Of all celebrity deaths, I think Sid Vicious was the one that disturbed me the most. (Someone said that “My Way” only works when the singer is less smart than the song, and that the Sid Vicious version is the only good one. Personally, I like the Elvis version too.) But I digress.
What things have I done or not done that I regret? I try not to second-guess my younger self with “I should have done that instead of this.” (The soldier in the Civil War novel Cold Mountain muses that regret is the eighth sin.) Looking back, I remember in college when people were friendly with me, and in hindsight I wish I’d reciprocated, but I just wasn’t ready! I also wish that I’d developed my singing and acting talents at an earlier age—I finally started doing that in middle age, joining an opera group.
But I thought of a specific regret just the other week. It goes back to 1996, when I was writing my Ph.D. thesis. My supervisor and I did not have good chemistry. I found him inflexible and became defensive, and the thesis suffered. I kept writing things or saying things to him because I just couldn’t think of anything else to say, and in the end I was lucky to pass. For his part, he thought I wasn’t taking it seriously. (I know this because he later admitted it to me!) The only reason I didn’t ask for a new supervisor was because there was nobody else. Maybe I should have gone to the University of Toronto, with its bigger faculty, instead of York University. But that isn’t the regret I had in mind.
In the spring of 1996, after a long period getting my research notes in order, I finally started writing the thesis. I’d handed in the first chapter and prepared to write the second: I was moving on not because I saw the first chapter as “finished” but because I didn’t want to waste time. But the catch was, I’d have to write the second chapter very soon, while the material was still fresh in my mind.
My supervisor was going to spend the summer in Hong Kong, and in our second-last meeting before his departure came an unexpected development: he wanted me to add an “overview” to the first chapter. And he wanted me to spend the next two weeks working on it and give it to him at our last meeting so he could look at it in Hong Kong and send me his feedback. But for me this was unfeasible because I needed to start the second chapter soon, and it couldn’t wait two weeks. (In addition, I wanted to get his feedback before he left.)
When the Nazis attacked at the start of the Battle of the Bulge, General Eisenhower told his subordinates, “This is an opportunity!” I decided to look at it as an opportunity to improve the thesis. I’d write the overview as quickly as possible and send it to him so he could give me feedback before leaving, then turn to writing the second chapter. Of course, it showed that I’d written it in such a hurry. (I made the no-brainer mistake of confusing the Treaty of Nanjing with the Treaty of Tianjin!)
I actually missed my last meeting with him when we would have talked about the overview, because I got the time wrong. (Was I unconsciously missing it deliberately because I feared his reaction? It wasn’t conscious anyway.) When I finally got his written comments, it wasn’t pretty. He called the overview “vague, simplistic and often mistaken” and said that it reflected “basic weaknesses.” I gave an opinion in one place because I couldn’t just recite facts, and his comment began with a “No!” exclamation. (I later figured out that it was one specific sentence he objected to.) I tried to find another member of my committee to talk to about the overview, but none of them was available and I got sent to (I kid you not) a professor of Japanese history! That didn’t do much good…
I understand that from his perspective I was doing a slapdash, half-assed job. But from my perspective, I was trying to play ball with him and make the thesis better, and he was being like one of those teachers who make you regret that you even tried! After he came back I sent him another draft where I tried to meet him halfway and address his points. But it still had the sentence he objected to, and he saw only that, and none of the changes I’d tried to make. In his response he repeated the same thing he’d said before, ignoring the changes. He left out the “No!” exclamation, of course, but otherwise it was exactly the same, as if he’d forgotten writing it earlier. I can’t work with someone like that, where you try to make changes to please him but he just acts like you’ve made no changes at all. After that I gave up on trying to please him. Since I couldn’t work with him, I had to fight him, and I ultimately wrote ten drafts. (After the seventh he declared the thesis “unexaminable,” and I had to demand an examination anyway.) On more than one occasion, you won’t be surprised to hear, I came close to quitting the whole thing.
What do I wish I’d done? I wish I’d said to him, “Sorry, the overview will have to wait till you come back from Hong Kong. I’m ready to write the second chapter and can’t afford any delay in doing so.” If I’d known he was going to ask for the overview and had time to think, maybe that’s what I’d have done. But it came on me as a surprise, and I had to make an immediate decision on what to tell him. And I was afraid he’d say “You can’t write the second chapter until you’ve improved the first!” and I would have had to ignore him and write the second chapter first anyway. Which wouldn’t have improved our relationship. When the eager to please meets the hard to please, feelings get hurt.
In the end, I did pass, but I felt like a burnout. I remember thinking when I started out, “I don’t really care about the degree. I just want the experience of writing a doctoral thesis!” By the time I was finished, it felt like a century since back then. (The hardest part is waiting months for feedback, worrying that the latest draft won’t get you any closer to finishing, and being proved right.) It was like in the movie Easy Rider, when the two of them finally make their fortune from a drug score and Dennis Hopper says “We did it!” but Peter Fonda says “We blew it.”
But that’s all in the past, of course. I don’t expect to be in a situation like that again, so there isn’t much I can learn from it. I guess I could tell today’s doctoral students about it, and they could learn something useful.
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