Letter from Boston Graduation Pressure By MASAKO YAMADA	フレームで見る  英文をプリントする  脚注をプリントする
卒業のプレッシャー 雅子さんは現在大学院物理学部5年生。クラスの中には、雅子さんより後に研究を始めながら、今年すでに卒業予定の人も現れ、だんだんと卒業のプレッシャーを感じるようになりました。ここ数年なかなか研究が進みませんでした。指導教授に、あと1年あれば卒業できるだろうと言われ、卒業までもう一踏ん張りです。

It's not uncommon for people who are perfectly content being single to begin feeling nervous once their close friends start to get married. Indeed, it seems that weddings come in groups. It's not too rare to hear of people who feel the itch to get married because they don't want to be left behind by their peers.

When I'm with my circle of friends and colleagues in the physics department, I do not feel such pressure. This is partly because most of my friends are still single, and partly because I see the responsibilities my married friends must carry in addition to their academic work.

There is a different kind of goal among students in the physics department. The pressure one feels to achieve this goal — while still in one's late 20s or early 30s — is probably similar to the pressure working people feel to getting married. The goal is to graduate as quickly as possible.

Thankfully (for me) none of the people I've entered graduate school with have finished their theses. I know that at least three of my classmates will be graduating in the spring, but this doesn't really bother me, since the date is still far off. Besides, all of them are quite a bit older than me.

However, I must admit that I feel a bit of jealousy toward a couple of friends who will be graduating soon in spite of their having entered graduate school a year after me. One of them defended his thesis recently. He already has accepted a nice job with an electronics company, and his future looks bright.

I acknowledge that these early-graduating friends deserve this honor, since they are extremely intelligent students who have accomplished a lot in their research. This doesn't prevent me from feeling a bit of pressure to finish my own degree.

Indeed, because of this, I have approached my advisor to see whether he thinks I can graduate any time soon. It seems that it'll take me another year or so. Granted, this is not so bad, since it means that I'll be out of graduate school by the time I'm 28. There used to be a student in my department who took over 10 years as a full-time student to get his Ph.D. I've met others who have taken almost as long.

On the surface, it may seem that they are luxuriating in their student status — similar to being a swinging single in the marriage analogy — but I think that they've probably started to feel deep-seated anxiety once their classmates started to graduate, one by one.

I've noticed that after about five years in graduate school, students start to become ashamed to tell others how long they've been in school. One acquaintance of mine started telling people that he was in his "last year" of graduate school for at least a few years before he actually graduated.

I've certainly felt graduation pressure, myself. When I tell people that I'll soon be finishing my fifth year of graduate school, it implicitly seems to emphasize how little I've accomplished in this time. However, now that I have an idea of when I can graduate, things have become easier.

I have started to take the required steps to reach that point, and this has forced me to think of how I'd like to progress. I've already assembled a thesis committee, and have started to think about a topic for a pre-thesis lecture that I must give to the department.

One of my professors, whom I haven't really talked to since my introductory classes in graduate school, recently asked me how my research was going. I told him that progress was slow for a few years, but that I felt that things were finally picking up.

Although he's not a very comforting person, he assured me that that's what research is all about. He said that academic research isn't about seeing clear-cut results proportional to the amount of effort put into the task. He told me that kind of progress is more like assembly-line work, and that academic progress comes in fits and spurts. This made me feel better, but it did not change my desire to graduate soon.

Shukan ST: March 9, 2001

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