11 years ago i left my PhD in theoretical physics. I started so happy in 2008 and left in discontent 'cuz the corruption and culture of the institution. I started it for the love of knowledge so it was easy to leave evethough i wws about to finish. I left as a protest, i hope it had caused some ripple effects (i lost any form of contact since i left).
Maybe that's the reality oh things but i wanted to do research just for the love of curiosity and knowledge but gosh why do we humans corrupt eveything? anywho... this feels right at home.
Mourning and moving on: rituals for leaving a career (2014)
131–132 of 132 posts
Re: Mourning and moving on: rituals for leaving a career (2014)
#132> We create meaning around the stress and soften transitions with rituals and rites of passage. I graduated into the height of the pandemic, so I never had a graduation ceremony. Instead, they played a shitty video presentation over Zoom and my parents cracked open a beer and watched it on TV. By the time I got invited back for a ceremony, I had already moved hundreds of miles away from my university. Obviously, I tu…
These ceremonies are meaningful if you invest meaning into them. For my college graduation, the dean did something small to make the ceremony more meaningful. He asked us all to stand up, look back to our family, and applaud them for supporting us all these years. For me, looking back at my parents and thanking them for all they've done for me was a beautiful moment. And it was a full-circle moment for our family, th…
Fair. I hope my kids invest some meaning in it (assuming I have kids someday). Or maybe I don't care if they assign meaning to graduation?
I always cared about school, but I saw it as a means to an end. I knew what I wanted to do from a pretty young age, the path to get there was pretty clear, and I went down that path and now here I am, happy that I made it. So, for me, the ceremony really was just a formality because I knew the real reward would be all the exciting stuff I get to do with my education.
But, now I'm considering having a family in the next few years, and someday I might want to show them photos from my graduation. I can't do that, though.