budding scholar

A new year has arrived, one with a blue moon on New Year’s Eve, and family visits that kept me busy and gave me a break from worrying over my project for 10 days. I really needed the break, the complete focus on being an aunt. The fact that you never really disconnect has been one of the most challenging things about doing a Ph.D. for me. I know people doing startups, or writing novels, or becoming artists, or doing other original work probably face this too. Your work is with you all the time, and feels all tied up in who you are, in your identity in the world. How the work is going seems to matter more for for how you feel about yourself than in other jobs where you’re not trying to create something new. The rewards feel few and far between.

It often makes me miss teaching, the satisfaction of knowing you’re helping people learn every day. When I taught I had days where I was exhausted, my home life was a mess, and I didn’t know where I would find the energy to go to work. But then I got there, and the connection with my students was so rewarding that it made the problems pale in importance. I can’t wait to have this connection with students at the college level, in classes on culture and education, immigration, language policy, qualitative methods, and social networks. One of the most rewarding experiences in my life is helping people learn, mentoring them, supporting and encouraging their growth. I just need to get past this milestone/rite of passage of the dissertation!

A post soon about my goals for the new year. I’ve seen others do some last year/this coming year reflecting on their blogs and it’s inspired me. I haven’t made new years’ goals in years, but feel like it would help with the next stage of my study.