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."