A Year Past Rejection

“The world is indeed full of peril, and in it there are many dark places; but still there is much that is fair, and though in all lands love now is mingled with grief, it grows perhaps the greater.”

 -- J. R. R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring.

A year ago today, I posted this picture and quote after walking around my subdivision at twilight in a bit of a daze. The previous Friday, I rode the bus to uni nearly crying because nothing seemed to be working out. By the following Wednesday, I had a full scholarship to write my PhD at the university of my dreams.

It’s been a year now, and within the next few days I’ll be submitting my thesis outline and first chapter for review by the department. It’s been an amazing year, full of plays, concerts, travel, church events, friends, and (occasionally) academic work. The year hasn’t been everything I expected, but, in many ways, it’s been so much better.

 

Now more than ever, though, I’m glad this PhD position didn’t fall into my lap. I’m so thankful for those months last year where I felt rejected, and alone, and a failure.

Writing a PhD is hard work. The hours are long, the expectations are high, and the paperwork is never-ending.

What’s most difficult about the PhD, though, isn’t the work itself—it’s finding the motivation to actually do the work. It’s putting in the hours at the office when people tell you, “You’re just a first year; you don’t need to work so hard.” It’s managing to care about some entertainment that Queen Elizabeth saw in 1575 when it seems like everyone else’s project is so much more interesting and relevant. It’s keeping a smile on your face when your supervisor is disappointed and you feel you can never be a real academic.

Basically, doing a PhD is about managing your imperfections in a system that expects constant perfection.

For me, as a Christian, doing my PhD is about daily acknowledging that I’m not doing this on my own strength. I’m so flawed, so inadequate, but God has given me an amazing opportunity and He will guide me through it.

That’s why I’m glad my PhD applications weren’t a glorious string of acceptances. Because now I know that I’m not here because of my intelligence, or my academic excellence, or my copious extracurriculars.

Facing rejection before starting my PhD taught me that I am very much not perfect, but neither do I have to be. And now, whether my friends are complimenting me on a theatrical performance or my supervisor is tearing my chapter to shreds, I have absolute confidence that I am valuable not because I can somehow achieve perfection, but because He strengthens me.

Success and Rejection

Forest near my home

I'm so bewildered right now. My life could not possibly have taken a more dramatic turn in the past few days. 

Just over a week ago, I took the bus to university nearly crying. I'd been rejected from two universities and the other two weren't providing me with enough funding to afford to attend. My papers weren't going well. I was looking for jobs, but even with a Masters it seemed like I wasn't qualified for anything.

And then Friday Afternoon happened. 

I can't release details yet, not until everything is finalized, but I now have the opportunity to go do my PhD in the UK next year, which is what I've hoped and prayed and worked for all this past year. 

One big yes began an avalanche of yeses, all happening so fast I could barely keep track. I went from a burnt-out MA student uncertain if I'd ever enter a classroom again to a desirable PhD candidate with grad chairs at prestigious universities casually saying they'd love to have me and graduate financial managers suggesting we meet up for drinks and world experts in my field chatting in my office and offering to help in any way they could. 

It's wonderful. It's crazy. It's utterly beyond what I could have expected.

Moonlight walk the evening I heard the news

It’s also, quite frankly, a tad uncomfortable. I’m exactly the same person I was a week ago, but just with one highly important piece of paper in my hand. And now everyone wants to help me out. I’m the go-to success story that makes my department look good. I’m the rags to riches fairy tale.

I always assumed that people doing PhDs at prestigious universities with sizable scholarships had it all together. They were the best of the best. They were smart. And hardworking. And somehow magical—everything worked out for them. They could sit in their comfy office chairs with all their applications and grant proposals comfortably behind them and smile because they had succeeded at life.

But that’s not how it is. Maybe for some people, but not for me. I was rejected. I was burnt-out. I was so lost and confused. If there’s one thing I know about life, it’s that I most definitely don’t have it all together.

There’s a lot of hard work coming. I may have gotten the PhD position of my dreams, but actually getting the degree won’t be easy. And then there’re postdocs. And adjunct positions. And maybe, sometime in the future, a professor’s chair.

Western

I certainly haven’t written my last application or received my last rejection. Life is not all sunshine and rainbows from here on. I may have gotten accepted where it counted most, and I am beyond thrilled. But I am still the same person who was rejected.

I want to be the person who learns from those rejections rather than the one who pretends it’ll never happen again. I want to remember how hard the road has been so far so I can be more empathetic towards the ones travelling behind me and more respectful of the ones ahead. I want to sincerely thank everyone who has supported me so far and in turn support everyone I can.

I want to grow, yet not become a different person from last week, before everything went right. My worth as a human being does not depend on what one scholarship committee thinks of two pages I’ve written. I want to work hard and trust God and move forward knowing that I am not defined, ultimately, by either my academic failures, or my successes. 

Day 193: I'm Going to Be a Master's Student!

I’ve been accepted to the MA in English Literature program at Western University!

For those of you who don’t know me IRL (or who haven’t taken the time to memorize every detail of my endlessly fascinating existence) Western is the university that I attend back in Canada when I’m not gallivanting off to different continents on exchange. Though I attend King’s College (a smaller campus about ten minutes’ walk from Western) I’m still a Western student, and it’ll be nice to return to a familiar university for my first graduate degree.

One condition of doing my exchange in my fourth year (rather than my third, like most sensible people) was that I have to return to Western next year and do either a fifth year of undergrad or my MA. I really don’t want to do a fifth year, since I feel like I’ve learned pretty much all I can at the undergrad level. However, Western has a great MA program and I’d have wanted to do grad work there anyways, even if I hadn’t been ‘forced’ to because of my exchange.

Receiving the acceptance email completely made my day. While I’m not surprised I was accepted, it’s still a huge relief to actually receive the offer. It’s one thing to be confident that you meet the standards of the program, and quite another to have the acceptance letter from the application committee!

Perhaps the most significant thing to me about this acceptance is that it’s confirmation that I’m on the right path. I didn’t plan on going into academia when I started university—I intended to get a college degree in journalism, get a day job, and write books.

Then I started studying English literature, expecting to hate essays and to find Beowulf and Paradise Lost boring. But I didn’t. I absolutely loved studying literature, even the endless readings, and the rewrites of papers, and the research in the library…

I just loved academics so much, and sometime early in my third year I realized that I didn’t want to stop. The idea that after fourth year I’d be done with readings and writing essays and discussing books in class wasn’t a relief; it sounded awful! I didn’t want to get out of university and enter ‘the real world.’ To me, university was (and is) a big part of the ‘real world.’

Now, as a mere four weeks of class (plus two weeks of break and three of exams) separate me from my undergraduate degree, I still feel the same way. The idea of being a graduate student, of continuing to engage with texts but at a higher level and helping undergrads to do the same, makes me so excited. I’m dreading leaving St. Andrew’s at the end of this year, but having an MA program waiting for me back in Canada makes me so much more enthusiastic about the future.

To those curious few wondering about the program: the MA at Western is composed of two sessions of coursework followed by another semester (the summer) of writing a thesis (at least, this is my plan for the year; there are a number of options.) I plan to take a variety of courses in different areas, but my thesis will likely concentrate on Milton’s court masque Comus and how the masque form serves to both reflect and create reality. This will allow me to read a lot of Renaissance literature, dramatic and otherwise, which is a favourite literary period of mine.

In short, I’m thrilled to be accepted into Western’s MA program, and I almost can’t wait to start… but I still plan to savour my last few weeks of undergrad.