Da Degree

This Thursday I picked up my certificate and the final transcript. There it was -- the material, tangible proof of my degree. I have completed all the motions mechanically. Written the dissertation, defended it, did the final revisions and the final submission, without really letting my feelings seep into those things too much. But seeing the degree brought home to me the fact that I have indeed been PhD-ed. It's been a long journey in some ways. This degree made me leave my home in Kolkata, move to another country altogether. It is during my time in the PhD programs that I finally began to write seriously, and that too in a language in which I had never really thought I would write. But, I haven't really celebrated it in anyway. I didn't attend the graduation ceremony, because I didn't have the money to pay those fees. Besides, I didn't really feel that this spectacle of walking down the aisle has any meaning for anyone other than myself. Well, maybe my parents, ten friends and my advisors. I don't have any photographs of my graduation to show off on Facebook. And if I have to be really really honest, I don't really feel any real sense of achievement. Rather, I feel, this degree was long overdue. I just needed to get the dissertation done. Like, done done. But, what it has done one thing for me-- it has given me the courage to push through a project. There had been many many days during the last three years when I wanted to stop, give up. I didn't, because I knew I would hate myself for not completing it later. Besides, after spending so much time and energy in a foreign land, I didn't really want to look like a "failure" to my friends and family in Kolkata. So, I pushed on, in spite of my ambivalent feelings about academia and academic writing. And what this experience has taught me is that, every big writing project brings with it its own share of pain, tribulations and even boredom. But, it's important to push through those things to some kind of completion. I am hoping, this lesson would come in handy for my future creative writing projects.