On the day of my half-time seminar, I dreamt of wearing a wedding dress.
Explanation: half-time (which apparently is a Swenglish term, as the English speakers seem to call it ‘midterm’) is a seminar in which the doctoral student’s work is presented, reviewed and discussed. Kind of a mock defence at an early stage to assess progress and offer direction and guidance. An external discussant (a professor) and a reader from the department (a postdoc researcher) read my first two papers and a draft of my thesis; I presented and discussed my completed and planned work with them in the presence of a committee and a bunch of well-meaning colleagues on Zoom and in the room for two hours, after which there was an additional closed discussion. To okay me and bless for further academic endeavours. (Or not?)
In other words, a rite of passage. Like a wedding.
In my dream, I was wearing a long white silk wedding dress. I thought (in my dream): what a nuisance. How cumbersome and impractical. How on earth am I going to get there wearing this thing?
I woke up and thought, hm, what a weird dream. And kept thinking so until an hour later my long gauze pale-pink skirt got caught in my bike chain.
Because I wore a long gauze pale-pink skirt to my seminar, and I rode a bike. (Explanation: they do not check your IQ before admitting you to the PhD programme.)
What a nuisance, thought I, pulling at my skirt and leaving a considerable chunk of it in the chain, watched by some compassionate passers-by. An old lady said, dear, I’d help you, but I must dash to a doctor’s appointment. Good luck. How cumbersome and impractical, thought I, tears streaming down my face, parking the bike at the train station. Mum, I ruined the skirt you had altered for me the summer before the war, the last summer I went home. Mum, I ruined everything.
By the time I got to the university, my tears had dried up, and the first thing I did in my room was haute-couture. I cut my unevenly torn, machine-oil-stained skirt. I cut away the charred pieces and put them carefully on my desk.
Simultaneously, I thought of all the other cuts I’d made and hadn’t made. Of having cut my sentences in two (some at the cue of my supervisor, but most entirely on my own initiative). Of having cut my first paper to seven thousand words. Of the terror I experience at the thought of not being able to cut my second to any manageable number. Of having cut into shape ramblings, lectures, seminars, conference panel proposals, PowerPoint presentations. Of having made the final cuts and the director’s cuts, me being the only director of my clumsily, jarringly shaping work. Of having cut my hair in ‘Year 2′ after making a difficult choice. Of having cut away bits of myself, so that new tissue could grow and so that I could pull myself through keyholes and needles’ eyes. But above all, of the fear of not cutting it, and not being cut out for it. Of not making the cut.
I left the pieces beautifully arranged on my desk, picked up my stuff and went to the Room. In the corridor, half a dozen colleagues wished me good luck and said that they were ‘definitely coming/unfortunately could not come’. It was forty-five minutes before the Seminar.
I love that room, as we had a conference opening there a year before, of which I had fond memories. Here, at the table I now stood behind, a few speakers had sat who I came to admire. I knew the room in and out, as we had practiced the light, the screen and the sound (we were showing artwork, and we took it very seriously). I slowly set things up: ‘launched the room’, logged into Zoom from two computers, shut the curtains, plugged in my laptop, changed the batteries in the microphone and attached it to myself, fixed the sound level, made sure I could change the slides with the remote presenter, made sure I could share my screen while projecting the room computer screen, moved the furniture around (with a horrid screeching noise) until I was happy, checked both cameras to see where I could stand and how big my amplitude could be if I wanted to move so that I don’t disappear from them.
It was perfect. It was a work of art. (Spoiler: it was all going to go wrong.)
When the chair of the research education committee and the director of studies came in, they only had to check if the sound was working. It was. The room was ‘alive’. My supervisor appeared early, which made me wonder if he was… apprehensive? I liked that thought. I curiously observed. I sat and tapped on the table with my nails. My reader came in. I went up and sat down multiple times, anxious about my discussant not being there. I checked the sound with the colleagues who joined through Zoom. The room slowly filled. I was counting the committee members. I said hi and even hugged or brushed my hand on the shoulders of some of my colleagues who entered. But this is where it started getting blurry. Things went wrong; the discussant was in the wrong digital place (of course), when she joined I couldn’t see her (of course), when I tried to make her visible I completely messed up the Zoom window (of course) and fixed it in panic (but only half-way) while the chairperson was already speaking. I thanked the chairperson, the research education committee, the audience, the supervisor (who grinned and looked down at his notes), the discussant and reader – and when I started, the Zoom was not in full mode, framing uglily my art piece of a presentation, and my slides wouldn’t move (of course).
In my mental rehearsals of this event, things were smooth and suave. I smiled. I made eye-contact. People were smiling and making eye-contact with me. I had a nice little chat with the discussant and those on Zoom before we started. In reality, none of this happened.
In reality, things were getting blurrier and blurrier. As I was mumbling about technology and trying to unshare and share my screen in different ways, I was surrounded by care and support – I think. I think it was my supervisor coming up to me on my right, and the chairperson on the left, and the discussant was giving me some suggestions on how to defeat the technology through Zoom – I remember this vaguely, or maybe I dreamt it. All their efforts were caring, intelligent and well-meaning, but futile. In the end, something happened on its own (of course), and I could start presenting.
And from here, it was – not suave perhaps, but smooth – for a while. My well-rehearsed PowerPoint gave me a moment to catch my breath. And when the discussant started speaking to me, I realised that all of this was part of the initiation. I had all along been wearing the wedding dress: torn, charred and cut back into shape by my office scissors.
She spoke to me about power. I had been reading her papers on power, reflecting and wondering what she might say. Not knowing what to expect her to say. She drew me out to say that I had never wanted to talk about power, because I was too afraid. I didn’t say that I had thought of power as masculine, as the domain of men, as something only men are allowed to speak of. It would have been going too far and being politically incorrect – but also incorrect tout court. Because by then I knew that women spoke about power – a lot. And they had a lot to say about it. Like my discussant. Like other women in the room and on Zoom.
Somewhere along the way the smoothness ended and the blurriness came back, culminating in what my supervisor later called an ‘out-of-body-experience’, in my case being asked a question and taking a few seconds to start answering, all the while feeling all the gazes on me. This is not a rehearsal, Tatiana, this is not a dream. This is it, this is the half-time/midterm, this is her asking you a question. This is the moment you need to straighten the folds of the crumpled white wedding-dress silk under the table and speak.
What to me was a blurry rambling nightmare was later described by others as a coherent conversation. Sitting there in my torn and cut skirt, staring at the Zoom screen and frantically taking notes (I ran out of ink and refilled the pen mid-sentence), I saw a glimpse of something I never thought possible. As I was talking about utopias, I was having one – if you can ‘have’ a utopia like you have a dream. I imagined that in a hundred years from now, I could enter a studio, where I could be doing the art of research. Entirely on my own. With dozens of people offering caring, intelligent and well-meaning critique and recommendations outside the walls. But there, in that studio, in my ‘utopia’, I was alone. It was the way she spoke to me about power that gave me a vague suggestion that one day out of torn, crumpled pieces of fabric I might create something of my own. That there are studio doors through which I can go in and out, like through a breathing membrane, and it will only let me in – no-one else. She gave me that gift.
Or perhaps she didn’t. Perhaps I dreamt it. Perhaps I had wanted it so badly without knowing it, that I kind of… invented it.
When I came back to my room, I pinned the pieces of fabric to my ‘trophy’ wall, next to dozens of other scraps and pieces I found and stole (including a casino chip with a diamond shape on it, a candy wrapper, an oak leaf, a colleague’s scribblings on my paper draft…). I sent the picture to my mother with a voice message explaining it. She said, ok, I get it about the skirt. How did the seminar go? Did the professor encourage you to go on? Were her questions good? I sent her a screenshot of my Zoom meeting which a colleague kindly/caringly took. I said, it went well, Mum.
She was happy for me.
Good luck to everyone going through various rites of passage: seminars, interviews, and dress rehearsals. Remember to report back!
Fathom 