Why making the wrong choice isn’t necessarily a bad thing
Thoughts from my ivory tower
This is me: a twenty something who graduated only two years ago and who already seems to have it all: a good job; a nice apartment filled with books, food and pleasant company; and the most supporting friends and family. After graduating in two master’s programmes, I had the chance to choose either one of two PhD programmes — something I’ve been wanting for a very long time. So I tossed and turned and made a decision. Instead of the educational sciences I chose for the arts, simply because the conditions were better and it would give me better options for the future.
I have made rational choices almost all my life and this one was no different. Looking back it really was the best choice, since the programme for the educational science was cancelled in the end. Nevertheless, I couldn’t help feeling (or: fearing) that I made the wrong choice…
When I started the PhD, I was completely certain of having chosen the best option — especially after someone broke the news to me that the other PhD programme didn’t go on. So I put all my effort and energy in setting up a good research plan and I was quite happy: after all, I was doing what I — and my friends, family and acquaintances — always said I would: pursuing a PhD.
After a while my initial enthusiasm drained away and I started asking myself what I was doing and especially why I was doing it. As said, I was always a quite rational person and I’ve always known really well what I was working (which sometimes felt like fighting) for and why — but this time I wasn’t so sure. In fact: I wasn’t sure about anything at all.
From that moment on, many days were filled with feelings of restlessness and anxiety. It took me a while before I knew why… In a conversation with a friend it became clear to me: I felt that my research was useless, since it wasn’t really contributing to society. I was stuck in an ivory — well, concrete — tower in the land of Academia.
In the beginning I hated myself for it. Which rational person would lock herself up — that’s what it felt like to me — for four years to do something she apparently didn’t like in the first place? I was disappointed in myself and didn’t really see a way out — I was never someone to quit or give up, so that didn’t seem like a rational(!) option to me.
It took me a while (and a lot of overthinking things) before I could see clearly again: the fact that my life choices made me feel so miserable actually taught me that I valued ‘contributing to society’ a lot more than I had always thought. I never knew this was so important for me, and it were my feelings of fear and anxiety that taught me that lesson.
Instead of rationally fighting those feelings, I decided to accept them. Instead of battling the fact that I was in fact stuck at the highest floor of some big concrete university building day after day after day, I decided to learn something from it.
The first lesson: fear and anxiety are valid and legitimate. That doesn’t make them nice or pleasant, but by accepting the way I was feeling, I was able to go on. Instead of worrying about not finding my way around in my field of research, I focused op things I could do to make it better. It turns out that I actually do like the research, and I just had to accept that for now, it doesn’t relate to society as much as I maybe wanted it to.
That wasn’t an easy at all — and sometimes it still haunts me. What helps me through it, for now, is knowing that I can always do something different after this PhD. If I really want to go on in the Educational Sciences, there’s no one who’s telling me I can’t. I’m not saying I will do it for sure, because there’s still two more years to go and I’ll probably change my mind, but for now, it calms me down knowing that the rest of my life will not be based on this one choice.
I thought that would be the end of my restlessness, but accepting that I made a choice that wasn’t what I want to do the rest of my life only took a part of my anxiety away. At the same time I kept worrying about having made the wrong choice in the first place and about being stuck with myself and my research. I expected to be really unhappy the next couple of years, knowing that I might be wasting time in the ivory tower.
That’s when I learned lesson two: I should take this as an opportunity to learn and to get to know myself. Especially since my PhD is not about others, but about art and my interpretation of that art, it’s a very subjective theme. It can be extremely confronting, but at the same time I think I need it. I never really took time for myself and was always working and studying. Everything needed to be perfect and I transformed in some rational robot; I thought about my work and how it could be better, about my friends and how I could manage to see them and get some work done. Everything was related to completing the tasks university asked of me in the best way possible. It wasn’t even that difficult, it just took a lot of time and dedication.
Now, for the first time in what seems forever, I’m more or less on my own. I need to work out my own plan, set my own goals and give my own interpretations of things. It’s difficult and scary, exactly because I get to know myself. I can’t hide behind fixed lesson plans and paper subjects chosen by others anymore and I have to do it all myself.
Looking back I’d still make the same choice; of course, my PhD is about the visual arts, but at the same time it’s about the art of getting to know myself: who I am, what I want and what’s important to me. I will not be easy, but I will try — maybe fail — and learn. It’s confronting but it’s also about time.
Turns out, that in the end, I don’t have it all…
