Doubt

I got my PhD almost 10 years ago now. When I started out on this path, 20 years ago (when I graduated from high school) I hadn't planned on using my high fallutin' education "just to raise kids", but that is where I ended up.

This post is not about how I ended up here, but about where I want to go next. With the economy the way it is, I may not have much of a choice about where I go in the near future, and staying at home with my kids is fulfilling, involves creative sides of myself that I never knew I had, and is helping me get myself organized. And yet... Next year, Luke goes to preschool for 3 mornings a week, and I really don't want to spend the time reading blogs and cleaning the house.

The thing I would like to do most is actually mathematical research, although pure research does not pay very well---right now I am planning on using the research to spring into some other kind of work. I enjoy reading the papers and thinking about theorems and seeing what I can prove. I do not enjoy writing yet, although blogging has made me a better writer (although not up to where I was when I was writing my dissertation). Sitting in a coffee shop drinking tea and reading papers brings me right back to where I was when I was in graduate school. What I have now that I didn't in grad school is a lot of doubt.

When I was in graduate school, I knew that it was where I belonged. The work was hard but pleasant. I wasn't the brightest kid in the bunch, but I wasn't at the bottom of the barrel. It became clear that if I put the work in and got results, I would graduate. If I didn't graduate, it wouldn't be my fault, and I could move on to the next thing (since I wouldn't have been in the right place anyway). I did get to be proficient, and eventually after years of work I got my degree. I was in the right place, doing the right things, and there was no reason to worry about it.

But right now, I'm not sure I could ever get back where I was, much less move forward. I remember an older man (probably younger that I am now) going back to graduate school while trying to work at IBM and have a family, and he gave it up after a few weeks. Is my distracted attention enough to keep me from doing what I want to do?

Some of what I am feeling can be overcome, it is a result of the unfamiliarity with mathematics that I lived with intimately for so long. But some of it comes from the genuine pressure from raising kids and having 20 million (at least) things going on in my brain, all of which are tremendously important, at least to the young child who is tugging at my hand or trying to get my multiply divided attention. In the past year I have seen some studies showing that multitasking makes us stupid, the kind of reading I do is bad for concentration. This morning I heard an interview about how we make decisions, and the interviewee used the example that having to keep a telephone number in your head makes decision making less efficient---I feel like I've go 10 telephone numbers in my head all the time! Is it possible to find the peace and quiet and motivation to get back into doing mathematics?

The answer: maybe. People usually manage to get done what they really want, provided they have some resources. I have a few hours a week next year. Tonight I looked myself up on "Google Scholar" and found that my dissertation had been cited by two people! One wrote that my results were "interesting but not widely known!" This makes me a little excited, in case you are wondering. If I can take the excitement plus the desire to get out of the house and think hard, plus a few hours a week... maybe I can write the papers I need to write. And after that... who knows.

Writing this about doubt made me realize that doubt has actually been with me for a long time. When I graduated, I needed to send copies of my dissertation to lots of people, and I was too shy. I needed to send my paper to someone else after it was rejected twice, but I was too shy. I didn't believe that my results were interesting (although now they've been referenced at least twice!) and so I never could get myself to work on writing the papers. I think that while my current life is not so helpful in encouraging sustained thinking, it may be useful in giving me some confidence and perspective. 10 years off may not be entirely bad for my mathematical life.