Mudita Journal

Joshua Zader, M.S.

May 15, 2003 · Filed under: Personal
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Today I successfully defended my master’s thesis, and passed with distinction.

The latter caught me completely off-guard. I didn’t know what “with distincton” meant until my advisor explained it to me. (Apparently, it’s an honor bestowed upon one out of every four or five candidates.) Given that it has taken me four years to complete my master’s thesis, which technically makes me out-of-progress in the program, I was expecting nothing of the sort.

For the previous 24 hours, I had been feeling considerable anxiety—no, abject fear—about making my presentation to the committee. This morning I awoke at 4:00 a.m., feeling anxious about the looming presentation, and never succeeded in getting back to sleep.

To further dissolve any lingering confidence, I had an unfortunate memory in the back of my mind: Two years ago, during my defense of my master’s proposal before this same committee, I had all-but-swallowed my own larynx, I got so nervous.

Today went much better. As far as I can tell, the chief difference was that I consistently applied what I have learned from Eckhart Tolle about how to deal with any kind of resistance to an experience. Each time I felt anxious or afraid, including the moments right before my defense started, I responded by being intensely present with the experience, surrendering to it, rather than becoming tense or lost in thought.

Ultimately, the results were amazing. I was in varying degrees of torment leading up to the defense, and even had a flash of wondering if I’d need to go find a bathroom. But I kept staying with the experience and, lo and behold, when it came time for the actual defense, I was able to put my full attention on the task at hand. Word is, the committee was more impressed with the presentation than with the actual thesis.

As honored as I am by my committee’s decision, I feel that what I really learned today is that Eckhart Tolle is one damn sage man.

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  • http://faustin.livejournal.com kirez

    Congratulations, Josh! I’m even happier to come here and read about what you learned from the experience, and the promise of enhanced confidence for future presentations.

    I’m really happy for you.

  • Mike Hardy

    Congratulations!

    Are you going to go on to get a PhD?

  • http://www.dianahsieh.com/blog/ Diana Hsieh

    Congrats Josh! … Or should that be Master Joshua?

  • fredrik

    Well done!

  • Lissa Fischer

    Kudos! You earned it. :)

  • http://hubcap.clemson.edu/~campber.html Robert Campbell

    Congratulations!

    And I’ll bet you’ll find that the doctoral defense goes easier.

  • http://www.livejournal.com/users/happilymyself HappilyMyself

    Congrats. :)

    And interesting.. while I’ve never heard of Tolle, it’s almost exactly like things I’ve been figuring out on my own lately, in dealing with the mass amounts of anxiety I feel about all kinds of things. I knew I had to overcome it, or forever be mediocore in life. I stumbled across something like that just a couple of weeks ago — I decided to just let myself feel the fear, let myself experience it.. and most of the unpleasantness of the fear went away.

    Of course, after a day or so of that (I was going through a lot at the time), it started to get really annoying, the way pain from an injury gets after a few days of toleration. :)

    But since, my ability to tolerate anxiety has increased greatly, and the amount of anxiety I feel over things has gone down. :)

    I’ll have to check this guy out. Thanks!

  • http://www.wayneklick.com Wayne

    Congratulations Joshua. I’m glad to that when we do finally get together for lunch, I’ll be dining with a Master.

  • http://www.davidmsc.com David

    Well, the title of your blog – Mudita – certainly sums up my feeling: happiness at your success! Congratulations, Joshua!

  • Amanda

    FINALLY!! This has been a long time coming, Josh. Way to go! You have worked long and hard — and your work is finally being rewarded. :)

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