Receiving an inordinately expensive piece of paper |
Today, I should be crossing the stage with the other
members of my cohort to receive my Master of Arts Degree from Western. Instead,
I’m sitting in a flat in Scotland, working towards my PhD at the University of
St. Andrews, courtesy of a SSHRC scholarship and generous funding from the
university.
It’s been a wild ride. I’ve read thousands of pages,
written 45,000 words, cried at rejections and jumped with joy at the
acceptances that meant everything. The Masters year wasn’t always fun. Nothing
about it was easy. But it was so, so worth it.
To be corny and cliché, it was the people that made my
Master’s experience enjoyable. I owe so much to everyone I interacted with that
year: the family I lived with who were there for me through the string of
rejections, the professors who helped me with proposals or wrote references or
just listened when I needed to rant about the stresses of grad school, and,
most of all, the wonderful MA and PhD students who made classes so enjoyable.
I might not miss the long nights struggling to finish
marking, or the mornings waking up at five to read 90 pages of Freud before
class, or the 12 hour days writing three papers in a week, but I definitely miss
Wednesday evenings at the grad club and Friday mornings grumbling about the
uselessness of bibliography class and afternoons in the “bunker” chatting about
everything from the definition of “English” literature to the meaning of
marriage to Victorian mummy unwrappings.
Final day with the MA cohort |
I wish I could be there to convocate with everyone this morning.
I’m so proud of everyone who made it through the year, as well as those who had
the courage to drop out when they realized that the program wasn’t for them. I’m
so thankful for the intellectual discussions and the Doctor Who evenings, for
people who love both Shakespeare and David Tennant.
To everyone convocating today, I wish you all the best.
Whether you’re heading on to a PhD or running away from academia as fast as you
can, know that I’m thinking about you and praying for you.
Enjoy your thirty seconds on the stage this morning—I might
be in Scotland, but I’ll definitely be there in spirit… and possibly lurking
the video livestream… J
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