at our university, doctoral candidates’ dissertations must be approved by an outside reader. which approval comes after the committee has reviewed and approved the diss. this can be, as one of my students is learning, incredibly stressful and more than a little unfair.
after getting his reader’s comments my student and i embarked on a revision plan that we both believed addressed the pretty reasonable observations made by the reader. then. then. then his reader read his reviewed dissertation and wrote a second review, twice as long as the first, going into much greater detail about what needed to be changed and why. and refusing to pass the dissertation until all of these changes were made.
i had an hour-long phone conversation with this student pretty late last night. i went to bed angry on his behalf and also revved up with strategies for advocating for him. and so i dreamt of being back in some not-quite-recognizable town where i’d lived before, on a crowded and not-quite-recognizable sidewalk of a street i’d been on countless times before. in front of me were all my graduate school comrades — people i was close to, people i barely knew, people i might not even recognize IRL on an actual street, people i still talk to almost every day. the sidewalk was crowded, and people were jostling each other but also meandering, stopping to exclaim in front of changed store-fronts, to reminisce about hours spent in dark bars, or to catch sight of an old friend and stop/hinder/divert traffic to get to the person for conversation. it was quite sociable and everybody was happy.
except me. i was pedaling furiously on my tricycle, trying to wend my way through the crowd: get out of my way! you’re in my way! you’re slowing me down! but i was so low to the ground — below everybody’s knees, more or less — that nobody really saw me or paid much attention.
teacher/scholar/administrator or toddler? you decide.
