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So... I'm in my thirties, i'm about to finish my phd in one of the world's best university, and this morning I felt fine. I usually revert to writing in here as a way of emptying my soul and feeling better. Usually it works, and it has taken me from the deepest pits of my depression to a milder state of mind. Not to a happy place, mind you, but to a lower-scale bout of depression.

I come from a rocky couple of years: I have discovered that my old supervisor had tricked an exam against me to have me fail and kicked out of the Uni (Check my older posts for this story, also involving the examiner, the full-professor who deemed me "too ugly, fat, and stupid for a PhD", full quote). I have found support in the wider academic world, with a world-renown name offering me a job first, and then agreeing to supervise me if I had not taken it. I have "sued" the University (kind of, it was a process internal to the university, but I had to hire a lawyer). I have won a crushing win against the faculty ("I have never seen a similar humiliation for a faculty and an examiner", said a friend and former "judge"). I have repeated the exam. I have passed the exam.

I am now a month from submission. My new supervisor and my friend/unofficial supervisor have just promoted my dissertation with flying colors, so I basically need to write a conclusion of a couple of pages, cross the Ts, dot the Is, and hand in what has been 7.5 long years of my life (should have been 4/5, but these shenanigans robbed me of 3 full years of my life).

I am however today back in the pit of the grad-school depression, as I am not sure it is finished. Remember the humiliated full-professor above? When I passed the exam one of the examiners was a friend of his, who basically did everything in his power to fail me. I passed because the OTHER examiner took my side in the shouting match. It was ugly as fuck, and basically told me that the humiliation of me winning in "court" could not pass without further actions.

Now, I even though my dissertation is unassailable, I do not trust the university and I am fully expecting a final hack-job at the thesis defence. And against that I am powerless.