resubmission after failure

Strap in, this is gonna be a long one.

Long time, no write. I was preparing for (hopefully) a major comeback. After I didn’t pass my dissertation proposal back at the end of April. It affected me a lot more than I thought it did.

I felt defeated.

When I didn’t pass, I legit went through all the stages of grief. I think that I am still grieving. At first, I honestly thought that I was being dramatic. How could not passing, something that has happened before, affect me so much that I felt paralyzed. I was so angry at first. I was constantly ruminating on I was asking things like, “What do you mean my research questions, aren’t really research questions?” “Why couldn’t y’all just sign the paper?” “Have I not proved myself enough over these 4 years?” “Do you not trust me?”

“Do I even trust myself to do good work anymore?”

These among several other questions were running through my brain. I was stuck for a while. I tried to just move on considering that I had to just jump from that straight into teaching. I had the worst imposter syndrome. I didn’t think that I belonged in this space anymore. I spent a lot of my downtime from teaching trying to just feel those emotions. They were all so heavy. It was the subject of most of my therapy sessions. I cried–a lot. I didn’t want to work on my dissertation.

What if I fail again?

That question plagued me. I threw a temper tantrum. I wanted to drop out. I wanted to scream into the void. I asked God, “Why do I even need to go through this? Why am I in this space?” I went through the rest of teaching with all of that on my brain. But as the 6 weeks course went on, my students really recharged me. Though the prep work felt like a burden, my students were able to find and connect with the materials in a critical way that I knew I was doing the right thing. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not posturing myself as the sole cause of the course going well and my students learning a lot from it. I owe that to my pretty laidback, approachable, and dialogic teaching style.

I believe that teaching is a partnership between the student and the teacher where you are learning from them just as much as they learn from you.

As the semester went on, I was able to pick myself off the ground little by little. I regained some confidence in myself. I started really working on my brand in the last month and it has been revitalizing me. I finished revising my dissertation proposal and turned in last Monday. I’m still waiting on my committee’s verdict but I’m in a much better headspace about it. One thing that I have been keeping in mind is the following and what I’m going to leave you with:

Failure means you quit after you fell. Find success in getting back up and starting again. Keep going. You ARE supposed to be here.