We have a couple of neighbors who spent some years overseas studying towards their PhDs. At the time, their now grown kids were children.
On the day the father finally gave in the final version of his thesis to the teachers who were going to evaluate it, the son approached him in his den and said:
“Dad, can I ask you for something?”
Of course, on that day his mood couldn’t be better, so he promptly answered:
“Today you can ask me for anything, son!”
He obviously thought his son would want an expensive toy or the like, but instead he said:
“I want that pile of papers over there.”
The “pile of papers” was a waist-high stack of older versions of his thesis, which had gone back and forth to his advisor (in an era when the Internet wasn’t so present!) over the past months until he was finally satisfied. The father was a bit surprised by the request, but since the son had some classmates over, he thought it had something to do with the recycling program the school promoted.
“It’s all yours, son!” exclaimed the father, happy he wouldn’t have to spend the extra money on the latest toy. He never would have imagined the scene he was about to witness.
“Come on in, everybody!” shouted the son, beckoning to his sister and classmates, who were waiting outside the door.
The kids all rushed in and started tearing up and stomping on the old theses and screaming:
“Thesis nevermore! Thesis nevermore!”
The father rushed to get out his camcorder and film everything. Today it is the first thing he shows his own graduate students when they start studying towards their own doctorate degrees:
“See what awaits you?” he jokes.
Now that I finally defended my own thesis (last week – hurray!), I can’t help but wonder if the stress it generated had any kind of lasting effect on my own kids. The week before my public defense my 9-month daughter was feverish and irritable, and on the evening before the big day my 7-year old son couldn’t sleep.
“Don’t worry,” I joked, “Your own thesis presentation will only be in 20 years.”
“I never want to write a thesis,” he said sternly. He then jumped on my lap as I went through the slides of my presentation one last time. My subject was related to international policies to conserve biodiversity, so I had inserted several pictures of children interacting with nature to lighten things up a bit.
“It’s not fair,” my son complained, “there are all these photos of children and none of my sister and I!” I let him choose some photos of him and the baby and placed them in the presentation. He was satisfied and finally went to sleep.
And you? Have you ever had to reconcile studies and kids? How was your experience?
This is an original post to World Moms Blog by Eco Ziva of Brazil.
Photo credit to Isaac Mao. This photo has a creative commons attribution license.
I tell my college students that graduate school is frequently dull, often difficult, and usually expensive, so that they think long and hard about pursuing an advanced degree–some of them think that graduate school would be a good place to “mark time” until they figure out what to do with their lives. I did my graduate work before I had kids–or a marriage–and I’m always triply impressed at people who manage to complete the long (tiresome, tiring) road to advanced degrees while also being parents. You are owed EPIC congratulations!!
Thanks to everyone for the great comments and support!! 🙂
Congratulations on your thesis completion.
I myself dropped all ideas of pursuing my doctoral degree, I was sure if I was prepared enough to manage being a mother and do enough justice to my doctoral thesis.
So, I admire you lots 🙂
Being a mom and doing a degree is a great challenge — well done to you for making it past the finish line! This is exciting!
I think having your kids see and know that you’ve worked so hard on something is character building.
Thanks for this post, Eco Ziva!
Jen 🙂
Congratulations on such a huge accomplishment. My mom went back to get her PhD when my brother was about your son’s age. I don’t know how she did it as she was also working full time. The only real impact on us kids was that we had to make dinner a lot – not a bad thing at all! (My brother is a professor now, by the way.) Congratulations again!
Congratulations on completion. My friend just finished his, and I know that his wife is very excited to have her husband back – and now he has more time for his son (who is just over a year old). I love the story of the kids tearing the old theses to pieces. “Thesis nevermore!”
This is fabulous! I too love the image of the kids shredding the old theses. But then — there is also the story of wanting to be including in the final product (or presentation). How much our loved ones wind up in our theses/dissertations/publications, even if there are not photos to demonstrate this.
I do not have children, but can relate to the issues as I see friends and family juggle them. It is not just completing the PhD, but also the tenure process that can really do a number on families.
Big fat giant kudos to you. I always admire moms who take time to pursue higher studies. It’s just amazing and inspiring. Love how you added your children’s pictures on the presentation. Congrats!
I’ve been a stay-at-home dad for several years now, working from home with a pretty flexible schedule, but just this past semester I decided to finally enroll in school full time…going from spending all day with my toddler to having several hours of classes daily, not to mention the homework, certainly took a toll on us! As soon as I sit on the couch, she takes that as the cue that “daddy’s done with stuff,” and hops up for “cuddle me” time. We’ll read a few books or watch “Blue’s Clues,” and on the plus side it seems that she’s learning to really value our time together rather than just expect it all the time…quite insightful for a 26-month-old, but maybe I’m just being the typical boastful parent and passing her off as a genius!
I’m sure she’ll enjoy it more in the future when instead of “bring your child to work day” consisting of us staying at home (which would be the case if I stayed in my current dead-end job, benefits of being at home notwithstanding), she can perhaps join me for some geology field work!