--- breaking the silence ---Toward a Theory of Women's Doctoral Persistence
© Roberta-Anne Kerlin, 1997
Prior to the start of this study two of the seven women, Sarah and Zoe, had successfully defended their dissertations. Camila and Denise defended while the study was in progress and this left Tracy, Helen and Maggie to defend after the study was completed. Neither Maggie nor Helen had given much prior thought to the defense. Tracy was writing the final chapters of her dissertation and continued presenting conference papers based on her research as part of her personal and professional development. She believed these experiences would help to prepare her for the final defense, although she was quick to recognize that "the committee is a different kind of judge." Her strategy for the defense is to "be prepared" and she believes that on-going discussions with her committee members as she writes each chapter will enable her to know where her committee's concern are. She found this to be a strategy that worked for her with other presentations and in her preliminary oral exam. "Otherwise," she wrote, "I'll just maintain a certain level of denial about the possibility that things could go wrong." But she has "little fear of the final oral defense because there hasn't been one in so long; only three that I can think of in my 6 years [here]. But no horror stories from the three. So that's promising .... I'm sort of not too worried about it. If I am there that will mean that I've done my work. I generally don't have a fear of speaking in front of people or anything that would cause me panic; that would be secondary to just being accountable for my material." The Final Defense
Both Camila and Denise wrote briefly about their experiences of the final defense. Camila described a meeting she had the night before her defense with the teacher-member of her committee.
she asked me tons of questions and bombarded me with intellectual challenge. i appreciated this and also hearing she benefited from my research big time. and the kids too she said ... that was my real defense ... we all know how the myth goes about teachers being non theoretical. She asked me theoretical questions at the level of methods and frameworks (I had used in the thesis) BOTH. Of course, I could say that her words were not the academia jargon but that is totally irrelevant from my point of view.In contrast to this meeting, Camila experienced her orals the next morning as significantly less meaningful.
the orals were just a joke of pretense. i didn t enjoy any bit of them.
Camila's experience of the oral defense as a "joke of pretense" was, in her assessment, because there was no real discussion at the defense of the ideas she presented in her thesis. She indicated there was a lot of talk and a lot of jargon being tossed about the room -- but most of it had very little meaning to her.
Lots of little wars about who gets to talk when but no real meat. Or veggies if you are a vegetarian but I am an Argentinean Beef Lady. I should say that there were two attempts during the orals to have good talk: one was when one of the profs critiqued some of the tools (format and writing, id est, where I had said what -- my thesis crafting) I used in the thesis. He said that there was a full section that I had put somewhere where it was in a way not exactly very "helpful" he thought for a reader; I indeed took his suggestion and changed the thesis for the last version. But funny indeed, when he brought this up, someone else in the room AND NOT ME thought his suggestion was not good, defended my work to a ridiculous extreme, I think, and left me kind of off side, to use a soccer metaphor. I thought that was odd given that IT WAS ME and not them who had to worry about these things. This is an example to me of pretense: there was a pretense that we were intellectually engaged in discussing ideas and the crafting of an intense and rather big document (an ethnographic and sociolinguistic account of a bilingual classroom) BUT I found out that we were about polishing someone else's egos. Or defending their "apprentice" (me). Of course, I am sure that this is NOT their point of view at all, and of course, I am being crude because it was a shock for me. At that point I knew there was nOOOO point in arguing with them because I had very intense fights with one of them in the past and we can not communicate in the best optimum way. What was kind 'a funny was that I had already had my defense if you wish to call it so when I talked with the teacher the nite before. It had been a 3 hour challenging intellectual encounter. Very meaningful and very professional.As the date of Denise's defense approached, she wrote:
I'm getting anxious! 10 days from now. Amazing. I've had a few nightmares as the defense looms in front of me. None of them explicitly about the defense itself, but I interpreted them as melds of fear and confidence over what lies ahead. Got my hood in the mail. I bought one. It's the one piece of "regalia" that I want for some reason. Gonna have my chair hood me at the party the night after the defense. She's not very into it. In fact, I got lots of "feminist flack" for wanting the hood. But it's the equivalent of my graduation, and I'll do what feels right to me.A few days after her defense she wrote describing her experience.
[My partner] will be meeting me [there]. He'll be there 3 days and I'll be there a week. Hope to relax and enjoy friends and sun and warmth. Realized that I still need to write my abstract so I guess I need to get my head back into it all. I've been avoiding that, but I guess it's time. Haven't heard from my readers about changes. Wish I could just trust that it means they have only typo type suggestions.
It was a rather strange/typical defense. My chair and the reader from my department were celebratory, though their questions were pointed and not easy, especially since most of them went beyond my dis. But I handled them well--according to those in attendance. However, one committee member (from another department) was incredibly passive/aggressive! Her body language was incredible and of course I was facing her. She was SO angry! After several of us talked about it, couldn't figure out what her problem was. We hypothesized me or my chair or just her own life. Who knows? She signed off even though she thought there were problems. Very strange. In the midst of my defense the angry committee member attacked the chair of my department. The dept chair had said something that made reference to the angry one's comment. It wasn't insulting or anything, but she took offense and exploded. But it wasn't at me, so, I just watched. They all signed off as it was so all I have to do is get it turned in. Had hoped to do that before I left here but there wasn't a single printer on campus that would put out single sided pages of good enough quality so I'll print it in at home.About a month later when Denise had a little more distance from the experience she wrote,Guess that's the basics. I'm gonna go play today with a friend. I head back home on Sunday. Then back to work as a "real person" on Monday. Sounds good to me. It really is a good feeling to no longer be a grad student under their weirdness.
I feel much more relaxed. Even now as I put in lots of hours because I was at a conference last week and we're in the midst of the hiring process (I've interviewed between 4 and 6 candidates each day this week!) I can feel that I'm not nearly as hyper. Rather than freak out, I just work longer if I need to. And it's ok. No resentment or anything. Kind of cool.For Sarah, the final defense was also a grueling experience.
I remember at some point in the writing process thinking that I would never get to the point of defense.Sarah estimated her time to completion and twice this changed while she was writing the final chapter. Finally, in the spring of 1994 she settled on a Friday that would fall two days before her 35th birthday -- she'd made a pledge to herself to finish the degree before she turned 35 -- and suddenly she was confronted with the reality of finishing. This new perspective of the degree altered the way in which she viewed her own writing.
Where before I had been able to just go along, writing and editing, now I looked at each word as something that I had to justify and defend. These words would be my legacy. Would it be good enough? Was I really writing anything that would add to the store of knowledge? Was I really asking and answering a "So what?" question? .... Needless to say, the pressure at that point really kicked up a notch. There were times I would write for four or five hours, and then at some point feel my stomach go into knots. I tried to visualize sitting in the defense. I also tried NOT to visualize sitting in the defense. And it was such an unknown. In preparing for [the preliminary exams] , I at least had the ability to ask people who had been through it, and to review the questions asked in other general exams. I had some sense of what to expect. I did talk to a few people I knew who had their doctorates, but I can't say that anything I heard really helped to prepare me.One of Sarah's committee members, despite being informed well in advance of her defense date, managed to double-book himself and the date was rescheduled for two weeks later. That meant Sarah had to defend four days after her 35th birthday. She was annoyed -- actually, she described it as "pissed" -- that he would "jerk" her around like that but she "knew that the defense and the doctorate would be finished [then]. It was real." When I asked Sarah to describe what the defense had been like for her she wrote: "I honestly can't recall anything about the dissertation defense, although I sense that I was able to sleep [the night before]. Just can't remember specifically."
Zoe's recollection of her defense remained quite clear in her mind. Her husband had scheduled a trip to Mexico during the week of her defense and the only other family member able to attend was her son. He drove three hours from his own college to be present and to celebrate with Zoe and her committee members afterwards.
the one person i wanted present, was 1500 miles away and unable to be with me on one of the biggest days of my life. however, he phoned me that night and we celebrated via ma bell:) This was, however, more than my husband did. i did not hear from him until two days after my defense.Zoe found the defense "collegial and fun." For her, it was a wonderful way to finish her program.
That evening my chair and i celebrated; and i received an hour long phone call from my lover, full of pride and claims of loving me even more. However, thirteen days later, a mere three days before my graduation (which he had for a long time considered coming to) he ended the relationship in a hurtful and mysterious way. So, given all i had been through during the fall: a) the committee and university stuff; b) sexual harassment where I was working; c) teaching full-time; d) the deterioration of my own marriage; e) the overwhelming experience of fully loving someone only to watch it end once i completed the doctorate, my graduation was anti-climatic and very, very sad. I felt no sense of accomplishment or self-worth. i had lost 49 pounds in the process and i felt violated rather than fulfilled. And i lost a lot of my trust in the people around me.
I spent the entire holiday season of 1994 in a deep and very dark depression over many things in my life that had turned out to be less than i had thought they would be -- my work situation, my home life and marriage, my professional sense of self from receiving the phd.
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