“Pardon me, GPS: Directions please!”

Ever get the feeling you are driving around in circles? I have that feeling at the moment as I continue to work through this mountain of research materials on my Journey to Dissertation. I am stuck. Overwhelmed. Stressed. Ticked off that I have lost my way. 

Since I began blogging on this experience last summer, I have been enlightened, empowered, and humbled by the revelations I have had as well as the fascinating comments from readers who have shared their thoughts on various components of my research. 

There is a transformation taking place in modern society, in the way that human beings express, experience, and share their grief. So my bright idea of sharing this research experience -- my oh-so-long walk on this social-scientific path -- has led me to put words to the journey here, because it is indeed that -- a journey. And as I said when I launched this blog, no one walks alone in this life, so this walk is a shared experience. I’d like to offer this correlation: my struggle is not unlike your struggles to get through whatever challenges are pushing you around these days.

I have continued to wade through a pile of interesting information for months, finding idea after idea to be worthy of exploration. But as a PhD candidate, this can be deadly. I am largely left to my own devices, in spite of having a committee of three experienced, highly intelligent professors to bounce ideas off of. They will review my ideas, but they will not go much deeper than that. It’s my deal, so it’s up to me to navigate through the weeds to isolate the key information and bring it forth. 

So, the dissertation GPS is regularly chirping at me: “Recalculating.” 

I am working my way back to True North, perhaps, but we all know how annoying that “Recalculating” message can be. I want to go right when the signal is telling me, “Sharp left.”

I have to be honest, I have thought, many times recently, that I might abandon my “grief research” altogether and opt for something more “objective” for me, or at least, something that I would be able to think about regularly without being dredged through the personal back stories that are the demons forcing me to examine such a heavy but important topic in the first place. 

Truth be told, I am a little sick of all the grief talk. You probably are too. Some of you may recall that, in my introductory blog, I explained that this topic evolved as a “meant to be” sort of thing. Personal loss and tragedy are the backdrop, but I am not interested in being an expert on this, at the moment.

Trouble is, I am in too deep. The only way out is through and up. So I am a little lost, perhaps, but rest assured, this is temporary. If I can offer any positive spin on all this churning, it is this: whatever struggle you are going through, it is just a bump in the long road. Keep going. That is what I intend to do.


Copyright 2011 by Marianne V. Heffernan