A few days ago, I opened a box and one of my past lives fell out. Specifically, I found the papers related to my comprehensive exams, way back in the second year of my Ph.D. Without question, the seven months I spent studying for the comps was the most stressful period of my life. And long after it was over, some of those papers held an eerie, residual power over me. They were like voodoo dolls of a former self.
Weird, super-nerdy voodoo dolls, I freely admit. In the year 2000, if my apartment had suddenly gone up in flames, THIS is what I would have risked everything to save. Check it out:
Handwritten notes on every poem/novel/essay on my reading list…
And more…
(These go on for hundreds of pages. I’ll spare you the rest.)
I even saved basic administrative memos as though they were essential legal documents.
And in a sense, they were. For seven precarious months at the start of my academic career, they represented everything that was official and certain. Certainties are a rare luxury in the humanities and I felt deeply superstitious about throwing these out.
As for the comps, I’ve never worked so hard or so long at something for which there was no feedback, no further steps, no discussion. After I got my exam results, that was… it. End of story. Yet the trauma around the comps haunted me for years. I even blogged about it a few years ago, and the horror was fresh and vivid at the time.
When the comps jack-in-the-boxed out at me this week, however, I felt… mildly amused.
I sifted the papers. I flicked through my painstaking notes. (I disagreed with my assessments, at some points. At others, I found my past self quite insightful.) And here’s the best part: I recycled all the administrative stuff, the stern injunctions to self (Check dates v. v. carefully! ESP. CENTURY!), the practice exams, the elaborate table I made that cross-referenced critical themes in canonical works. All that stuff? Gone.
For some reason, the comps wound has finally healed. I’m keeping my handwritten notes because they tickle me, and because I feel a distinct nostalgia for the hundreds of hours of work they represent. But they’re no longer a sinister talisman to ward off failure and ignominy and an uncertain future. And maybe that’s the point.
Fifteen years on, I’m an entirely different person. I’m happily, confidently working outside academia. I know who I am, and I like who I am.
That other, anxious, frantic Ying? I’ll keep her notes because I like her company. But I don’t need her baggage.
Cat London says
Previous Ying, and presumably current Ying, has lovely handwriting, though.
Jennifer Marotta says
Loved this post. It is amazing how crucial those hurdles felt in the moment. The other day I was asked for the title of my Ph.D. thesis– and much to my embarrassment, I actually had to look it up!
Shelley King says
Comps trauma seems to be a rite of graduate passage. I can remember the friends who went before me aging 5 years in a summer, only to magically rejuvenate when the comps beast was slain. I can remember the sigh of relief I heaved when I was so senior in the program that I no longer knew personally anyone going through them. This generation tells me they can’t afford to spend seven month studying–there’s paying work and desultory reading in the summer and then settling into 2.5 months of intensive study while frantically TAing. I remain conflicted about them–I’m grateful to my own for making me read things I never would have made it to of my own volition that have been important to my subsequent career, but nothing is worth the trauma suffered by the good and conscientious who in the end fare about the same as the slack and cynical on the exam itself.
And as you can tell, comps wounds never fully heal–they just scab over.
Ying says
Small consolations, Cat! 😉
Jennifer, that is brilliant achievement! I hope you tell everybody who’s ever been to grad school!
And Shelley, aieeeeee!. It must be so much harder to heal when you relive it vicariously every year. I agree with you: I’m a better-read person because of the comps (though I still haven’t read MOBY DICK or THE GREAT GATSBY…) but it’s awfully difficult to justify the cost.
Tanya Butler says
I still have my cards. And sometimes I think, “I should reread Rasselas.” But mostly, when I think of it, I feel grateful for my study group.
Ying says
I really should have mentioned that, Tanya! Comps Team 2000 was the best and most enduring thing to grow from my PhD process. Don’t you wish we could all go out for dinner regularly, the way we used to? (Also, Rasselas: nope. Still the nopiest nope ever.)
GEW says
My PhD thesis notebooks look like that right now (well, without the tidy handwriting), and my stress level will soon skyrocket, I’m sure. My UK program doesn’t include comps, but I kind of wish it had. I find myself in the thesis/dissertation writing stage with great holes in my knowledge–holes I’m trying to fill as I go along. I had general comps for my MA program, but I’m a total impostor when it comes to my specialization!
Ying says
Oh God, IMPOSTOR SYNDROME. You’re not. You’re not. YOU’RE NOT AN IMPOSTOR. And while comps is certainly a very effective way of enforcing wide reading, it’s genuinely traumatic for nearly everybody. Shelley (third comment, above) is a gifted and passionate teacher AND one of the most generous academic mentors alive, and as you can tell from her comment, she’s still haunted by her comps process a few decades ago. I wish there were a way to inspire PhD students to read widely without doing us harm.