--- breaking the silence ---> Toward a Theory of Women's Doctoral Persistence
© Roberta-Anne Kerlin, 1997
The following portraits of the seven women provide background information that serves as an important context for understanding their doctoral experiences. Text excerpted directly from the women's correspondence appears in block quotations and has been modified in three ways. First, I replaced each occurrence of an ellipse (...) in the women's text with a dash. Without this modification to the text it would otherwise be impossible for readers to differentiate between ellipses that were part of the women's text and ellipses that represented deliberate omissions I made from the text. Background Portraits of the Women
The second change I made to the women's text was to replace straight quotation marks characteristic of electronic mail with 'curly' (smart) quotes; this change was made for the sake of consistency throughout the document.
Third, while all original stylized or unconventional spellings in the women's original notes were retained, I corrected typographical and spelling errors that are characteristic of informal written correspondence via electronic mail. This was done for a number of reasons: first, as the women read drafts of this document to ensure that I had accurately presented their views, ideas and experiences, some requested that I correct the typographical and spelling errors, just as they would correct such errors in drafts of their own work; it was important to me to honour these requests and present the women's writing in a way they felt was representative of them. Second, the spelling and typing errors neither added to the meaning of the women's stories nor presented any basis for interpretation of the women's experiences. Third, in some quotations a high frequency of errors resulted through the repeated use of one or two consistently misspelled or incorrectly typed words and as I read through drafts of the document it was my experience as a reader that the traditional practice of inserting '[sic]' after every error was, in many cases, very distracting. Aside from these modifications, the quotations from the women's original correspondence remain unchanged.
What follows are brief descriptive portraits of the backgrounds of each of the seven women who volunteered to participate in this study. These portraits provide an important context for understanding the many facets of their doctoral experiences.
Sarah recalled the precise moment when, after seeing the movie "Cries and Whispers" with a friend, she decided at age 13, that she would one day earn a Ph.D. She had no idea what the movie had been about, but she remembered telling her friend, "You know, some day I'm going to earn a Ph.D. in Psychology and then I'm going to watch that movie again and see if I can't figure out what the hell was going on."
Sarah Sarah left high school at the end of her junior year and entered the college program at a branch campus of her state university system. At the end of her first year in the state system she also received her high school diploma and then transferred to a private university where, in 1979, she earned a Bachelor of Arts degree with a double major in psychology and pre-law. It was not until 1983 that her interest in how people work within organizations led her to take a number of pre-requisite courses for admission to a part-time MBA program at another institution in her home state. She began the MBA in the fall of 1983 and completed the degree in 1986. Three years later she began her doctorate, taking one course each in the spring and summer before beginning full-time study in the fall of 1989. She completed four years of full-time study before moving to part-time status in her last year. She successfully defended her dissertation in September, 1994, three months prior to the start of this study.
Sarah describes herself as someone who comes from pioneer stock who is an extrovert, an overachiever and "a little more obsessive-compulsive about work and school than other people." She grew up as the youngest and only girl of three children and throughout her school years she was compared constantly to her older "and, by inference, smarter, older brothers." As will be discussed, Sarah's gender and the constant comparison to her brothers helped to shape both her self-image and her concepts of achievement. In turn, these factors had a significant influence on her doctoral experience.
Sarah is twice divorced, both times during graduate school. The first divorce occurred just after she began her MBA; the second, just after she entered the Ph.D. program.
My first husband was an alcoholic who was also somewhat threatened, I think, by my grad work. I don't know why, as he was an intelligent man and he was himself enrolled in law school at the time. However, we married too young (I was 22, he was 23) and the alcohol just got to be too much. Husband #2 was a nice guy--I thought--who turned out to be a sociopath (just my professional opinion). In retrospect I realize that I probably married him on the rebound. Dumb move! Anyway, he became involved with his secretary (I found all this out after the fact) and three weeks after I started the doctoral program he said he wanted to split up because I "Just didn't meet his needs" or understand him, or some such bullshit. He later married the secretary.Sarah, now 38 years old, holds a permanent administrative appointment as the Director of Admissions at a prestigious four-year college in the mid-west U.S.
Tracy, 29, is the youngest of the seven participants in the study. Her path to the doctorate began in high school at an all-girls' private college preparatory school where most of her teachers had Ph.D.s.
Tracy
The teacher I loved most had a PhD in English, taught Shakespeare and had a pretty significant influence on my life. Oh yeah, the teacher was also a woman. Anyway, higher education was something that I considered to be fairly normal coming from that environment. Going to college was very much taken for granted after a college prep program like I was in.Tracy graduated from high school in 1985 and continued her education at a private university in her home state in the southwest U.S., switching majors several times, but always keeping foreign language study as a minor. Eventually she chose this as her major and completed her undergraduate degree in 1988.
During her undergraduate program Tracy had three influential professors, one man and two women, who strongly supported her interests in graduate school. She lost touch with both of the women when they took positions at other universities; however, she continues to work with the one male professor since they share a common interest in foreign language literature.
Throughout Tracy's childhood her father had been determined to send his children to college, something neither he nor his wife had done and, like Tracy, her brother also attended a single-sex college prep school. However, despite what she describes as "similar initiations into the academic world" she and her brother approached their undergraduate education quite differently.
... my brother who should have become an engineer and made big $$, smoked dope through most of college and played a lot of guitar. It took him 7 years to get a Bachelor's degree. I on the other hand who should have met a handsome business major in the cafeteria, gotten engaged and had a nice successful marriage with children by now decided that college was the coolest thing ever and made a career out of it. I think I have already discussed my disillusionment etc. in other letters but that is a separate issue than this.Tracy described how her parents responded to her brother's difficulties and to her own success in university.
My brother not finishing college was a big problem for my mother and father. They also paid a lot of attention to his grades .... my brother got hell from my dad for slacking off in school because that somehow represented failure in performance in his future job as well .... I basically got ignored where school was concerned. I always made good grades and no one really worried about my major in college which was foreign languages. I took this major after changing other majors several times ...In 1989, Tracy entered the M.A. program in foreign language literature at a public institution in her home state. At the time Tracy experienced her choice to go to graduate school as a rather rebellious move on her part - "a feminist gesture and a gesture of independence." She didn't see herself as wanting to get married or start a family during her early twenties. "I was paying for everything myself and doing what I wanted to do whether anyone liked it or not." However, after finishing her Master's degree in 1991, things changed. She had gone to graduate school to become a teacher and, indeed, she had "learned a lot about teaching" but she was unsure of her commitment to academia and undecided as to whether she wanted to pursue a doctorate.
Tracy decided to go to abroad for a year to teach English, to improve her language skills and to reflect on her future. She saw the move as yet another "gesture of independence" - but one that "didn't receive too much resistance" from her mother. By this time her mother was becoming used to the idea that her daughter was travelling a different path than the one she had imagined.
When Tracy returned from overseas the idea of a Ph.D. was still 'very much in her blood.' She knew it would be something she would enjoy and she still wanted to pursue a teaching career. However, Tracy's parents supported her educational pursuits only to a certain point. In Tracy's eyes, their notions of what going to college was about had little to do with earning a doctorate. And, in fact, Tracy's mother was very opposed to the idea that she might pursue yet another higher degree, in part, because she didn't really understand what it was all about and because she thought it would take her daughter far away from home. She and her mother "had big fights" about this and according to Tracy, her choices were often a big disappointment to her mother.
My mother and I often argued about the nature of a woman's role in society. My mother was not a feminist and was in fact quite against me calling myself a feminist. She was the most blatantly discouraging figure in my family and I believe that is because she saw me as forsaking the role of wife and mother for a life of studying, a rather consuming career, and especially one which was going to take up the years of my life when I would seem most eligible to get married and start a family.Although Tracy's father didn't get involved in these arguments Tracy didn't think he really understood her desire to pursue a doctorate any more than her mother had. Despite this she describes her father as "fairly supportive" and he hopes that eventually she will get a job since employment and economic stability have always been very important to him. In turn, Tracy has found that these values have influenced her own attitudes about employment and economic stability.
While Tracy was growing up, her father had worked overseas supervising the maintenance of a major oil refinery and although he made enough money to send both his children to private school and later to college, she describe him as being "as blue collar as they come, complete with wanting a better, easier life for his children."
... after 9th grade ... I had to continue high school back in the states. The company paid for a percentage of the tuition for private school or paid a stipend depending on what was less. So I applied to prep schools I wanted to go to and then went to my preference of schools depending on where I was accepted. So I ended up going to an all girls school with very high academic standards by my own choice. But prep school was what everyone did in the circumstances and it was supported by my mother and father who saw this as a way to ensure their kids would go to college-- their idea of a ticket to a better lifestyle than they had themselves ...Tracy described many of her friends in university as also coming from working class backgrounds and they often talked among themselves about what it was like to have parents who weren't familiar with higher education - about having "to cope with the novelty of their career choice given the values with which they were raised." She experienced her parent's "working classness" as a lack of understanding of most intellectual and artistic endeavours.
[My father] wins a prize for success I guess. I'm just not sure it turned out how he expected. I know it didn't for my mother who was always confused about my choices in becoming a PhD. My father is not actively unsupportive like my mother was .... My mother was very active in expressing her disappointment with my choice to go to grad school and to always want to travel somewhere else because I was never doing what she perceived that it took to get married and have a family.As Tracy wrote about her experiences of 'growing up working class' she noticed that she seemed to equate the role of 'mother' with family and the role of 'father' with work. She often talked with her friends in university about their experiences of growing up 'working class' and how these experiences stood in stark contrast to the backgrounds of their university professors who seemed "to take upper middle-class to aristocratic values for granted." Tracy described the space in which she lives between these worlds -
There is an uncomfortable distance sometimes
between the ground on which we stand and
the place we are trying to reach ...
When Tracy and I first began to correspond in December, 1994, she was 'ABD' and just beginning to write the first chapter of her dissertation. In December, 1995, at the data collection period of this study concluded, Tracy had shifted the focus of her study somewhat, had rewritten the first chapter of her dissertation and was revising chapter two. In mid-March of 1996, Tracy submitted the second chapter to her advisor - 'who loved it' - and in April, she began writing the third chapter.
Camila was born in Argentina on Christmas Day, 1962. She first contacted me about participating in the study just six days before her 32nd birthday and her letter began:
Camila Dear Candidate Smith,2
I am a grad student, I have finished my course work, I have passed my orals, I have defended my proposal, I have collected my data, I am currently writing my dissertation, I am exhausted.
2 Smith was my family name before I married.
Camila's parents separated when she was still in pre-school and her mother raised both Camila and her older brother as a single parent. Learning to read came as naturally to her as breathing and from kindergarten onward, Camila excelled in school, both academically and socially. From early childhood she was both strong-minded and an independent thinker and she 'took no bs' from anyone. It was this rebellious, out-spoken side to her personality that she often thought was a target for the anger and discrimination that others directed toward her.
Camila's family struggled financially after her father left and she remembers 'having to measure every coin they spent.' Despite the economic stressors, Camila's family had strong ties with the intellectual elite in Argentina. Camila's mother had pursued her undergraduate education in the United States, and both Camila's uncles and her grandfather, who "lived in a huge old house with a fantastic library and other fantastic places," were connected with the intellectual elite. Her grandfather was "very well known in academic circles" and had been a professor at the same university where Camila first pursued an undergraduate degree in history. He taught there for many years and rose through the ranks to become first, Dean and later, the Rector, a role similar to that of university chancellor. These associations gave her a sense of privilege in academic circles that she experienced with a degree of ambivalence.
it was sort of funny for me because i knew deep down i was privileged [e.g., by my grandpa having one of the most complete and big libraries AT HOME (his house was always like my house for us) that i had access to all the time, etc.] ... i was somehow feeling a mix of embarrassment for having such a privilege and yet knew i could use it when/if needed.However, Camila was not ambivalent about her disdain for the wealthy upper class in Argentina.
the only [class] that i ... also did not have a lot of exposure to - is high class people. in argentina they can be nasty and i hate it. truly.Camila's formative years were influenced significantly by growing up under the repressive atmosphere of the Argentinean dictatorship, and even by age 10, Camila "understood socialism and anarchism and 'la derecha' [the right wing values]." Growing up in such a repressive atmosphere as well as her family's involvement with political activism served as catalysts for her own self-image as a rebel.
Camila also described how her family life contributed to the growing rebel inside her. She referred to a book called "Capitalism and Schizophrenia: A thousand plateaus" in which the authors, Deleuze and Guatari, used the term, 'rhizomatic', to develop a concept of multiplicity (in contrast to causality or linearity) that Camila found useful in describing her upbringing. A rhizome is a plant with perishable stems attached to a perennial root that grows horizontally along the ground. Like the Morning Glory that is so pervasive on Canada's west coast, you can tear the stems off at the surface but the plant continues to thrive underground.
my family is a sort of rhizomatic entity, in a way, because there is so much going on at the same time and relationships are not necessarily linear---but they have a system of their own. this is part of my rebel side i think because i did not grow up in a simple, "normal" system. my mom got together with my dad and he already had 2 kids who lived with him. then my brother and i were born and we lived all together until i was three or less than three.Camila also described this concept of multiplicity as an important aspect of her sense of self and she described to me what seemed to be her holistic approach to life.
In 1980, Camila graduated from a typical "bachillerato" program - a five year secondary school program from grades eight through grade 12 - in which there are no electives, only required subjects. Since Spanish is her mother tongue, Camila studied English as a foreign language for three years during the bachillerato program.i like to do sports and i like to read and i like to paint and i like music and i like to talk and i like languages and the sort. this is a hard side of me too: it is hard to see things in a one way sort of way and i have a hard hard time adapting to convention. i can t concentrate easily in things that are mono-chromatic so to speak; i come in colors.
After completing the bachillerato program Camila entered the University of Buenos Aires and took five years of History. These five years reflected a very turbulent time for Camila as she struggled to survive the blatant repressive presence of the dictatorship on campus. She described the use of intimidating instructional techniques, police guarding the doors of the institution, police infiltration of the student movement and curricula that were "reactionary and fascist." She described hundreds of people as "going missing from the history department." She wrote,
i saw the worst things happening during those years and i think i was scared but i didn't wanna admit it.Studying in this atmosphere took its toll on Camila. As she neared the end of her studies, she felt increasingly alienated from the university culture and was "fed up with all the bs around studying in the university." Ultimately, she decided to leave the university before writing three of the final exams that would have enabled her to graduate.
In 1985, Camila entered the Physical Education program at the Instituto Nacional de Educacion Fisica and four years later earned her teaching credential that enabled her to teach physical education in kindergarten through college. Despite successful completion of her teaching credentials, Camila has long harbored regret about her decision to leave the University of Buenos Aires without her degree in hand, a decision which she has come to understand as a form of self-sabotage.
While on the one hand Camila described herself as having a very solitary nature, she finds that often she is approached by others to make friends and she frequently finds herself surrounded by people. She enjoys having other people around and although she describes herself as adapting easily to all kinds of environments, she finds that the presence of others makes those transitions easier.i guess i am a drop out who completed everything did all the work in normative time worked part time at the same time participated in student movement etc. etc. etc. but boycotted herself at the end.
Music was an important part of Camila's support system while growing up in Argentina.
Camila also described a side of herself that she doesn't like.music was surely part of my support system growing up in such a terrible environment
i think one of the things that was surely terrible was a kind of schizofrenia developed around there: all kinds of horror stories happening and all of us denying them at the same time. i know this is a psychological mechanism found in many other cases of stress [denial] but it is very damaging too. the military rule had slogans and other mechanisms to make us believe everything was fine. it wasn't.
but even me who knew people in jail
whose mom's cousin is a disappeared
whose sister's friends [my sister is 9 yrs older than i am] were involved in political activisms [and some of them vanished after a while]
even a person like me
was confused. of course i was young very young but still.
i can be cruel and i hate this side of me. i usually get cruel if someone messes up with me. but once it's happened, i have a hard time letting go. i get sort of "righteous" and i want to pursue "justice" [obviously what I consider just!] and it is very hard. i get sort of stuck and i get so stubborn that it kind of hurts. i sometimes get sort of lonely in my crusades. i get hard as a rock and i can be, i think, insensitive. but i have analysed [british spelling] my actions many times and i know i do get like this when i perceive a lot of harassment.When Camila first contacted me in December of 1994 about participating in the study she was in the final stages of writing her dissertation. She successfully defended her dissertation in the summer of 1995 and accepted a position as lecturer at the same institution in which she earned her Ph.D.
Denise, now 35 years old, had been a very good student in high school. Growing up in the mid-west, she attended a Catholic high school from which she graduated in 1979. During her senior year she began taking concurrent classes at the local community college and by the end of 1980 she had completed an Associate of Arts degree.
Denise
Then I stopped and worked full time at a discount store that I'd worked at part-time since I was sixteen. I was engaged at the time. When we suddenly decided to postpone the wedding I started checking into colleges without telling anyone in my family. When I'd made a decision I told my mother. (My father died the summer I graduated HS.) I went away (2 hours from home) and finished my BA in two years.As an only child growing up in a working class neighbourhood, Denise is the first in her family to earn a university degree.
Her father had finished high school but he had little interest in furthering his education. He worked on the railroad when he was young, but an injury when Denise was three years old made it impossible for him to continue working there and after that he worked in autobody repair.Growing up I didn't know people went beyond bachelors degrees.
He used to criticize people who were in college, especially if they stayed there very long. He thought you learned on the job by doing, not by reading. He died when I was 18.Denise's mother never finished high school. She had lived on her own from the age of 12 after her mother died, and married Denise's father on her 16th birthday. When Denise was little her mother worked full-time in restaurants and at other odd jobs that included selling Avon products, door-to-door sales and working in fast food restaurants. Only after Denise had earned her BA, did her mother earn her GED (Graduate Equivalency Diploma).
I don't think they expected me to go to college, but they also weren't against it. I did well in school and my mother was accepting that I might go to college. I think they mostly expected me to get married and have kids. My mom always said she just wanted me to be happy. But in her world that translated into marriage and kids for a female. I don't have a sense of other expectations. I worked at a discount store through high school and college. I did that partially because all female members of my family had been waitresses and I resisted that.In 1981, with her Associate of Arts degree in hand, Denise returned to university to complete her undergraduate education at a public college in her home state. In 1983 she completed a baccalaureate in Communications with a major in radio and television and a minor in journalism. She then pursued full-time volunteer work through various church-related service groups. At the end of her first year of service work, Denise took the Graduate Record Examination, but ultimately decided to do another year of volunteer work instead. In the Spring of her second volunteer year, Denise decided she wanted to study theology so she could get a better job doing the same kind of justice work she'd been doing for two years as a volunteer. She was accepted at two institutions and chose a program on the west coast where she entered a master's program in Theology in 1985.
I came from a working class family, was the only one to graduate college and had never heard about or considered graduate school until my first volunteer year. By the year I entered grad school, everyone from my first volunteer household (7 of us) were all graduate students (3 lawyers, 3 MSWs and 2 seminarians). Don't misunderstand, we weren't all that religious, but a sense of justice was a large component of what brought us together .... I entered seminary (I prefer to refer to it that way because even though it was a scholarly program that I was enrolled in, it's assumed in my former faith tradition [Roman Catholic] that only men go to seminary) after two years of full time volunteer service.Denise thought that pursuing a graduate degree would enable her to gain employment similar to the kind of volunteer work she'd been doing under the auspices of the church but with the advantage that it would be like a regular job, a career, something her family could better understand. She also saw the degree as a way to gain a certain level of respect. Denise was getting passing grades, As and Bs, in her program and she "rationalized that even Bs were very good grades" since, unlike many of her colleagues who already had master's degrees in theology and philosophy, she'd never had any previous courses in those areas.
But in the second year of her studies Denise "slowly entered a rather deep depression" that ultimately lead to her withdrawal from the program.
I had a back injury which was part of it, but I had also begun to realize I was fighting a losing battle. I was in an ivory tower and they were going to cut my hair. I was never going to be allowed to walk on the land again. I speak of this metaphorically because what was happening was hidden from sight. I was losing my faith as I learned more and more (a common enough phenomenon), but as a woman there was no gift or glory at the end to replace the space that faith had occupied, no reason to continue. I gradually realized that though we were learning feminist, process, and liberation theology I wouldn't be able to tell anyone else. Basically, I was to learn but not share my knowledge. I was told repeatedly, "the people in the pews simply aren't ready for this." To a degree that was true, but it was also devastating. As part of the depression I reduced my course load. I dropped class after class. I cut back everything I could to still be "on schedule" if I wanted to finish. That was something like 4.5 hours my last semester when I'd been carrying at least 12 hours a term.Added to the loss of faith that Denise experienced were two other factors that influenced her decision to withdraw from the program. The first factor related to the hidden rules with respect to her own program, or as Denise put it, the rules that state "what you don't ask specifically, they won't tell you."
Denise described herself as entering seminary without adequate skills to pass the foreign language requirement, which as she understood it, meant taking a written exam. In the middle of her second year, after struggling and doing poorly in courses in two private programs, she feared she wouldn't be able to pass the written exam. Only then did she discover that there were several other methods of meeting the language requirement. One of those methods was to take two years of language at UC Berkeley, "just down the block at no additional fee - and with no written exam." However, by the time Denise learned of this, it was too late and she "felt cheated! Big time!"
Denise described herself as having "a real language phobia." In high school she earned As in Latin but felt she "never learned ANYTHING because of bad instruction and a change midstream."
Language carries a lot of baggage and fear for me. So when I learned that I'd been inadequately informed, I felt mistreated and abused. My degree was within grasp. Writing a thesis didn't scare me, but I wouldn't finish because of the language and I felt that wasn't my fault. I felt if they'd told me, I could have done it.The second factor that eventually led to Denise's withdrawal from the seminary related to differences in the way Denise perceived the mentoring process was being experienced by her male and female colleagues. Denise recounted a number of different situations in which several women students were discouraged from pursuing their ideas for research while male students with similar ideas were being encouraged to see what they could do with their ideas.
The women masters students were being told that their ideas were really more dissertation ideas, too large. They should narrow the focus, change the subject ... The comments about women's theses' ideas being "too large" were pretty much made in private one-on-one meetings with faculty members ... But it was a Catholic seminary and the faculty in question were celibate Franciscan priests. I also knew several males whose ideas were praised. Not all of the males were going to Catholic seminary. But there seemed to be a pattern. I did know women who eventually finished and finding the right advisor was an important piece of the puzzle for them.Denise was discouraged from pursuing topics she was interested in on two different occasions with two different faculty. She became "extremely depressed" and reduced her course load to only the essential classes. Ultimately, she "dropped out of the program with only the thesis and the language requirement remaining."There weren't many women faculty in general. Yet our student body was over 50% female when I was there. The discouragement process didn't happen in classrooms much as I recall. I do remember some of the young Jesuits being somewhat belligerent, oppressive, arrogant in class, but the faculty didn't really support that behavior. I felt relatively confident in the classroom even though I had much less education in the field than most of those I was studying with. For example, I'd never had a philosophy class even as an undergrad and many of my fellow students had masters degrees in philosophy.
I asked Denise if she thought the discouragement she experienced was systematic or the result of just a few faculty.
I think it was built into the psyche of the whole enterprise. It was hidden beneath all kinds of pretty rhetoric about the changing role of women. It's not that the faculty didn't believe their rhetoric, they just hadn't considered the real life consequences. I saw them display why it would be impossible for me to fulfill the role I had envisioned for myself in the church. If they couldn't make the transition, how could others possibly follow?I also asked Denise if she experienced similar kinds of discouraging attitudes toward her research from the male students and although she hadn't, she pointed to the power differences between students and faculty as an explanation, in part, for the faculty's actions toward the women students.
... I really didn't see the male students enact this attitude toward women. But as I say, it was in what was done not just said and the students didn't have the same power the faculty did. So most everyone talked a good progressive, almost if not feminist line, but those with the power didn't act on that line. Where they acted, where they lived, they were still holding more traditional lines.Denise's decision to leave the seminary came about rather quickly. She had applied for a couple of jobs and quickly accepted an out-of-state offer, even though another job in the area was almost assured.
It just seemed right to get out. And the job was in line to some degree with what I'd imagined doing with my masters so it wasn't a complete and immediate abandonment. In fact, the job was with a Franciscan organization. I broke down crying during the interview when they asked how I would deal with church hierarchy. Though I thought at the time that had blown it, I believe it was actually one of the elements that led to my hire.Denise had spent a total of 22 months as a full-time student at the seminary before withdrawing from her program. When I asked her how this experience might have affected her sense of her own abilities she wrote that she "thought there was something wrong with the picture not with me."
For the most part it didn't affect my sense of my own abilities. I thought the church, the human or male (mis)guided church didn't realize what it was missing. It seemed that not only in me but in many of the women I knew, the church could have had a powerful and loving force that it refused to accept because of our gender. I saw it as their loss. I saw it as my loss too. Don't get me wrong. I still have heavy therapy to do on this subject someday. I still cry easily when those times and images are evoked. But I didn't question my gifts or abilities.In 1991, four years after Denise withdrew from her master's program, she entered a graduate program in the southwestern U. S. She successfully defended her dissertation in the spring of 1996.
When Maggie recalls her high school years in the northwest she remembers herself as a "shy introvert with low self-esteem" - this despite being valedictorian of her 1978 high school graduation class where she had studied in a pure science-track program.
Maggie I never dated. I was told I was ugly and stupid.
After graduating at age 18, Maggie entered the veterinary science program at the state university.
When I entered the world of college, suddenly people were interested in me. I became entwined in relationships with men that weren't very positive. I believe now a great many of my decisions regarding relationships were based on 'not hurting their feelings.' I was never abused physically or emotionally, the relationships just didn't 'feel right.' I also was not promiscuous or a party animal. I invested a great deal of energy and ultimately pain in these relationships which drew me from my studies. I also just couldn't get my studying together leaving me to doubt my ability to do scientific work. Plus, once those grades drop there is no turning back.Maggie had difficulty focusing on her chemistry and biology courses and felt insecure about her performance in these courses. She began to experience the competitive nature of her classes as increasingly incompatible with an emerging sense of her 'self.'
I had come from a pure science background and found myself continually plagued with a great sense of competition, self-imposed as well as outer influenced. My definition of 'self' as intelligent was only linked to the sciences ... I could not focus on my chemistry and biology courses. I also hated the stress of performing in these classes ... Although I believe I think very logically and scientifically, I believe the freedom of expression in the arts was where I needed to be to discover (if you will) the real me.Maggie became more unhappy with her grades and at the end of her second year she decided to "jump ship."
I didn't feel like a failure, I just felt I needed to close the door on that attitude about intelligence. I needed to change direction.Maggie transferred to a program in the performing arts but she hadn't begun performing until age 19 in her first college class. She had never intended to be a professional performer. Her primary interest focused on the historical and philosophical dimensions of performance and she "fully embraced the discipline as an integral part" of herself.
I love the ideas that [it] generates and stimulates. I believe it is through [this field] that my critical thinking skills have excelled. It has matured me and given me great satisfaction.She was an academically trained performer and lacking both experience and a professional background, her new department was less than thrilled to have "such a fledgling" in its midst.
The department was very subtle. I felt they tolerated my presence in classes. Even though I became active in many of the performances and did my course work, I never got the impression that they took me very seriously. I can't actually recall a specific incident other than my distinct feeling that if I wanted to get anywhere, I needed to go to another school.Feeling somewhat alienated from the department, Maggie opted to participate in a student exchange program and transferred to another college in the east.
As it turned out, that first year was very good for me. I learned many basic things and got a good introduction into the field. Transferring was the best thing for me to do.Maggie completed her undergraduate degree in 1982 with a major in the performing arts and a minor in psychology. She had hoped to pursue the therapeutic aspects of performance after completing her degree but finances were limited and she returned home to the northwest. She took a two year hiatus from her studies before moving to the west coast to pursue a master's degree in the performing arts. She married during this time and after 20 months as a full-time student Maggie completed her master's degree in 1986. Although she felt her work had helped her to establish some maturity in her training, she never felt like she "really belonged to the program."
It was as if I felt I really was not worthy of the education. Of course, I was still a relatively young performer with a few performance experiences behind me ...
In 1988 Maggie entered her doctoral program in the southwest U.S. as a part-time student and she worked full-time to support herself and her husband who was enrolled in full-time studies. During those first years Maggie's position at the university library was their primary source of financial support. Maggie has worked full-time throughout her doctoral program, including her year of residency in 1991-92. She wrote comprehensive exams over the Christmas break in 1992 and learned shortly thereafter that she was pregnant. In the spring semester of 1993, Maggie took two courses and prepared for her preliminary orals - all while continuing to work full-time. Maggie developed toxemia and the baby was born prematurely in the late summer. Both mother and daughter had a long recovery in the fall. Because of health complications Maggie spent most of the next year recuperating from the birth and working on her dissertation proposal. The proposal proceeded more slowly than she wished and it wasn't until the spring of 1995 that Maggie submitted her proposal to her advisor. Her advisor was pleased with the proposal and told Maggie she could now take it to the rest of her committee and begin to address the Human Subject Committee requirements. Maggie's proposal was given a conditional approval in May and by December, after the first review, Maggie had also received approval to proceed with her study from the Human Subjects Review Committee. Although Maggie continues to present conference papers and remains active in her field, finances and her relationship with her advisor, as will be discussed, have been significant inhibitors to her continued progress.
Zoe is a 43 year old mother of four who successfully defended her dissertation at a public university in the mid-west U.S. just three weeks before offering to participate in my research study. Zoe followed a non-traditional path toward completion of her doctorate. She calls it "living life backwards." Raised in a small, traditional, mid-western rural community, she had "gone through high school as an academic and athletic standout, always gaining notoriety" for her accomplishments. She graduated from her college preparatory high school program in 1971. Zoe's parents had "always expected" that she and her older brother and sister would go to college, complete their undergraduate degrees and find lucrative employment, but they never expected their children to go beyond that. Zoe's father had only a high school education. Her father farmed rented land during the early years of his marriage and when that drove him to financial collapse he took a number of different positions as a manual labourer. During the later years of his life he worked as a district manager for various seed corn companies in the area.
Zoe
my father, for all the other faults he had (i.e. the violent temper, the tendency to degrade the family, etc.), was always what i would call a "champion of the underdog" both verbally and in actions; taking food to people who he knew didn't have any (even if we ourselves were short on it) and speaking up when he thought someone was being socially abused in any way.Zoe's mother did complete high school and attended a two-year "common school," before teaching school for a couple of years shortly after her marriage at the age of 19. When Zoe's father returned from the war her mother became the "stay-at-home wife and mother of the 1950's." A lack of financial resources had always been an intense issue in Zoe's family and when Zoe reached junior high her mother took various secondary jobs to help with the family finances: housekeeping in a local motel, working in a dry cleaning establishment and clerking in a department store.
Zoe remembered her father, in particular, talking of Ph.D.s with great disdain, calling them educated fools and the implicit message she received from her parents was that, first and foremost, she should have a family and be a good wife and mother. As a 17 year old, from a small town high school, Zoe was "terrified of being thrown into the outside world," but she also had a home environment that she "couldn't wait to escape."
We were *so* poor and my parents came to "wear" that poverty almost like a badge-- i don't ever want to minimize the impact my parents' messages had on me or on any of my siblings ... we were always told and *knew* by what our parents told us that we were "less than" others in our small town (~1000 pop). In fact, our parents told us many, many times that they *depended* upon my brother and me to excel-- athletically and/or academically-- because we were "all" they had to show the outside world. So, i grew up embarrassed because of what i didn't have, embarrassed by my father's violent and alienating temper, embarrassed because in that small town everyone knew when a bill collector had contacted your family. But-- at least that was "familiar" turf and you knew where you stood and at what level people accepted you.Just two weeks out of high school, Zoe began her first year of college during the summer session - "a naive 17 year old" who travelled seven hours from home to attend a private 4-year university that had given her a full academic scholarship.
i remember more than anything else wanting to double major in english and speech -- i had a high school speech teacher who really made me believe in myself and my abilities.Zoe left for university that summer with only the five dollars her parents had given her and when she arrived it seemed like everything her parents had been telling her over the years was correct. All the other girls seemed to have so much more than she did.
i was scared to death that i wouldn't have enough money to make it. And the clothes. i had so few and they were things like blue jean cut-offs and a few tops -- the others had all the matching outfits and closets full of them!!!During her first week at school, too frightened to face this new and foreign world all alone and fearful that she wasn't good enough, that she wouldn't measure up, Zoe began to plan her escape from college. And for the first time Zoe admitted something she had never told anyone, not even her husband of 23 years.What hit me so hard when i went away to college was that the "haves" in my little town of the growing up years didn't hold a candle to the "haves" i was now meeting-- "girls" from families that had *real wealth* ... and this *real* wealth was so overwhelming for me and created such a standard against which to compare myself-- if i was looked down on in [my home town] by the people that viewed themselves as the elite there just imagine how i "thought" people in this college environment were looking at me .... I *knew* then that my parents had been right all along -- that i was not and never would be as good as all the people around me .... i felt like the proverbial fish who had floundered her way *out of* the water the others were so comfortable swimming in! .... in many ways our parents are responsible for the high-achieving tendencies you see in both my brother and me-- but, it was a bag of mixed messages as we *had* to be high achieving to make up for their own feelings of inadequacy with regard to their financial status-- and we *never* did any of it quite good enough for them.
it was during my first week at school i began "planning" to get pregnant-- i would have someone to take care of me-- i wouldn't have to face the world alone-- and i could get away from this college environment that was filled with so many that had so much and were so better than me. And, it worked-- within a couple of weeks i was pregnant-- and so she lived happily ever after surrounded by the white picket fence and cooking din din for the beav and the fam every nightBy the end of that summer, despite devastating morning sickness, Zoe managed to complete six hours of general education credits. And in one of her classes she encountered a professor who taught the introductory psychology course..
i was *fascinated* by the material-- i couldn't read enough-- i couldn't study enough, and he made me believe i was good (really good). I knew then that it would never be the English/speech thing-- psych would be my calling. I still remember his name-- Dr. Rowell from texas.I asked Zoe what it was about this professor that had been so inspiring for her.
I'd never thought about this concretely until you asked the question. he did the same thing i fell in love with Tom for. He was the first person to *listen* to me talk about intellectual stuff and show he was interested in what i had to say and that it had merit. The test performances and paper grades were great, but, that's not what interested him. We would have coffee together. Here was a *professor* inviting me to have coffee with him and talk with him and he listened and talked back, never with a put down ready, but with questions and responses that *invited* me to think beyond what i just said.It was because of her experience with this professor and this class that Zoe vowed one day to complete her undergraduate degree. However, for the next eleven years Zoe was a full-time wife and devoted mother. She raised four children, until at age 29, she found herself living with a husband who travelled extensively and was experiencing "a tremendous amount of personal growth" while she was at home "stagnating." It was then she decided to return to university to complete her undergraduate degree.
I really felt the need at that time to feel like i had somehow expanded my education since my husband was now traveling worldwide and even though he only had three years towards his own degree he was growing so much and *always* came home with these exotic stories of traveling to England, France, Germany, Italy, and Japan -- being wined and dined, the places he saw, the pictures he brought home with him. i felt so small-world and lacking.Zoe began her new college career with a major in psychology and she loved every minute of it. In her sophomore year she took her first sociology course and before long she declared a double major in psychology and sociology with a concentration in human and social services. She thought this would make her more marketable in the local community after graduation.
The department had a good reputation for "bonding with its students." The students spent a lot of time in professors' offices and the department made great efforts to develop positive student/faculty relationships; because of this, Zoe saw herself as well integrated into the department. She was strongly influenced by one of her psychology professors, also a feminist, who stimulated her interest in gender issues.
My first class was a psych of women class taught by a feminist from a feminist perspective and i will always love her for what she gave me. she challenged me *as a woman* to make a mark on the world, at least "my" world.This professor introduced Zoe to the notion that her own life experience was not all that unusual.
For eons women had sacrificed their own abilities and futures by *letting* the men and their careers take precedence over their own and that my degree could be a whole lot more than a "show piece" (keep returning to that phrase, don't i?), that i could get a degree, use that degree, and be something myself apart from the family and spouse and she invited me to challenge just what was going on within my own family and circle of friends, to speak out about the gendered nature of the western family and how it works to the disadvantage of women and she taught me to demand some rights of my own within that family.While Zoe sought every opportunity to further her own education, it was never at the expense of the family. She learned quickly how to balance the multiple responsibilities of student, wife and mother and she continued to be actively involved in her children's lives.
in essence, i went for what i wanted, but only by doubling my work and responsibilities, never really *claiming* what i needed and what would have made my path easier and i have no one to blame for that but myself .... If i'd tried to do it when my kids were real young, no, there is no way it would have been possible, especially since i was always an hour away from home and with the amount of time i spent driving i was unreachable a lot of the time. Even at the ages they were it was emotionally difficult for me as i always felt i was somehow "neglecting" or shortchanging the kids, compromising them for something i wanted.In 1987, at the end of five years of study, Zoe graduated, summa cum laude, with a solid 4.0 grade point average and accepted employment with a prestigious social agency. However, she knew even then that her employment would be temporary, that at some point she would return to school for a graduate degree and after only seven months in the work force she was missing the stimulation of the classroom environment. Few of her colleagues at work were interested in what she had learned at university. They were interested in pragmatics, not theory. However, it was her field practice that influenced her choice of sociology as her field of study in graduate school. The systems approach of sociology rather than the individualistic perspective put forth by psychology seemed to Zoe to be a better way to "deal with and explain the reality of individual existence."
Because of her concern for her family responsibilities Zoe applied to just one graduate school. It was only 60 miles from her home and her attendance there would not require her to uproot the family as she began her quest for her master's degree. Despite Zoe's accomplishments at the undergraduate level she never felt well integrated into her master's program.
No one warned me that only "good" students are admitted to graduate school. so i went from being "top dog" at a very small college to being one of the pack at a graduate department in a major big 10 university. quite a bit of cold water thrown on my face with that one! And i immediately slipped back into the familiar thoughts and behavior patterns that had plagued me so many years earlier when i felt i couldn't measure up in the college environment i entered right after high school graduation.There were other reasons that Zoe felt like a fish out of water in graduate school. Due to illness, she had entered the program a semester later than the rest of her cohort. She also commuted 120 miles a day throughout her entire graduate program which meant she didn't have the same opportunities as other students to socialize with her colleagues. Initially, she and her husband planned that she would commute for the first half of her graduate program and then the family would move closer to the university, but when the time came, they never really made a serious effort to move.
The non-move probably resulted from a combination of factors. it has always been so easy for me to assume guilt for anything, even something i think *might* happen, so it was hard for me to think about moving the family when this whole doctoral thing was for and about me. it would have meant laying claim to something i wanted for myself. And we had never asked the kids to experience a dramatic change so i harbored the fear that if we made the move for me and it turned out to be a horrible experience for the kids i would always be responsible for disrupting and screwing up their lives.What Zoe remembered most about those early days in her master's program was "being very scared and intimidated." It seemed as if all the self-confidence she had acquired during her successful undergraduate days had deserted her just when she needed it most.
Everyone else seemed so capable of speaking up in the seminars. I found a shyness in myself i had never encountered before. And, as i now look back on it, this "shyness" didn't leave me during the entire graduate experience. Throughout the entire six years i found it very difficult to speak out in the classroom .... the feelings were "queasies" and "nags" that rumbled around my head at all times. The behaviors, hesitancy in the classroom, resistance at being an *active* part of what was going on in this learning context, *fear* (that is perhaps the best descriptor of the feeling part of this) of "exposing myself" as less than my colleagues, diluting the statements i made in papers, exams, and in the classroom, not making the strong assertive statements i would have like to have made for fear i would put myself out on this limb only to watch it get sawed off from under me .... and yet, even now, i can't say really why i found this to be the case. I don't think there were any "overt" examples of treatment directed at me (or any other student that i can think of) that should have made me so reserved and doubting of myself, yet, that reservation is part of my "reality of experience" as i remember it.As Zoe progressed through her program she felt less and less affiliated with a specific cohort, in part, because students finished at various times (some had come with master's degrees; others had not) and there were fewer members of her cohort around by the time she finished. In spite of this, Zoe felt more "connected" to her cohort than to any other students she met and made friends with during her program.
Zoe had entered the graduate program with a clear idea of what she wanted as her major and according to all the recruiting information she received, the university had a strong program in this specialization. After she was admitted she found out otherwise.
Surprise!!! They had neither the faculty in place nor the resources to offer this major-something that several of us students encountered after getting into the program.Zoe declared her major in a different specialization and left her minor to be decided at a later date.
all i ever heard was that it's too bad but that's just the way it is. pretty much i was on my own to even chart my own grad experience with respect to classes, etc. i finally found the chutzpah to do that and managed to get the minor i wanted which i'd been told would be an impossibility.An older professor who had been at the university for nearly 26 years was the faculty specialist in her major and he became Zoe's primary advisor.
Actually, as i look back on it, we developed a very good relationship-- yet, it also became apparent very early in the experience that he wanted to "shape me in his image" and, the work he had done for many, many years was of little interest to me.To Zoe, the department seemed very cold and impersonal. She was also older than most of the students in her cohort and she found the faculty did little to encourage any form of personal relationships amongst themselves or with the graduate students although the department did encourage students to find a faculty member to work and to publish with.
i don't know if i was just not assertive enough or what, but this opportunity never transpired for me and the only work and publishing i did with other faculty came after the culmination of my master's thesis.Zoe missed the supportive kind of environment she'd experienced in her undergraduate program and she missed the kind of encouragement she'd received from her undergraduate professors "who would at least acknowledge that i had some merit and could "make it."
Lacking confidence in her own abilities and still of the mind that other graduate students knew much more than she did, Zoe followed the advice of her colleagues to "take the easiest route," to do whatever was requested of her and get through the "damned program." And she did. Her thesis was a quantitative examination of the different work orientations women bring into a job at the time they enter employment and their expectations about job satisfaction. However, in the end, Zoe completed a thesis project that was of little interest to her - it was a project that she "merely got through" even though she did manage to co-author one publication with her advisor.
yet, as with my thesis, i always felt as if the paper was more "his" than mine and by the time it reached publication i could barely recognize it as my work and my creation even though i am listed as first author.The seeming lack of connection Zoe felt with her master's level work was shaped, not only by her own lack of self-confidence, but by experiences with two of her committee members, one of whom was her chair. These two committee members had worked and published together for more than 20 years. As Zoe worked with these two committee members she began to feel more and more like she was being "bounced around like a ping-pong ball between the two, each one wanting *very* different and often contradictory things" from her work. Then one day in her graduate seminar, her professor and committee member told "a story to the class that went something like this:
Suppose you've worked with a colleague for a very long time, but you've come to a point in your collegial relationship where you see things very differently. But, your professional relationship doesn't allow you to "fight it out" with your colleague. What do you do? Suddenly, one day you realize that there is another mechanism at your disposal-- you have a master's student in common. So, you wage your battles using *her*. You have her running between the two of you, you have her dancing like a puppet on a string, but you get your point across to the colleague.Zoe recalled her reaction at the time.
Well, i left the class in tears, marched into my chair's office, and told him the story and, in no uncertain terms, put him on notice that he, as my chair, was going to assume a leadership role here, work out his professional difficulties with the colleague, and i *did not* expect it to impinge upon my progress anymore. From that day on i had no further problems with the other committee member. But, the hell i went through until i "discovered" the hidden agenda .... the game-playing and politics of higher ed are sometimes nauseating, stress inducing, and down right *mean* to the student!!! So, there you have my nightly vent-- always has to be something with me, doesn't it? But, there does have to be a better way than what we're currently doing to our students.Despite such trials, after two years of full-time study, Zoe earned her master's degree in 1990, and in January of 1991, without missing a beat, she entered the doctoral phase of her graduate program in the same department.
Helen, born in 1945, is the oldest of the women who participated in this study. When Helen was quite young her mother divorced and worked to support Helen, her brother and her own parents with whom they lived. Helen was raised primarily by her grandparents who she described as very traditional Europeans of Swedish and German extraction. Her grandfather had a sixth grade education, her grandmother, only grade three and when Helen thought about it she couldn't really remember whether or not her grandmother had known how to read. Today, despite having moved a number of times to different parts of the country, Helen lives in the same town as her mother and typically, they meet once a week for breakfast. Helen described her upbringing as very traditional. Her mother maintains the belief that women should marry and be able to stay at home with their children. During the early years of her marriage most of Helen's friends were the "woman-half " of other couples and she had few role models of women as academics and certainly none with a feminist orientation. To Helen, such roots didn't "suggest graduate study as an appropriate path" for her to follow after completing her undergraduate degree.
Helen
I'd still like, at times, to retreat to a subsistence farm -- part of me grows in the dirt.After high school Helen completed two years at a small, liberal arts college and then married in 1965. She completed the remaining two years of her undergraduate degree at a midwest university while her husband was working on his Master's degree. In 1967, she earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Education with a major in English. Graduate school wasn't among the options Helen considered after completing her undergraduate degree; she assumed she would get a job, which she did, and she supported her husband as he completed, first his master's degree and then his Ph.D. in mathematics education.
I wanted to be (and it was a decision I was comfortable with) a full-time mother and housewife (shades of my own mother's often voiced wishes that she had been), and have several more children (we had only one more).In the years subsequent to completing her undergraduate degree Helen took a number of graduate classes at different institutions in education, history, and science and technology and raised two boys who were born in 1973 and 1977. In 1982, they moved to a small midwestern town where they live today. They chose the town, in part, because it had a graduate school Helen could go to. However, she delayed her entry to the graduate program for two years so she could teach at a parent-run school where she and her husband had enrolled their two sons.
In 1985, Helen entered a course work master's program in English with the idea that she would teach post-secondary English when she finished. Her long term plan was to teach only long enough to support her two boys through college and then quit. Helen was a full-time student throughout her master's program and she completed her degree in 1987 at a state university in the U.S. midwest. The intellectual range of her scholarship is reflected in the titles of the approved papers submitted as part of the requirements for her degree:
Generalization of the Feminine Character in Three Authors of MetafictionAfter completing her master's degree Helen made the decision that she did not want to pursue a Ph.D. She had given some thought to pursuing a doctorate and had been interested in an interdisciplinary program at one mid-western university. However, she was "turned off" by a double language requirement, convinced she couldn't be fluent in even one language. Only later, through her friends, did Helen learn that rather than establishing fluency, the language requirement could have been met by taking classes. A couple of years passed during which Helen taught first year composition in a non-tenure track position and she was happy doing that. She enjoyed teaching composition and thought she did it exceptionally well.
Absent Fathers, Unorthodox Daughters: Literary Prediction of Recent Psychological Observations.
"Mathematics and Eastern Symbolism As Unifying Images in Emerson's 'Circles.'
I loved it, got good responses from the students, and decided I'd found something I could enjoy doing for another ten years.
However, ultimately Helen had a change of heart about pursuing a doctorate and in 1992 she entered her current program as a full-time student. She first completed her course work and the year of residency and then wrote her comprehensive exams in the summer of 1994, followed by her preliminary orals in the fall. In mid-May of 1995 she submitted her dissertation proposal which was approved by her committee. She returned to the university full-time during the 1996-97 academic to finish writing and to defend her dissertation.
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