Fighting to reach the destination

All you need is the plan, the road map, and the courage to press on to your destination. 

~Earl Nightingale~

Feeling lost doesn’t always mean that you cannot find your way on the street. Sometimes it means you cannot find your way in your mind. But isn’t it wonderful when everything starts to clear up and you cannot only see the streets in your mind and the direction that you must take, but the destination? The thing is that despite finding it all, there will always be days when you will feel lost all over again, and the only thing that will keep you going is the moment when you could see the destination. 

After that first review, I felt lost. I felt like a fraud that had no right pursuing a PhD. Who the hell was I to even be here? How did I even get this scholarship? The only thing I could see at that point, with any clarity, was the need to run and hide; the need to lick my wounds and figure out how to give them their money back and go home. You know what held me together, besides the emotional eating, and the time to think? A hug …. A hug for which I am supremely grateful, and to add to that there was also the memory of the destination, my destination, and why it is so important to me.

Everyone tells you that pursuing a PhD is a lonely road and one that will test your resolve, confidence, intelligence and temerity.  So few people tell you how to survive it, and there is a simple reason why. No one person follows this path exactly the same way as another; we all have to find the gumption to make it there alone. What works for me may not work for you.

But does this fight only apply to the pursuit of a PhD?  Why should we, PhD candidates, feel special? Can’t you apply this to almost anything that is important to your life? What do you fight to protect? What is so important to you that it brings you to tears when you feel like it is slipping away from your grasp? What will you get up out of bed for and say… I can do this, no matter how hard, knowing that at the end of this I will have achieved something that is important to me?

This will not be the last time I feel lost, but I am damn sure I will fight like a dog till I get to the destination!