“If I Can Do This I Can Do Anything”
I wrote my thesis in a computer cluster established for students with disabilities, such as blindess, hearing impairment, severe physical limitations, and learning disabilities such as ADHD and dyslexia. The staff specialized in advanced technologies to help students with even the most debilitating medical conditions complete their academic work.
I didn’t have a chronic disability, but I was disabled. In my fifth year of graduate school I developed such a severe form of tendonitis (inflammation of the elbows due to excessive computer use) that I couldn’t type for more than 5 minutes without excruciating pain.
The staff at the computer cluster set up an ergonomic station for me to minimize the physical effort associated with typing and mousing. Yet, even with these advanced technologies (and prescription strength pain killers) I had to alternate every 15 minutes of typing with 15 minutes of break to keep the pain under control.
My thesis committee consisted of the most brilliant people from my department, and they had several heated arguments regarding the requirements for my thesis. At my committee meeting in April of my final year, my chair finally had it with all the disagreements, and he said: “Dora, if you can analyze the data and write it up by the end of this semester, you can schedule your defense.”
This was my chance. I had to finish my thesis that semester, else I would have to endure more committee meetings and satisfy more requirements to finish my thesis. But how could I write up my thesis when I had such limited amount of time to write?
It was past midnight on the day of my committee meeting and I was alone in the computer cluster wondering where to begin writing.
I felt hopeless as looked at the pile of data that I had to analyze and write up into a doctoral thesis in less than 3 weeks. Then, an unexpected wave determination came over me, and I heard myself say out loud: “If I can do this I can do anything.”
For the next 20 days, I repeated this phrase over and over in my head every time I had my 15 minute chunk of time to write. There was not a minute a waste, and even when I was on a break, I was planning what I would write about during the next 15 minutes.
The phrase, “If I can do this I can do anything”, had so much power over my focus that I was able to finish writing my thesis and prepare the slides for my thesis defense by the due date. But where did this phrase come from?
It was only after I successfully defended my thesis that I remembered the story that inspired this phrase, and gave me the determination to finish my thesis, no matter what.
The Last Loaf of Rye Bread
“Remember there’s no such thing as a small act of kindness. Every act creates a ripple with no logical end.” —Scott Adams, Creator Of Dilbert Comic Strip
It was 1945, and World War II had just ended. My grandfather was finally free to return from Russia to his native village in Hungary. My grandfather was thousands of miles from home, and he had a deep wound from a gunshot in his right calf.
A Russian doctor had cleaned out his wound with nothing more than gauze and a bottle of vodka. My grandfather was one of only six people to survive in his squad of 100. The other 94 had perished in battle or disease, and my grandfather would have too if the Russian doctor had not saved his life.
In parting, the doctor offered my grandfather a loaf of dark rye bread to start him off on his long journey home. Seeing the empty cupboards in the house, my grandfather shook his head, but the doctor insisted.
Hesitantly, my grandfather took the bread and said:”Spaseeba. ” Years later, my grandfather remarked that “spaseeba” (the Russian word for “thank you”) was the extent of his knowledge in Russian, and he felt so humbled by the doctor’s generosity, that he couldn’t think of anything else to say anyway.
There were no trains or cars nearby, and my grandfather and his fellow soldiers walked. They spent their night in an abandoned barn in a Russian village.
My grandfather shared the load of rye bread with his mates, and he wondered how he could ever repay the doctor for saving his life and giving him the last piece of food in his house. He realized, that while he will probably never see the doctor again, the only way to repay him was to make it home alive, where his own family was waiting for him.
It was that that night that my grandfather declared to his fellow soldiers that “If I can do this (make it home alive) I can do anything.”
Indeed he did.
After 2 years of walking and eduring frostbite that left his hands trembling for the rest of his life, my grandfather arrived home.
In the years that followed, my grandfather lived up to his promise. He secured a well-paying job in a country that had been devastated by the war, started a family, and he quit smoking during a time when everyone else smoked, because he wanted to live long enough to see my Mom get married and start her own family.
Although my grandfather had passed away nearly 15 years before I had to write my thesis, I had heard his story so many times that, without realizing, it instilled in me one of the most valuable life lessons:
You Are Capable of Much More Than You Realize
Who says that you cannot train for the Olympics if you have a physical injury?
American diver Laura Wilkinson broke three of her toes on her right foot during a training accident for the 2000 Sydney Olympic, just 6 months before the event.
Undeterred by her injury, Laura and her coach, Ken Armstrong, developed a rigorous and unique training regimen that included mental imagery and standing in her cast for for six hours a day on top of the diving platform practicing her pushoffs.
Laura’s cast came off a few weeks before the Olympics, allowing her to enter the Trials and qualify for the event. While her foot did not heal completely, and she had to wear protective footwear to climb up the ladder, Laura won the gold medal for the 10 meter platform dive, becoming the first American to win the event since 1964.
Who says that you cannot set a world record in running after being told that you will never walk again?
In 1917, there was an explosion in a school house in Kansas that killed 13-year old Floyd Cunningham and left his eight year old brother, Glenn, with such severe burns to his lower body that the doctors recommended amputating his legs.
His parents did not allow the surgery, and instead massaged his legs for hours a day so he could regain strength in his muscles. Just 22 months after the accident, Glenn took his first steps.
In high school Glenn became an avid runner and by his senior year in college in 1934, he set a world record for the mile of 4:06.8, which he held for 3 years. In 1936 Glenn set the record for the 800 meter run and in 1938 he set a new world record for the indoor mile at 4:04.4.
Who says that you cannot finish your thesis if you have no time, no money, and a family to take care of?
Shirley was in her 60’s, worked full-time for an airline company and she took care of her grandchildren on the weekends. After overcoming many obstacles herself to earn a college degree, Shirley’s dream was to open up a career coaching center for disadvantaged African-American women.
Although she was barely making ends meet, Shirley took out a loan and enrolled in an online PhD program in Counseling. She reached out to me for thesis coaching in her last year when she already had a good first draft of her thesis.
Surprisingly, Shirley’s biggest obstacle was not a lack of money or time. Her main challenge was that she could not come to an agreement with her supervisor about the scope of her thesis. Every time they spoke over the phone, her supervisor asked Shirley to do more research.
Shirley did not give up, and after a few more discussions with her supervisor and her committee members, she was able to nail down the requirements for her thesis and get her degree.
What did my grandfather, Laura Wilkinson, Glenn Cunningham, and Shirley have in common that allowed them to overcome challenges and reach their goals?
In summary, determination combined with resolute focus helped these ordinary people achieve extraordinary success, sometimes against all the odds.
While you may think that your challenges in writing your thesis are negligible in comparison to the obstacles faced by a World War II veteran returning home or an athlete training for the Olympics, writing a graduate-level thesis also requires daily discipline and commitment, frequently at a cost to your personal life.
Without a supportive community and lack of guidance from a knowledgeable supervisor, the experience of writing a thesis can be isolating, even depressing, and only 50% of students who enroll in a doctoral program earn their PhDs.
After working with hundreds of graduate students over the last 5 years, I realized that they all had an undiscovered well of resources within them that allowed them to make unexpected breakthroughs in their writing process.
If you have made it to graduate school, I know that you already had a time in your life when you had to be creative and resourceful to achieve something that you previously thought was impossible.
In striving to reach your goal, you probably encountered unexpected obstacles (who doesn’t? ), yet you found a way to overcome whatever stood in your way to accomplish something that seemed out of reach just a few months or years earlier.
When you are focused and determined, you can supersede your own expectations and achieve consistent success – it is just a matter of gaining clarity in your purpose so you can intentionally call upon your innate capacity to be motivated, productive, and (infinitely) resourceful .