November 2023

What If You Changed… Everything? New Research, New Committee.

Whelp, at this point it feels like my PhD has been at least partially a how to (how not to?) for grad school. Or, perhaps, a test bed for anything even remotely possible in a grad program. Well, regardless, let’s talk about this whole situation!

So, I decided to radically change my research direction. Like, a lot.

This is after three years, multiple research projects and publications. After completing candidacy – which included two chapters of a would-be dissertation.

That’s a lot to leave behind.

It wasn’t an easy decision, and it took about a year of contemplation. but as you will read about below it was one I had to make.

Before we get too deep, I do want to impart something a postdoc mentor of mine said which helped put me at ease.

“It’s normal. It’s normal to change your committee. It’s normal to change your research. It’s especially normal to change all of these things after candidacy.”

So, yeah, it’s normal. That’s helpful, but it takes a whole lot of work and thought and support to do it.

Run it Back

Rewind to the Spring of 2023, which is when I completed my candidacy (read about it here and here). It was rough. It was the first time I thought about dropping out and literal weeks of my life are blotted out in my memory from overwork.

Out of that process I had a syllabus, submitted publication, and a literature review. All of which I am quite proud of! However, what that intensive process taught me is that there were irreconcilable epistemic differences between myself and the chair of my committee.

So, I changed the chair of my committee.

Which, I was very lucky. My original chair was very supportive in helping me transition into a chair who was a better research fit. So, I didn’t have to deal with any of those shenanigans.

Fast-forward to Fall 2023 (the start of year four!). After interning during the summer, I was starting fresh with my new chair. The goal of the Fall semester was to develop the next lead-author research project, which would count toward my dissertation. We reviewed past research projects and proposals and talked about potential research directions based on my candidacy work. At the end of the meeting, he said to me:

“I do want to say this. You have to care about what you do. When you care, you finish your work. When you care you get through bad reviews and revisions. When you care, you resubmit.”

Very good advice. Very pragmatic advice.

And, wow, it really threw me off my rails. But, to understand why, we need to take a little detour.

I Know What You Did Last Summer

In April of 2023, I wrote this blog post. As I have said in other places, I was really angry and scared for what was happening in the Place most dear to me, and to much of my family. Conferences are colonialism and really, really don’t help amidst ongoing social movement and ecological crisis. For roughly a year, I have been intentionally re-engaging and reconnecting with my family and sense of Place in Hawai’i. This meant being present to listen, educate, speak out, and show up for various causes relating to the ongoing occupation of the Islands. It has been the work of recognizing existing and building relations.

Over this time, I was privileged to be connected to a faculty member, who would quickly become a mentor of mine. He imparted advice that is still sitting with me:

“If you are doing research that can be done in industry, then just go to industry. But, if you are going to stay in academia push the absolute boundary of what you are allowed to do.”

He has been such a guiding influence and role model for who I can be as an academic. Especially as a Kanaka Maoli (Native Hawaiian) who does not live on the Islands, I have learned much about what relations feel and look like when you are so far away.

He also kindled a fire to reinvent what my positionality and what my social role as an academic serving community could be(!). More on that later.

At this point, it felt like my reconnection was making Place grow in importance and priority, which was pressing in on my existing research. What I was reading, how I was thinking, who I was talking to, and what my hopes and motivations were. All of them were changing at a rapid pace.

At this point, my motivation to continue with online discourse and community studies was at an all time low. Experiencing the paper submission and revision process didn’t help. There was so much more I wanted to do, and I was needed elsewhere.

This was the energy I was carrying into the Fall semester.

Back in Ithaca…

Okay, welcome back from that detour! Pretty intense stuff, huh?

A few weeks into the semester and I am struggling through revising a paper for re-submission while my new social and academic sphere are filled with Native academics and activists. Here is where I was at:

I knew, deep down, something needed to change. I either was going to rush my PhD and get a good job and do the work I loved on evenings and weekends (sure you’ve heard that before, huh?). Or, I would open up a bookstore and write fiction until the end of my days. Honestly, not terrible futures.

Or…

I could change everything. Start nearly from scratch. Change my committee, change my research. Reconnect with community and serve their needs. Cede agency and form my PhD around community-based research and move back home.

But, but!

Sure, I could make that choice. It’s difficult and it comes with a lot of baggage. But I am in year four (4!) and I don’t have an endless timeline for my PhD. Building trust within community takes time. It takes years. Something the academe realllllyyy doesn’t support.

That’s not feasible, that doesn’t make sense. I can’t just force these things to make it convenient to finish my PhD. So, I guess back to the drawing board…

A ha! Gotcha! Not so fast, the universe had something to say.

While I was avoiding giving my chair a straight answer about what my dissertation would be, I got a text from a dear friend. A new faculty who had started this fall in natural resources (not even close to my discipline). But, they are Islander and there aren’t many of us at Cornell, so she suggested I reach out.

We met, we immediately hit it off.

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I also want to pause and just say how nice it is to show up and not have to think even for a second about who you are. You just speak and your sense of yourself and your beliefs are just the default. So validating.
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Yet another mentor! After a few meetings to get to know each other, we met at cafe and were talking tennis. Then, he interjected and said “so, I have been working with this group of folks on the Big Island of Hawai’i looking at land use policy. We are going to do some ethnographic work. We need a graduate student, are you interested?”

Don’t you love it when the stars align?

It was as if every stress tangle in my spirit was unfurled in one quick motion. Not only in Hawai’i, but where my family lives. A research project that serves community. I am guided into the space by a Kanaka Maoli researcher. Everything and more I could ask for! It was a clear sign, so I leaned in and have now successfully merged my obligations with my research role.

And Here We Are

Not much time has elapsed since that moment, and I am slowly working my way through this project and a supplementary computational project looking at public comments on land use policy in Hawai’i.

I presented these projects to my committee, received overwhelming support, and am continuing on! I feel more motivated than I ever have in my program, I feel successful, supported, and that I am growing as a person. I have never been as supported and championed by my support network as I do now. Most importantly, I feel aligned. I feel that this what I am meant to be doing.

There are loose ends. I am still toying with removing and adding committee members, but it feels like a completely different conversation when speaking with Native faculty. There is so much unspoken understanding that informs what it means to speak about research and mentorship.

There is an incredible amount of work on the horizon, but I am ecstatic to make my way steadily toward it.