Becoming Dr. Van Wyk
Notes from the long, messy, occasionally brilliant road to a Ph.D. in History.
A Ph.D. looks remarkably tidy when reduced to a line on a curriculum vitae. The process of earning one is considerably less so.
Becoming Dr. Van Wyk is where I document the work behind the credential—the reading, research, writing, revisions, breakthroughs, false starts, footnotes, teaching days, and occasional existential crises that come with becoming a historian.
My doctoral research focuses on the cultural memory of Boudica, but this journal is about the larger journey: learning to think and write as a professional historian while balancing research, teaching, and the rest of an already very full life.
Some entries will be about research. Some will be about teaching. Some will probably be about spending an unreasonable number of hours fixing footnotes. Together, they are a record of the process—not just of writing a dissertation, but of becoming Dr. Van Wyk.
Latest from the PhD
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So, Apparently I’m Writing a Dissertation Now.
After coursework, comprehensive exams, thousands of pages of reading, and more historiography than any reasonable person should consume voluntarily, I’ve reached the part where I’m apparently supposed to write a dissertation.
