Burnout, Regret, and Philosophy.

"What I really need to do is drop my PhD"

- me, Journal entry, 13th May, 2016 

 

 About 10 years ago I pulled out of my PhD in philosophy. I'm lucky, I have kept a journal since the 5th of November, 2003, a journal is a very useful (but imperfect) instrument for understanding where you were at any point in your life, and so, rereading my journal entries from around the time I dropped out of my PhD I know it was the right thing to do then (details below), but that doesn't mean it's not the greatest regret of my life.

The PhD had been my dream since I was, I don't know, twenty-three or thereabout (although, back then, I thought I was going to be a classicist). I more or less gave up on my dream of being a full-time academic, though, when I was doing my honours degree and saw how the sausage was made. Still, I loved philosophy, and I loved the feeling that I was thinking, that I was working on things that mattered (maybe not like things matter in medicine, but that mattered to me). Compared to philosophy, everything else seems kind of dull (with the exception of fiction, perhaps).

I never expected getting a doctorate to make me feel any different, or special. I'd learned from getting my undergrad that the difference between not having a degree and getting one is, basically, just one day on the calendar. I'd started studying to convince myself I wasn't stupid, but I continued studying because I just love learning in general, and I love philosophy most of all.

 So the doctorate was never about anything than me continuing to work in philosophy as long as I could. It is something special being surrounded by people smarter than you who are thinking about similar things and who are keen to dive deep into these topics alongside you.

And, don't get me wrong, I am more than happy with what I've achieved. You must understand, from someone who started studying at university specifically to get a sense of whether they could hack it or not, working my way through the three degrees I have, starting out with really bad high-school marks, and having to hold down full-time employment through all of it ... I'm satisfied what I've done. I think it's pretty cool and I'm proud.

 But honestly, I'm not done. Because although I'd convinced myself that I would be okay with not doing the doctorate, I don't think that's true. I'm only going to be happy if I give this one last real shot. 

So wtf happened? Why did you drop out?

 There were a few things.

First and foremost - I was a new dad. This is probably the most important aspect to all this. I was, honestly, stupid thinking that I could be the kind of father I wanted to be (that I am?) while also holding down a full-time job and also being a PhD student. This was a massive overreach on my part, but I'd always just been successful piling on more work, so what was even more? This was terribly naive. I should've at least given it a couple years to experience what being a father was like. And, as it turns out, it is extremely time and attention intensive.

Secondly - My wife and I were looking to move overseas, which was a just a whole process. We'd experienced some crime (stolen car + a shootout in our building) and had decided to investigate moving to NZ, at least for a little bit, to see what life is like overseas. The answer, after being here for nine years, is complicated. It's great, but it's hard, and if it wasn't for my kid, I'd likely be back in S.Africa. This is for another post though. Moving, fwiw, is hard. The admin involved is nightmarish, and adjusting to another country is not easy - no friends, no way to orient yourself culturally, etc. It's hard. I'm more lonely than I've ever been, but my wife and daughter are flourishing, so it is well worth it. That's not me feeling sorry for myself, it's just the truth about the situation.

Finally, and this comes through from the journal hard - I was burned out. Although I didn't get a diagnosis or anything, I'm pretty sure that it was genuine burnout I experienced. This was definitely something I should've mentioned to my supervisor. But the period from just before I handed in my masters till about two years later were brutal. The company I had helped found was floundering for reasons I couldn't control. I was working 12 hours a day, minimum, then doing 4 hours of Masters work (this was just before I handed in the draft of my thesis). I was barely sleeping. I was so angry just all of the time. When my kid was born I couldn't take any paternity leave - I was literally working on the day after the birth, computer set up right in my wife's private room, the two of them sleeping soundly while I dealt with some BS at work. I found myself just completely irrational, unable to modulate my emotions, on the one hand, and barely able to think on the other. I struggled to read anything. I'd look at a book and it was like my brain simply couldn't process them.

2014-2015 was really a year of recovery to me. I had to leave my business, I couldn't do it anymore. I got a job at an agency as head of dev, a great move for me, because I was only responsible for a small slice of the business. When I moved, I was a wreck, completely out of my mind. I have never screamed at someone before - I'm ashamed to say I screamed (literally) at someone involved in moving our stuff from Durban to JHB.

I was supposed to be doing philosophy - but it was barely happening. I was recovering, to some degree, from what had happened at work. I was just enjoying hanging with my wife and daughter, trying to get my head back together. By the end of that year, one of my colleagues at the agency remarked at just how different I seemed from the first day they met me to then. I felt like I was coming right.

All these factors, though, were reasons that I definitely shouldn't have registered for the PhD. 

 So why now?

I've tried starting up my philosophical work in earnest before, and every time something comes and takes a shit right on my plans. Things start looking good, Covid. Recovering from world altering events, bam, someone in the family gets dread disease. The last 10 years have been good, ultimately, but really rocky for a number of reasons. 

 

I have managed to do a few things, though. I've studied some maths, theory of comp.sci, some finance, and economics, and I did pretty well, so I know that the brain is still able to work.

 

My kid is doing well, and at this stage she's about to go off to high school - so I'm finding myself with a lot more time to read and write.

 

Finally, I think that if I don't do it now, if I don't dig deep, read deeply, and write philosophically - I'm not going to. Something will always come up, always.

 

A brief aside about what's possible

 Part of what I believed growing up and well into my twenties, is that with enough hard work you can achieve more or less whatever you want. Work hard at things you desire and things will open up. I thought this in a relatively realistic way, though. Set realistic goals, work hard, and you'll most likely achieve them.

 

I realize that that was a little naive now. I don't come from a rich family. I don't come from a family with practically any academics. I didn't even really know what university was until I was 20/21 (a whole different story). If I'd started earlier, if I'd had a way of studying that took me through my undergrad by the time I was 21, rather than 25, I would've had an easier time of it all.

Since 2013, especially, the world has shown me that desire and willingness to work aren't always guaranteed to get you across the line (or, even to the start of the race).

As an aside, this is why we need programmes that help people from underprivileged backgrounds - there are real structural differences that need to be bridged between those who play the game on easy mode vs those who play on nightmare (I consider myself as playing on "Hurt me plenty").

 

But, despite being disabused of my earlier notions of the guarantees of will and desire, I have seen examples of people who have pursued and achieved their goals despite massive obstacles to overcome.

The most impressive of which was a family member who, through sheer will, became a medical doctor in the face of odds that most people would probably say "it's probably never going to happen". Truly inspiring.

 

And so, while I'm no longer so sure that I can do anything I put my mind to, especially given what life throws at us sometimes - I have a good feeling that if I work really hard, and make the right moves, I could do this.  

And what now?

Okay, so this is the big one. What am I supposed to do about this?

 

Well, I recently reread my PhD proposal - a bunch of it seems to me to be out of date now, but that's okay, there are parts of it that I think I can salvage. There are four proposed chapters, I got a single paper out of the first chapter that I published with my supervisor, which is great, let's see what more I can get out of it.

 

Here's the plan:

 

1. Reorient myself to the literature, write everything up and post it here. This will keep me accountable in my reading and writing, plus, writing is thinking so getting it up here will give me a chance to think publicly about these things. Writing this blog will be my seminar.

2. Chose two topics, preferable from my old thesis proposal, and write what would be essentially those chapters. Pieces of writing 15-20K words long that work as modular, stand alone bits of writing - tightly argued, empirically sound pieces of philosophy.

3. Use these two chapters/papers as "proof of work" when approaching any philosophy department. I want to basically come in and say "I've got like half of my thesis written, can you supervise the rest of this thing?"

3.1. This is useful because it'll both act as a way of showing I'm committed to finishing this thing, but also let me cut down the amount of time I'm registered. University is expensive, money is tight, I need to do anything I can to keep the price down.

 

And that's it. If I can focus on getting real philosophical work done in these two chapters I can have something I might be able to present at local philosophy seminars, to get feedback. I could, further, distill them into their very own papers that I could submit to places. Finally, I get just under half of the thesis drafted before I think of registering anywhere.

 

Screw it, if this takes a decade, it doesn't matter, I don't want to be sitting 10 years from now thinking "do you know what I should have done?"