Ever since starting grad school, I've been terrified of the idea of the qualifying exam. It represented the first time that I would actually have to prove myself in front of experts in sub-disciplines vastly different than my own home base.
In my department, our quals are set up in two parts: writtens and orals. Before your written exam you produce a 15 page “NSF-style” research proposal that outlines your thesis chapters. The written exams are over the course of 2-3 days where you have two hours to answer 2/3 of the questions per committee member. There’s no set rule on how long these responses should be. The idea is that you answer the questions adequately—one committee member told me even if I can answer it in 2-3 sentences, don’t. Expand on that. Consensus from other older students is that your responses should be ~1-1.5 pages each. How much information you need to learn to fill up those pages is a different story. A few weeks (average: 2) after your writtens, you convene your committee for oral exams. The first 10-15 minutes, you have to wait outside (or in a zoom room by yourself) while your committee discusses your written responses; i.e. you don’t know how you did on the writtens until the day of your oral exam. On your orals, each committee member will ask a round of questions until there are no remaining questions (~2-3 rounds). In general, it’s a good idea to identify your weak points from your writtens- what information were you not confident on, and what information did you not answer at all (that third question). Straightforward, right? Maybe. Maybe not. Committee members all reassured me that the purpose is to gauge “what does Alexis know” rather than an opportunity for them to kick me out of the program. But how do you study for such a nebulous exam? I met with each of my committee members individually to identify what topics they thought were important. Some gave me ~2-3 succinct topics (perfect for preparing for 3 questions on the writtens!) and others listed off many topics I should know, with some extra emphasis on certain topics. With this help of my committee, I generated a list of ~15 topics to focus on. I should note that before having one-on-one meetings with my committee members, I was reviewing information already. This included material from courses my committee members taught or chapters from books that seemed important to my research proposal. After receiving guidance from my committee (which some wanted my proposal before meeting—so get that done early!!), my general approach to studying was focusing on a topic a day. This is hard though. So many topics in oceanography are interconnected so staying on track was difficult. Furthermore, ever feeling like I knew enough information was even more difficult. It got to the point where I felt as if every time I started answering one question, 100 more popped up in its place. And this leads me back to the question of “how complete of an answer is enough.” Moreover, though, how do you manage a never ending to do list of things to learn when you're burnt out? By burnt out, I mean mentally, physically, and emotionally. I landed on a pretty accelerated timeline for taking quals, partially so that I could enjoy my winter break without needing to think about studying. But this meant I felt behind from the start. I realistically only had 3 weeks of hard core, super-dedicated study time. A little over a week out from my written exams I had a huge list of coursework and extracurricular commitments to deal with along with studying. To combat this, I split my days in half-- deal with the "easy" or "fun" stuff in the morning since I'm not a morning person, and study in afternoon-evening. Even with this division, my body started saying no. The stress was getting to me—mentally and physically. I was waking up every day feeling like I had climbed a mountain the day before. But I hadn't worked out in weeks. I hadn’t practiced much self-care in weeks. But I was climbing different kinds of mountains each day. I've been prioritizing sleep, but never felt well-rested because I would wake up in a panic every morning thinking that I was late for ~something~. In short, I was prioritizing other people's opinions and expectations of me rather than myself. I had really supportive committee members. Each one gave extremely candid and helpful advice and study tips. This included cautioning me about stressing too much, and the ability to say "I don't know". Some committee members want to get you to the point of saying “I don’t know,” so they can see what your thought process would be in trying to apply knowledge that you DO have. These conversations also included how to have a more beneficial perspective on the process: this is one of the only times in your career where it'll be 100% okay to blow off lab work and just spend your days reading and learning. But many of them also said, “I know you'll do well because you're a great student.” Hearing those words can be a double-edged sword, though. In the immediate sense, it's a confidence booster: "I can do this and I will pass." In the following days it turned into "I have to live up to this high expectation that they already have of me". I'm not a "great student" because of luck. I've always put a lot of pressure on myself to work harder/longer because I was taught failure wasn't an option early on. This is how we are often conditioned as kids. Like many, I was raised on a system that rewards achievements without consideration for progress or the journey that it takes; a system that looks at the “great students” and says, “they don’t need any help along the way” or “they’re so independent”, but it really means “maybe we’ll just tell them they did a good job when they get there.” Most people don’t think to check on the “great students” and make sure that they’re doing okay. How do we break that cycle? How do us “great students” stop pushing ourselves so hard when being rewarded for our achievements are the only time we get attention or acknowledgment? When I was in elementary school, I was in a “gifted program” (read: normal classes were substituted with creative activities). One day, our teacher brought in an outside speaker. They asked us all to try juggling in front of the class. Some people volunteered and failed and moved on. Others, like me, wouldn't even volunteer. We later unpacked the meaning behind this. Which for elementary students is saying a lot. The speaker talked to us about how many of us will experience external pressures in our life; everyone else will look at us and think we're the perfect student because we’re doing “great.” But in reality, no one is perfect and that fails to consider any other factors than the end product. And how do we deal with that? How do we deal with trying something, failing, and moving on rather than internalizing this stress of never being able to slip because someone may see and that will shatter everyone’s perception of you? Through my quals studying process, I've been thinking about that day a lot. And how I didn't juggle because (retrospectively) I was afraid of failing. Publicly and privately. I'd be lying to myself and anyone else seeing this if I said I've learned how to fail. I think I've been better about talking about my failures, but it's always in the sense to make other people feel better: "it's okay, I did the same thing." I'm not sure that it makes me feel as if my making mistakes was okay though. So how do we get past this? I don’t know the answer to that. To me, it’s a problem in the realm of academia, but an even deeper stemming societal issue. Here I was, just over a week from my written exams and I was unsure of how to get past these mental and physical road blocks. The physical ones were easy. I took a lighter study day and practiced self care instead. One of the hardest things to do when you’re on a time crunch is recognizing when you are no longer being productive. Taking those breaks, however long they need to be, are your only saving grace. It’s like taking one step back to take a leap forward. Physically resetting my body allowed me to mentally reset again and have the mental capacity to read a paper without feeling overwhelmed about “knowing enough”. The next day, I returned to studying. I thought I was refreshed, but there was still something holding me back. I ended up concatenating all the notes I had taken on each of my study topics. I had anywhere from 1-3 pages of NOTES per topic. In the coming days, I practiced turning these notes into essay responses. Okay, so now I should feel relieved—it seems like I have enough “knowledge”. But then I question… what if the knowledge that I have isn’t the *right* knowledge? Who defines right vs. wrong here in a literal sea of information? I think for that, it’s useful to have a grounding point. What did I actually SAY I would investigate in my proposal, and what are my committee member’s research interests? That helped narrow it down. I’ve found that writing my feelings or journey has been a cathartic process in the past—something that has held true for this. What I really needed though was to allow myself to take a step back from studying. Fortunately (or maybe unfortunately) I had volunteered to help plan an event for my department that took place the Friday-Saturday prior to my writtens on Monday-Tuesday. This did give me the opportunity to take a step back and absorb all the information I had been come across. After my writtens, I took a step back from quals. This was partially to give myself a break and partially because I had a giant to-do list for end of semester projects/goals. It was definitely hard not to overwork myself during this time--and I wasn’t even STUDYING. One night, I was still at it at 1 AM and my ever supporting partner made me go to bed because I was complaining that my vision was blurry in one of my eyes. In retrospect, he’s the only reason I took breaks. I thought after writtens I would feel more prepared, and I did in some respects, but, in others I was more stressed. I’d say I’m usually a decent writer (maybe not in this blogpost), but given the opportunity to weave a story and cycle through my knowledge, I can come up with a coherent response. In orals though, I was not confident in my ability to think on the spot given the mental state I was in. Come the day of orals, all was much better than I anticipated. My committee chair tried to terrify me after they deliberated on my writtens by saying, “okay, it was really close, but I guess we’ll move forward…… just kidding!”. While that terrified me, that and being told “if you weren’t nervous I’d say you were a sociopath” by another committee member lessened my nerves—it felt more friendly and casual. Much to my relief, my Q&A sessions felt like conversations rather than interrogations. It was easier to feel confident because they were asking me about MY research and, if I didn’t know the answer, they would help me to it. Sure I answered a few things wrong, to which I was greeted by a puzzled look or an “actually it’s this, but now that you know that, explain it.” But it was over before I knew and they once again deliberated. Pretty quickly, I was congratulated on passing and felt a flood of emotions—exhaustion, relief, and happiness to name a few. In the coming days, those emotions started to subside as I started being greeted with either “I knew you would do great” or just being shuffled onto the next project/task without acknowledgment. And so the imposter syndrome began to again creep in a little at a time. I still don’t know how to best deal with that, but at least now I’m a Ph.D. CANDIDATE with imposter syndrome.
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December 2021
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