As I write this today, I note that it has been two days since I have officially graduated [once again] from school. The experience was anything but satisfactory, and I think that now that things are effectively over, it is time to be a little more reflective of what had happened throughout the time that I had spent out here in UIUC.
I started the journey with a steely resolve to work hard, and to achieve what I sought to do. However, things started going downhill as time went on, and I could only attribute this to an impedence mismatch between idealism and reality. I could have pushed on through as hard as I could and be completely and absolutely defeated before pulling out, but I chose to bail early. I had done some soul searching and realised that the price to pay for that stubbornness of completing what I started was something that I was unwilling to pay.
For you see, during the time period that I was here, I had effectively lost a lot of whatever humanity I managed to cobble together during my years back at CMU and then I2R. I decided that losing all of my humanity was really too high a price for a dream of obtaining a PhD, which, as I keep on thinking now, is a mismatch with what is essentially me.
I am a generalist. This has been established since forever ago---I was never particularly good in one thing, but am competent in multiple sometimes unrelated domains. My strength lies in the ability to grasp things from multiple different perspectives, and not to be a highly narrow focus the way a PhD programme is supposed to train you to become. In spite of all the idealism of how insights and inspirations are cross-disciplinary, my little foray into the world of the PhD has shown me that any form of cross-disciplinary notion is at best a superficial acceptance of the inter-dimensional linkages of the various fields of science---the truth is that each field has its own dogma that needs to be implicitly satisfied before anything can even be considered legitimate. This is the limitation that comes from the peer-review process that scientific research is based on. A ground-breaking idea or anything that challenges widely accepted beliefs is less readily accepted than one that is an incremental build-up, yet for a PhD thesis the incremental build-up has to be sufficiently large that it can be ``considered'' to be a new piece of knowledge. The problem then is the subjectivity of what it means to be of a sufficiently large delta, and this problem is akin to that of defining pornography---no one can give a precise definition, and yet, when given an instance of something that satisfies the requirements (of either pornography or a large enough delta of work), a majority can declare the correct classification.
Heh. That last paragraph feels almost as though I were resentful of my experience. In many ways, I am. I resented the daily deconstruction of my psyche, I resented the lack of progress of my research. I resented trying to go against nature, an ongoing war that I thought I could win given my previous successes at the other skirmishes.
But the humanity, or rather, the loss of my humanity. As the days went on, I grew increasingly withdrawn from interacting with people. I only interacted with people superficially, only wanting to know them from the activities that I partook with them, and not wanting to develop anything more than being an acquaintance. I didn't have the time to do music, couldn't join a band because all the bands here were actually ``serious'' and not like the Kiltie Band whose purpose was to allow amateurs to play and enjoy music. Jujitsu helped in letting me forget about the loss of humanity as I channelled my angst towards physical exertion, but redirection was merely a temporary diversion and not a solution.
So I came here with dreams and resolve, and leave with a general disdain for my own field, and an increasingly low impression on people. It is with that sort of emotion that I have graduated with. The last semester was slightly better, I met with a few people who I can call friends, and have part of my humanity slightly restored. But the damage to my psyche during this period of life is more or less permanent, just like all the little bruises and cracks that I had sustained over the years.
Who knows what the working world will bring.
