Any Better Designations?

Wikipedia (in its infinite wisdom) tells us that

[t]he term all but dissertation (ABD) is an unofficial term identifying a stage in the process of obtaining a Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.) degree or equivalent research doctorate (Ed.D., EngD, D.Sc., etc) in the United States and in Canada. At this stage the student has not earned the Ph.D., but has completed the preparatory coursework, qualifying examinations, comprehensive examinations, and defended his or her dissertation proposal.  

 Roy Jacobs says that

[t]his little phase ... will cause countless moments of anxiety and is the academic equivalent to purgatory. ...You are that close to a significant milestone in your life, and also almost as far. ... [Y]our life must seem like it is on hold.

The internet is teeming with solutions to the dilemma of existing in this state.  Forums, consultants, blogs, checklists and therapies abound, all aimed at completion of the dissertation, and ultimately earning a Ph.D.  My fairly extensive search has not turned up any strategies for living with the ABD as a terminal condition. 

I have been A.B.D. since 1986. Yike! I just did the numbers, and confronted the fact that 1986 was 24 years ago! Almost a quarter of a century! Of course, the nail in the coffin of my academic dreams was hammered in a mere decade ago, so my life has not been “on hold” for all that time. I have accepted that this is one ship that has definitely left the harbor, and one that I don’t plan on ever swimming after. But what I haven’t completely dealt with is the taint of failure that trails those three little letters. It's a bit too much like having an official "incomplete" on the transcript of your life.

For a while now, when some social or professional occasion requires revelation of this “status,” I have jokingly explained to the uninitiated that ABD stands for “all but dead.” However, I have come to believe that the words we use contribute to shaping our reality. Since I don’t want to think of myself as “all but dead,” I have been trying to recast the meaning of this label.

Here is my brainstormed list of possible recodes for this dreaded acronym. If this were a Rorschach test, my analyst would note the predominance of negative words and combinations.

1. Arguably Badly Defeated
2. Anything Beats Depression
3. Acceptably Busy and Determined
4. Antidote Backordered & Delayed
5. Archaic Beast Discarded
6. Already Beyond Dissertation
7. Awfully Bogus Disaster
8. Ain’t Buyin’ Defeat
9. Artistic, Beautiful & Desirable (currently my husband's favorite on the list, but he's prejudiced)
10. Anything But Derailed
11. Agitated, Blue & Defenseless
12. Actively Barmy Ditz
13. Antiquated Barrels of Detritus
14. Association of Backward Dissidents

Clearly, we don't yet have a winner here.  I welcome suggestions.  In the meantime, I’ll try to avoid the subject.

Dealing with the Undead

According to Wikipedia, "[u]ndead is a collective name for fictional, mythological, or legendary beings that are deceased yet behave as if alive." Sounds like my dissertation to me. And probably some of the other unfinished business clogging my thought processes, blocking my chi, and taking up storage space in my dwelling.   

The Wikipedia entry goes on to tell us that "[i]n some cases, the undead, especially skeletons and zombies, are under the control of a necromancer. In other cases, such as zombies as depicted in film, the undead existence is passed on like a curse or disease. . . .Ghosts are said to be kept in their undead state by willpower, either from a keen desire to remain with the living or from a wish to see something completed that they could not do during their lifetime. Revenants are a corporeal analog for ghosts in this manner, their independence setting them apart from the typically mindless skeleton or zombie. However note that, while ghosts are sometimes portrayed as benevolent or at least innocuous, the appearance of a revenant in folklore or fiction is almost universally horrific..." 

So now we are in the realm of necromancy.  Who knew?

More seriously, and more frightening, I find much of relevance in the above passage.  For example, "the undead existence is passed on like a curse or disease."  I have felt that my uncompleted dissertation has infected other projects, and even my whole work process.  And "[g]hosts [unfinished dissertations, etc.] are said to be kept in their undead state by willpower, either from a keen desire to remain with the living or from a wish to see something completed that they could not do during their lifetime."  And then there is the clearly pertinent verdict that such things are "almost universally horrific."

Okay.  So it's a bad thing that I continue to be haunted by this costly "failure to launch."  And to give space in my head, my study, my attic, several generations of hard drives, and my gut to what amounts to a stillbirth.

But what do I do about it?  How do we deal with such bothersome creatures?  Again, Wikipedia tells us of "[r]ituals propitiating the uneasy spirits of the dead [that] were a feature of ancient Greek religion (keres), ancient Roman religion (lemures), and Hinduism."  So a ritual, then.  And because I'm really more of a do-it-yourselfer when it comes to ritual, and because I don't have the kind of time required to mount an exhaustive search for an appropriate template through the annals of time, it would seem that it's on me to figure out how I might lay my  academic ghosts to rest.

A man I met long ago in poet circles shared his dissertation-zombie story with me.  After trying unsuccessfully to gift his mountains of data, notes and text to the state historical society--they wanted him to digitize his largesse before they would accept it!--he decided to build a bonfire and throw into it every scrap, every flake, every dissertational wisp, and to watch it burn.  His dreams and efforts literally going up in smoke.

I have kept this image all these years, for a reason perhaps.  But I am not ready.  The research I conducted, the stories I collected, and the impact they had on my life have their roots deeply planted in me.  I fear their removal, kind of like the surgical excision of a conjoined twin.  There is something of sacrilege about the idea of consigning this spector to the flames.

This may be the hardest thing for me to "put to bed" ultimately, harder even than totally obsessed mothering, which is another force to be reckoned with.  For today, I will try to keep moving and working, and accepting that I am not there yet.  A picture of Professor Quirrell in the first Harry Potter book, a purple garlic-scented turban covering his head, onto which the not-yet-completely-dead Voldemort had grafted his being, flashes before me--my dissertation as "[s]he who shall not be named."