The Silence After Collapse
There’s a particular kind of silence that follows the collapse of a dissertation. Not the clean break of a decision well made, but the slow, echoing quiet of something unraveling after years of trying to hold it together.
That was me last year—sitting in front of an outline I no longer believed in, a Word document full of pages I couldn’t bring myself to open, and a stack of comments that made my cry every time I looked at them. After more than a decade of academic work, my research had lost its shape, and I had to make the difficult decision to stop.
Not pause. Stop.
That break—my first in ten years—wasn’t just about stepping away from writing. It meant letting go of an entire framework, one I had defended in proposal meetings, shaped with committee members, and convinced myself I could salvage even as it slipped further from what I actually cared about.
Beginning Again, Differently
It’s hard to explain to people outside of academia what it feels like to “start over” on a PhD. There’s no clear roadmap for beginning again when so much of the path has already been walked.
But somehow, I’ve found myself here, back at the keyboard, notebook beside me, sticky notes scattered like breadcrumbs.
This time, the project feels different. The information feels tangible and the questions relatable. I’m now analyzing how Canadian newspapers covered a decade long court battle Restoule v. Canada—a 2018 court decision reaffirming the Crown’s obligation to raise treaty annuities promised under the 1850 Robinson Huron Treaty. It’s a legal case, yes, but also a narrative battleground: a place where ideas of justice, sovereignty, and legitimacy are publicly shaped and contested.
Following the Media
So I’m tracing the media coverage—not casually, but methodically.
I’m working with over 200 articles from national, regional, and Indigenous newspapers, reading closely to understand how they construct the Crown, represent First Nations voices, and frame the meaning of “treaty.” I’m asking: Whose perspectives are amplified? Whose are omitted? What language choices reinforce settler narratives? What strategies resist them?
To do this, I’m using a tool called NVivo, which helps with the quantitative and qualitative data analysis of language and texts. For those not familiar with it, think of it like a digital tool that lets you sort, tag, and connect patterns across dozens of texts. It’s less glamorous than it sounds—mostly hours of coding articles line by line—but it’s how I see the forest through the trees.
I’m about halfway through my first analysis chapter now and have started editing. The pace is deliberate. I revisit sentences often. Some days, the data feels generous. Other days, I second-guess everything. But unlike my first dissertation, this time I don’t feel like I’m faking it. I’m not trying to make the research fit into someone else’s frame.
Carrying Failure Forward
Instead, I’m working from a place of alignment—intellectually, ethically, emotionally. I care about this topic. I care about how treaty rights are represented in Canadian media. I care about how settler colonialism operates not just through law and policy, but through narrative silences and “common sense.”
There’s still a long way to go. I’ll soon be (nervously) waiting on feedback of this chapter. Whole chapters remain unwritten. But this project feels alive in a way the last one never did.
And while the failure of my first dissertation hasn’t disappeared, it’s no longer something I avoid. It’s part of the terrain now—something I’ve walked through, mapped in my own way, and used to recalibrate the route.
Questions I’m Sitting With
- What does it mean to write responsibly as a settler researcher analyzing Indigenous legal successes and struggles in Canadian media?
- How do we tell the truth about failure without turning it into performance?
- Where do we draw the line between self-disclosure and self-erasure when writing through academic breakdown?
I don’t have all the answers. But I’m learning to live with the questions.
More soon.
Samantha D. Stevens 
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