Last day

I vividly recall my last day as a student. My defense experience was a battle, one I didn’t expect and wasn’t prepared for. It included a late attack by someone I liked and respected, and remembering the shock of it still turns my stomach. Absolutely sick with terror that my life was being irrevocably ripped apart, I battled back - hard. Email, phone calls, meetings – I tried each to argue passionately over my qualifications, my work, and the fairness of an educational system that seemed to be making an error. It still pains me to know that I lost. While I hope to eventually derive comfort from the final positive outcome, I still look back and cringe – at my belief that nobody would try to stop me from graduating at such a late stage, at my desperate plea for someone to fix the situation as it quickly unraveled, at my 2-day breakdown, characterized by a complete inability to do anything other than sleep and breathe.

But I did get through it, though the details seem unimportant right now. I had actually started my new job while I continued to correct the draft of my thesis, so completing graduate school required one more trip to the town I had called home for 4 years. An early-morning drive through snow and sleet allowed me my first glimpse of winter weather. Stress over traffic – why must you drive in the left lane if you’re not passing? Or going the speed limit? – and a later than ideal arrival time made me rush through printing the final version of my thesis. I needed 5 copies, and for a document that was only slightly shorter than 200 pages, that’s a nice sized stack of paper.

I loaded the color printer with the thesis paper – soft, smooth and watermarked – elegant somehow in its off-white color and silky texture. The way the paper felt under my fingertips is one of the clearest memories. The way the printer slowly marked each page, unimpressed by my silent screams to hurry. Things take time – quality, whether in color images and bold text or in carefully scripted equations and centered tables, takes time – and as desperate as I was to finish, to just be done, the pages slowly floated into the tray, pausing momentarily between chapters.

Finally armed with printed pages, there was a dash to the graduate school, 10 minutes late for a 15 minute appointment – I despise tardiness; being late is a result of poor planning or lack of interest; there’s a reason why graduating is so hard for me – everything is so melodramatic – just do what needs to be done, and do it faster – talking with a lovely woman about my plans, how I chose my department, what I hoped to do after this post-doc. I give practiced answers, though I didn’t know these questions would come at the final interview. I’ve responded to similar inquisitions before though – I know what to say, how to say it, when to smile and the appropriate time to cock my head and frown thoughtfully.

I become distracted as she cheerfully scatters my carefully constructed stack of paper. Does she notice I put the documents in the order in which they appear on the list of things to bring? I used the right paper – the quality is impeccable, see how lovely it feels as you flip through the pages so casually? Those are the pages I sometimes despaired over never being able to turn in. I typed the title page myself – I used the bold option on the typewriter because the ribbon was going bad. I could do it again if that’s not right though… I so want this to be over – I’ll do anything to make things good enough… The signatures from my committee are in blue, not black ink. Those page numbers are a little too low in the corner, I know.

Ending in less than 5 minutes, stamped pages and a bulky clip placed around 4 years of headaches, small victories, hard-won insight and sleepless nights represent the official endpoint of what I spent 4 years trying to achieve. Clutching the packet welcoming me to the alumni association, I shake her hand – she was kind and didn’t make any mention of my material being anything less than acceptable – and take one more look at the papers I left with her. The thesis I had feverishly finished printing only 15 minutes ago – it was probably still warm from the printer and I question the quality of its content even now; the 2 pages my committee signed – 5 men who I respected greatly, who originally told me I wasn’t good enough to graduate, but eventually relented; a survey – my parents completed high school, but have little college credit, I didn’t pay for graduate school, I finished in a little over 4 years, I’m doing a post-doc for a little while after I leave; and an abstract – 4 years of work, 3 papers, 7 abstracts, 8 interviews, and 4 boxes of journal articles condensed into 200 words on a single sheet of paper. Is this it? This is what I worked for, what I’ll leave behind?

Leaving the department was hardly more ceremonial. Signing a form to terminate my fellowship. Leaving more copies of the thesis, carefully placed in a box to avoid wrinkles, so they can be bound. One will go in the library – I used to like to read the dedication and acknowledgement pages when I needed a break from studying. Fascinated by why people did this work, who they needed to thank for helping them through the experience, I wondered what I might someday say. Glancing in the library as I turned to leave, I saw 2 students talking about exam scores, sharing study strategies. If they were to look now, they could find my thesis – dedicated to my family and thanking many people who started out as colleagues and became dear friends – and perhaps remember that I did something in that department, personally and professionally. That I stumbled many times, most memorably near the end of my career there, but I recovered. Perhaps my trip to the finish was completed at a limp, with plenty of furtive glances around, hoping that I wouldn’t be noticed and inflicted with yet another hurdle, rather than a sprint with head held high and smiles all around. But I finished.

But, really, who would think about me at all? Apart from a fleeting glance at 2 preliminary pages of several thesis documents, I didn’t consider those who came before me. Though I wish them well, I was more concerned with the next lab, upcoming deadlines and future plans. So as I walked out of that building for what should be the last time, and headed out the car as the sun was peaking through the clouds, I hoped that things were going well for the authors of all those bound theses on the shelves, and that many more black-bound documents join them as a testament to the value of learning, the ability to see something through despite difficulty and exhaustion, and the hope that in learning and creating new knowledge, we can become better people.