It’s been about 1.5 years since I’ve started this PhD, and as coursework draws to a close (just one course left), it feels like an apt time to write a more personal reflection on my journey so far. I had a less traditional route of getting here (both in field migration and the gaps between my undergraduate and now) so it’s been quite the journey of rediscovering myself again and again.
//”a person, scattered in space and time, is no longer a woman but a series of events on which we can throw no light, a series of insoluble problems” - In Search of Lost Time, Marcel Proust//
I haven’t been home since I started and lived alone for over a year. When I arrived last summer, home was thousands of miles away and I had no friends here. It was a big change, a sudden splice in my life in the then and now; I had never lived outside of home (vacations, yes, but never even a semester’s exchange otherwise). The gulf, I would say now, was mostly a blessing even though the first year was not easy.
When the summer is eternal, you don’t really think much about the passage of time. You live in a constant limbo of hazed humidity. Here, the seasons change so quickly and so I became increasingly aware of the days passing. Every day feels like a race to start working on the questions that led me here, but there’s coursework, there’s getting used to the city, and there’s finding myself.
I would say the hardest part of the PhD so far is the last part. I won’t go into the details of my life here but when you are finally truly alone, sometimes everything catches up with you. It felt at one point like I had been sprinting a marathon, running from things I didn’t want to think about, busying myself with things and other people. The PhD put a stop to all that. There is so much thinking. I have never had so much time to think through things myself. I enjoy it. But in my first year, maybe because my path here was so convoluted, all I could see when my thoughts turned inward were fragments of who I was and I could not reconcile them with who I am now. A black hole collapsing upon itself.
I’m still working on that (with help now) but I think the worst of the storm has passed. There are stars in the sky again and this time I can feel when the snow crunches beneath my boots. I wouldn’t say the PhD brought this on, but it did force me to confront it because there is only so much thinking you can do about your work before all paths start leading home to yourself.
There are some things that helped me (and I still stick to) and I’ll leave them here. I don’t think it’ll be applicable to everyone (maybe just me? anyway-):
Making plans to go out every weekend, even if by myself, to something that I care about and like. I don’t have a car, but there are still so many things to do. Often I have multiple choices about what I want to do every weekend. I would bus to Monroeville, drop by Allentown regularly, go to anything that I want to see around the city, strike up conversations with people around, and then have a nice meal by myself with a book at whichever place I want to try.
Going back to old comfort hobbies I had dropped when I was working. I picked up a watercolor class in winter and there’s something about the medium that teaches you to accept mistakes and trust in the process. I also started playing around with simple 3D sculpting and doing digital art again. I never stopped learning Russian.
Picking classes out of pure interest. I’ve always done this during my undergraduate/master’s with little regard for my eventual grades, and I’m very lucky my advisor is fully supportive of this here. The English graduate courses were a stand-out for me and helped me connect better not only with my work, but things that I grew up thinking about around fandom (which was the thing™ that influenced young me massively)
Generally taking time to indulge the things I know young me would’ve wanted. Seeing San Diego (blink-182!), bright pink eyeshadow, thrifting for alt clothes, fun hair colors, concerts, picking up cosplay again, visiting Snoqualmie Falls, dressing up for Halloween and giving kids candy from my apartment, dancing to music at night, etc.
Trying to keep my research as close as possible to something I care about. I realize this is also really advisor-dependent and so I have to say again, I am fortunate to have support here.
I close this year in a better place than I opened it. To 2026!