I just want to add something to the last post, regarding my sort of outburst against my dad's insinuating that I left the adult education doctoral program because I couldn't trust anyone.
The first thing I would like to say about that is that that outburst is indicative of part of the ambivalence I've had towards my dad starting in my mid 20s. I felt like our relationship was fraught with intense good things and equally intense not so good things, like this event/issue about leaving my studies. You'll see more of this, I'm sure, as we go along. Having said that though, it wasn't just me, but he did concrete things and some things that weren't so directly and visibly connected to him, so this isn't just my problem. He's dead now, but I imagine he had (probably mostly) unspoken struggles (although he may have confided to other family members at times, making it just unspoken to me specifically. I refuse to take all the blame and listen to a bunch of gobbledy-gook about it being all in my head or all my fault. I know that dad is sort of this patron saint of the family, but he was just human after all, and others in the family have the choice of whether they care to hear my side of the story (really hear it, not just go through the motions) or not. At this point I'm assuming they've chosen the "not" option.
The other thing that I would point out about the situation in question here, is that actually it could be said that my leaving the doctoral program was actually a step of trust in my professors, who kept insisting that I was on a doctoral track. I believed them so much that I dropped out based on their statements alone. I risked my whole career on believing what they said, that I would become a professor if I stuck with it and got my doctorate. But I didn't WANT to be a professor, so, believing them, I left the program. Perhaps that was foolish faith, but it was faith; I believed that they were right and that's what would happen. I was under the impression that at least most people in the program were there because they thought their studies could help them meet their career goals. Once I became convinced that the program could not do that for me I left.
~ Meg
