A long road and the journey along it

Twenty years ago, I defended my doctoral work, after six long years of toil in the lab and in my office writing up the results of my hard work. While I no longer work in the lab full-time, I am and have been responsible for students (PhD and Masters) who do. One of the PhD students is finishing up her own work and hopes to submit her thesis early next year. We got to talking recently about the long journey that makes up the entirety of doctoral work. You don't reflect so much upon the journey when you are experiencing it, but when you are close to finishing or are finished (or are twenty years down the road), you realize just what an incredible and strange journey it's been. As the Grateful Dead sing "Lately it occurs to me, what a long, strange trip it's been" (from their song Truckin'). The PhD journey is difficult, frustrating, tears-inducing, overwhelming, nerve-wracking, as well as intellectually-stimulating, mind-expanding, and rewarding on so many levels. When you're done, you realize what you have accomplished, and you realize mostly that the journey is about persistence. If you persist, you'll get there. There are hindrances along the way--demotivating mentors, indifferent mentors, projects that don't work out and need to be abandoned in favor of others, bad prioritizing, journals that refuse your articles, lack of funding--the list is long. If you persist in the face of all the hindrances, you'll realize that doctoral work is a microcosm of what life is all about. Nowadays a PhD takes about four years to complete with a requirement for at least two published articles and one manuscript; back in my day it took about six years with a requirement for at least five published articles. Four or six years in the space of an average lifespan is really not a lot of years, but when you're going through it, it can feel like forever.

Persistence is the key word for much of life. There are many hindrances along life's road. Some of them threaten to overwhelm us, and for some people, perhaps the hindrances are too many and they give up. But most people do not, and once you reach middle age, you realize that the journey is about persisting and overcoming obstacles. It is also about enjoying the ride, but happiness is rather fleeting, and is not a goal in and of itself. If there is happiness, it is found in the journey itself. So many students have said that to me, that they realized how much they really did enjoy the difficulties they faced, even though in the face of them, they complained and were frustrated. I know, because I was too. I know too that I have dealt with many obstacles since my PhD years, and not all of them led to pleasant places even though I overcame them. But in the midst of the unhappiness, there was the journey, the road, the way forward and the way out. I persisted, struggled, and made my way along the road, like so many before me and many that will come after me. Like my student now, who has had many more obstacles than I ever had. But she has persisted, and come to discover that she likes research, so much so that she can envision a future where she will make room for the intellectual pursuits of research. The funny thing about difficult journeys; you insist that you just want to get to the end of the journey, but when you do, you realize one thing. Ursula Le Guin says it best:
“It is good to have an end to journey toward; but it is the journey that matters, in the end.”