‘I am everything you want
I am everything you need
I am everything inside of you
That you wish you could be
I say all the right things
At exactly the right time
But I mean nothing to you and I don’t know why’
– Vertical Horizon, Everything You Want
If there’s one skill you should have after you finish a doctorate, it should be handling rejection. You know of few Ph. D.s who have not earned those wretched emails, letters, and phone
calls. You know the type.
Telling you that you’re not good enough. Someone else had more money, and someone else had more experience. Someone else was a better fit. Someone else was more familiar with the needs of the faculty. Someone else, someone else.
But you can’t help it. You begin to wonder. You have an advanced degree requiring you to master social science research. So you can’t help it. You analyze your many, many failings.
And there’s a pattern, discovered late into the night over too many glasses of Kirkland brand scotch. You hate that pattern, but it is there.
It’s your learning disability.
You never impressed your first dissertation chair, the balding, angry white man who spoke proudly of his special education teacher’s wife but viciously attacked the learning-disabled student who needed help and guidance. He clicked his tongue disapprovingly when she cried in his office and said bringing her on was a mistake.
You certainly didn’t impress your co-chair, who suggested you drop out, who told you that you are not cut out for teaching or research, so she gave those positions away to smooth-talking male Ph.D students who would go on to never defend their dissertations. Their depression and their mental struggles are soothed over and cooed by her, but you are not given this sense of comfort.
You never impressed the students in your first lab, who mocked your trembling hands, your need to write everything down, your vocal volume, and your strange ideas.
Sometimes people liked you. You got in, after all. You got tuition waivers and fellowships free rides and invitations to conferences and publications. You eventually make it into another
doctoral program, you earn a 4.0 GPA, earn fellowships and free rides to conferences in different countries, you present papers and posters, you earn it all.
But you weren’t Amanda and Rachel and Jessica and Prudence and all the other women in your graduate college. They successfully wooed and charmed their way into graduate programs, teaching assistantships, and post-doctoral positions. You never earned the protection that is necessary within the academic atmosphere.
And why is that?
Because you made the mistake of stepping out of bounds.
Because you do not learn properly. And how could you?
After all, within the bounds of the university, the learning disabled are meant to be studied, pitied, regarded under noses, and swept aside when it’s time for an actual academic discussion. The learning disabled barely make it through community college, not finish graduate school with distinction. The learning disabled work menial jobs, not become the head of a program at a major organization. The learning disabled ‘flourish’ in the manner in which higher education and greater society have deemed comfortable and fit, not eschew its iron-clad laws.
But you broke that mold. And it fills them with rage.
Because you did not know your place.
You have earned the top degree in your field. Your name is at the top of chapters and papers. You are quoted in papers. You have a full-time position in which you are allowed to write and present research.
You are a learning disabled Ph.D.
And you’re everything they hate.
Kristen
