Gabriel Mizrahi

Honestly, not easy.

So Yalom's thing was all of these are ultimately defenses.

We try to escape the anxiety of being the author of our lives in so many different ways.

Anyway, I think you've covered the most important part of this, Jordan.

But I was just thinking about a couple of other things in her letter.

One was she mentioned that nobody told her she had to complete her degree this semester until a month ago.

So she missed the window to apply for jobs.

I don't know.

And that's something she should get clear on.

It's possible that she is just so disenchanted by academia, so tired of this dissertation process at this point.

I mean, every single grad student I've ever spoken with says that the PhD program becomes a slog and toward the end you want to kill yourself.

So I get it.

She might just not be engaged with her program or her career path, but that's either a sign that she needs to lean in and relight that fire so she can take care of herself and figure out a job.

or it means that this might not be the path for her.

I also wonder if being asleep at the wheel might itself be part of the sidestepping of responsibility that we've been talking about, and or a way to maybe unconsciously create a situation in which she ends up with no job prospects in academia, so she can't go into this field she might not love anymore, and the choice has been made for her, so to speak.

Interesting.

Funny how that works.

Just a theory.

Either way, I don't think it's totally an accident unless her department somehow literally forgot to tell her something that only they could possibly know.

Like, we don't have a space for you in the program.