Why I quit (part 2)
April 3, 2008
Yesterday I talked about the lack of focus I had at the beginning of grad school that put me on the initial path to failing and eventually dropping out without my PhD. Today, I'm going to try and identify the point-of-no-return, the point at which all the early mistakes and my failure to correct them (or even recognize them at that point) forced me into a position in which I could no longer graduate in the amount of time I was willing to put into the process. I only recognize now in retrospect that I was stuck. At the time the situation only seemed like a minor setback.
During the second semester of the second year of PhD studies, all the students in my department are required to take qualifying exams. The purpose of these is still a little opaque to me, but I believe they are supposed to test how prepared we are to do research and how well we've mastered the current state-of-the-art in our respective fields. This is a little at odds with the statements I made yesterday, since it implies that we wouldn't really be doing a lot of advanced research until after we've shown ourselves capable of it. However, I think this was yet another of my many misunderstandings. In fact, the best way to prepare for the qual is to already be doing research.
The end of my third semester leading into my fourth was pretty hellish for me. I still hadn't really adjusted to the mid-western cold and that winter was the worst I had yet experienced. Kim was taking a particularly heavy course load since it was her first year of PhD study at Notre Dame. She was driving back and forth every week which was stressful for her and I was pretty stressed myself since she was gone so much. On top of this I was studying constantly for the qual while also trying to secure an advisor (see yesterday's post for what I should have done about that instead). I was also taking the usual load of courses, most of which were unrelated to my chosen area of study (algorithms, or "theory" as we called it). I was under so much stress I started have some crazy spasms in my back muscles that would sometimes make it impossible for me to even make it to campus.
All this stress and work was in anticipation of this ridiculously hard exam I was going to take. The theory qual consisted of 8 questions over a 6 hour period. Usually solving half of them is a passing grade. This sounds easy, but in fact was the hardest exam I had ever taken. I studied for months in advance doing tons of old qual problems and covering material from some suggested texts. I wasn't particularly good at studying then, in retrospect, especially since I didn't have a lot of time since I was trying to find an advisor, still teaching classes, taking 3 classes of my own and trying to survive an Illinois winter.
As you can expect from this environment, I didn't pass the exam. I came in at around 130 points out of 400, which wasn't enough for even a conditional pass. This devastated me. I hadn't ever failed anything I set out to do before and I wasn't at all emotionally prepared for it. The massive stress combined with the massive failure sent me straight into the worst depression I've ever experienced. I had trouble getting out of bed in the morning. I didn't eat. I sat in the dark all day watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer. It was pathetic. All the while I pretended that I was fine. That I was studying to retake the qual the next semester. I stopped going to the group meetings of the professor I was thinking about studying under. I banked all my hopes on a new hire who was interested in exactly the same research area I was, but then he took a position at Stanford instead. I didn't know what to do with myself. I finished out the semester with my worst performance of my entire academic career.
That was it - the point from which I could not recover. Because I had my priorities wrong from the beginning, I didn't have a clear plan and motivation for the qualifying exam. I was wasting lots of time on issues that weren't related to passing the qual and graduating. Teaching, extraneous (but interesting!) classes, and worry oppressed me when if I had followed my advice from yesterday's post, they would have been irrelevant.
The interesting thing is that even though this is the moment I can point to at which I really failed my PhD program, it took me another year and a half to finally quit. From appearances it looked as if I recovered. I eventually passed a qualifying exam, but not the theory one. I got an advisor, but not the kind I needed. I scaled back on my class and teaching loads. But all those things I did too late. It just took me a while to realize it.
Again this is getting longer than I anticipated, so I'll continue again tomorrow. Tomorrow's post should be more upbeat. I'll talk about how I recovered from my depression, some constructive steps I took to improve my situation, and the moment when I finally decided that I wasn't going to finish my PhD.