Chapter 3: Flying, Falling, and The Space Between

Remember falling off your bike as a kid? There was a particular sensation in those moments after you had fallen off but before you hit the ground—a scary, thrilling weightlessness that you hoped wouldn’t end in disaster. That’s how I would describe being a doctoral student. Sure, there are occasional bursts of exhilaration when, like riding over the crest of a big hill, the hard work is done and for an instant you can take your feet off the pedals and just enjoy the ride. But mostly it’s that other feeling—that sense of flying and falling and the faith that somehow everything will be okay. I believe it’s the willingness to endure that sensation, for years on end, that carries students successfully through their programs. Though we share a capacity to persevere, to rise to the challenges of our respective programs, each of us is led to pursue a doctoral degree by circumstances that are uniquely our own. For me, the decision to embark on the path to a PhD was about discovering a passion that had been hiding in plain sight.