No longer MIA...well kinda

Guess who's back?! I know it's been eerily quiet out here on 30-30. Long story short, I left for a vacation and decided to stay on hiatus from blogging and non-urgent e-mails. Just primarily for the sake of my sanity to be honest.

I'm back. The dissertation beast is awake so I might not be posting as regularly as I'd want to for the next couple of weeks. But yes I do want to write a couple of posts about being back in Pakistan after a long(?) gap of 2 1/2 years.

Anyhow, just wanted to shout out a hello to everyone. Hope you've all been doing well in all sorts of ways.

Why a Ph.D?

I've thought about this before. I've even posted about it before - if not on this particular blog then elsewhere in the blogosphere. I've talked about it with many of our readers here at LTLWI. But I don't think I've ever really had the perspective (being in the thick of things) or the courage to admit what I'm about to share right now.

This is going to sound incredibly self-indulgent for someone who isn't going to have a trust fund kick in. But it is the truth.

I did this because I love to think and write. I love being able to produce a tight narrative - one that moves people or forces them to think. [Relevant aside: I will add here that I love to write but not necessarily dissertate - and no I won't elaborate on that until I'm done with PhDing - not for any other reason but I just don't think I need to process it and risk a crisis of thought in a swirling vortex of anything remotely negative.]

I was able to do it for these reasons entirely because of my parents' support. Their objective for me as their offspring as far as education/schooling was concerned was that they wanted me to become an educated person capable of thinking. To them, college was a place where one went to learn how to think rather than be trained in a particular vocation. I respect and value their thoughts; more than that I love them for subscribing to this notion instead of being typical Pakistani/South Asian parents who can only see their kids growing up as doctors or lawyers or engineers. I love that they gave me the freedom to be able to use my brains. And this whole PhDing has been the ultimate space to nurture that kind of experience - this is not to say that that is it's only reality but it certainly is what the whole endeavor is about...so long as you find the right people or seek the right people to sustain the ideal.

And so, while I'm not exactly done - although I'm close but sometimes proximity can present itself as an overwhelming distance - I know that I would do it over. Well perhaps not in exactly the same way but I, despite obstacles and frustrations, have loved the experience. And to be perfectly honest, that which aggravated me about this process and continues to is only so if I think I'm in it for other reasons. But when I manage to remain in touch with my 'real' reason for doing this, I'm grateful and thankful to have had this opportunity. And for anyone else thinking about pursuing this path for the same reason, and only this, then I'd highly recommend it.

Now, back to dissertating. I have to finish working on a chapter that's due July 11. Wish me luck.

Of Resolutions

Over a year ago, I made a resolution to cleanse my life of all relationships that were somehow toxic. An example would be friendships that were more a habit or compulsion than actual connections. Or perhaps relationships that always had me down more than up. I've more or less accomplished that. Okay what I really mean is I have actually accomplished that absent those relationships which according to, "the world", I can't walk away from. I've made my peace that and keep my contact to a bare minimum.

So now it's time for a new resolution that pertains not to my personal life but my professional one.

I've noticed that ever since I was a kid I have a really difficult time completing projects very close to the finish line if they have been part of my daily rhythm for too long. I get restless. I crave change. I want variety. For example, I'd do well in school all year long but I'd lose focus when it came to finals. Another example is my dissertation - I start writing a chapter and it's always the last couple of sections that trip me up. Either I don't finish them or write crappy bullet points to get it over with. I don't know if it's because the perfectionist in me gets intimated - some might say that. I really think it's just as simple as being bored. Although the perfectionism thing isn't completely off base. I work so hard in the beginning and maniacally to the point of exclusion of all else that I lose the fire by the time I near the finish line. So my new resolution is to work through the boredom or not let myself get to that point by curbing the perfectionist in me. Where am I going to try this first? Duh - the dissertation! Stay tuned - I won't promise regular updates but there will definitely be an announcement when I finish :-).

A Dissertation Prayer

O Ye God of Dissertating Goodness! Please be thou kind enough to stop messing with me dissertating momentum. I plead with thee to grant me no (melo?)drama from "The Loved Ones" on every day 2 or day 3 following a serious commitment to finish the last couple of Dissertating Hurdles successfully. Particularly when I have a meticulously detailed plan for completion.

I thank you for your time - please be kind enough to give me back mine.

Optimistically yours,
Bionic-Woman

Dissertating Tip

A friend who emerged successfully from the PhDing cave last year sent me the following piece of advice upon asking...an excerpt from her e-mail:

"I could not get the energy and focus to complete the !@%#$%@ thing until I stopped responding to my friends' emails (and calls, IMs, etc.). ....Yes, our friends are wonderful people who deserve our attention...--in fact, it SUCKS to have to say no to people....but the final part of the journey is solitary and grim. And you...just...DO IT."

Yup I agree...it's tough as nails and then some to say no to loved ones - whether it's family or friends or whomever. That I find being with others more fun than sitting by myself and writing makes it even more challenging. But I'm at the point where I'll have to do it i.e. say no a whole lot more than I have so far. [Sometimes, my other female friends - who are also from Pakistan and other places in South Asia - and I often complain about how we women are expected to attend and be our lovely gracious selves at all social events and nurture all our social relationships with Martha-Stewart-like-grace but the men somehow seem to get away with it. But that's another rant that deserves its own post/space!]. I don't want to pull a complete disappearing act - that seems like a surefire recipe for depression - although I also recognize that I will have to sort of pull one for extended periods of time in between. Or at least selectively in the sense that I need to make sure I make time for people I'm close to....which really isn't intended to sound horrible but I don't want to feel compelled to "be there", in a sense, for folks who I barely know. It's challenging enough to keep up with relationships that mean the world to me- and I refuse to let those fall off to the wayside even through this last stretch - not because I couldn't be bothered but there just don't seem to be enough hours in the day so adding another one to the mix is going to be a juggling act that I just can't pull off. In other words, that coffee date with a cousin's friend who has been on my back for months is not happening...not because I wouldn't like to get to know this person and I recognize that this person is new to this place so I'd like to be a bit more hospitable but if I am going to step away from dissertating I need to nurture the relationships that already hold a special place in my life. I mean that's a whole solid 5 hours i.e. an entire afternoon off during peak dissertation time....3 hours to go back and forth between The Coffee Place in The City and where I am, 30 minutes to look presentable enough and not like I just rolled away from my laptop [yes I'm vain if you want to call it that], an hour or so of convo over coffee. I wish I had the time but I honestly don't.

So, in that spirit folks, if I'm mostly MIA over the next 6-8 weeks please don't yell at me or wax poetic about how livid you are because I already feel guilty enough about having to say no all the time. I really need to take this time out for myself and just get done. But yes if you're having a meltdown and need to send me an SOS or if you have the most awesome news to share feel free to ping me and, depending on which of the two is happening, my shoulder and I will be there or we'll party like it's 1985!

Wish me luck folks as I try to jump the final hoops.

Why a Ph.D?

Since Saad D asked....

To be honest, I wish I had a more profound answer with movie-like charm but Ph.Ding was a happy accident for me. You know one of those stories where you know you always wanted to do something and then battled all odds and reached all your goals and then some. There might be sparks of it in my account (more on that below) but it wasn't like I knew I wanted to get a Ph.D. when I was 5 years old. Okay I did enjoy pretending to be a teacher while I got my homework done - my family members gladly obliged and played students. In fact, I actually taught my mother's mamu ( mother's mother's - my grandmother's -brother...irrelevant aside: what I find immensely fascinating is how in the Urdu language we have a specific name for each blood relationship that within 4-7 or however many letters spells out your relationship with someone with more precision than the generic "aunt" or "uncle" affords) how to read and write in Urdu since he didn't know how. His English was impeccable but since he grew up in British India he never actually h-a-d to learn Urdu. But I digress.

What I wanted to write was that teaching was something I was drawn to and I knew I always wanted to teach but I never claimed it as what I wanted to become. Because there was something more I was looking for. When I lived in Pakistan, advertising seemed to speak to that "something" I was in search of for the longest time until I moved to the US. Two years of liberal arts courses pushed me out of the all-too-popular MBA into media studies. Grad school came and I taught at a number of colleges. It reminded me of my love for teaching. But more so, grad school, specifically working on my MA thesis, helped me see how much I enjoy finding better arguments.

Some might use the "making jigsaw puzzles" metaphor to describe the experience. But I think that's inaccurate. Why? Because someone else defines the picture. You, as the puzzle solver, simply fill it in. Puzzle maker is probably closer but I just don't like the connotation that puzzle might carry here - I don't get excited by the thought of puzzling other people or having them follow the exact contours of the picture I see. I'd much rather they engage in a conversation with me. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

I'm not the biggest fan of one part of the process of writing in that it forces me to spend huge amounts of time all by myself. But I do like being able to use words to unravel that which bewilders me. And that's back to my decision to go for a Ph.D.

I love the idea of delving into something that bothers me, hurts me, bewilders me, puzzles me. I like questioning it, diving into it, breathing it, existing in it. Till I can fill those spaces that I think are missing in others' accounts of it. Doing that doesn't make my account definitive - it only fills the gaps that I feel (notice I wrote feel and not think because I truly believe that what we write about is stuff that makes its way into our lives as our guts notice it before we can begin to rationalize it) are problematic or that I think are plain and simple important enough to merit greater attention than they have now. Basically, unmuting the silences that aren't spoken but they are definitely out of our reach given our present ways of thinking about stuff. It's a lot like artistry. You figure out what to represent and how to represent it and you hope it resonates with people - not in the sense that they agree with it but that they grapple with it. To me, this is the better argument...and it's an interest in better arguments about specific things about the social world that lead me to Ph.Ding.

I'm reminded of something Nietzsche wrote in "Genealogy of Morals": "There is only a perspective seeing, only a perspective “knowledge”; and the more affects that we allow to speak about a thing, the more eyes, different eyes, we know ourselves to deploy for the same thing, the more complete will our “concept” of this thing—and our “objectivity”—be."

Which brings me back to my last post. Thanks Saad for making me put my finger on it publicly...but it still comes back to what I said earlier...it's pretty darn entertaining. It's being part of the process that Nietzsche talks about in the excerpt I included above that I thrive on.

What am I going to do with it? That question is not irrelevant [although if somebody wants to ask me about that, well e-mail me or call me and I'll share because it's I feel it's too personal to blog about...at least until I make the decision and things fall into place] but the more important one for me is: "what have you done with it?" My answer: I've become a more educated being in that I've gotten a wonderful opportunity to spend time to read, think, percolate, and write.