Chapter 10: Stuck in an In-Between State: Exploring the PhD Student Experience through Ambivalence

It was my first day of the PhD program and I was sitting on the subway on the way to York University feeling torn. I had spent most of my summer back-packing in Thailand and had returned to a Toronto that I no longer felt was “home.” In the past four months I had not only moved apartments, but I resigned from a corporate HR position, and had just come out of a five-year relationship. Everything that was familiar to me was unfamiliar. I was entering into a new phase of my life, and Toronto’s transit system was helping me get there.