Skip to main content

Back to School...

School is starting once again and for me this is a momentous occasion because it marks the beginning of the last year I’ll ever be in school…as a student. I started school when I was 4 years old and I’ll be ending this epic three decade journey with a new title, a few extra letters around my name, a certified piece of paper in a frame, and a brain so stuffed with information that it mostly just seems like a jumbled muddle of words.

I’ve been in Graduate School longer than most of my Thai friends have EVER been in school. And that’s tough to think about. Not because grad school takes forever in Anthropology, but because school is so valuable, yet totally taken for granted in our North American lives that it hurts to stop and consider it in a humanitarian perspective.

Most people are impressed when they hear that you’re working on your doctorate in any field of study. Some disciplines have more clout to astonish then others. Anthropology usually gets looks of pleased confusion (What’s Anthropology?); Primate Studies gets some “Ooo’s and Aahh’s” (after you explain what a primate is – I study monkeys and apes), but for the most part, all people really seem to want to know after you say you’re still in school well beyond ‘normal’ years of schooling is: when will you be done? And, what will you do with that?

Well, for the first time ever I can, realistically, say: I’ll be done this year.
And the answer to the second question logically follows: I can do whatever I want.

That’s the point. Because school isn’t about how much time you spend there. Maybe you wanted to get out of school as soon as possible, maybe you thought better things were coming in the ‘real world’. But for people doing their doctorates like me, we don’t see it that way. That’s why we’re still in school. We’re working on the stuff we want to work on right now; we’re improving our lives, challenging our minds, and still growing up just like everyone else. And ya, it takes a long time, and no, we don’t like how long it takes either. But let’s put things in perspective: getting your doctorate is not a prison sentence. It’s not about putting in your time, getting a piece of paper, and walking away having paid your dues.

Education is life. And it requires the same determination, dedication, and effort to get through as any other worthy path life offers. There are ups and downs; roadblocks, detours, obstacles, mountains to climb, and hills to roll down; along with dazzling opportunities for personal growth and experience. Everyone questions themselves throughout the entire process of grad school. Many people quit before finishing their degrees. All the rest of us want to quit, but don’t. The difference between who stays and who goes is usually deeply personal.

That’s life.

A few years ago, I was stressed and strained to max capacity before taking my candidacy exams, I sighed in my advisor’s office and said: “I just need to get through this and it will get better.” To which she promptly responded: “It doesn’t get any easier, it just keeps getting harder after this.”

Ugh. That’s not what people want to hear when they're emotionally drained or feeling uncertain. We want to hear it's all gumdrops and lollipops from here on out. You do the work, and then live in a field of dreams with cloudless skies and rainbows, watching unicorns run in slow motion, glorious and free.

Apparently that never happens.

As with any push towards excellence, the further you go, the harder it gets. But see, what you learn by persevering through any training regime is that the world is not in actuality a terrible scary place you have to scurry through on your way to a pristine field of dreams. The world is actually quite malleable, and it changes. It’s impressionable, and because of that, it’s subject to your imprint – and you can make your mark on this world in a big, big way.

So you stop wanting an ending with unicorns and lollipops, and you start wanting a story with challenges and variation. Then after a while, when you know you’ve done the work, you start believing in yourself to the point where you want the opportunity to prove yourself in the world.

And you learn that success doesn’t look like this:


But rather, it looks more like this:

And you’re Ok with that because (though you’ve likely never seen a real unicorn) you’ve seen your fair share of rainbows and cloudless skies along your way. And you’ve frolicked in your dreamy fields a few times, but now you have even bigger ideas running just ahead of you to catch up with. So you push to run harder than before and you write your own story (the best stories cover a significant amount of time).
---
Since people don’t know so much about what anthropology is really like, they often think my life is one big vacation: I work on my own time, I live to inspire others, I have everything handed to me because I’m lucky, and I take extended holidays in the jungle. But that view is a little skewed. Yes, my story so far has been pretty great, but this is what an anthropological life really looks like:

It’s books and scattered papers. It’s computer screens and post-it notes. It’s lists of things to do made into charts and grids. And it’s thinking, thinking, thinking until you can’t think anymore, then thinking more, then readily admitting you’ve lost your mind and gone insane so you can have that breakthrough moment and write just one sentence that finally makes sense. Then it's back to more thinking. It’s staring at a pretty picture from a better time in your life on the wall in your office and sleepless stressed out nights. It’s being broke, all the time. It’s being challenged by basically everyone around you. It’s people rejecting your ideas, challenging your proposals, and tearing apart your research, so you can build it back up. It’s doubt. It’s exhaustion. It’s having faith in the bigger picture. It’s editing, so…much…fricking…editing… And it’s standing in a room of over 100 students trying to keep their attention long enough to spark a thought in their mind that sticks: the world is bigger than you currently imagine. And it’s standing in a room of 20 students trying to convince them to SPEAK UP ‘cause their thoughts and opinions matter: you are an important part of this giant world! And it’s grading papers, grading exams, grading projects; making posters, giving presentations, putting yourself out there by sharing your thoughts, and standing in conference rooms with intellectual giants feeling so very, very small.

90% of the time it’s a tremendous challenge, and really not all that glamorous.
90% of the time it’s just regular lifework, just like everyone else.
And a few weeks or months of a year, if you’re truly fortunate, it’s a chance to stand in a foreign place with a question, giving your best effort in a hopeful attempt to unearth the answer.
10% of the time it is glorious.
And you know what, I really kinda love it.  :)
---
I have no special skills that equip me to be successful at anything I do. I’ve tried to find it a million times, but nothing makes me particularly special. I’m a primate; that makes me persistent by nature. I’m a human; that makes me adaptable and enduring by natural design. I’m putting in my 10,000 hours at school; that makes me skilled at what I love to do.
So for those of you heading back to school and considering your moves ahead this year, please keep this in mind: school is not a prison sentence, it's not about putting in your time.

This is your life, you can make it extraordinary.  



Comments

Meadow said…
Jackie, what a wonderful post for our first day back this year. I very much enjoyed reading it. Today I'll give my Brown Bag presentation and take one more step towards my ultimate goal. Along the way I've considered many others' notions of what 'success' is, and most people are quick to judge your success based on their conceptions. It's hard to define success as more than X number of articles, grants, projects, etc. I see success as being happy with what you're doing. Can I still have a unicorn, though? :) Thanks for the post, today.

Popular posts from this blog

Life Under the Canopy - Survival Tips for Primate Research.

All too often students begin fieldwork full of anticipation and high hopes for big adventure, only to end up burned out and on their way home within a month. This has inspired me to write a post about what it takes to survive primate behavioural research for people who may be considering taking this "road less traveled by" in the future. I won't water it down for you; primate research is not for everyone. Fieldwork is an uphill road, overloaded with obstacles that will test your personal strength every step of the way. (Perhaps there's a reason we opted to leave the forest and culture up our lives, oh so many years ago :). But if you've got what it takes to push yourself beyond the comforts of the average everyday world, and you're interested in finding out just how strong an individual you really are, then studying primates is one of the most inspirational and rewarding jobs available! Think you've got what it takes? Here are my tips for what it

Jane Goodall, Gibbons, and A Little Girl’s Dream.

Many people ask me how I got into studying gibbons for a living, and quite honestly there is no direct answer to that question, because it wasn’t a direct route. When I was growing up in Burlington, I wanted to be many things: first on the list (so I’m told by my parents) was a “ballerina hockey player” but that’s too far back for me to even remember saying, and I don’t really dance or skate these days so that was probably a bit of a stretch. One clear target that I do know from as far back as I can remember is that I always wanted to get my PhD. By the time I was about 4 or 5 years old, I had firmly established in my mind that I wanted to be called “Dr. Prime” when I grew up because that’s my Dad’s name (he has a PhD in chemistry), and I wanted to be like my Dad. So from the moment I first started school until this very day, that destination has always firmly held the course, and thus likely guided the navigation parameters since then. The rest of the story follows with many sente

Join Us!

The world is an amazing place and we're on a mission to live in harmony with nature and create a more compassionate world... are you coming?  Like us on Facebook or visit our website at   www.primeearthonline.org.