Have you ever felt that achieving your goals left you feeling more empty than fulfilled? This summer, I learned that achievement can be hollow. Process, on the other hand, is everything.
These past three months have been trying, to say the least. No one wants to fail at anything. At the same time, I don’t feel excited or elated. I certainly felt relieved after passing my exams, but I also felt sad and empty. I suppose the lessons I have learned from all this are:
The achievement itself is actually profoundly anti-climactic.
The measure of your passion for anything is how much you enjoy the process.
Now that I have passed my exams (and technically earned a master’s degree in English), I feel like I’ve figured out why getting this degree is hard. The process of self-regulated routines, systematic information searching, organizing, writing, and then editing is exhausting. Right now, I don’t know if I enjoy that process enough for academia to be my career of choice. What I know is that this PhD is more connected to a maternal family story that began with my grandmother.
Failing and then passing has helped me realize that the PhD is more about discovering what kind of writer I want to be. I’ve learned that I don’t want to be an academic writer and I do not want to write in the style that academia demands. Instead, I aspire to write more like Rebecca Solnit and Robin Mitchel. I need to research in order to write, but I want the freedom to shape my research and writing as I see fit. Failing my exams showed me that I do want to write for a living. Studying again over these three months clarified that I do not want to write in the way that academia dictates. Passing my exams revealed that I still don’t know what and how I want to write.
While I know that academia is not my future, I am committed to completing the PhD so that I have more time to discover the writer and researcher I want to become. Despite struggling with the PhD, I’m beginning to enjoy the process of figuring out what kind of work I want to produce—of which the PhD is just one part. From here onward, I hope to find the inner motivation not only to attend to my PhD work, but also to engage in pursuits like blogging, YouTubing, photography, and traveling. My new goal is to create more harmony between all these pursuits, rather than label the PhD strictly as ‘work’ and my other interests as ‘hobbies.’ I want to build a life where I can bounce between many passions that enable and facilitate producing something I can truly be proud of.
Best,
Prof. Vilakazi
(Note: In the U.S Professor is what all educators in the academy are classed, regardless of qualification. In South Africa, the title of Professor is connected to achieving tenur.)
CONGRATULATIONS ON COMPLETING THIS JOURNEY, E̶L̶L̶I̶E̶ PROF. VILAKAZI! 🥳
It is indeed an arduous process, and it’s good that you are looking to find the lane where you enjoy the journey. May you find it soon and blossom even more than we’ve ever seen!