I began my Ph.D. program a year ago with very clear insecurities: Would I fit in? Was this the right choice? Would I like doctoral-level work? What the hell was I doing?
And honestly, that first semester was all about figuring out whether I had made the right decision in starting a Ph.D. — in political science, especially.
The whole year was a journey I won’t soon forget; from latent and palpable insecurity, to great relief when my grades came back quite good, to excitement about becoming a TA, to a summer of exploring some research interests and working closely with my mentor-professor.
While I was out of the country on our honeymoon, said mentor-professor basically wrote the entire first draft of a paper we’ve been discussing and doing preliminary work on for months, and he’s now submitted the project to two political science conferences in the spring, in the hopes that we will be able to present our research at one or (ideally) both to get some feedback and get the paper ready for submission to journals.
Since I wasn’t here to help write it all up, I feel a bit left behind, but he’s nevertheless kept my name on the paper as second-author credit (YES!), and it’s all starting to feel so darn real to me as a result. In all likelihood, I’m going to be along for two conference presentations next spring, will probably get a publication out of this article within the next year or two, and now that I’m firmly esconced into editorial assistant work at a major professional journal housed at our university, well, I really FEEL all academic now.
With only a year’s worth of classes under my belt, I’m getting to the point where books on new syllabi are already in my collection, and names on articles have greater meaning because I’ve read that person’s work before.
I know this may not mean much to you, but to me, it’s seismic. I actually feel like I belong here, and it’s a wonderful, wonderful feeling.