Reclaiming Lives


And now, sitting on the toilet in contemplation of the seventeen years of struggle I'd had to get to complete my doctoral thesis, I am in despair. Should my tired defense of a highly original thesis result in its not being accepted, I think I can come to terms with the committee's decision. I am not so sure how I will handle the anger I shall indubitably feel towards my daughter. I consider flight. But I have left both my briefcase and my copy of the thesis in the examining room. I can hardly ask the secretary to fetch them for me. I must learn to face my failure and then I must learn to forgive my daughter.

As I exit from the women's room, the door to the examination room opens. The chairman comes out. Despair transmutes to hope. There is protocol determining who of the examining committee informs the candidate of the committee's decision. If the thesis is accepted with no more than one abstention or negative vote, the chairman does the honours. If the examination is adjourned, then both the chairman and the thesis supervisor inform the candidate. I look beside and behind the chairman for my supervisor. She is not there. "Congratulations, Doctor Monteath," says the chairman.

And now hope transmutes into disbelieving joy. As I enter the room, the committee stands and applauds. I have dreamed of this moment for years and years. One by one, my committee members and the other examiners, with the exception of the chairman, come to hug me. "It was unanimous," whispers my thesis supervisor. "It was hell," I think to my- self.

Woman's Song

I want to go for broke.
I want to risk it all,
feel the day I'm in,
hear tomorrow call.

The kernel in the straw
is what I'm after,
I want to peel the orange
and crack the nut of laughter

I want the love in loving,
I want the salt in tears,
I want the sweat in striving,
I want no wasted years

I want to walk beside you,
matching you, stride for stride.
I want to be separate, together,
not half of a dream that died.

Gert Beadle

Reprinted from WEdf, Fall 1990, Volume 8, Number 2.

It took me all the rest of that day and evening to realize that at last my dream of a Ph.D. had really, really, come true. When I did, I said to myself "Yes! Yes! Yes!" And I am still saying it.

We like to think that the life of thought can and should be a thing apart from our everyday experiences. It's not always possible.

Unless we conduct our studies with determined detachment, isolating and insulating ourselves from everydayness, life will interfere, even in the third-floor examining room in the School of Graduate Studies. That's what I found, anyway.

Reprinted from WEdf Spring 1994, Volume 11, Number 1.

Upon earning her Ph.D., Sandra Monteath discovered that there was no place in the academy for a middle-aged woman who had taken 18 years to get her degree. She subsequently did a TESLA certificate, and currently teaches ESL in Toronto on a catch-as-catch-can basis.

The book I wrote is called Marriage and Metamorphosis: Telling Tales of a Woman's Life. A feminist press is currently considering the manuscript for publication.



Back Contents Next