In addition to the Four-Kings Theory of Supervision (which I will share in another post… maybe…), I have developed a Theory of Supervision Meetings. It goes like this:
Supervision Meetings are the processes in which the PhD Student’s darkest, scariest monsters (the ones that emerge from the hole in the bathtub late at night after the water has drained) stand in the light of… well, Supervision. And when they do stand there, they shrink, and pale, and puff – they are gone. For a while. For a little while. Until they reemerge, and then need to be exposed to the Supervision Light – again.
The initial anxiety of the Supervision Meeting abates (you may call them ‘chats’, I may call them Panopticon Prison Breaks, but it doesn’t take anything away from the nature of their Supervisionmeetingness – hence the anxiety), and I’m looking for those monsters. Where are they? Nowhere to be found. They were truly huge. They loomed truly large, crowding me out from the bathroom – so enormous they were, they took every inch of space. They followed me to the kitchen, dark, lit only by the small IKEA nightlight which is supposed to turn off in daylight and turn on in the dusk, but which often does the opposite. In the kitchen, I was swallowing the pills: the vitamins, the minerals, the Omega-3 because it’s good for your everything, the Brahmi because it’s good for your mind, the Ashwagandha because it’s good for your Resilience, Adaptive Capacity and Ability to Deal with Wicked Problems, the Neem because it’s good for your skin, the Melatonin because it’s good for your sleep. No prescription drugs here, mind you, because Patrik did not consider it necessary to prescribe them. He said, don’t compare yourself to others, compare yourself to yourself. He said, read a novel, watch a film. (Which I, needless to say, didn’t. I was busy worrying about my work.) So, the monsters were standing all around me; their hands were on my throat, making it hard to swallow.
Where are these monsters now? I’m in a supervision meeting, and I’m having a hard time att sätta igång as they say in Swedish, to get the ball rolling. But we’re getting there; I’ve laid out my Four Kings, and we’re talking about Australian football versus tennis coaching and how this translates into the PhD Supervision (spoiler: it doesn’t, but we have to make it translate). And I am searching for the monsters, but they are gone. I have prepared them so carefully; I said to them, look, when we go in, you have to stand right by me, hold my hand, don’t go anywhere; loom large, make scary faces. But when I look around here in the café where I’m sitting with my supervisor, they are gone. They had bolted. They couldn’t take the Supervision Light.
When did they disappear? In the morning they were there. They were right by me, gloating and sneering with Schadenfreude. They were sitting right next to me on the train, bickering between themselves in their impenetrable monster language, making other passengers anxious, even though other passengers could not see them. They went in with me as I walked into the corridor of my department, making me smile a wry, cynical smile at my ultra-tech key that unlocks the door with the power of the electrical impulse of me setting it in (which it didn’t today). They sat with me as I answered my emails. They were there after I came in from another meeting, anxious that the Supervision Meeting was imminent; they sat right on my desk, on top of my papers and books, swinging their legs, saying: look. You are an idiot, and this is going to go badly for you. This is the time when the Supervisor will radically disinherit and disown you. Watch yourself go down, all the way. This is your nemesis, your downfall, your doom.
I stood up and said, forgetting myself, my tongue numb (I had heard my supervisor’s steps in the corridor, and there were only a few meters between where he was and my door, but it lasted forever): Because the weather is so beautiful, would you… (I stumbled) care to go out for a cup of coffee with me? And get drizzled on along the way? Hm-hm, is it raining?, my supervisor mumbled noncommittedly and disappeared. I took off my black flats and slipped into my cherry-red Docs. I wasn’t sure if it was a ‘yes’, but just in case. He was right back, in his red flannel jacket and green hat, Xmas-coloured, but without the Santa beard that had been shaved off a couple of weeks earlier. You might need more than that, observed he ironically, watching me pulling on my white woollen cardigan. I will I will, I said wryly, my hands shaking a little while I was grabbing my black coat that got all the white fluff on it from the white cardigan.
Here? Was it here that they were gone, the monsters? As soon as he started speaking to me, there was no trace of them. I summoned them, I invoked them. In the café, I rummaged for them in my bag as I was taking out my phone, my wallet, the scissors, the tape, the pen, the notebook, the golden page anchor, the cigarettes, the deck of playing cards. They were gone. Not a trace of them. Where are you, monsters?
How does this post end? You have a choice between:
Option A
Gone until the next time when I feel I cannot, cannot lift this alone, I cannot disentangle myself. I am suffocating in the interviews I am coding. I am suffocating in other people’s nonchalant brilliance and seventy thousand citations. My second paper still not published and might never be. I am plotting another twelve – I will never write them. I don’t know how to. I don’t know what I’m looking for. He said, Tatiana, how are you using feminist theory in your work? I said, I don’t. I don’t know. I don’t know how to. I can’t use theory. I will be blacklisted. No-one will fund this. They didn’t include what I had written in their newsletter, even though they had asked me to write it. They never got back to me on this. He said, if you’re going to do something along the lines of what you did in your first paper, I won’t write with you. She said, I read your paper draft; you seem to have no idea what you are talking about, and the fact that you feel daunted to sit next to the professors means that you won’t be able to move up the academic ladder. He said, this paper seems too sophisticated for a first PhD paper. The Queen of Hearts said, you‘ve got your critique, I feel at home in your work, but I will not work with you. They didn’t like my suggestions in the meeting – not a single one of them. In the WhatsApp research group, they ‘liked’ everyone else’s input, but not mine. When I said, let’s talk about our own research, he laughed uncomfortably. I sit in a research meeting, not saying a word, until I disappear. I come in and out of the room without saying a word, and no-one sees me, until I disappear. I colour-coded my supervisors’ comments and I started with the yellow. No, I started with the orange. No, I started with the green. Three hours later, I had not a word of text changed. I deleted all the text and started from scratch. What is my research question? I had no research question. I put the old text back in. Tatiana, you need to explain why this is a research problem worth investigating. I stood up and left, I went out under the rain and bought a pack of cigarettes. I had not smoked in thirteen years – I had no clue what cigarettes to buy. I had no clue what the red and the yellow and the silver labels meant. This sounds like an academic exercise. What is the problem here? Why should we care about your research problem? I will ask her, and she will say no. I turned to the Queen of Hearts and she said, Nej men hej, du är här. I will present my old paper. No, I will present my new paper. They won’t think it relevant anyway. They won’t like it. They will nod politely and never talk to me again. There’s a hand on my throat, it makes it hard to swallow. There is a hand on my chest, it makes it hard to breathe. See you soon, monsters. See you too soon.
Option B
I know that I need to compare myself to myself, read a novel and watch a film, Patrik, but I refuse. Even if it drags me all the way down the spiral staircase. I am reflected in the shimmering, shifting mirror of voices which I resist as much as I internalise them. This mirror is a dark well at night, but in the morning it is a shining frozen surface in which I stare into my own eyes. I found your work to be amazing. I was really impressed, and I mean that. I just sort of sat down and started reading, and I was like, wow, fantastic. So you should feel really good about the progress that you’ve made so far. You’ve got your critique. I feel at home in your work. You’re a wonder. Stay close.
Fathom 