Today, I am saddened to be penning my final installment of Graduate Journal. This was therapy for me more than once this year. It was therapy not because it gave me an audience, but because it allowed me to occasionally transplant the chaos from my head into a world where I could digest it. I have long said that Homo sapiens have an enormous frontal cortex both to make us smart and also completely crazy. Sometimes our minds torture us by rapidly calculating options and proposing diverse feelings. Even though I'm a scientist trained to chew big problems into smaller bites for analysis, I've struggled to apply this method to my own life sometimes. Writing makes my whirl of thoughts more stationary and it shines a brighter light on the path to progress. As a teenager, I filled legal pads with therapeutic writing but it was a habit foolishly laid down when the demands of university life emerged. Hopefully, I'll continue to make writing a priority.
Last year, I counted down the last moments of 2004 by drinking, chanting and mourning with a few hundred friends in Chicago. We had traveled from near and far to witness the final moments of one of rock's greatest live acts, Guided by Voices. As I reflect on that concert and read my first Graduate Journal, written in December 2004, I remember how I thought 2005 was to be a year of big changes, new beginnings and other nauseating euphemisms. It turned out to be a year of natural disasters on this Earth and I had my own private share as well. A few events changed me this year and most of them were personal. Just as the mind cannot be separated from the body, I think our personal lives are integrally tied to our professional lives.
Three days into this year, my wife told me how she rang in her 2005. I was shocked and hurt, but I knew I could get past it and move forward as a husband firmly committed to the relationship. I was ready to roll up my sleeves, make real changes and do what I felt married folks are supposed to do. In time, I discovered it was a "thing" rather than a "fling" and that's when my whole world was turned upside-down. An ugly divorce was on the way and that was an unwelcome addition to my already full "to do" list for 2005. I had hoped that the completion of my PhD would be my shining and defining moment of 2005. Now, the defining moment of my life seems to be this loss. Ugly images and feelings continue to haunt me. I'm told that time is the only medicine to cure this.
When this all shook down, I left the lab for a good cry and then a few more. When I returned, I was amazed at how much I could get done. Work was a good distraction. Though I never went to the lab on weekends, I assembled a paper, did final experiments and wrote a dissertation all in a matter of a few months. Outside of the lab, I read good books, listened to great music, played my guitar, wrote and recorded several songs, and hung out with friends nearly every night. I didn't watch TV for months. I felt like I was going insane, but somehow I kept "controlling the crazy" by staying busy. That large frontal cortex needs to stay occupied so it might as well be getting work done or having some fun. I have great friends and family to thank for keeping an eye on me and making sure that I was eating, staying busy and keeping my "will-to-live" needle off of "empty."
I went to Alaska after I finished my PhD and didn't return to Los Angeles for about two and a half months. I had no clue who would sign my next paycheque, but I wasn't all that stressed about it. I knew that it would work out and it did. I was not the traditional graduate student with the postdoc lined up before the dissertation was written. That was my plan a year ago, but events changed my priorities and perceptions. I heeded those events and I'm glad I did. I was in a rut last year and now I am alert and excited by new experiences. I crave more now. I feel like I'm no longer numb.
For example, I have a new girlfriend and she's got a toddler. They've been through rough times this last year too. We are struggling to figure out our lives and how to move forward, but it's actually fun. Recently, the little one said to her mom, "Don't you make a crazy me!" I guess she's already aware of that frontal cortex problem. It's a totally new place for me to be, but it's pretty special too.
I hope that I have somehow connected with some of the graduate students who are depressed or losing their motivation because of what is happening inside or outside of the lab. Graduate school is a hard gig sometimes. It's not like undergraduate life where you just study and take tests. It's hard to avoid the feeling that you are a failure when your experiments continue to fail. And let's face it; all graduate students are bitter and struggle sometimes. Just know, it is really great to finish and you'll both laugh and cringe at the years that have just passed. It's been six months for me since graduation and I am not tired of being called "doctor" yet.