degrees within these walls

On Tuesday at just before one in the afternoon, I sit at my desk, put my headphones on, turn on my twenty dollar plug-in camera that I have unceremoniously taped to the top of my monitor, and wait for my supervisor to let me into his office – a link to a recurring Zoom meeting that he first sent me at the end of last summer and that we have been using to meet biweekly for the past nine months or so. Sometimes, our meetings are nothing more than a momentary update of what I am doing. Other times, our meetings stretch deep into the afternoon as we meticulously go over the finer points of the comments that he made on draft after draft of my dissertation – the both of us looking at the document on our screen, minimizing our views of each other. At the end of each meeting, sunlight pouring in from the window perpendicular to his computer desk, he waves goodbye to me and I wave goodbye to him. My smile stretches out, thinning slightly, as I maneuver one hand toward the bright red “end” button at the bottom left hand corner of the screen. The window disappears. My smile melts away. Another momentary click.

This is largely what my experiences in graduate school have been until now. Zoomversity, I have nicknamed it half-affectionately, has been nothing more than a mosaic of pixelated faces, cameras tilted at unflattering angles, the glare of light coming from somewhere unseen and painting orbs of white across foreheads and bald heads, audio lag causing unintended interruptions, and conversations that from another area of my house sound nothing more than my own musings. It has been lonely – lonelier than I thought.

I applied for graduate school in the fall of 2019. I had been living in Seoul at the time in a dilapidated apartment with no bathroom sink and paper-thin walls in one of the most expensive areas in the country. I spent my evenings teaching English to wealthy children and my nights walking along the Han River, eating and drinking with friends at restaurants far from tourists’ reaches, or burying my head between the hinges of my laptop as I sipped on a single iced Americano that would buy my café seat for several hours. Leaving that life which I had loved so much for graduate school seemed like a worthy exchange. I was excited to take my place in libraries and grad student lounges, to go for coffee with peers, and more.

Like the rest of the world, I hadn’t planned on COVID-19 interrupting my plans and leaving me to complete the entirety of my degree within the four walls of my bedroom. I have completed eight classes within these walls, held dozens of meetings, written papers, and presented at conferences. Like everything else, these experiences have been quite isolating.

I don’t know how much different my experiences would be if I had gone to school a little earlier or maybe a little later. I suspect that I would have been able to build better relationships with both my professors and peers. But at the same time, if I had gone to school in a traditional manner, perhaps I would have spent more time commuting and less time filling my days in other ways. I don’t think that I want to spend much more time thinking about how my life would have been different if only such-and-such circumstance was different. Instead, I’ll do my thesis defense in this same space, apply to graduate, and maybe even graduate within these walls too. There are worse places to be.