Current mood:	frustration
Current music:	Blackbird - The Beatles

fallen star
today, my graduate school life is summed up with the story of icarus, who was best known in greek mythology as the young mortal who flew too close to the sun.

icarus, was the spirited son of the great inventor daedalus. when king minos of crete imprisoned them in the labyrinth, daedalus invented two pairs of wings that can help them fly to escape. some accounts say the wings were made of wax. daedalus told icarus to keep a middle course over the sea and avoid flying high. but icarus, being the spirited youth he is, dared to enjoy the sky and fly freely with the clouds. he soared up and up, his wings came off (some accounts say the glue melted, some say the wax wings melted) and he fell into the sea and drowned.

i finished my thesis oral defense earlier and, to my dismay, am graduating cum laude. only cum laude. i wanted to graduate with flying colors this time, since i really devoted much of the last three years to study than politics as i used to in ab. i was hoping for a suma; after all, goals are meant to be high. i seriously worked for it and successfully got an academic average of 1.02, with only one subject with a grade of 1.25. the academic average was a third of the total grade.

but after passing my manuscript and a critical review of my own research work, i conceded that graduating suma cum laude would be improbable already - it was my first attempt on a serious qualitative exploratory research, on using phenomenology and the constructivist paradigm and on employing qualitative data analysis techniques (which i never really learned in ab, even though our first thesis paper was qualitative).

all things considered, especially the fact that the degree i'm vying for is masteral, not doctoral, i estimated my work and my upcoming defense to be good enough to merit magna cum laude (and since my academic average was practically a 1, adding it to the final grade average wouldn't pull a magna merit on the thesis). i still wouldn't say that i over estimated myself, even though i didn't get a magna. comparative analysis of masteral theses in the graduate school would support my claim. i was offering a new perspective, new method, new paradigm and i thought it was effectual enough.

but my panel thought otherwise. while they commended my efforts and even the results and analysis, i knew we had a gap on paradigm use. in fact, dr. de guzman, who has been graciously helping me with the research design and analysis, even said that if my panel would be composed of quantitative researchers, my study wouldn't be appreciated as much as it is. my panel was, in broad stroke, a quantitaive panel.

my panel was coming from a positivist paradigm, which is regarded as traditional, the usual find-a-problem-and-solve-it approach. i was coming from a constructivist paradigm, which is basically ask-to-know-the-phenomenon; phenomenology also made it more complicated, as it is a pure qualitative method with a totally different standard.

the question and answer part of the defense was good though. i listed all their comments and their bone of contention is summed up in the thesis' form, not really content. i expected the suggestions, actually, because, as i said, this was my first serious attempt at a research with a new approach and method. but i do have some problem with some of the suggestions brought up, as i feel they were positivist and it goes against the nature of a constructivist study - that i would still have to research about in an attempt to reconcile their suggestions with my own frame.

i truly appreciate my panel's comments (their criticisms during my colloquium were very helpful), but i can't help but get frustrated that my panelists, collectively, didn't appreciate my research as much as it could have been appreciated by others. i think my high hopes crashed to a wall of our paradigm differences.

i remember, when i was still taking up subjects in the graduate school, my classmates and my professors said i was promising enough; i thought so too. in many of my classes, i was a darling of discussion. modesty aside, my graduate schooling was by far one of my most academic learning endeavors, next only to high school. i believe i haven't overestimated myself at any point, because as i've set my hopes up to gun for the big win, i know my capabilities and limits and was able to gauge my resulting mark. and my estimates never failed. not until earlier today.

it pains me even more that the hard work i put in all of my subjects, the almost perfect academic record i set, will now be obscured by my thesis grade, which was an unfortunate result of paradigm differences. i already had the wings to fly high and i fell. the waves have swallowed me whole. and my efforts are now only a myth.