That Fucking Dissertation

Last I checked, somewhere around 80 percent of Ph.D. students do not finish their degree. And as far as I understand, the reasons can be summarized in one phrase: Life gets in the way.

I can attest to that. I started my Ed.D. program in education policy in 2005. I was a 38-year-old single, childless woman who’d applied to only three programs (Harvard, Northwestern and Teachers College; TC was my first choice and the only one I got into). I had several goals for going after a doctorate (not necessarily in order of priority): Increase my earning potential. Get out of the Midwest for awhile or maybe forever. Broaden my horizons, as they say. Gain the expertise necessary to help amplify teacher voice in education policies. Improve my marriage prospects because I sure as hell wasn’t meeting anyone in Chicago.

Teachers College at Columbia University was my first choice: New York City always held a certain level of allure, and I hoped to study under a professor there whose research often focused on issues around privatization of public education (specifically on how it’s a really bad idea because privatizing schools erodes the whole purpose of public education, which is to ensure that our democracy and the common good prevail. But that’s another blog post for another day.) TC was the only program that accepted me, so in August of that year, I packed up my whole life – 13 years in Chicago – and traded my spacious one-bedroom in Chicago’s Southport Corridor for a 20’ x 9’ studio apartment on Manhattan’s Upper East Side. I knew one person there. 

Nine years later, I am about 80 percent finished. My dogged pursuit of my doctorate puzzles many, I’m sure. Most of the time these days when I bring up That Fucking Dissertation, as I’m fond of calling it, friends and family don’t have much to say. I read the silence as disapproval. Maybe I’m wrong, but that’s my takeaway.

Recently a friend asked, “What do you need? What do you need to get it done?” My response: TIME. If I weren’t a single working mother, I’d have finished it 3 or 4 years ago, well within the typical 5 to 7 years that it takes a doctoral student to finish. If I were a fully funded doctoral student (a rarity), I’d have finished it by now.

But I am a single working mother. A single mother by choice – that is, I chose to have a child on my own, fully aware of the wrench that might throw into my doctoral pursuits but nonetheless determined to Do It All because the prospect of leaving this life without having mothered -- it felt so joyless, so bleak. Plus, I like to take big bites out of life, or as some would say, load my plate as full as possible. (Or at least I did back when I started. I’m kind of over that now and would much prefer to drop one of these balls that I’ve been juggling for the last four years.)

So why haven’t I dropped this one, That Fucking Dissertation? Why not just forget about it? Why make my life more challenging that it already has been since my son was born (backstory in a nutshell: my career path hit a few rough patches for the first two years of his life, but it’s getting better)?

Because I’ve poured a shitload of energy, time and money into this. The figure that is my student loan debt would make your eyes pop out of your head. You’d judge me for sure. And then there’s ego. I want a doctorate. I just do. But more than money or ego, it’s the curve balls that I can’t forget. I’ve hit every last one of them, so why throw away that great batting average? Let me illustrate. 

First there was the housing debacle in August 2007 that left me with three weeks to decide whether to sublet a new apartment in Manhattan (I’d already planned to move back to Chicago in January 2008 since I had the Baby Project underway and needed to be closer to my support network; I’d made friends in NYC, but I neither wanted nor could afford to raise a child there) or move back to Chicago and commute each week to NYC to finish my one remaining course. A quick cost-benefit analysis showed that flying back and forth for at least 10 of the 12 weeks of the semester would cost less than renting an apartment in New York, so that’s what I did: Every Tuesday, I’d wake at the crack of dawn and get myself onto the Belmont bus and then the Blue Line to O’Hare in time to board a 7 am plane for LaGuardia. I’d get into my graduate assistantship office around noon, work til 5, go to class til 9 and then either sleep on a friend’s couch or, as I started doing out of sheer weariness, pitch an airbed on the floor of my office and shower the next morning across the street at Columbia’s student gym.

Next curveball: Chicago Public Schools’ research review board.  As I understood at the time, CPS’ RRB was supposed to be a mere formality for every researcher hoping to study CPS teachers and/or students. That “formality” turned into a nightmare for me. They rejected my dissertation proposal in November 2012.  Flat-out said “No, you may not use CPS teachers as your research subjects. Go find someone else.” They put the brakes on my entire study. And it’s no piece of cake to reconfigure a study you’ve spent three years crafting so that it fits into another school district or to find another reform effort to ask teachers about. You can’t just cut and paste. So there was a lot of panic and fear and sleepless nights for a good two months while I crafted (with the help and wisdom of a wonderful local professor who caught wind of my problem and offered, sight unseen, to help me, bless her) a Plan B, which in turn had to pass muster with Teachers College’s institutional review board. Thanks to a precedent involving a fellow doctoral student friend of mine, which my dissertation sponsor was able to fit into his argument on my behalf, TC’s IRB bit. My study was back on, albeit delayed by nearly 4 months.

The biggest curveball of all has been motherhood. Some days it’s all I can do to make sure my kid is clothed and fed and loved and that I don’t appear a raving lunatic to the outside world. It’s much easier now, but the first two years of Henry’s life were total chaos. I’d hoped to return to teaching but couldn’t score a job to save my life (teachers were being cut in mass numbers all over the state), so I took two maternity leave jobs at two different high schools over the next two years and then filled in for three months for a teacher out on disability leave. Burning the midnight oil after I put him to bed each night, crafting lesson plans on my own for two courses because there was no cohesive course team at the first high school with whom I could work (creating lesson plans solo is, in my opinion, so much harder than when you do it with a team), and simply getting back on the teaching horse after five years off and trying to learn the culture of a school mid-year – not an easy feat because students sure as heck aren’t going to cut you much slack when things have been going a certain way for awhile and you waltz in and bring your bag of ideas about how a classroom should run and they just tell you to fuck off day after day, unlike your former students, with whom you had absolute simpatico – not an easy feat at all while your baby is sick every other week and you spend mornings cleaning up his diarrhea and puke and put a new set of clothes on him as you’re about to walk out the door so you’re not late for your 8 am class. And incurring the passive-aggressive wrath of your principal for taking all that sick leave and, hey, why didn’t you change those zeroes in your gradebook to 50 percents like we told all of you at the last minute so that our failure rate doesn’t go through the roof, and what? You’re going to pick this hill to die on, Kathleen, you’re not changing the grades?  (No, I’m not, and that turned into a big old burned bridge. Another blog post for another day.)

Yeah. All that. Where was the time for That Fucking Dissertation? Ah, there was spring break 2012. My parents came up, bless their hearts, and watched Henry for five days straight while his daycare was closed so I could hammer out my dissertation proposal in time to get the green light once to begin the actual study once and for all. Then they came back up for two days in June while I flew to NYC to defend my proposal. And there were summer teaching breaks, when I kept him in daycare instead of keeping him at home with me – consumed with guilt for not being a “good” mother – and interviewed teacher after teacher for my study, driving all over the city and sitting for several hours with each one to hear the stories they told me about this topic that I care so very much about and this study that I hope in some small way makes a difference in teachers’ lives.

And then there’s the debt. The Fucking Debt. The wisdom or lack thereof notwithstanding, it’s there. It’s mine. And I own it. But I refuse to let it be for naught. I am going to have something to show for it, and for all the curveballs that I’ve hit hard and far. To finish is to push those curveballs into home run territory. To finish is to start what I began in August 2005. To finish is to honor my passion and my desire to make that dent in the ever-growing problems that plague our public schools. To finish is to show my son the essential role that determination and persistence play in one’s life. To finish is to show him that his mother didn’t give up, doesn’t give up, won’t ever give up – even when she doesn’t feel like anyone else thinks it’s worth it. To finish is to fulfill all the promises I made to him before he was born.

That’s why.

Let 'Em Be

Back at this again. No idea how long this blogging streak will last, but I've promised myself that I will get back to writing for ME, so this is it.
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Even before I got pregnant, I knew I wanted a drug-free birth. The prospect didn’t scare me in the least. It’s what women are built to do, I figured. So I took a hypnobirthing class. I practiced visualizations that would help me manage the intensity of the contractions. I got a doula. I was determined. I was ready.

And then Henry wouldn’t come out.  40 weeks and 5 days into my pregnancy (that’s almost one week past my due date), he’d just barely descended, and I wasn’t dilated at all. I’d gone in for the every-other-day amniotic fluid check and fetal nonstress test that are standard when you’re past your due date. 

“Are you leaking fluid? Has your water broken?” the ultrasound tech asked in an excited voice as she viewed the screen. 

“Nope. Nothing. Why?” I asked, a bit alarmed.

“Your fluid is gone. Get to triage now. You need to be induced.”

This was not what I’d signed up for. But I wasn’t too worried. I figured contractions would start at some point, and I’d resume Plan A and have my drug-free birth (well, Pitocin-induced, drug-free birth). But 16 hours into it and with only the teeniest of contractions, I told my doctor I wanted a C-section. Me. The Committed Hypnobirther. I was asking for the highest level of medical intervention possible when it comes to childbirth.

As I lay on the operating table, all drugged up and trying my best not to be terrified about the fact that I was about to undergo major surgery, Dr. Bicalho must’ve done one more pelvic check because she leaned into my face and said, “Kathleen, good call. He is still so far up there, I’m not sure he’d ever have come on his own.”

I recalled my doula’s words during one of our prenatal sessions: Most pregnant women have a vision of the kind of birth they want. But children come into this world with their own intentions. In that moment, it seemed Henry’s intentions were to stay nice and cozy in utero and screw up all my plans.(I know -- what a horrible thing to say. He was born healthy, after all. But I found that gratitude for a healthy child and grief over a lost experience could co-exist.)

My birth experience was my first lesson in relinquishing control. Our children do not come from us; they come through us, said the poet Khalil Gibran. Henry’s birth was just the beginning of the attitude readjustments I’ve had to make since becoming his mother. As an infant, he had reflux, and he and I slept terribly as a result. When he started daycare, he was sick at least twice a month for the next 14 months, and I took every sick day I had, putting me in precarious positions with my employers. Nothing that many other mothers haven't experienced, but this stuff threw me for a loop.

And then came the clinginess.

A very gregarious baby and toddler, Henry (now 4), started to become very clingy in new situations right after he turned 2. Especially in group situations. I first noticed it when we started music classes. He’d cling to my neck, often facing away from the group, sometimes peeking around at them or the teacher. I’d sit there and clap and sing along with most of the rest of the class and their parents, all the while wondering why my kid wasn’t running around in circles or dancing in the middle of the group like some of the other kids. When it was time to get up and march, he wouldn’t let go of me. I had to hold him AND dance around in a circle with the group. It was exhausting and often maddening.  Once, he cried that he wanted to go home. At least once, I left the class in tears. 

When we visited the homes of our playgroup members, he’d behave similarly, sitting on my lap for up to a half hour before he’d finally mosey over to a toy. I started telling myself to get used to it. If we were going to someone’s house, I needed to be ready to hold him on my lap for the first 30 minutes. It was part of the deal.

But by the time he was 3, he seemed more comfortable venturing into group situations. Gradually though. Henry’s always been Mr. Ease-In-Slowly. As you’ve probably surmised, he’s not the kid who bursts into a room at full speed or dances around by himself in the middle of a crowd. 

Recently, though, the clinginess has come back. Several days in a row this month, we hit the park, as we usually do on the weekends when the weather cooperates. He usually runs toward the slide or sometime stands next to me, surveying the scene, but then quickly takes off for the jungle gym. 

But not this time, and not the next day, and not last weekend either. The first two times, he stayed right next to me. He didn’t want to play with his little friend Laura, who’d come in with her mom from Oak Park to hang with us. He didn’t want to go down the slide or climb up the jungle gym or do any of the park things he usually does. He wanted to stay right by me. Last weekend, he ventured out on his own only when I promised to be right there next to whatever he wanted to climb on.

And then there were the birthday parties. Since he started preschool in August, he’s been invited to at least 15, all attended by his little preschool friends. Henry is a social kid who doesn’t usually gravitate toward any particular classmate; he likes them all. Which is why I was puzzled when he wouldn’t leave my side at nearly every party. The worst came at The Little Gym, where two of his friends have hosted their birthday parties in the last 6 months. The Little Gym requires all party participants to remove shoes and socks. 

“NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!” Henry screeched upon hearing this request.

“What? What’s wrong?” I searched his little face. He looked terrified.

“I don’t want to take off my socks. I DON'T WANT TO!”

Since he turned 3, Henry has shown a strong preference for having his feet covered. About the only time I can get him to forego the socks is when we’re at the beach. I’ve chalked it up to mild sensory issues. It doesn’t interfere with his day-to-day, so I’m not worried.

But this was extreme. No amount of encouragement, soothing or persuasion did the trick. Several of his friends came out to ask him why he wasn’t playing with them. It didn’t matter. Henry spent both parties on my lap, watching through a window as his friends bounded over balance beams and leapt across the floor. I could sense the internal conflict he was experiencing: He sooo wanted to join them, but his fear – whatever the source -- of running around in his bare feet trumped that desire. 

I struggled to contain my impatience. I wanted to hang out with the other parents, unencumbered, for an hour. I had not signed up to hold my 37-pound, writhing four-year-old on my lap for an hour – a four-year-old who interrupted me every time I tried to partake in the conversations around me. I felt my blood pressure rise. 

“Why is my child so neurotic?” I wondered silently.

But he’s not neurotic. At least not any more than any other preschooler. He’s Henry. He’s careful. Cautious. Playful. Independent. Highly imaginative and prefers to direct activities rather than be directed. Can focus on a task for quite some time all by himself (god bless you, Henry, for I know not how I would get things done if you were always asking for my attention!). But some of his tendencies present themselves so suddenly and so intensely that I’m thrown for a loop over and over.  And I have to continuously remind myself that Henry is who Henry is. He came with his own intentions. And the more I become upset or try to push him beyond his comfort level, I—his number-one source of security and comfort – will make him feel all that much more insecure.

The truth is, I am very much like Henry. I am slow to warm up to certain experiences. I don’t like diving in head first (literally or figuratively). I was never the physically adventurous kid. Many times, I felt the tension – no, the pain – of simultaneously wanting so badly to join my friends in something fun but instead cozying up in the safety of the sidelines. I was the kid who climbed backward down the steps of the tall, twisty slide because once I got up there, I was terrified of sliding down. And I hated that about myself. So it’s the last part of my personality that I want Henry to inherit. I want him to be unafraid and adventurous. But here we are. Like mother, like son. And I remind myself that his – our – tentativeness in unfamiliar situations is our way of processing, taking it all in and carefully deciding how we want to experience a particular moment. Which is far from a bad thing.

So I find patience. And I immerse myself in gratitude – for Henry.  For all that he is and all he will become. He is my child. He came through me, not from me. And my job is to honor every part of him by simply letting him be.