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I taught middle school for five years before deciding that I was ready to pursue my Ph.D. In the Skype calls and email exchanges with the man I hoped would be my major professor , we discussed my approaches to, beliefs about, and inquiries into teaching . Although I look back on my pedagogical choices now and find some of them to be a bit problematic, at the time I was a firm believer in service-learning. In one of our last email exchanges before I formally accepted the invitation to return to grad school , my major professor suggested that I write a book chapter about the service-learning work I had done with my middle school students. No one had ever suggested that I write something for publication. I was overwhelmed with excitement and nervousness at the thought of such an undertaking.

One Saturday morning a few weeks later, I pulled into the parking lot at Caribou Coffee, ready to spend the next few hours banging out a draft of the service-learning chapter. Before I jumped out of the car, my dad called. I proceeded to spend the next ten minutes telling him about the invitation to write a chapter and my ideas. At the end of my monologue, there was a prolonged (and unexpected) pause on the other end of the line. My dad, who had earned his Ph.D. in Civil Engineering decades earlier, didn’t join in my excitement or ask for details about the chapter. Instead, he offered the following admonition:

“Don’t let your ego get the best of you. A lot of people get into Ph.D. programs and end up getting divorced. I just want you to be careful and not forget your husband .”

I was surprised by his warning and flippantly responded that of course I would never forget my husband , that I was just excited about the chapter, and that my relationship with my husband was on solid ground. I got off the phone, walked into Caribou, and began to take my first peek into the colorful Land of Oz.

The film adaptation of Frank Baum’s (1900) novel The Wonderful Wizard of Oz first appeared in US movie theaters in 1939. As was the norm of that time period, the film began in black-and-white. Fearing that her loathsome neighbor would take her dog away, the story ’s main character, Dorothy, decided to run away from her home in Kansas. But after an encounter with a fortune-teller who suggested that her Auntie Em was ill, Dorothy returned home —just as a tornado struck. Unable to get into the storm cellar, Dorothy sought safety in her bedroom, where she ultimately hit her head and entered the dreamland of Oz. Dorothy’s awakening in Oz was quite a dramatic one: Not only did the film transition from black-and-white to Technicolor, but also Dorothy contributed to the death of the Wicked Witch of the East. Upon her arrival in Oz, Dorothy learned that the only chance she had of returning to Kansas hinged on her ability to reach the Emerald City and meet with the Wizard of Oz . Along her journey to the Emerald City, Dorothy met a Tin Man, a Lion, and a Scarecrow. Though Dorothy didn’t belong in the Land of Oz and was in fact eager to return home to Kansas, she had a positive influence on the characters there and she learned more about herself and her world as a consequence of her adventure. Although there were a number of influential women in the Land of Oz (namely Glinda, the Good Witch of the North, and the Wicked Witch of the West), Dorothy was ultimately dependent on a man (the Wizard of Oz ) to get what she wanted most: to return home to Kansas. Dorothy’s adventures in Oz bear a strong resemblance to the experience of getting a Ph.D.

The world of academia , like the world of work in general, wasn’t built for women (Drame et al. 2012; Friedan 1936; Knights and Kerfoot 2008; Wolf 1991). The process of completing a dissertation , for instance, demands long stretches of time to write, without interruptions from for-profit work, children, chores, or other social responsibilities. Women who, for better or worse, have traditionally been expected to care for households and children often struggle to find the silence and isolation needed to complete the courses and/or dissertation required to earn a Ph.D. And, regardless of gender , those without funds for food, home , and general livelihood are inevitably barred from years of unpaid reading, writing , and research .

Of course, as gender roles shift in society (albeit slowly) and opportunities for scholarships and financial aid flourish (although these, too, are under fire), graduate programs are matriculating and graduating more diverse applicants (American Association of University Women 2004; Drame et al. 2012; Knights and Kerfoot 2008). However, even as students become more diverse (in terms of race , gender , socioeconomic class, language , able-bodiedness, sexual orientation , etc.), the processes and requirements for receiving a Ph.D. (or tenure for that matter) have remained largely unchanged (Drame et al. 2012; Mason et al. 2013). Thus, the academy is loath to accommodate the changing needs, interests, and lives of its students. Instead, students from traditionally marginalized groups are expected to change their lives to fit into the academy—a system that was initially built to keep them out (Drame et al. 2012; Wolf 1991). In this chapter, I focus on my experience as a woman entering the academy.

Similar to Dorothy walking into the Emerald City, when a woman enters academia , she is walking into a (wealthy, white) man’s world. Even a woman ’s choice to enter academia is often met with derision from other academics and her peers. For when a woman enters the academy, she has inevitably left something behind: a husband , a child, and a home (see also Davila and Aviles, this volume). She is, in effect, making a selfish choice by conceivably choosing herself over her relationships.

The already fine line that exists between selfishness and self-care is almost imperceptible when it comes to women. Womanhood has been and in many cases still is, synonymous with selflessness. Society expects women, particularly white women , regardless of their own identities, to sacrifice their bodies to motherhood and their personal lives to the betterment of their children and family (Friedan 1936). I’ve been alarmed at the extent to which twenty-first-century women my own age sacrifice their own personhood to their children—adopting Instagram names like “AmandasMom” or “MrsRichard.” So, when a woman chooses to enter the historically “man’s world” of academia , it is inevitable that she will experience tension as she moves between her personal and professional lives, as she attempts to manage the relationship between selfishness and self-care, and as she struggles to determine what it means to be a woman .

In this chapter, I draw on my personal experiences while a doctoral student to consider the following questions: In what ways do women mold their personal lives to fit and/or push against the age-old structures of academia ? Do women feel the need to camouflage their identities in the academy, so as to be perceived as belonging and knowledgeable? How do women traverse the space between their academic and personal lives? and How do women negotiate their gendered, sexual identities into the academic world?

My aim is not to tell anyone else’s story or to generalize my own. I recognize that womanhood and gender , in particular, are powerful terms and identities that carry with them a host of meanings. I identify as a cisgender , heterosexual white woman , and it is those identities that shape the stories and perspectives that I discuss here. Like Dorothy’s adventures through Oz, my progression through my Ph.D. program was wrought with tension as I struggled to maintain relationships outside of academia , to care for my physical and emotional well-being and to strike a balance between my work and personal lives. In particular, I draw on three salient aspects of The Wizard of Oz to organize the vignettes and thoughts that follow: (a) The Land of Oz was a land of color, unlike Dorothy’s monochromatic home in Kansas, (b) Dorothy sought the help of the enigmatic Wizard of Oz to help her and her newfound friends get what they desired most, and (c) There was both a literal and figurative shroud of mystery surrounding the grand Wizard of Oz , who ultimately turned out to be a middle-aged human (i.e., not magical) man.

The Land of Color

It was a Saturday in October, and I was halfway through the first semester of my Ph.D. I had spent the previous week reading about different qualitative data analysis methodologies and considering the potential colonizing effects of ethnographic research . My brain felt hazy with all the new terms, theorists, and concepts that I was learning. But I was eager to keep learning and to deepen my level of understanding. On this particular Saturday, my husband and I were going to a friend ’s house to watch a football game with about eight of our closest friends since undergrad.

I’ve always been pretty disinterested in football, so (for me) these weekend gatherings were more about conversation and seeing friends than about enjoying the game. But this Saturday was different. Not only did I feel like I was having to pull myself begrudgingly away from school work and reading just to leave the house, but I struggled to stop thinking about school work once we got to our friend ’s house. I felt, perhaps for the first time, disconnected from their lives and topics of conversation. The jobs, social lives, and children my friends talked about seemed to exist in a world distant from my own.

When my friends first found out I was going back to school , many responded with envy—inevitably expecting that I was going to relive undergrad. I can’t say that my expectations were significantly different from theirs. When I first started my Ph.D. program, I was shocked by the sheer number of hours I needed to work. Doctoral students are expected to teach undergraduate courses, to conduct research , to write for publication, to attend and present at conferences, and to serve the department, in addition to successfully completing their own coursework and dissertation . As the weeks and months progressed, I began to feel that the only people who understood the demands of a Ph.D. were fellow Ph.D. students.

The disconnect I perceived to exist between myself and many of my non-Ph.D. friends continued to grow until I felt completely isolated from my past relationships, pastimes, and interests.

When I started my Ph.D. program, it was as if I, like Dorothy in the Land of Oz, was seeing color for the first time. I grew up with two happily married parents and a younger sister . For as long as I can remember , I imagined having a life very similar to that of my parents—getting married , settling in one place, and having children. The first disruption to this imagined future happened when I chose to get my Ph.D. at a university that required my husband and me to move states (see also Tondreau, this volume). I didn’t know at the time that this move would be the first domino to fall. The classes I took pushed me to look at my world through a more critical lens and to question the relationships, places, routines, texts, and words that had for so long defined me. It was during my Ph.D. that I finally started to consciously analyze my white privilege , to understand gender and sexuality as existing on a spectrum, and to develop the skills needed to be a critical consumer of life and society.

As my Ph.D. program progressed, my life became riddled with questions. Although I was already married , I began to question how that relationship would change as I continued to internalize what I was reading and learning about in school . How would my husband respond when I challenged some of our routines and goals as a couple? Would school drive a wedge between us, or merely leverage us to new planes in our relationship ? I also started thinking more concretely about having children. I wondered what life with a baby would look like (see also Guyotte and Hick, this volume). How would I balance taking care of a child with the demands of a life in academia ? When would I have a baby ? Would it be smarter to have a baby during my Ph.D. program or to wait until after tenure ?

As time went on, my interests in being married and one day having a baby faded. Although I have since met many women in academia who successfully balance marriage , motherhood , and their professional lives, early in my doctoral work I had met few. Further, there were very few women academics who talked openly about their personal lives. My interactions with women academics (even fellow students) were almost always relegated to discussions of writing , research , and teaching . I began to see academia as the (stereotypically) masculine and isolated place it was designed to be—a place free from children, romantic relationships, and personal problems and lives.

As a newcomer to this world, I (both consciously and unconsciously) tried to assimilate. I rarely talked about my husband , our past, our future plans, or our friends outside of academia —contributing to a very real sense that I was living two parallel lives. As time went on, I struggled more and more to reconcile those two lives or even to move back and forth between them. I was incredibly unfair to those around me and found that I was almost unable to have conversations with family or friends that didn’t end with me criticizing them. My struggle to cross the chasm that was developing between my two worlds resulted in some very elitist behavior that, looking back, I’m not very proud of.

However, my relationship with my husband suffered the most. We struggled to talk about the divide that was consuming our marriage , and he refused to take an interest in my school work and resented school for changing the tenor of our relationship . He criticized me for being too challenging to talk to or spend time with, for questioning whether or not I wanted children, and for requiring him to put life on hold so that I could go to school . Ultimately, I found that I was unable to nurture my own personal learning and growth within the confines of my marriage . Although plenty of my peers were critical and labeled me “selfish,” I believe my decision to get divorced was a courageous act of self-care .

Seeking Help

It was pouring down rain the morning that I found out. It was four in the morning, lights were still on in the living room, and the TV screen glowed blue. I was alone in the bed my parents had given us as a wedding gift five years earlier, while my husband slept in the living room. Preferring the uncomfortable sofa to sleeping in the same room as me.

I woke up worried, a feeling in the pit of my stomach that things were off. I was supposed to run a half marathon in three hours, so I blamed my nerves on the race . But even after shaking off sleep and brushing my teeth, the nerves remained. I walked quietly into the living room and tentatively pick up my husband ’s cell phone from the coffee table. I pressed the circle at the bottom of the dark screen, and was met by lists of texts from one number. Over and over again, back and forth between my husband and his assistant, the words: I love you.

I quietly put a leash on my dog, slipped on shoes, texted my sister to come pick me up. And I left. Not to return until six months later when I would divide up the dishes and furniture, the meaningless artifacts of what would become a past life.

In the years following, there were feelings of guilt that I, as a woman , had failed at my marriage . That guilt was compounded with the fact that I had the luxury of being a full-time student : I didn’t have a significant other or children to worry about and, although money was tight, an assistantship could be my primary source of income . And so, I often felt that I needed to make up for my desolate personal life by having a very robust and full professional one. I felt that I needed to be as busy as those around me and that somehow that busyness would give my life legitimacy. When I had been married and had taken a break from working, I had done it in the name of needing-to-spend-time-with-my-husband . But after the divorce , I had no excuse for taking breaks. So I just didn’t.

I could feel myself morphing into the man that academia was built for: I used work to insulate myself from worries about children, a significant other, and money . As I rejected stereotypically “woman ” responsibilities and interests (e.g., marriage and children), I turned to my work to give me an identity . But even by pouring myself into work, I reasserted my womanhood . Similar to the US housewives of the early to mid-1900s who busied themselves with chores around the home and volunteering at their children’s schools (Friedan 1936), I was creating work for myself in order to both appear and be busy. However, also like the housewives, my busyness was neither wholly necessary nor fulfilling. So why did they do it? Why did I do it? In short: because I had imagined an audience to my life. I was making choices about how to spend my time based on what I believed others would find legitimate and worthwhile, rather than based on my own personal interests or goals. I was so concerned about rejecting the appearance of selfishness that I was unable to care for myself. The fine line between selfishness and self-care was, yet again, blurred.

During her time in Oz, Dorothy met a Scarecrow, a Lion, and a Tin Man. Each character had something they desired and believed that the Wizard of Oz would be able to grant them. Unlike Dorothy, the Scarecrow, Lion, and Tin Man were unaware of their deepest desires until the Wizard’s gifts at the end of the story signified that they already had what they wanted all along: brains, courage, and heart, respectively. As much as I wish I had been more like Dorothy (who knew what she wanted and how to get it), I was, in actuality, more similar to the Scarecrow, Lion, and Tin Man. I thought that a life of reading, writing , teaching , and thinking could fulfill me. I poured myself into my degree. I made it my mission to be the most successful doctoral student I could be, and consequently, school became my entire life. I experienced some modicum of professional success, yes, but I also struggled to maintain out-of-school friendships and to take care of my physical and mental health . I gained weight , escaped my life to live abroad for a few months, lost too much weight , and had a couple panic attacks.

Finally, I began to recognize that not only was this life not sustainable, but it was unfulfilling. I had started my Ph.D. with intentions of being both professionally and personally successful. Somewhere along the way, however, academia became a zero-sum game: I could have either a full professional life or no life at all. My second panic attack was the Wizard’s gift I needed because it forced me to pause and to realize that, like the Scarecrow, Lion, and Tin Man, I already had what I desired: family , friends, interests, and work. I just needed to care for myself in a way that allowed all of these parts of my life to intersect.

The Shroud of Mystery

I was hunkered down at my favorite coffee shop, having worn the same sweatshirt for two days, and doused my hair in dry-shampoo to try and mask the fact that I didn’t shower that morning. It was early December and my dissertation was due to my committee in one week. As I stood up to get my third cup of coffee for the morning, I caught a glimpse of one of the women professors in our department. The antithesis to my disheveled and frazzled state, she was poised over her computer, no doubt writing what would turn out to be a brilliant journal article.

As I stood waiting for my coffee, I remember questioning how she managed to balance everything: she was a successful and well-respected Associate Professor , married , and mother to three young children. I, on the other hand, couldn’t even manage to balance basic hygiene with writing a dissertation . So when she came up behind me in the coffee line I wanted to curl into my sweatshirt and disappear.

Instead, I turned to say good morning and glimpsed a stroke of distress cross her face. After saying hello, she asked:

“Can I get your opinion on something?”

I was at a loss as to what this professor could need my opinion on, but I nodded my consent.

“I have two twin girls; can I buy them one Barbie dream house? Or do I need to buy two? Can they share? Did you share with your sister ?”

For the past three and a half years, I’d held professors on a pedestal. They were the elusive grand Wizard behind the curtain. But at this moment at the coffee shop, I felt that I had finally pulled away the curtain and seen the Wizard—and (s)he was human! At that moment, she wasn’t concerned with the feminist critiques of gendered toys, she wasn’t spending her Saturday morning writing an article, she was just trying to buy her kids Christmas gifts.

Academics often discuss the dark cloud of imposter syndrome : that feeling that at any moment someone will pull back the curtain and figure out that you, in fact, know nothing and have no business calling yourself an academic . For women in academia , the threat of the curtain being pulled back is perhaps even more pronounced than for men. For a woman to lay bare her humanity is also to reveal the fact that she isn’t a man. By exposing her woman ness (and all the historical, stereotypical, and socialized narratives associated with being a woman ), the woman professor both confirms and challenges the fact that she’s moving through a world that wasn’t built for her. As a nascent academic , struggling to reconcile my personal and professional selves and to find a space for my woman ness in academia , I needed this Barbie dream house moment. I needed a successful woman professor to peel back the curtain and to give me a glimpse into not only her personal life , but her gendered life, as well.

Conclusion

I still have moments where I wish I had never landed in Oz and seen the color there. In so many ways, life was incredibly simple and predictable before I decided to pursue my Ph.D. I had no idea that my choice to enter academia would mean that I would lose friends, get divorced, reconsider having children, struggle to balance my personal and professional lives, or question what it means to be a woman . But, like Dorothy, the fact that I’ve seen color only adds a new layer of complexity to my life, rather than one life replacing another. The people who care most for me will remain in my life (hopefully having forgiven my moments of elitism); experiences from my marriage will shape and help me to navigate my current romantic relationship ; and memories from my early Ph.D. years will help me as I continue to balance my personal and professional lives.

I’ve learned that the line between selfishness and self-care is a fine and gendered one. I have no doubt that men and women receive different levels of criticism when it comes to distinguishing between selfishness and self-care . Although I saw my decision to go back to school as a form of self-care , my husband saw it as selfishness, in part because he thought it would take away from my ability to give birth to or care for future children. To my knowledge, he never faced criticism for being selfish when he chose to take on a job that demanded he work during the evenings and weekends (times that would typically interfere with time spent with children). I’ve given up, however, on the quest to identify universal definitions of self-care and selfishness, or to defend my choices to others. Acts and understandings of self-care are deeply personal. Like the Scarecrow, Lion, and Tin Man, I’ve found that I don’t need to look outside myself to get what I desire most. Sometimes I just need to take the time to realize and nurture those desires.

Throughout my Ph.D. , I expected there to be moments when I would pull back the Wizard’s curtain to find the answer to how to balance my personal and professional lives or how to navigate being a woman in academia . Although I feel I’ve gotten better at managing the workload and not letting it seep (too much) into my personal life , I still find myself periodically glued to my laptop at one in the morning, writing , having forgotten to eat anything beyond a series of snacks all day. For me, the self-care needed to balance my personal and professional lives will be an ongoing quest. It’s not something that I’m going to find and nail down, but instead something that I will constantly have to negotiate into my life. Similarly, I expect that I will continue to struggle with what it means to be a woman in academia . I will simultaneously question how vulnerable I can afford to be in the academy and will push against the very fact that I’m in a vulnerable position as a woman . I will both reinforce and chip away at the masculine structures and traditions that define my profession. Hopefully, though, the chipping away will slowly start to overtake the acts of reinforcement.

The Wizard of Oz ended as Dorothy closed her eyes, clicked her ruby slippers three times, and woke up back in her bedroom in Kansas. Although she returned to a world dominated by shades of black, white, and gray, she didn’t leave the color of Oz completely behind her. Instead, she recounted her adventures to her family and friends—in effect, keeping the color alive. For Dorothy, there was “no place like home .” Although I loved The Wizard of Oz growing up and have no personal vendetta against Dorothy, I think she got it a bit wrong in the end. Instead, I think Dorothy could’ve taken some notes from Thomas Wolfe’s (1940) titular admonition: “You can’t go home again,” for once you see color, the whole world—even home —is altered.

It was lunchtime and I was sitting on the patio of a Mexican restaurant with my husband . I remember feeling relieved that we were sitting outside because there was no way I could take my sunglasses off to reveal my eyes—red, puffy, heavy with tears cried and still to come. My husband offered an ultimatum: either I give up the Ph.D. , find a job teaching middle school again, and have a baby , or our marriage was over. And there was a moment that I wished it all away: I wished I’d never thought about going back to school , that I’d never met my major professor , that I’d never been asked to write that chapter on service-learning.

And then I breathed out. And in that breath, realized that I could never unsee what I had seen. I’d arrived in the Land of Oz, I’d traveled to the Emerald City, and I’d seen the man behind the curtain. The world had become a more complex, exciting, mysterious, and colorful place—and there was no way I could fully return to my sepia-toned former life. And even though I wouldn’t admit it for many months, it was in that moment, sitting in that Mexican restaurant, faced with the possibility of never seeing color again, that I decided not to turn back.