Dragged Toward the Light: An Unexpected PhD in Becoming

Suzanne Connell, PhD Candidate Faculty of Education, Lakehead University Researcher, Writer, & Educator

Seeds by Suzanne Connell

My supervisor never warned me, I never read it in the literature, but the rigorous pursuit of knowledge demands the rigorous pursuit of the self.

I’m in a battle, one of the most brutal of my almost 60 years on this planet. I can’t escape it. It sticks to me like a metaphysical sweat that no shower will ever cleanse. My traitorous mind is filled with a hatred that is seared right into the most primitive parts of my brain stem, infecting everything that emerges. Especially when I think about my efforts to earn my PhD.

You’re wasting your time. You’re damaging your children. You’re exhausting your spouse. You don’t deserve it.

Writing and researching are my drugs. I’m not special or gifted, I just love learning. It’s a dopamine hit that makes my body sing. Writing that unique turn of phrase that sculpts an exquisite image for my reader is like nothing else in this world.

And yet, my brain keeps burping out malignant taunts. Every time something happens at home, or my family tells me how stressed they are, I feel a spasm of guilt that sometimes makes me run for the bathroom. I can’t tell them this because we’ve mowed the grass right off that part of the lawn where I argue to quit, and yet they all proclaim their support. My brain tells me they secretly resent me.

On the first day of my PhD classes, I was stunned that I was asked to share the roots of my scholarly identity. Weren’t the esteemed published authors more important?

I saw the thin ice, yet I continued to walk, fool that I am.

I typed out: I’m the mom, the wife, the fixer, the nurturer.

I stared at my computer screen and saw the red flags. I took another step forward, the ice cracking under me.

I am the youngest child of a family of alcoholics.

From my earliest childhood memories, I was the adult. I told myself I was fine, even though my mother was passed out in the guest bathroom when I was eleven and I made excuses to a houseful of her party guests. Or a year later, when she was sprawled at the bottom of the stairs an hour into a family reunion, too drunk to crawl to her room, all the while my brother lived in the dark like a troll in our basement, drunk and abusive in ways I don’t talk about.

“Don’t worry, my mom’s just tired.” “She’s had the flu.”

I stayed because she needed me. I couldn’t afford to go to post-secondary school with my friends. I had to work. I had to hold my mother together, support her artifice of haughty sophistication, dutifully scraping away the corrosion of her addiction from our home. I was responsible for the shopping, her cigarettes, ensuring her bills were paid, and protecting the family secrets.

Now I push my children away.

I avoid all intoxicants, my only vice being coffee and my attachment to my baggage. I’m broken. I don’t want my children enabling my dysfunction, making excuses when I embarrass them. I shut down so they don’t feel the burden of my life. I want them to feel supported but unfettered.

I know I’m fucking them up. I know I’m driving a wedge between us, but I can’t show them what’s in my head without sounding like a lunatic. I can’t explain to them that I perceive these choices as my heroic act of love for them, my way of protecting them from the childhood pain I still carry today.

So, I turn away.

For decades before coming to formal education, my pursuit of knowledge was an effort to shelter me from experiences I didn’t understand or have the capacity to manage.

I used it as a tool of control in an increasingly disturbing world. I thought I could ‘think’ my way through my trauma, applying theories to silence the fury. I perceived it as justification for my right to personhood, making me valid.

The path to my PhD had trapdoors.

I tried to escape by entering university, plunging into my role as an ethical researcher. I didn’t see the trap: as an ethical scholar, I was required to investigate my positionality, to know myself, my biases and perspectives to understand my choices and interpretations of data.

I’ve discovered that life is messy and painful, that education is not a shield but a vivid

spotlight that shines on everything with raw brilliance, illuminating the traumas that one hopes would stay buried and silent. This relentless progression has become a material weight against my claims of equanimity, squeezing all my messy baggage out into my writing and life.

The only thing I can say with absolute confidence is that I know less today than I knew when I started this journey.

Although it has never been said, I think there are others in this space who understand the psychological upheaval scholars experience in this journey. It’s like a secret club. Nobody talks about it, but I see it in the smiles and hear it in the questions about my well-being. It’s subtle yet distinct.

To all my PhD siblings: I see you, and you are doing good work.

Most of all, you are worthy.

Suzanne Connell is a PhD Candidate at Lakehead University in the Faculty of Education. She came to formal academia as a mature student with diverse experiences accumulated through roles in film production, healthcare, business, and entrepreneurial ventures. Her HBA in Psychology supports her research in how students attribute meaning and value to academic integrity within digital contexts. This work explores the landscape of academic moral foundations within a rapidly changing technological environment. The achievements within higher education represent a fulfillment of a lifelong aspiration that weaves together her love of writing and research.

Edited by the JCACS Musings Editorial Team: Nicholas Rickards, Alexandra Olsvik, Colin Kutchyera, Sarah Green, & Chantelle Caissie for the special issue, “The ‘P’ is for ‘Philosophy,’ not for ‘Professor’?”