TRANSCRIPT OF AUDIO FILE:

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT:

[beginning at 2:15]

CLIENT: Hi. How was your Thanksgiving?

THERAPIST: Oh good, thank you. Thank you.

CLIENT: Do you have family in the area?

THERAPIST: No, I-well, not in the immediate area.

CLIENT: Okay.

THERAPIST: In New York.

CLIENT: Okay.

THERAPIST: But I usually spend it here. Or were you thinking about asking me about my Thanksgiving?

CLIENT: Was I thinking about it?

THERAPIST: Yeah, yeah. Because you-well, thinking about only because it's something that you think about in terms of what you can and can't ask.

CLIENT: Yeah. That seems safe enough. [3:00]

THERAPIST: Yeah. It's seems [unclear].

CLIENT: Yeah, I think so.

THERAPIST: Mm hm.

CLIENT: Yeah, I think it's something like that. Well within the boundaries of normal conversation around this time of year.

THERAPIST: Mm hm. Yeah, as you've pointed out, this doesn't seem like normal conversation, so it can be kind of confusing.

CLIENT: [laughs] Yes.

THERAPIST: Mm hm.

CLIENT: Yes. [pause] So I'm very tired. I have not been sleeping very much as I try to finish my dissertation. So I might be a little slower today.

THERAPIST: Mm hm. [4:00]

CLIENT: But. [pause] And I'm not particularly sure what to talk about, which you suggested last week was indicative of-or could be indicative of my internal state. So there's that. [pause] So on the way over here I was trying to decide-so I was supposed to send my dissertation to my committee yesterday to defend it in a week from yesterday. So I didn't do that because it wasn't quite done. It's almost done. So on the way over here I was sort of trying to decide why it had been-why that was the case. And a lot of it is circumstantial I think. I think some of it is that I couldn't really convince myself that there was any reason to get it done yesterday, but today or tomorrow there's good reason to, because that's definitely like getting too close to-it's too far past the deadline or something. So why that should be important thing I'm not quite sure, but... [pause] [6:00]

It's been this way with every sort of major hurdle during my degree, that I've like finished it at or after the deadline. So that's been on my mind a little bit, just like, you know, three is a pattern, so why does it happen every time? I'm not sure that it's actually a pattern though.

THERAPIST: Oh, but it's especially interesting given that you're very sort of focused on goals. And so I guess in some sense it seems to go against that, if you think about it that way.

CLIENT: [pause] Yeah.

THERAPIST: Mm hm.

CLIENT: [pause] The first time around it happened essentially because I thought I was going to fail my preliminary examination because I didn't feel like I had enough done, and so I was continuing to try to do more things long past the point at which I should have stopped and just written up what I had done so that I could have that done by the deadline. And, you know, so the deadline sort of approached and passed, and Kevin was like, "It doesn't really matter anyways." Like a day matters in this context. [sarcastic] Sure, we had to send-for that one also you had to send a paper a week in advance of the actual event. A year later I had to write an original research proposal. That one was late because a month before it was due an actual grant proposal that I was writing was due, and so it took me right until the end of that deadline to finish that. But I got that done by the time. So I think maybe I don't take the rules very seriously.

THERAPIST: Right. [8:20]

CLIENT: At Ohio. Or comparatively very seriously. Sort of like... [pause] At this point whether I pass or fail is really not-does not depend on whether I sent them the dissertation yesterday or today or tomorrow, so it's a... It would be nice to send it to them on the day that it's expected, but of my four committee members my advisor is going to read it, and that's probably it. There might be one other that reads the entire thing, but there might not. So. Anyway, so I guess I flirted with the idea that this is like a response to there being a rule that doesn't matter. It's me just saying, fine, I will do something that's very close to following the rule, but... Like I'll finish the thing and turn it in, but I'm not going to do it on time. I'm not sure that's the correct description, but... [long pause, over one minute] [11:00]

One that seemed more interesting I think is that I feel some sort of need to make the tasks harder for myself in order for them to be worth doing, or something like that. [pause] So two weeks ago, or a week ago, when I should have been able I think to make a realistic assessment of where my dissertation was in terms of like being in its final completed form and say, "Ah, let's push it back a little bit. It'll be fine. And that will be better." But... [pause] But I really didn't want to reschedule. I mean, part of that was like literally I did not want to go through the process of scheduling a date again because it's hard to line up all of the schedules. And I think part of it was I really wanted it to be done. [pause] So I often will order things from least important to most important. And you may have seen me do that or not, I don't know. I don't know how often I list things. But this time I forgot what the third thing was, so there was some other important thing there.

THERAPIST: Mm hm. [13:15]

CLIENT: [long pause] Yeah, and the third one was something like it not being clear whether it could be done in the amount of time had its own appeal I think. I think that was it. [pause] It somehow wasn't enough just to finish the thing in a normal time period, you need to do it in a time period that made less sense and was harder.

THERAPIST: Why do you think?

CLIENT: [pause] I don't know that I have a good answer to that. I feel like there's this sense of-you know, we've talked a lot about me trying to figure out what is important. I don't have a very clear sense of that. But... [pause] Because I feel like it's some sort of response to that, like adding urgency makes it important somehow, or something like that. [long pause] Yeah. And I'm really tired right now, and sort of wish that I were not in this position. But I also have enjoyed long stretches of it, that intensity of working and things like that, instead of sort of... I feel a little bit like I created this situation for myself because I like the situation. Not all of it, and maybe not quite where I am today, but something like that.

THERAPIST: I was just thinking about this idea of hollow authority. [17:00]

CLIENT: Hm.

THERAPIST: [unclear]

CLIENT: Yeah. That's interesting. Because I actually feel that way about the dissertation process in general to some extent.

THERAPIST: How so?

CLIENT: Well, so the grad college has all of these rules, and the department has its own set of rules also, but their rules make more sense. Like just, you know, you have to write a dissertation because that's been what's been going on for the last several hundred years is people write dissertations when they graduate. The grad college has like, you have to do, you know, this thing by this date in order to graduate on this date. You can only graduate on three dates out of the year, even though that is not reflective of how the degree program works at all. It's sort of like... It's like they have acknowledged that the dates are arbitrary, in the sense that they could take any value, but then they have specified a very specific set of values for no reason at all. So. [pause] [18:30]

Once I finish this I'm going to send it to the committee, and then I'm going to give a talk about it. But then I'm going to take any comments that they give me and my advisor's next set of line edits and revise the whole thing. And so it's sort of like you have to have it done by this day, but it's not done. So. Yeah, so like I said, at the end of the day it will be consented by very few people. [pause] So I feel like it's a rich world that has-that doesn't serve the purpose that it used to, it's one that we're holding on for in a sense cultural reasons. And sort of we've in some sense taken away any significance that it has, because all of the work that matters will be published as papers separately, and that's what anyone is going to read who wants to read the information. I mean, the sort of ceremonial pieces are downplayed because we want to-I'm not sure why, be proper or something. That's essentially what this is, right, it's like this sort of ritual of closure or something like that.

THERAPIST: Mm hm.

CLIENT: So I feel like that got more scattered than I meant. [long pause]

THERAPIST: There's something, you know, like things that purport to have meaning but don't-but are actually meaningless. [21:00]

CLIENT: What did you mean by the first part of that? There's something in it?

THERAPIST: There's something about-so this thing that you're thinking about, like your mind is going to this place where your thoughts are organized around things that are supposed to have meaning but they're meaningless. There's sort of a phantom meaning. And you're very sensitive to that.

CLIENT: [laughs]

THERAPIST: You [overtalk] to phantom meanings don't [get too far?] with you.

CLIENT: They really don't, yeah. Yeah, that's a... Yeah, that's a quite generally true description of me. [long pause] And I guess in general I feel like that gives it two different directions. One is that things that have no meaning are claimed to have meaning. That's its own like disappointment and emptiness and... The other's like things that actually have meaning have their meaning misrepresented for no good reason, because if it has like real meaning then why misrepresent it as meaning something else? So I think they probably bother me for different reasons, but they do both converge on that one issue.

THERAPIST: Mm hm. [23:30]

CLIENT: [long pause, 11/2 minute] So through a sequence that maybe I'll reconstruct for you if I can remember it, I got to essentially the question, what if my life is meaningless? Which I followed up with, what does that mean? So some wordplay game there.

THERAPIST: I'm not surprised you came up with that question. I think is where you've struggled for a while. And I think at different periods in your life way back... a lot you believed in and what organized your existence just came crashing down.

CLIENT: Yeah. [long pause] [26:30]

THERAPIST: And I think you're quite unhappy about this. That you're having this question. [pause] But in other words that you're posing this question implies a level of unhappiness. [long pause] [27:40]

CLIENT: Yeah, I am very unhappy about it. I had a strong sense when I was younger that I was for something, that I had purpose. [pause] But that I didn't know what it was, that I would come to know what it was at some point. I still don't know what it is, and I haven't... [pause] I don't know that I have... I don't know that I've lost the sense of there being a purpose, but I sure can't find what it is. Yeah, that... That's hard.

THERAPIST: Mm hm. [29:00]

CLIENT: [long pause, two minutes] So do you have insights like that and then hold on to them for a time that you think it's right, or do you generate them on the fly? [31:15]

THERAPIST: [pause] I'm thinking maybe both are true, but then-my first thought is actually these are things I think I've talked about before. So I don't think it's something new, it might be sort of a slightly different way of saying it.

CLIENT: Yeah.

THERAPIST: But I would think it's both, although on the fly, I wouldn't quite put it on the fly, because sometimes in the moment something's just generated in me that seems sort of significant at the moment. And so that's sort of on the fly, but fly makes it sound a little too whimsical.

CLIENT: Yeah, yeah.

THERAPIST: So I guess sort of yes to both.

CLIENT: Okay.

THERAPIST: But I've certainly thought for you that this is like sort of a fundamental problem, and thought that way for quite some time.

CLIENT: Hm. [32:00]

THERAPIST: And sometimes it's more in the foreground or background. [pause] But sometimes we talk about it in this way, which is sort of [unclear 32:16] our in a sense I mean general way, for lack of a better term, and sometimes we talk about the specifics of your life which relate to it, but we talk about [all?] the particulars.

CLIENT: Right. Yeah, I felt like this time we sort of went more to the general more quickly than we have before and that was I think what prompted the question.

THERAPIST: Mm hm.

CLIENT: But I did.

THERAPIST: Mm hm. Well, it just seemed-had seemed pertinent at the moment too. I mean, it seemed like that's sort of what you're struggling with on a really deep level.

CLIENT: Yeah.

THERAPIST: It's interesting. I don't know if this is true for you in particular, because you sort of struggle about the meaning of your degree, but I do think that especially at the undergraduate degree, more so than a college degree, because graduate degrees are usually more deliberate than college degrees, where there's a little bit more of a de facto-a lot of people in college. But, you know, that it's more intentional, graduate school tends to be more intentional. That given all of the work and time that you've put into it, it's just what this all means. Like at the end you get a piece of paper. Of course it's much more than that, symbolically, practically, but it's also a piece of paper, what does this paper mean? And it means the extent to which you imbue it with meaning. Or it's a piece of paper. [33:40]

CLIENT: Yeah. Yeah. Of course it also has meaning to the extent that other people imbue it with meaning too.

THERAPIST: Mm hm.

CLIENT: Yeah.

THERAPIST: Which leads to that. And also the practical implications of job opportunities you would otherwise have and so forth. So it's not just-it's not that it only has personal meaning. But the personal meaning it does or doesn't have is significant. [pause] But for you it almost seems like it takes on a deeper level because of your history, that things may not only have meaning or not have meaning, but they could be a sham, which is even worse. Or at least [different? 34:41].

CLIENT: Yeah, absolutely. Things that I suspect are shams are what I really don't like.

THERAPIST: And maybe there's sort of a flavoring of that like with these arbitrary deadlines. [35:00]

CLIENT: Yeah, I think so. But... But I think I deal with those primarily by like telling people that I think they're a sham and then moving on, because... at the end of the day it has to get done at some point.

THERAPIST: Mm hm.

CLIENT: In the construct or any-if it has any meaning at all. And so which day gets picked is not that important.

THERAPIST: Mm hm. But even, you know, in terms of the three days a year that you can officially graduate, what those three days are are fairly artificial, but that there probably needs to be a few dates and not an ongoing thing probably helps-there's meaning-there's reasons to it, it's not completely arbitrary. It helps to organize the administration, it probably helps to provide a particular kind of chaos. So it's not completely useless.

CLIENT: Oh, yeah, I think it helps with the bureaucratic thing of one particular part of the organization. But it doesn't match the job market for the people who are graduating in almost any way. And so it's-

THERAPIST: And I'm not saying it's a good-it's a perfect solution, I'm saying there's reasons for it.

CLIENT: Yeah, and I think-

THERAPIST: It's not completely just whimsical.

CLIENT: I think what I'm trying to get here is that those reasons also have an injustice built into them. So like, yeah, there are reasons, but they privilege a certain set of people for not necessarily a good reason. But... [37:00]

THERAPIST: We could get into a very interesting line of discussion, but I don't think only [with these sort of?] interesting academic or different points of view, [but/or/where?] I do think have sort of important emotional implications for you, I don't know, for a lack of a better term.

CLIENT: Okay.

THERAPIST: And I don't exactly know-there's a particular purity that you seek-

CLIENT: [laughs]

THERAPIST: -that is idealistic, and in some ways actually would almost undermine what it is that you hope to achieve. I mean, even graduate school bureaucracies, which I am no best friend of, still are made with things to happen that might not otherwise happen. As inefficient as they are, all these other-I'm not defending the academic bureaucracy. But when they're executed in some optimal way it really enrages you.

CLIENT: [pause] Yes. And the degree to which it enrages me is vaguely correlated with the degree to which I think it is harming someone.

THERAPIST: Mm hm. [39:00]

CLIENT: [long pause] I'm not sure exactly where we are right now.

THERAPIST: Mm hm. And I was thinking about that statement.

CLIENT: Okay.

THERAPIST: How are they being harmed?

CLIENT: [pause] So in this specific context of like graduation dates, it's more that people are inconvenienced slightly, so I'm not particularly fussed about it. But we're talking about it because it was kind of the one that came up today. But on the bright-I sort of dismissed this as the like explanation for why I was not on time, because I don't actually think it's there. [long pause, one minute] Yeah. So I've somehow gotten stuck on this particular problem and can't quite get back to the larger ones, because the particular three degree graduate dates is not that important, and is inconvenient in the sense of like people graduate, they'll work somewhere for months, and then come back and actually graduate in any sort of official capacity. Or their parents come to see them graduate and have to be there at the same time that all of the undergraduates are graduating, and so it's much more expensive for everyone involved.

But these are like-just are. And not that the visit's that big a deal. I see it as like costs that are incurred for no benefit, or very little benefit. Because that-[I always think of it as? 42:31] the secretaries in our department very well, because they're very nice and they help out with a lot of the things that we do. So they're separate from the graduate college. And their year goes in a very particular cycle, and some pieces are very hard. And so I'm pretty sure that the people who live in the graduate college have a cycle that is constructed around these dates that is probably very stressful for them as you approach those dates. But there's no reason for it to be-like that work could be averaged across the year. So I don't... I'm not sure that this is getting to the general issues in the right way.

THERAPIST: Mm hm.

CLIENT: I feel like you said there was an interesting conversation to have here and I'm not sure if I've participated in it. [43:30]

THERAPIST: I think it was along the lines of one just sort of thinking about your feeling about the arbitrariness of it, and your thinking that there's some reasoning. It actually reminded me of sort of where we left off last week in terms of feeling like not having to think that someone actually can figure something out, that you might not be able, and that there actually might be some important reasons that make a lot of sense by some rules, or a place or policies around place, that just it wouldn't be a reasoning that you'd have access to. And then you're having a lot of skepticism about it, and not trusting that there actually might be things that are not only beneficial to other people, potentially beneficial to the graduate students. Like maybe they had eight dates and it caused a lot of confusion and made graduate students' lives worse. I mean, I don't know, I'm making this up as I-

CLIENT: No, no, no, it's-that's a very reasonable hypothetical. I can totally see how that would happen.

THERAPIST: Mm hm. So I guess in that sense it sort of boils down to an issue of trust, confidence. [pause] [45:00]

CLIENT: Yeah, and I think in my general experience there's not a lot of reason to have trust in organizations of almost any kind.

THERAPIST: Mm hm.

CLIENT: But there are often very good reasons to have a lot of trust in individual people.

THERAPIST: Mm hm. All right, we're going to need to stop for today.

CLIENT: Okay.

THERAPIST: I will see you next week?

CLIENT: I think no.

THERAPIST: Oh, so next week is the week you're not going to be here.

CLIENT: Yes.

THERAPIST: Right, because you're going to be confronting-

CLIENT: Yeah.

THERAPIST: Are you back the following week?

CLIENT: I should be, yes.

THERAPIST: Okay. All right, good. Well, good luck, okay, good luck.

CLIENT: It'll be fine.

THERAPIST: I'm sure it will be.

CLIENT: Okay, bye bye.

THERAPIST: Bye bye.

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