Kimberly Hirsh, PhD

I mentioned in September that I was going through the Artist’s Way. I got about three weeks in when I realized I was only doing morning pages and reading, but not doing artist dates or any of the exercises. My motivational tendency is obliger, so I thought maybe if I were doing it in community, I’d do better.

But then I thought about organizing a whole community and I got weary immediately. I looked over Julia Cameron’s Guide for Starting Creative Clusters and registered a big old NOPE.

So I’m planning to do it MY way.

My life mantra is WHAT I CAN, WHEN I CAN.

I’m inviting you to participate. Here’s how it’s going to work.

1. I’m going to do morning pages as often as I can, but I’ll be keeping them to myself. I might occasionally blog about what I’m learning from doing them.
2. I’m going to do Artist Dates as often as I can. I’ll blog about them, with what I did, and my response to it.
3. I will end both morning pages and Artist Dates posts with a question about how they’re going for you, what you did, and what you’re getting out of them. You will be able to reply in one of a few ways:
   • through a Micro.blog reply
   • through an IndieWeb webmention
   • through Disqus comments
   • through Twitter replies
   • through Facebook replies (yes, I’m even going to try this on Facebook)
4. I’ll essentially do the same process for exercises, writing about my response to them and maybe even my answers, then asking if you did the exercise and how it worked out for you. You can reply in the same ways mentioned above.

I’m not in a place where I feel good about confining myself to a 12-week schedule, and I know if I try to turn it into 12 months or something I’ll lose steam around the 8 month mark, so instead, I’m just going to do it WHEN I CAN. Here’s what that will look like:

1. I will make a short post when I start a chapter/week.
2. I will make a short post when I finish a chapter/week.
3. And all the exercises and stuff above, I’ll make a note of what chapter/week it’s from.

Here are the rules to participate:

1. Do what you can, when you can.
2. Avoid trying to fix people’s problems or offer advice; “listen” to understand. I encourage you to respond, but try not to have it be advice-focused.

That’s it. I really hope you’ll join me.

I’ve been in the middle of a Star Trek: The Next Generation rewatch for months, maybe even more than a year. Maybe since before the pandemic started, I don’t remember. I often will fall asleep to a TNG episode. I do this with the same episode over and over until I actually watch it all the way through while I’m awake.

Back in May, just over a month out from my dissertation defense and with no plan for the future, the episode I slept through over and over again was “Peak Performance.” It’s one of my favorite episodes, for many reasons, and one reason is a B story focusing on Data. (Surprise!)

The A story is that a strategist named Kolrami has come aboard the Enterprise to evaluate the crew’s performance in a combat exercise. Kolrami is a jerk and has real problems with Commander Riker, suggesting that Riker’s jovial attitude is not compatible with strong leadership.

Kolrami is also super arrogant. He comes from a species called the Zakdorn, well known for producing the galaxy’s best strategists. He prides himself on his strategy and uses it for games as well as combat exercises; he is a grandmaster of a game called Stratagema. Riker challenges Kolrami to a game of Stratagema and loses after only a few moves. Thinking that with his fancy positronic brain Data might actually be able to beat Kolrami, Dr. Pulaski eggs Data on to play and eventually misleads Kolrami into believing Data has challenged him. Data agrees to the challenge, in spite of not initiating it.

Kolrami and Data play Stratagema and it lasts longer than the game with Riker did, but Data still loses. Then this exchange happens:

Pulaski: How can you lose? You’re supposed to be infallible.

Data: Obviously, I am not.

It seems like a simple and innocuous response, but Data goes on to remove himself from bridge duty, believing that his loss at stratagema indicates a defect in himself:

I have proven to be vulnerable. At the present time, my deduction should be treated with skepticism.

I am concerned about giving the captain unsound advice.

This has indicated that I am damaged in some fashion. I must find the malfunction.

I heard the exchange above and these lines from Data and felt a deep resonance in my heart. Isn’t this how so many people feel, all the time? Isn’t this especially how scholars feel? Especially if you are an overachiever, you may make it all the way to a PhD program and only know what it is to excel in everything, and then meet a challenge that you can’t surmount.

You might be pursuing a tenure-track job, have done all the things you’re supposed to do, and still not get hired. Maybe you have tons of publications, brilliant teaching evaluations, a robust record of service, and did important dissertation research. And it doesn’t matter.

Data explains to Picard why he has removed himself from the bridge and what prompted him to do so. Picard replies:

…it is possible to commit no mistakes and still lose. That is not a weakness. That is life.

Um, excuse me Captain, just a moment, I got something in each eye and it has caused them to water profusely and also has made sobs wrack my body, hold on…

In the end, Data challenges Kolrami to a rematch. We see them play, Kolrami moving more quickly and becoming more agitated by the moment, as Data plays slowly and maintains a calm expression. Kolrami suspends the game, yells “This is not a rematch. You have made a mockery of me!” and storms out of the room.

As Data’s colleagues come to congratulate Data on his victory, he points out that he didn’t win, though no game of Strategema has ever gone to as high a score as this one has. Data explains that Kolrami was playing for a win and assumed that was Data’s goal as well, but Data had in fact chosen his own goal: a draw. He let many opportunities that would have supported a win pass him by in order to maintain a balance that would let him challenge Kolrami indefinitely.

Is this a perspective that can be useful for anyone dealing with impostor syndrome, and especially PhDs moving away from the tenure track? I think so. The “victory condition” for a PhD is assumed to be a tenure track job, but I went in with the intention of learning about qualitative methods. Now, I write about qualitative research and am pursuing other writing and consulting opportunities. It’s not success by the usual metric, but it’s a path with which I am happy. And it’s a path where no one tells me to wait for tenure before I have a kid (whoops did it during the PhD!), do public scholarship, or have opinions. And thank goodness, because that’s a long wait for a train don’t come.