I know a few weeks ago I was glum and overwhelmed about well everything. This week, that is not that case. I have officially competed all of my reading. YAY me *throws confetti*. It was a massive undertaking, but I did it. I am really glad that I signed up for the literature review course because it is really helping me focus. I have written my introduction and sorted out the sections I would like to include and am feeling a lot more secure about the direction I have taken things. That’s the main gift of the course: a restoration of my confidence. When I was doing all of that reading, the articles were about wildly different topics and it would do my head in. Organizing the articles has been tremendously helpful. I have a secret ambition to complete the first draft of my lit review this term. I think it will take a few stabs at it to get the section approved, but starting the process is a big step in the right direction. I also hope to take the SPSS software course this term while my lit review draft is under consideration. This is a much more optimistic mindset than I had even three weeks ago. It is amazing to me how much of an emotional roller coaster the PhD process is.

I think for me having an illness that messes with my emotional equilibrium adds to my internal emotional chaos. I do still have some anxiety about the process, but it feels like low-level nervousness that anyone would have who was about to be judged. Something I always find interesting when taking a course designed to advance my PhD is the distance between what the course wants and what I know my chair and co-chair want. I could basically phone it in for the course, whereas for my chair and co-chair I must truly give it my all each and every outing. I think this is a good thing because when it goes to committee it has a better chance of being approved. I feel like I might be able to complete my PhD in the next two years, and this is the first time I’ve felt like the end was in sight. It is starting to feel real to me, rather than something that is off in the distance. That is simultaneously rewarding and terrifying a bit. That is part of the legacy of being an abused foster kid, always feeling fear when you can see something really good for yourself. As a foster kid, a lot of foster families were good families but your biological parent randomly could rip you out of the family without any warning. Now that I’m an adult, it is a bit hard to realize that I am the only one who can take this from myself.