My PhD Life, and Connecting the Dots Between Here and There…
摘要
In this piece I sift through my PhD dissertation, written a few years ago, and I read again some of the autoethnographic vignettes that I had interwoven with the theory, the methods, and my research findings. My reflections take me back to a time of sitting in coffee shops, alone but never lonely, deep in reflections, enjoying the experience of writing ‘differently.’ I remember even now that those were rare and special moments, when I gave myself permission to go down mysterious rabbit holes and describe what I saw, using creative writing modes. My reflections take me back further too, to my life back in India, pre-migration to Canada; and in this personal essay, I tease out the connections between who I was back then and how those experiences have formed me into the individual I am today. This personal essay is also an autoethnography about my PhD journey, and how the creative writing I could do as part of it helped nurture my spirit in difficult times, showing me the way forward through finding strength, voice and resilience. It is also about John Paul Lederach who taught me to ask the big picture question: why do I do what I do?