Rejoice with me

The anniversary of my father’s death falls on 27 February. I don’t always remember the significance of this day when it comes around, but this year I did.

From time to time on Monday last I reflected on the fact that thirty years earlier when my first daughter was only ten days old my father died.

Strange then – uncanny even – that on 27 February this year, 2012, I had word in the form of an email, that I have passed my PhD.

Yes folks, rejoice with me. I am a happy soul, at least for the moment until the thrill wears off. After all, one of my motives in beginning this thesis, one of my less noble motives, as I have written elsewhere, was to prove myself to my father, who in my mind did not believe that girls could ever amount to much in the academic sphere.

Boys had the brains, or so my father believed. Girls were good for making babies, keeping house and I dare not spell out the rest. Misogynistic for sure.

But I shall not belabour the point here. In any case, this part of my journey is almost done, and once I wear the floppy hat at the designated ceremony, whenever that happens, I shall be able to use the honorific, too. What fun.

I have spent the best part of my life trying to get over the idea – deep-seated in my psyche – that I am an unintelligent, ignorant soul who cannot think. There are many reasons for this view as I now understand but the little girl in the picture below did not. I have exonerated her. She stands here on the left with two of her sisters, unaware of what the future holds.

Thank you, my fellow bloggers, for all your help. There is a section in my thesis dedicated to you all and to blogging as a form of expression that connects with what I have written about elsewhere and here earlier in this blog as a desire for revenge.

I trembled at my decision to include it. Blogging is not usually considered an academic pursuit, though theorising about it can be.

And so my blog life features in my thesis as do so many other aspects of the autobiographical impulse.

I now feel exonerated in my decisions to write as I have done, experimentally in many ways, at least in a thesis, but those three good people who examined my work were happy enough with the results to give me a pass, accompanied by some useful and positive comments, and some more critical as well. To top it off I don’t need to make any changes to the thesis as I submitted it for the purpose of getting my PhD, and this is such a bonus.

Now begins the difficult task of turning my thesis into a book that might be read by others outside of the academy.

The examiners’ comments make sense to me, and so I go off on my day with a load lifted from my shoulders. Rejoice for me.