Yesterday was sort of a 'mittwoch' meltdown for many people I know enrolled in the Ph.D program, including me. Perhaps it was the onset of a new semester, the reality of financial risks, and the voyage to the unknown that created a day of angst. I received an email from the director of the Louisville Writing Project checking in on me and she said, "These days are the hardest part of the journey towards where you want to go." I emailed her back, "Yes, because getting the degree is crossing the river Styx."
In the underworld, travelers forget their former lives because the powers that be pull such history away. Styx is a foul river and drinking directly from it causes death. Here, the world of the living meet the world of the dead and the world of the mortal meet the world of the immortal. Only a few who journey in these parts make it to the Elysian Fields. Most end up like Sisyphus, punished forever in a bouldered-state of Ground Hog's Day with Bill Murray.
I can't think of a better metaphor for this academic process, and when it popped into my head, it made me smile. Yes, I'm in one of those crappy parts of the journey, and I'm hoping to keep a little sense of who I am. I don't want to forget where I've already traveled nor why I want to cross the River and, hopefully, return with more knowledge than I had before.
It smells here. It is dark. All around me I see sadness and worry. Angst and fear rule the day. I float in a world seeing Tantalus tempted by fruit and water just out of his reach. This world is not real -- it is not like the public school teaching world I once knew and all the life that I found from it. I am walking among ghosts and they are all judging me, trying to suck the life out of me through their eyes. They are Harry Potter's Dementors.
Yet, everything is evolving at exactly the right time --- and for this, I must be content and patient. Happiness comes from traveling the bad parts, too.
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