The last few weeks have been very eventful in terms of my career. Four weeks ago, I was worn out and disheartened but plodding slowly along the doctoral path. Two and a half weeks ago, I had decided to leave graduate school for fame and fortune back in the magical world of the internet. Now, I’m recommitted, reenergized and excited about school and my dissertation. Why all the changes? Well, it’s a bit of a long story.

First, graduate school is tough. Aside from the financial burden, graduate school also brings existential crisis, especially if you’re doing it the “right” way. By “right”, I mean really challenging your understanding of the world and how you can know anything about it. This is the root of good scholarship but is also extremely mentally and emotionally taxing. Invariably, you will feel lost. You will have a great deal of trouble getting where you were going when you started graduate school because you now have to question whether you really had any business going there in the first place. This process is what leads to that bleary-eyed, shell-shocked look that most graduate students get around their 3rd or 4th year.

As an aside, this is not unlike the bleary-eyed, shell-shocked look that most new parents have. I could draw all kinds of analogies between the two undertakings related to bringing new life/knowledge into the world but I won’t. The fact is that I don’t really know what parenting will be like and so don’t feel comfortable saying anything about it. (Socrates would be proud of how much I’ve embraced the whole “knowing how much you don’t know” perspective.) Instead, I’ll just say that this fall will combine both graduate school and new parenthood and, thus, should be very “interesting”—a word used by academics when the import of something is unclear or complicted. In other words, “interesting” can mean anything from “probably worthy of note” to “wow, it suddenly appears that everything I ever thought I knew about the world is totally wrong”.

Getting back to graduate school, it is easy to see questioning everything you ever knew and inevitably finding faults in your answers could get a graduate student feeling a bit down. On top of this, most faculty are not very good and giving you feedback to let you know that the process you are going through is normal, much less whether you are weathering the storm with anything approaching competence. This is exactly where I was four weeks ago. So, I decided to take some time off from school.

I still have connections in my old field of interaction design and user research. In fact, several folks have been trying to coax me out of school for most of the time that I’ve been here. This design work is lucrative, bounded, and concrete. In addition, I know that I’m good at this kind of work. The prospect of making good money and feeling competent at a job proved too much to resist. So, I decided to take a “leave of absense”—to get some perspective, to take a break, to get the heck out of school. I told all the professors I have close relationships with about my decision. They were disappointed but understanding and supportive. With the existendial crises behind me and no bridges burned, I entered a state of blissful calm that lasted about a week.

Exactly one week after telling the profs I was leaving, my advisor called me in to his office and said he’d been thinking a lot about my situation and my decision. His conclusion was that leaving the program now was stupid (his word). He said he thought it was a waste. So he wanted to make a pitch to me. For a number of reasons, I won’t go into the details of this pitch but I will say that he made me an offer that I couldn’t refuse. Regardless of the details, the REAL reason that his pitch worked is that in the process he essentially said, “Todd, you’re doing a good job.” As simple as that is, it was what I really needed. It’s amazing the effect this has had on my attitude and worldview. The grey world has become rosey. Blue skies are here again. I was lost but now I’m found. But I’m sure that this is nowhere near the end of the emotional roller coaster.