Ph(inishe)D

 

Today marks an important milestone in my life. I just submitted my PhD thesis, and it felt extremely awkward.

After I pulled myself together, I visited this bench above, my sad place in Southampton. I have come here so many times. When I get upset, frustrated, or disappointed, I come here to cry, to think, to talk to myself out loud. And today, the reason I came here after my thesis submission was to let go of the things that made me miserable for the last four years.

Over the past years, I got upset over so many different things. I got upset over my PhD thesis, over and over again. I got upset over presentations, progression review deadlines, writing, not writing, not being able to read, not being able to understand what I read due to language barriers... I got upset over the wrong people, and then over people who were even more wrong. Countless things. This bench has witnessed my sorrow and stayed still for me while I burst into tears each and every time.

And now, since I’ve reached the finish line (almost), I can see that nothing truly matters. All the worries I’ve been taking so seriously, that I’ve been making my life about, didn’t matter at all in the end. At this moment in my life, I can see that, but I wish I could have seen it earlier, from day one.

I am here today to share my happiness with this very bench that is special to me, and at the same time, to free this bench. I am letting this bench and myself go, and releasing everything that made me miserable over the years. Today, I’m freeing myself, as well as this bench, from all the worries that, as trivial as they seem now, felt gigantic at the time.

I don’t know how I came this far. I didn’t think I would make it this far. When I was in my master’s, going to university every day but didn’t understand anything my lecturers taught me, I didn’t think I would make it. When I was translating the course materials to Turkish just to make sense of it, and still didn’t understand, I didn’t think I would make it. There must have been some miracle along the way, because the odds were so against me at the time.

Yes, master’s and Ph.D.s are difficult. But they were not the only challenges I faced. Life abroad brought its own set of difficulties. Life alone was also very difficult. Learning a new language and trying to make a life out of it was difficult. Coping with the homesickness was difficult. Missing out on all the important family and friends’ events was difficult. Trying to live your happiness, sadness, excitement, and frustration in a second language was also very difficult. All of them were different kinds of difficulty. And, over time, the definition of difficult has changed. This difficult was not the same as the previous difficult. A fellow PhD friend can understand me.

I honestly don’t know how I came this far. I don’t know how I survived five years (including master's), especially the last two months- they ripped my heart out many times. But somehow, I survived. The universe works mysteriously. And today, when I pressed the ‘submit’ button, everything became so pointless. I have experienced anything and everything here, and at the end of the day, I realised that, in the grand scheme of things, nothing really matters.

And I am so proud of myself. I am proud of the little girl in me who never stopped dreaming. Long ago, I had two dreams in life: moving abroad and becoming an academic. I have achieved both.

She believed she could, and she f*cking did it.