Time, Torpedoes, and the Pursuit of a Thesis
When I began working at Ā鶹Ņ¹ŹŠ in 2020, I learned about the employee tuition exemptionāa beneļ¬t I didnāt yet realize would reshape my academic path. In 2022, after a twenty-ļ¬ve-year hiatus, I returned to college. At 50, I completed dual undergraduate degrees in English and History, along with a minor in American Sign Language/Deaf Culture.
Raising a daughter with profound medical complexities while working full-time and returning to college brought its own internal tension. Itās the familiar mom-guilt that surfaces when reclaiming a long-deferred dreamāsomething many working mothers and graduate student parents understand all too well.
Now, as a third-semester graduate student and MA candidate in History focusing on disability studies, I recognize that my path, once viewed as unconventional, was actually laying the groundwork for my current trajectory as a historian.
My thesis, "The Authority of Speech: The 1880 Milan Conference and the Construction of Normalcy in Deaf Education," explores how this conference transformed hearing-centered assumptions about speech into internationally accepted educational policy for Deaf children. By analyzing the relationship between language, power, and normalcy, the project contributes to disability studies by demonstrating how disability is shaped not only by physical or sensory differences, but also by social and institutional definitions of what is considered normal.
Graduate school, especially on the heels of undergraduate study, is a diļ¬erent species altogether. Thereās no clean comparisonāso this analogy is the best way I know how to explain it.
A few years ago, I picked up a copy of the book Escape from the Deep by Alex Kershaw, which recounts the fate of the USS Tang, a legendary World War II submarine sunk by its own malfunctioning torpedo. Most of the crew perished; nine survived. The descriptions of men trapped underwater stayed with me as a stark reminder that even the most disciplined systems can fail in unpredictable ways. Graduate school sometimes feels like that erratic torpedo.
You prepare meticulously. You believe you understand the trajectory. And thenā somewhere between archival research and historiography debatesāthe plan veers oļ¬ course. Not catastrophically. Just enough to remind you that control is an illusion.
There are not enough hours for all the reading, the writing, the revisions, the ājust one more source.ā My sleep schedule has become erraticāsometimes because of deadlines, sometimes because caregiving does not observe oļ¬ce hours. When you live in a house where medical equipment occasionally decides to audition for a horror ļ¬lm soundtrack at 2:00 a.m. with relentless beeping, uninterrupted sleep becomes theoretical.
There are a few other losses too. My ASL proļ¬ciencyāonce strongāhas drifted toward intermediate. Without consistent practice, ļ¬uency fades. The same is true of exercise, meal planning, and the illusion that I can sustain peak performance in every area simultaneously. It turns out ādoing it allā has a footnote: at a cost. As a historian of disability studies, I examine structures that constrain lives. As a graduate student, I confront my own limits daily. The irony is not lost on me.
Still, there are gains.
Graduate school has given me unexpected friendships. My fellow grad students are more than classmates sitting around a seminar table debating historiography. Theyāve become a built-in support system. They are the people who will dissect a primary source with me at 10:30 p.m. on GroupMe, send a meme that only someone knee-deep in Foucault would understand, and validate the very speciļ¬c panic that comes with multiple deadlines sneaking up on us.
Thereās something uniquely bonding about collectively questioning nineteenth-century political rhetoric while simultaneously questioning your own life choices. We celebrate conference acceptances, workshop thesis ideas, and occasionally spiral together about time management. Itās equal parts intellectual rigor and emotional triage.
The camaraderie isnāt performativeāitās sustaining. Itās knowing that someone else is also awake at midnight revising a paragraph for the ļ¬fth time. Itās laughing at jokes that would make absolutely no sense outside a history department. Itās being reminded, in the middle of tight timelines and stress levels hovering somewhere near āmultitasking on steroids,ā that you are not doing this alone.
And that is one of graduate schoolās quiet rewards. That support system makes the work possible. The encouragement of peers, along with my faithās steady guidance, helped me move forward with conļ¬dence. Even women I meetāoften over fortyāshare that my return to school has inspired them to reconsider their own postponed goals.
So perhaps the goal is not ļ¬awless time management or heroic multitasking. Perhaps it is learning to surface for air, recalibrate, and continue.
Graduate school is not a sinking submarine. It is demanding, humbling, and occasionally powered by caļ¬eine (ok, daily TBH). But unlike the USS Tangās torpedo, the course corrections are ours to make. And for now, I am still steeringāunderwater, yes, but operational.
Lexi with her sign at my Ā鶹Ņ¹ŹŠ graduation in 2025.
Interested in pursuing a master's degree in history? Learn more about the MA in History program at the Ā鶹Ņ¹ŹŠ.
