Well, after a year of work and a week of panicked transcript orders, the verdict is in: I didn’t get accepted to my PhD program. What now?

Well, it’s a bit complicated about the PhD journey at present.

I got the rejection email not too long ago, and it said the committee didn’t think I had shown enough in my scheduling for my program, theoretical framework, or expertise in the field. Sounds pretty bad, right? That’s, like, 3/4 things you need for a PhD proposal not passing muster right there. And all of this after a year of work an more than half a dozen drafts to get the proposal into a submittable state.

However, they added that they thought the proposal was both timely and valuable, two things it is very difficult to convince people of in the process. This feels like a huge win in the face of defeat, to say the least.

They also said that they would be sending me feedback—something I was certainly not expecting, given how abysmally you are treated when you submit any kind of application for employment nowadays. I even checked Reddit and a few other websites and it seems that this is not the norm. The committee even said that they recommended “revision and resubmission,” so I think this means that they are inclined to accept if I follow the feedback.

And all of this gives me mixed feelings. Being rejected always stings a little: You don’t get what you want and if you really want it, that makes it feel worse. I’m only human: I don’t like not getting what I want, especially if I think I’ve put in a lot of hard work to meet the requirements for said thing I want. But… it wasn’t an outright rejection. There’s a glimmer of hope there.

I’m still in talks with my advisor on how to move forward, but I think she’ll be encouraging. She’s been patient and generous with her time and feedback, and this rejection kind of just feels like another step in the process. I mean, writing the PhD will probably be a lot like this: Drafts upon drafts upon drafts.

It does suck that I have to wait another year to try again, but that also means I have another year to get it right, to polish it up a discover the key to what a good PhD proposal is. If I get there, I will be sure to shout from the mountaintops what I learned to hopefully help others in a similar position.

It also kind of sucks to have to tell people “Nah, didn’t get it, but will try again next year.” I feel (and know) that we stigmatize failure. While this is technically an L, I don’t feel quite as devastated as I would have been, say, if I hadn’t been told I would be getting feedback or that I am encouraged to try again. It’s also nice, on a personal level, to know what the heck is going on for the rest of the year. That, in and of itself, is a huge relief for me. Not knowing what I’m doing in the next three months is very stressful, needless to say.

I can be disappointed and hopeful at the same time; there’s definitely space to hold contradictory feelings. Hopefully, I can keep up the hope and not spiral as the months go on.

Halee made a really good carrot cake using a recipe from RecipeTin Eats. It has crushed pineapple in it, and she doesn’t lie: You really can’t taste it. It does add a bit of textural oddness for a carrot cake, but the flavor is incredible. Especially the cream cheese frosting. It’s a bit laborious, but hot damn if it isn’t tasty!

I’ve been floundering a bit with what to spend my free time with, mainly because I’ve been pretty exhausted coming home from work, due to the stressing I was doing about my PhD.

I finished a couple of books: How to Read a Book by Mortimer J. Adler (the updated 1972 version) and This Is for Everyone: The Unfinished Story of the World Wide Web by Tim Berners-Lee.

First, Adler. The first few sections of the book contain a lot of valuable insights into what reading is, how it isn’t something we naturally do, and how it must be learned. I think prefacing any book on reading with this information is hugely beneficial to the reader. But as the book moves on and starts giving directions on how to read specific genres, like poetry and fiction, it starts to lose me.

The thing that I disagree with the most is his analysis of how to read a novel. He says that you need to read it as quickly as you can, preferably in one sitting, as that’s how the author intended it to be read, as that is most likely how it was written. This strikes me as overly prescriptive and assumptive because A) We don’t know how the writer wrote the novel (a lot of authors write non-linearly, shuffling around and jumping to different parts in the process) and B) Unless explicitly stated, we don’t know how the author intended us to read their novel. And reading in your own way does not diminish the quality of the experience reading the book! There’s a lot of interplay with the reader and the text that the author cannot control, and I think Adler trying to impose some control based on his own assumptions isn’t a good approach and may alienate people looking for earnest answers to help their reading.

While this is a seminal work in the discourse around reading and reading education, I can’t help but feel we may have moved on from some of his ideas. The first 100 pages or so go hard, but becomes a mixed bag after.

This Is for Everyone: The Unfinished Story of the World Wide Web is just that: A history and biography of Berners-Lee, the British man who made the World Wide Web. It’s a nice read, but I can’t help but notice a lot of these books by non-writers tend to sound the same, like they all hire the same ghostwriter to add some pizzaz to their story. Is that just me? He does say some things about AI that I didn’t quite agree with, but I’m impressed he still remains optimistic, given how horrible everyone in tech seems to be acting. Towards the end, it started to read a bit like an advertisement for his of personal data protocol, Solid. While I think it could be an improvement, I’m getting eerie vibes that the future of data safety is a bit bleak. I sincerely hope I am wrong and that Berners-Lee is right on this one!