So I don’t even really know where to begin with this topic. There is so much to say about the time-period that leads up to the exam itself, the ramifications of its simple looming presence on the way second years interact with one another, and even how things changes following the exam. It really is quite the experience much like nothing I have ever experienced in my whole life. The structure of this post is likely to be a bit meandering, but hopefully this will be a bit cathartic and somewhat revealing as to the unspoken challenges that go along with “achieving candidacy”.
Preparation for candidacy is something more than a year in the making. From the moment you join your research group at towards the end of your first year. The goal for everyone suddenly becomes…get ready for candidacy. The official process doesn’t begin until much later, but right from the beginning the goal is to accomplish something so you can have a substantive knowledge of your project before it becomes exam time. Suddenly daily progress and weekly progress on research become far more important than it had at any point in your first year. Frustration and doubt seem to cloud everyday. Am I any closer to my final goal? For me, this was the case as it is for everyone I imagine.
Preparation for the exam brings everything into to focus. Papers that you have been putting off reading final get read. You finally sit down and think about how all the pieces of a large puzzle go together and fit into the context of all the other puzzles being pieced together in labs everywhere. There is little doubt in my mind that candidacy is the ultimate learning experience. You become intimately familiar with you project in ways that you hadn’t before. And after the exam, you realize just truly how much more there is to consider about your project. I don’t really know whether, after thinking about it for a week or so, after walking out of the candidacy exam room that I feel like I know a lot or know very little. I guess it is all about perspective and depending on my frame of reference I either feel the weight of all that I don’t know yet, but need to know or feel buoyed by the seeing how far I have come in a few short years.
Really though the simplest and most direct ramifications are those related to the preparation for the exam. Everyone realizes that more time and effort must be put into his/her research as the months roll towards candidacy. I think that is even a pretty linear conclusion that people outside of this academic culture realize. Candidacy does not come without effort. It is possibly though the more indirect ways that the candidacy exam is felt that have a greater impact on the lives of second year graduate students. The added stresses and pressures have a way of changing many of the fledgling bonds that have formed amongst colleagues as time become precious and free time becomes ever scarcer. It is really this area that I would like to explore in some detail here. How candidacy has effected the relationships I have with my fellow second years and with others and more broadly how greatly things seem to change with the passage of time.
In retrospect at some point towards the end of year one here…during the summer months I guess…I was arguably happier and more fulfilled socially than I had been in a very long time. I truly had friends and confidants that liked me for me and we spent lots of quality time hanging out together whether it was at lunch or at the movies or even at the beach(!!). As a group we were able to share our trials and tribulations both regarding in department issues (teaching, classes) and things like current events. It was just really enjoyable. Now I guess this doesn’t much relate directly to candidacy, but I emphasis the indirect effects that candidacy can inflict. Not long into the summer, one of my closest friends after struggling through most of the candidacy process decided that this PhD thing wasn’t for him and that his happiness would be found elsewhere.
You could call this the first shot across the bow so to speak from candidacy. A real eye opener. For me it was the first time that I actually thought about the fact that all people don’t finish the program. Dan would hang around for a few more months as he sorted out his future plans and finished things up in the lab, but it wasn’t long before he was off in search of a job and our relationship had been left to sporadic interactions on Facebook. This kind of begun the slow trickle of people out of the program. Most of the time you only find out of these “departures” second-hand, so-and-so discussing the job they got or that someone is looking for somewhere to live in Montana.
Perhaps it’s a great over-analysis to breakdown such complicated situations down into a singular common origin, but it is hard not to see a lot of the people leaving around the same time as not being related to candidacy and hard contemplation as to where their lives are headed. And the blind-siding of those around them, that too can be seen as a direct effect of the failure to communicate as everyone is buckling down. At this stage, as most second years have taken candidacy I can count probably more than a half-dozen of my fellow students that have departed program (and those are just the ones I am aware of).
So I think up to this point, I have kind of made this process out to be something that changes the people and events around me and have not taken personal responsibility for the way it has effected me. I may have mentioned early the way candidacy kind of hermitizes (made up word) you as you are working to get as much research done as possible and prepare your document and presentation for the exam. Well unfortunately I went full on into this mode, really just immersing myself into my work at the expense of most everything else. Apart from the scattered interactions with my group-mates, I limited my social interaction largely to that of my parents for basically months leading up to the exam. Periodically I would run across somebody in the hallway, and the conversation would inevitably lead to who was taking candidacy when and who had passed, etc. I hated these conversations then (and still do) today. Another reason i gave myself to avoid people.
As of writing this paragraph, almost two weeks removed, I am trying to reverse the terrible drain that can has been inflicted on my already meager social relationships. I haven’t reestablished contact with my closest friends Jing and Cheryl since we all took our exams. This can largely be attributed to a few very simple reasons.
1. I am not a fan of awkward things. It has seemingly been forever since we have had meaningful conversations, let alone done anything together. Breaking that ice is something that I am truly terrible at, and takes me some time to muster the gumption. The question becomes when does my desire over come my fear.
2. I have developed a routine. Probably the lamest of the reasons I am enumerating here, but I am a person of routine, so I have found myself in a rhythm as far as getting through my day especially with things like lunch were previously we would frequently meet and have lunch together. My candidacy routine has made for quickie lunches by myself and then back to work. Routines rule my life, and until I get enough “activation energy” to change them I am generally follow them.
3. Finally, we didn’t all pass our exam. Really this is the biggie and probably the reason all of the above even matters at all.
It breaks my heart that Cheryl didn’t for whatever reason pass her exam. I really don’t know the details or anything like that, but simply that she didn’t pass. Of the three of us I was sure that it would be me that would have the hardest time passing, so it floored me when the day after I passed (despite what seemed to be some serious chinks in the armor) I heard that she didn’t. Again I have no idea why or how or any of that, I just know that all the emotions that a person goes through while giving the presentation and fielding the questions and waiting on the committee’s decision. Every little moment is being analyzed as it happens gauging how it affects whether you will pass or not. Luckily when you pass all the little things kinda get pushed by the wayside after a few days and you no longer relieve the gory details. I definitely pondered what it would feel like being on the other side of things and from my imagination it does not feel very good. I would love nothing more to reach out and do something to try to ease her pain or cheer her up/on, or whatever. But the realities of the situation is that I passed and she didn’t. I don’t want to come off as knowing anything or everything just because I passed and she didn’t because I truly believe she is every bit the chemist that I am (and probably more). I just can’t face her.
I guess this exacerbated by the fact that I don’t know what happened or is going to happen next. Did the committee recommend she retake a portion of it? Glup…did they not? Did she just get rattled and just have a bad day? And how does she feel about the results now? Resigned to the decision and ready to move on to something else? Determined to get it right and continue on? Unfazed? Anything for me to latch on to would make me feel more comfortable to reach out a bit more than I have to this point.
I really can’t celebrate my success while my friend has to suffer through my worst nightmare. It just crushes the soul.
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So I don’t know if this made any sense when all is said and done, but it at least gives a representation of some of my thoughts about the process and a look at the unspoken things about candidacy. I wrote this over the course of many days spread out over a week’s time, so I am sure there are shifts in writing styles as my mood dictated but hopefully it is worth something to someone…
