncomfortable being the only girl in the room. But there I was, during my first year in PhD, the only girl in the lab, and I hated it. I hated it mainly because there I felt like I had to be one of the boys (see [2]). Switching to a female advisor and frequently listening to Tori Amos' Boys for Pele partly, if not completely, solved this issue for me. Being in the field of computer systems, where the testosterone levels are visibly higher than the other sub-fields of computer science even to an untrained eye, I don’t expect this feeling to ever go away completely.


But let’s not distract ourselves and go back to our main quote, the quote above, which clearly highlights the three major mood swings I had throughout my PhD.

#1: I always wanted to be a hard-ass motherfucking Amazonian queen.

#2: Instead, most of the time, I felt like a big fat idiot.

#3: Toward the end of my PhD, though, I felt fierce and humble and gathered up.

#1: Amazonian Queen

I never knew how to answer when people asked me “What do you want to be when you grow up?” Sure, I gave some answer to them like "basketball player", "teacher", "journalist", etc. But the truth is I never knew what I really wanted to become. I am 27 today and I don't have more clue about this issue now than back when I was 7. The only thing I was sure of was that I wanted to be an independent woman both socially and economically. I wanted to involve other people in my life because I really want them there not because I need them or depend on them. I thought I could do any job as long as it allowed me that kind of independence. I also wanted to keep learning about and be experienced at several fields not just one. So this was my version of a hard-ass motherfucking Amazonian queen. (I actually wanted to be Xena and she once beat up an Amazonian queen so technically she is one. Anyways, details.)

During college I felt like a hard-ass motherfucking Amazonian queen. I worked hard, supported myself financially with no help from my parents, took care of my own ass pretty successfully, had a great social life despite being a certified nerd, gained substantial background on several things not just computers, and graduated with a great GPA. So when I started my PhD, I wanted to be no less than an Amazonian queen again. I was ready to rock!

#2: Idiot

Instead, the first year of my PhD just made me feel like a complete idiot. My interactions with people at work just emphasized how little I knew and how inexperienced I was in my own field (see [3]). My interactions with people outside work just made me realize how terrible I was at learning French. My interactions with people at work outside work just showed me how little they gave a shit about my knowledge in topics other than computer science. I sucked both at work and in my social life and I was away from family and close friends. I felt like a giant zero. In fact, I don’t remember any other period in my life that I thought less of myself than the first year of my PhD.

#3: Humility and Fierceness

After being kicked out of my first lab and then feeling the pressure of not fitting in with the topics in my second lab, I found my third advisor who put me in an environment where I could feel better about myself again. In that environment, I put my pieces back together and learned over and over to hold on to my humility and to be fierce at the same time.

I never felt like I did amazing research. Instead of being upset about not being good enough to lead great research like the people I admired in the field, I learned to start from something small and lead whatever I have the best way I could.

I made peace with the fact that I wasn’t capable of achieving most things on my own, I depended on my academic siblings and advisor. They taught me a lot and inspired me. Instead of feeling like an idiot about not knowing enough, I tried to learn as much as I could from them. Luckily, they were the kind of people who were ready to help you rather than judge you about what you don’t know. I think, I taught them a lot, too, later when I was a more senior student.

Instead of trying too hard to fit in with many people, I built extremely strong friendships with a few who I now consider my family. And I not only want them in my life, but I also need them there to put some sense into my nomadic existence.

I no longer have the need to feel like an Amazonian queen. Though, I do sometimes still feel like an idiot, but bad feelings go away more quickly now. Instead, I just remember what I have accomplished so far and feel humble and fierce.




More quotes from Wild
 
[1] “I’d loved books in my regular, pre-PCT life, but on the trail, they’d taken on even greater meaning. They were the world I could lose myself in when the one I was actually in became too lonely or harsh or difficult to bear.” 

[2] “ … as the only girl in the woods, alone with a gang of men. By necessity, here on the trail, I felt I had to sexually neutralize the men I met by being, to the extent that was possible, one of them”  

[3] “I nodded, as if I knew where Bighorn Plateau was, or what it meant for the snowpack to be double what it was a year ago. I felt like a fraud even having this discussion, like a mascot among players, as if they were the real PCT hikers and I was just happening through. As if somehow, by Ray Jardine, my laughably slow pace, and my belief that it had been reasonable to pack a foldable saw, I had not actually hiked to Kennedy Meadows from Tehachapi Pass, but instead had been carried along.” 

[4] “Maybe I was more alone than anyone in the whole wide world. Maybe that was ok.”

[5] (From the movie adaptation)
Frank: "You ever think about quitting?"
Cheryl: "Only once about every two minutes or so."

My cheers to Gilmore Girls revival and things I wouldn’t like about Gilmore Girls if I took it more seriously

As every Gilmore Girls fan, this week I received great news. Gilmore Girls is coming back to Netflix for a short but a more proper ending. Yeah, let’s admit, we were all bitter-sweet about season 7. Amy Sherman (show’s creator) left the show before season 7 due to disagreements with the network and things were different; characters weren’t talking as fast, there was too much of Christopher, there weren’t as many pop culture references … Now she can finish the series the way she wanted to and we can enjoy more episodes of Gilmore Girls.

Gilmore Girls was one of the rare female dominated shows on TV when it was first aired. Despite being female dominated, it didn’t undermine its male characters (the male characters weren’t just there to support the females) and the females looked more real (the female characters didn’t all have “perfect” body shape and they neither wear expensive fancy clothes all the time nor they changed clothes too often during the day).
I watched Gilmore Girls more times than I watched my any other favorite series. Every time I re-visited it I related to different events, caught new references, and laughed at different times. It reduced my feeling of loneliness whenever I moved to a new place. I remember it in the mornings when I inhale my coffee deeply before taking my first sip, at movie nights when I consume too much junk food, every bedtime chat with girlfriends, whenever I am indecisive about which book to read, every time I eat at a diner,  …  

However, despite my love of Gilmore Girls, it had some elements that would annoy me if I took it too seriously. I know as a cheer to its revival news, it doesn’t make sense to remember things I actually feel uneasy about in Gilmore Girls, but this is why this blog is titled Distorted Pollyanna.

(1) Lorelai’s pregnancy with Rory at the age of 16

I know that Lorelai had more conservative parents and this wasn’t an easy option for her and there wouldn’t have been any Gilmore Girls if she had had an abortion, but I kept wondering what would Lorelai do if Rory got pregnant when she was 16?

(2) Stars Hollow

I come from a small town in Turkey; not as small as Stars Hollow probably, but still small. I liked my small hometown, but I also knew that I wanted to leave it eventually. I prefer living in places where not so many people know me when I walk on the streets rather than places where people know you more than you want them to know you and you have to listen to gossip about other people too often. So while I respect Lorelai’s attachment to Stars Hollow and not wanting to move anywhere else, my feelings toward a town like Stars Hollow would be more like Rachel’s or Jess’. Rachel was always ready to pack and leave the town, and Jess’ first scene outside in Stars Hollow is when he stands in front of Luke’s diner looking around the town while Elvis Costello’s This is Hell is playing in the background.

(3) Lorelai’s first marriage attempt

I hated everything about this Lorelai’s potential marriage to Max except for its bachelorette party. I was really happy when Lorelai broke off the engagement (which happens in the same episode as the bachelorette party :)).

First of all. 1000 daisies… Come on!! If someone bought me 1000 daisies, I would make him or her eat them. I know this was Lorelai’s fault. She mentioned 1000 daisies and proposal in the same sentence and Max got her 1000 daisies. Then, there was all this talk about this event possibly being the most important thing that would happen to Lorelai. Yuck! It was very anti-Lorelai that wedding.

(4) Only rich kids go to college vibe

I always loved the emphasis the series put into pursuing a good education and enjoying your time at school. Up until December 2014, I had been in schools since I was three months old. Depending on your instructors, schools can either be full of dogmas or wonders. I was lucky to experience the latter mostly. I firmly believe that being in school around students of various backgrounds keeps you young, dynamic, and open-minded.

However, Rory’s high-school and college experience throughout Gilmore Girls was that of a rich kid’s experience since Rory’s grandparents and the parents of Rory’s classmates seemed to have unlimited amount of money. While Rory had one of the best possible education in the world, her friends from Starts Hollow high school barely went to college. I admit that having some economic privilege helps you to get better education opportunities and this fact is more severe in USA than in other countries. However, I sometimes had really hard time relating to Rory’s education experience because of this elitist attitude. That’s why, I was grateful that the series’ focus was more on Lorelai (who didn’t get a penny from her parents to pursue her own education after she left home when she was 16) and not on Rory.

(5) Town Traditions

I have allergies to traditions that I did not contribute in creating. Don’t get me wrong, I respect people enjoying old traditions. This is just one of the many anomalies that I have. My reaction to Stars Hollow traditional activities would be more like Luke’s sarcastic attitude rather than the cheerfulness of the rest of the town people.

(6) Constantly eating junk food

I love eating pizza, burgers, French fries, etc. However, if I eat this kind of food for a couple of days in a week, then I want my salad or soup or vegetables for the other days. I did not feel good about all the condescending remarks of Gilmore girls on various salad ingredients or vegetables. :P

(7) Lorelai being a big fan of Bono

My favorite episode of South Park is the one where they claim Bono has always been a #2. My least favorite part of Lorelai was the fact that she loved Bono very much. I don't want to write more about Bono and waste space.

Home

“I don’t think home is a place anymore. I think it’s a state of mind.”

Neil Gaiman, The Sandman Vol. 5 – A Game of You

When I was a little kid, home was the apartment my mom and dad lived in.

During high school, home was both the apartment my parents lived in and my high school classroom because that high school classroom was the first place where I left being my parent’s kid and became an individual.

When I left home for college, the first couple of years, the college campus was my home. In third grade, I started staying with Esra, the person I would call my college roommate and also my daughter for the rest of my life. Together we tried to form a Gilmore-Girls-style household and among the places I have called home so far, the dorm room I shared with her for two years (which was dorm building O – room 306) was my favorite home.

After college, I moved to Switzerland. Despite living there for a little more than 5 years, I never felt at home there. I always felt detached from my apartment and did not invest in it to make it my home. It was always a temporary place, the place I would get out of as soon as I finish my PhD. During my time in Switzerland, when I thought of home I only thought of Black Sea or Istanbul.

In November 2014, I moved from Switzerland. I had about a month in Turkey before I moved to the US in January 2015. This intermediary period, where I was in between countries, was the time I lost the meaning of home. Things got pretty messed up. I witnessed Istanbul slowly transforming from an extremely glamorous prostitute into an incredibly annoying macho prick. (People who are familiar with the social/political turmoil in Turkey during the past few years would understand this transformation.) I loved the prostitute, she always made me feel at home no matter how chaotic things were, whereas I just want to punch the prick in the face. I also briefly visited my at-Black-Sea-coast hometown (Zonguldak) after like six years and it made me sick (both psychologically and physically).

So I accepted, I don’t know where home is anymore. Some people view this as a sad thing. I agree that it also makes me upset from time to time. But who am I kidding? This is actually what I always wanted. I didn’t want to belong to any specific place. I remember the summer holidays I had with my parents where we stayed two days at one place and three days at another place and another night at another place. Meeting different people, being on the road, experiencing the unfamiliar ... Those were my favorite days from my childhood. Similarly in college, I don’t remember staying in my dorm room for ten consecutive days unless it was the exams’ period. I either visited some relatives or stayed at different friends’ house in between.

However, as everything we want to achieve in life, losing your sense of home also comes at a cost. I feel more and more that I never stay at a place long enough to form a friend group that I can meet regularly or build a family of my own. I hate admitting it because I fancy myself Xena (a.k.a. Warrior Princess), but sometimes it makes me upset. On the other hand, I have friends and family scattered all around the world and when I meet them we just resume from where we left off. Those friends and family make me realize that I am going to be just fine the way I am.  

Now I feel at home at very random moments and those moments always put a giant smile on my face. Like when …

… you come to your apartment in San Jose from work and find your mom and dad preparing dinner while The Velvet Underground & Nico is playing the background,

… your best friend in town (also known as your twin sister) has a sleep over at your place,

… your Greek/academic brother starts warning you on eating healthier after seeing you order a plate of French fries for lunch,

… your college roommate (and your one and only daughter) tells you that she is getting married,

… the waves of the Pacific hits you in the face and knocks you to the ground,

… you gossip about the people at work with one of your cousins during a work day afternoon drive,

… you start listening and singing System of a Down songs with another cousin despite being exhausted and wanting to sleep after three days of Lollapalooza, …

Well, as Barbie from Neil Gaiman’s The Sandman said “I don’t think home is a place anymore. I think it’s a state of mind.”

My “Love” Letter to Swiss Housing Agencies

When I think back on my bad memories in Switzerland, I can associate majority of them with three places: EPFL, government offices, and housing agencies.

EPFL is normal since I did my PhD there. PhD is a bitter-sweet journey for everyone. No matter how resourceful the journey is, it is painful at the same time. Therefore, I do not mind my bad or stressful experiences at EPFL. These were among the bad experiences that enriched my life.

So let’s move on to the government offices. These institutions are a pain in the ass wherever you go. So there is no escape from them. You just need to find ways to relax yourself after dealing with the people at a government office. To wash away the memory of the annoying interactions you had to go through in these offices, either swearing by yourself in your native language or listening to your favorite punk band after you leave the office works.

This leaves us with the Swiss housing agencies. The “wonderful” “lovely” agencies…

I was living in a college dorm before I started my PhD so Switzerland was the first place that I had to deal with a housing agency. Even though I had been told that it would be hard to find an apartment in Switzerland, I didn’t expect things to be this hard. Every time I went to an agency, it felt like talking to a wall. Of course, this was partly because of the language issue. My French was terrible in those days (and it still is). I also remember many agency visits where I asked my questions in English and got my answers in French. However, even if there were some people at the agency who didn’t resist talking to English, it still felt like talking to a wall when talking to them.

After struggling some time being rejected from all the places we applied for. Six months into my PhD, I finally moved to a studio apartment, which I didn’t dare to leave till the end of my PhD. I was lucky with this one because the building was a newly built one, it was specifically built for EPFL students based on an agreement between EPFL and Foncia agency, and  not many people knew about it at the time unlike my friend Cansu (who urged us (my other friend Duygu and I) to apply for it).

The feeling of talking to walls never disappeared though whenever I had to contact a person from Foncia even though I was now their customer.

The latest set of encounters I have been going through with Foncia is related to my deposit. I ended my contract with them on November, 2014. It has been almost 3.5 months now. And I still haven’t received my payment. The first time I contacted them regarding this issue was the beginning of February, 2015. Since I moved to the Bay Area in early January, I was sending emails to them in my evenings and calling them the first thing when I wake up at 6am in my mornings if my emails weren’t answered. The contact guy for my ex-building was a different one now and he seemed more responsive than the previous one.

As a side note, the previous one drove me crazy while I was moving out. He didn’t answer any of my emails and he barely answered my phone calls. All I wanted was a letter that says I was going to move out at the end of November so that I could schedule a time with my concierge to leave my keys. In the end, I physically went to the agency to ensure he handles my request. That was useless as well. He told me the letter should be in my mailbox in a week, but it wasn’t. In the end, I kindly asked my lab’s secretary to contact him and only then I got my letter. (Bless you Erika, and all the secretaries at EPFL that helped me. If I ever wrote an actual love letter to someone in Switzerland, it would be to the secretaries I interacted with at EPFL. They are the best.)

Anyways, this new guy, he actually answered emails and phones. So I was a little hopeful and decided to be polite with him while handling my deposit situation. I have never been a person that believed aggressiveness can solve my problems. (I blame my dad in this attitude; constantly making me listen to his favorite hippie singers/bands when I was a kid and basically brainwashing me to be a peaceful human being).

However, a couple of weeks later I started feeling like I had no progress in my issue with this guy. He kept telling me I should be receiving my deposit at the end of the week and he wrote this at the beginning of every week. Then he told me that they don’t have my account number (which I gave them while I was giving away my keys to the concierge, I have two people that witnessed me searching for my account number for 5-10mins in my wallet and then writing it down for another 5mins). I said anyways I gave him my account number over email and kept my polite attitude still. He again said I should be receiving things by the end of the week. The other week, when I re-emailed him saying I still haven’t received my money, he said that there are some documents that I should sign. I signed them, scanned them back to him in a still-polite email.

After this last email, he answered me writing they finally approved the release of the deposit and I shouldn’t contact him anymore and instead contact the cooperative of my building instead. When I asked him for their contact information, he told me that he doesn’t have such information and I should look at the contract that I made with “them”. 

(Here is where I leave my dad’s peaceful rock music and switch to my mom’s more angry music that is very specific to her so I won’t give it a genre name.)

Them, THEM. THEM = Foncia, you work at Foncia. How the hell you don’t have their number? You think I am an idiot. I am really bored of being treated like shit or an idiot every time I had to deal with a Swiss housing agency. I don’t know whether this is because of my student status when I was there or my nationality. But I don’t care. I don’t deserve this. Neither any of my friends who were/are at EPFL.

To give a comparison, it took me one day to find an apartment in USA. Whenever I have a question, request, or maintenance issue, it is handled at most in two days (as opposed to waiting weeks or a month in Switzerland or making your secretary call them again to fasten the process). Whenever I meet one of the maintenance guys in my complex or visit my leasing office, everyone greets each other. They always ask me if everything is OK with the apartment. They treat me like a human being.

I know writing this won’t have any effect other than switching me back to my peaceful mode. There is a housing issue in Switzerland. Supply just doesn’t properly meet the demand. And the housing agencies will keep exploiting the lower class European citizens like me. What happens if I badmouth Foncia’s name? Nothing. A student or a non-student non-EU citizen newly moved to Switzerland, has to say YES to the first suitable apartment that she/he got accepted into by the agencies. Because the alternative is either being on the street or paying really high prices to extended-stay-like options.