Steven S Veach

As part of my Doctor of Theology program at Forge Theological Seminary I am completing several preliminary foundational “seminars,” including writing several articles on various topics.

This particular article focuses on the issue of isolation in grad school, and more specifically the possibility of loneliness and depression.

So, let’s jump in and find out what to expect when venturing off to that coveted ivory tower….

The Isolation Inherent

It can be said to be a real and present danger in higher education and especially in grad school, that student experience some level of isolation in their academic career. I can attest. It is true. It has been true for the bulk of my studies, from the moment I stepped off a brick and mortar campus and stepped into the virtual learning world, it has been me and a digital screen. This kind of isolation can often develop into loneliness and depression and these can quickly get out of control if not monitored and effectively dealt with.

The stimulus for such feelings only increases as student move from undergraduate studies to self-directed grad school. Gone are the days (if you’re lucky) of official courses and a set pattern of hoops to jump through with a degree waiting at the end. Especially at the doctoral level, students are expected to be both the student and the instructor. They are now expected to not only provide valid answers, but also formulate and ask the questions they will answer. On top of this added responsibility, doctoral research is really time consuming, with countless hours spent either in the lab or in the library, or, as many modern students experience, nearly all of their time is spent in their studio apartment, sitting in awkward positions on the couch, laptop in lap, screaming at their citation software for not working correctly. And that can be it. For months at a time.

Many PhD students find themselves becoming unhinged at the isolation of it all. They don’t shower. They don’t go out or spend time with friends or think of spiritual things (unless, of course, you’re in Seminary, and then spiritual things are your work and they often lose their devotional, spirit lifting nature). Gone are the days of high school and parties or groups of friends out having fun or playing D&D in the basement with people you’ve known since gradeschool.

The reality is, by the time you reach grad school, everyone enrolled is super busy. They are more often than not trying to juggle some sort of work on top of their studies just to keep food in their stomach, they are feeling pressure from their advisor (varies depending on your specialty), are struggling with family responsibilities. Few have time to sit down with you and discuss what they’re working on, let along what you are doing in the library all day.

Some students start wondering if life will always be like this? They are on the trajectory of academia, hoping to find a professorship out in the world once they are finished with their schooling and are starting to see the cracks in the romanticized version they’ve erected for themselves of what a career in the ivory tower would look like. The reality is, grad school is most often very stressful. It might be the most stressful experience a student has been exposed to in their life. The politics. The backstabbing. The lies. The financial pressure. The academic pressure to publish. The games. Sometimes it can be simply overwhelming.

Not Actually a Negative (for me)

Luckily for myself, isolation is not something I’ve ever viewed as negative in life. In fact, as a young child, I preferred to keep my own company over the company of my peers. I simply, to quote a not so popular movie from the 90’s, “I just wasn’t that into them.” Most of the time and in most circumstances, I find people just get in the way of what I’m doing. They tend to get in the way of my research. They tend to heap onto education and inquiry a truckload of bureaucracy and artificiality. In fact, this has been my predominate struggle in my education thus far, trying to distance myself from the social aspects of academia so I can focus on the research alone and I can’t say its been at all easy to do so.

As I already mentioned, my education was social for the first two semesters at my Community College. By the end of those two terms I was ready to drop out and learn how to be a plumber, because I had had enough of group projects and time spent with strangers at the library when all they did was complicate my schoolwork and make me feel extremely uncomfortable and self-conscious. When I have reached out in the past, I’ve always reminded myself of the adage, “be careful what you wish for, you just might get it.” And the adage is true.

I have actually thrived in my isolation in schooling. I could have used much more of it in high school. In fact, I tried several times to get more distance between myself and my peers, to no avail. In my junior year I started experimenting with independent studies, but the administration quickly shut me down, stating this kind of self-directed work could only be done for electives and on a limited basis. No one mentioned I could quit and be homeschooled. Unfortunately, no one exposed me to unschooling either. If they had, I would have dropped out of high school immediately.

College was much different. To start with it was just like high school, but they required me to pay for it. When I discovered the new format of online learning, I was hooked. I immediately dropped my classes at my local community college and re-enrolled at the college in the neighboring town. All online courses meant I could study at home, in the comfort of my recliner, or along the riverbank or out in the woods where I was living at the time. Fast forward a year, and I found myself reading from one of my textbooks, sitting in a lawn chair that was wedged into my boat, floating on the breeze out on the lake where I’d moved. There is nothing quite like living in a cabin on a lake, taking a boat to get groceries and do laundry and take proctored tests at the library.

This is how I’ve done school, through my undergrad, to Seminary to get my MA in Theological Studies, and now into a doctoral program to get my ThD. Of course, now it’s not courses I need to watch and regurgitate onto tests, but it is in real research I need to immerse myself. It is time to do some real exploration, so real soul searching. For me, this cannot be done in any other environment than the one isolation affords. I do not maintain friendships (outside of my professional acquaintances at work), I do not seek out relationships, I do not socialize online (not sure what it is people are really doing online these days anyway). My interaction is primarily with the biblical text and with the books and articles that I find on subjects of my fascination.

I’ve said it before. The last ten years, since I’ve gone into seclusion, have been the best ten years of my life.

Possible Solutions

There are people who are not made for solitude, though. Some fear the darkness of an empty house, and would rather remain in a terrible relationship than have to confront the reality of being alone. I can’t judge these people any more than I would want them to judge me. And if these people find themselves in grad school and are suffering from the isolation, there are things that they can do.

One option is to join a study group. They used to be in person and I’m sure they still have those….somewhere. But, there are other options, too. There are study groups online that either meet together over video conferencing or through chat or even correspond with each other by email. There are Facebook groups (not sure how those work) and even I’ve found online forums a great use when corresponding with others.

I also found great utility in the local study group when I first became a believer while stationed in Germany. That time was really much like a seminary or monastery experience in and of itself. A group of men would meet weekly at the local library on base, where we had access to all the research books we needed. We posed questions to each other and raced around the stacks trying to find answers. We talked about our lives, about our marriages, about raising kids, but most certainly about God and our faith. It was a time of great growth for me spiritually, though, I unfortunately, haven’t been able to replicate it since then.

The greatest issue to tackle is if you need to socialize with people in the first place. Spending countless ours in the stacks or in the lab is a bliss for me. I don’t feel the loss others speak of, nor have I ever experienced the isolation as any kind of deprivation away from anything else. But others do feel at a loss in similar circumstances. So it is important to know thyself, and then to respond appropriately. I personally find sitting in a classroom with 20 other people and a teacher leading us through a textbook or exercise excruciating. Ask me to interact with others (and worse, form groups) and it’s pure torture. But that’s just me. I’m naturally predisposed to living as a hermit, which is why I am one. If you are anything like me and feel no negatives from isolation in grad school, then join the rich history of hermits that have gone before you, find your cave and enjoy what you’ve been given (or what you’ve been spared). Enter therein, for your cell will teach you all you’ll need to know.