Today marked the first rain of spring. Peter got his wisdom teeth out this morning and I finished my last week of in vivo experiments. It feels like the beginning of something new, the start of a new season.
Tomorrow, I give my research seminar to the department, the last milestone before the defense, and next week will be my last week in the lab.
Wow, it feels like I’m hurtling towards that deadline at a breakneck pace.
I spent this morning pipetting in the fume hood while thinking about how in one week, my life as I know it will fundamentally change. What will my life be like without pipetting, I have yet to find out.
Our days are full – attending baby showers (it’s a time of many pregnancies at our church!), setting up the nursery, reading reviews on strollers and diaper pails, searching for used cribs on Marketplace, finishing up the last experiments (but really, there can be no ‘last’, only an endpoint when you decide to make it your last) and in between all that, figuring out what to make for dinner at night.
I did find a moment however, probably during one of my 3 am sessions (yes insomnia is starting to hit me XD), to sit down and reflect on how I want to spend my last weeks at lab.
This post was written 2 weeks ago and originally published on Gradlife, but thought I would re-publish it here on my own blog. Enjoy 🙂
I officially have 3 weeks left of lab life before I go on maternity leave. It feels somewhat surreal that the only life I’ve known for the past 6 years (i.e. wake up and go to lab) will end abruptly. That one day I will wake up and not feel the pressing need to go to lab.
In fact, it will be the opposite – I’m not supposed to be in the lab. I’m supposed to be at home, resting and preparing for the baby.
Ironically, now that my days in lab are counting down, I’m finding I have more motivation to actually go to lab.
Perhaps it has to do with the fact that I know this is not forever, and this period of my life will soon come to an end.
The finiteness of it all makes me seize the moments.
It could also be that a baby on the way makes you realize that there are much bigger things in life than grinding through a PhD.
There is a human life growing inside of you and there is nothing more wondrous or miraculous than that.
And as I walk up that same hill to the Wong Building at McGill or wash glassware with ethanol, the baby’s kicks inside of me snap me out of my problem-solving stupor.
There is something outside of myself and my thoughts – someONE, rather – and I smile to myself.
I have to admit – this PhD has continued to feel like navigating a mountain without a map.
Winding paths that may lead to nowhere and all you know how to do is keep trudging in a vaguely uphill direction, hoping you will soon reach a vantage point where you can see more clearly.
It has also felt like a dark tunnel, one in which your eyes have so adjusted to the lack of light that you can’t distinguish whether that glimmer of light was simply a figment of your imagination or an actual way out.
Real or not real, signal or not signal? The perpetual question of the PhD.
And whether we’re trudging on that mountain or feeling our way through an inky tunnel, the only thing we know how to do is to compare ourselves with those walking beside us.
There is this perpetual pressure to get ahead, even though we don’t even know what “ahead” means.
So, we work on weekends, stay late in lab, run that extra experiment in the hopes that we’ll end up ahead.
But if there was one thing I have learned from my past 6 years in the PhD, it’s this:
There is no behind or ahead. There is only the pace that you’re going.
This is what I think of when people ask me why I would choose this time of my life to have a baby:
“Why wouldn’t you wait until after the PhD to undergo such a significant life change? Aren’t you delaying your own progress?”
I think the undercurrent of this thinking really is:
You need to finish the PhD to get on with life. Real life happens when you get a real job.
But what if the PhD is a part of life? What if life doesn’t begin after the PhD, but right now?
What if this baby is not slowing me down because there really is no benchmark for where I’m supposed to be at what time?
These are hard questions I ask myself, because that subliminal pressure that pervades culture (more and faster is better) also affects me.
I’m guessing it’s not just in the PhD, but even after graduation, that I’ll have to fight against this current.
I want to fight for slow.
I want to fight to know that there is always time.
There is time for me to take a step back and be at home having a baby, rather than in the lab working long hours.
There is time to spend my hours in a rocking chair holding my son, rather than churning out as many papers as I can.
Because at the end, if I rushed past people and burned out my soul just to rush to the end of my PhD, only to find that what was waiting for me at the end was nothing more than a list of publications, that would be a very sad day indeed.
I want to end with these words of Jesus that have both encouraged and challenged me:
And what do you benefit if you gain the whole world but lose your own soul? Is anything worth more than your soul?
Matthew 16:26
I hope these are the words that will guide my last 3 weeks in the lab.
Amen. Words of truth and wisdom. We need to always be in tune with God’s pace and go with His flow. He is the one who measures the success and fruitfulness of our life and he is one who accomplishes great things through us. Love you lots Viv. I’m also so encouraged and inspired by you. The Shalom of the LORD be with you and Peter and baby in this miraculous time of God’s creation.