Tags: personal
Many moons ago, I did my PhD. That was years of hard-ship, unknowns, anxiety. But also self-discovery, with plenty of fun and exciting times.
Then I met a wonderful woman, we got married and she decided to go back to school and pursue a PhD on her own. I have to admit the process of accompanying a loved one through graduate school is far, far worse than going through it yourself. Even knowing full well the challenges ahead, it is much worse to have to see her suffer through them without being able to do anything about it.
The feeling of helplessness while watching a person you care for deeply being in distress is nothing like I have experienced before. We were lucky the decision of going back to graduate school was well thought out and discussed at length even before she applied. But even then there were years the whole process took a terrible toll on our marriage.
It is thus I want to extend my congratulations to Dr. Ying for successfully defending her PhD thesis entitled "Code Fragment Summarization"; to all other PhD candidate spouses out there, I hear your pain. There is light at the end of the tunnel!