Hey everybody, just a quick post tonight.
Today I ducked out of work at lunch to zoom in to the dissertation defense of my friend Eric Becklin. Eric and I started together at the University of Minnesota back in 2015. We were two members of a cohort of 11 doctoral students, hoping one day to become real actual historians.
PhD programs are famously difficult on students, mostly by design. If you have gone through the program, you’ll know that it’s not a question of intelligence. There are far more intelligent people than me who I went to school with who never finished their doctorate. No, getting your PhD is a grind. It’s years of classwork, instructed by the smartest people in their field, surrounded by your peers who are also the smartest people you’ll ever meet. And then once you’re done, you set out on your research and your writing and your revising. This process takes YEARS. Oh and the whole time you’re teaching classes were working a non academic job, and likely both.
Nobody gets through their Ph.D. program accidentally. And it doesn’t matter where you go to get your Ph.D. Every place is difficult.
So one of the important things to getting through your program is making great friends. And Eric became exactly one of those people. Thankfully, for me, he is a native Minnesotan, with a real love for the state. Eric‘s enthusiasm from Minnesota rubbed off on me. I also share a love for the state now and would love to live there again someday.
Your friends become your greatest strength during this time. My time was made far more difficult by being a guy who is going through a divorce while at the same time attempting to learn a PhD. I tell you this- I would not have finished my program without friends like Eric, or Abraham or Orry or Jazmine or Kent or Patrick or Loren. It would’ve been impossible. These are the people you rely on. They help you break down books and arguments. They read your work and make you a better writer. They grab a beer with you when you’re not feeling your best. They stay with you and make you a better person. And my pal Eric is the absolute best of those.
So today he defended his stellar dissertation, becoming the fifth of our cohort to finish. I cannot be more happy today.
I share all of this with you because when I think about my time at the University of Minnesota and how it forged my career as a historian and continue to help me evolve as a person what I’m most thankful for is not the education, but it is the friends it gave me.
Congratulations buddy. Next beer is on me.
Jason