1,212 days ago I started my PhD journey.

1,199 days ago I wrote This Intro Post to my Visual Research Methods/Cultural Studies 455 course.

I wrote, specifically,

This semester I start my last leg on my education journey—PhD student. I type that sentence, erase it, retype it, look away, and repeat the cycle a few times before I accept it all sounds cliche. I imagine myself as the brown girl emoji (🤷🏾‍♀️) with hunched shoulders and upturned palms, before pausing to listen more closely to what’s going on down the hall with my teens. Though I’ve been a parenting student before, I realize tonight this is going to be a much different journey.

Here I am, ABD (All But Dissertation), or better yet, a PhD Candidate. I am no longer a PhD student—I am now a candidate. That means quite a bit; reaching PhD Candidacy is a huge milestone and quite a feet. What’s the difference? Well, a PhD student is a student. This means they are still taking coursework and can be anywhere in that process. They can be on the first day of the journey, the middle, or the last. A PhD student could also be finished with coursework and studying for qualifying or comprehensive exams. These are often colloquially known as “Comps” or “Quals.” At my college, Claremont Graduate University (CGU), they are called qualifying exams and we often refer to them as Quals. A PhD student could also be post Quals and working on their Dissertation Proposal.

For my program (PhD in Cultural Studies at Claremont Graduate University), we have to complete 78 units of coursework, sit for qualifying exams, and pass a Dissertation Proposal defense to reach candidacy. The Qualifying examination consists of studying a minimum of 90 books for three different exams, 30 texts per exam. Exams represent your Major, Minor, and Research Specialty. My exams were as follows:

Major: Cultural Studies

Minor: Africana Studies

Specialty: Cultural Geography, with an emphasis on Black women

If I am being honest, so far the Qualifying Exam process was the most rigorous and challenging stage of the program. For me, there is no comparison. I enjoyed coursework because it allowed me to learn and grow as a scholar. I had the opportunity to learn from my peers and to be exposed to their interests and their different ways of thinking in and through a problem. This is the thing most people do not tell you about Grad school—you learn just as much, if not more, from your peers as you do from your Profs. My peers were from a wide range of areas/fields and the way they approached texts exposed me to fields I would have never thought about or learned about. That sharpens you.

There were many times during the Quals process that I absolutely lamented the process. At times I hated it and sometimes I wondered what was the tangible purpose—until I completed the process and saw the growth in me as a scholar. I have heard people refer to it as academic hazing, and I think it is easy to make that assumption if you have not undergone it. It is easy to look at it from the outside in and say, there is no need. But, when you go through it and emerge at the other side, you realize it does serve a purpose. It prepares you for teaching your field and gives you a deep, general knowledge of the field that you do not gain if you do not read deeply, broadly, and intentionally. I have no doubt that I could successfully teach a course in Cultural Studies, Africana Studies, Black Feminist Studies, Transnational Feminism, Cultural Geography successfully. I understand the fields. This is not to be confused with mastering the fields—I believe that is a lifelong pursuit. I understand the fields. That is gold to a scholar. While I think I could have been successful before Quals, I know for a fact that I will be successful after passing Quals. If nothing else, I know more and I understand how my fields converge and diverge with other fields.

In going back and reading that initial post a few things strike me. I cannot help but think about how life has shaped me while in this program. A number of major life milestones have happened, along with a global pandemic. There are days, or I should say, there have been days I have asked myself, who am I. As cliche of rhetorical question that is…life has changed so much I have struggled at times to recognize myself. That has been frightening at times and rarely exciting. As a young adult I welcomed changed and the ability to grow and involve. As a middle-aged adult I often find that I have stopped dreaming about who I will be or dreaming about who I can become, and instead relishing in who I am and who I have become.

Do we not welcome that? Do we not find pride in that as 40somethings glad to get out of the insecurity of the 20s and hard-work of claiming and staking our ground in our 30s?

As a mother of two late-stage teenagers and wife of 23 years to (nearly) 50-year-old man, I’d better know myself.

That is the narrative.

I find myself wishing to daydream and dream again. With all that comes with being a 45-year-old woman there is often left space or room to get lost in ones daydreams.

My PhD journey has pushed me to dream—just in new ways. Theorizing is nothing but creative dream-work. Theory is metaphoric work that we create with knowledge.

And I love it. I love the gruel and labor of theorizing and inventing new ways of being in the world. It is possibility work. It is possibility work. It is poetic work. It is not unlike gardening. When building a garden I take what the world tells me, what I know to be relatively concrete about my patch of earth and I theorize about what would grow there. I theorize about what the birds and bees and lizards would like to eat. I theorize on ways to outsmart the greedy June bugs and the congregations of aphids that come to praise my food come winter. I daydream about the labor of plants—which will give fruit, give flowers, give scent.

I feel like a little girl daydreaming about the secret lives of my dolls. I am allowed to get lost in my own mind and the only way out is by thinking…creatively.

Grad school always seems to connect me to the little girl in me because she was so curious about the world and people. As a little that curiosity often feared me and drove my elders wild. I would wonder so deeply about people and things I would “learn” them and create stories in my mind by going down a never-ending road of what-ifs. I would ask question after question of my elders, downright begging to know. I wanted to know it all. To understand it all. Most of all—tell me why. Answers weren’t enough, I needed to know why they were the answers. I would press my mother and her girlfriends on semiotic topics at five, of course, not knowing that was what I was doing. My brain never rested. It is no different now, though now I do not get afraid.

Alas, I am going to end the ramblings of this post so I may make space for new ideas. It has taken over two months to complete as life has filled up. My intention is to stop waiting for perfection and to simply record my thoughts—let them fall as they are.

So it is, so it be.

Started: May 17th

Finished: July 29th