On a Sinking Ship in Saguenay
As usual, the moment winter ended, spring barely had a chance to exist. Within days, the snow disappeared and summer arrived in full force. A familiar Canadian transition that always felt abrupt, almost impatient.
I ended the previous post at a pivotal turning point. Not only was the season changing, but Alexandre and I had also made a major decision about our futures. Faced with financial uncertainty following the Laurentian crisis , compounded by a year of isolation, stalled progress, and mounting emotional exhaustion, we chose to downgrade our PhD programs to MSc degrees in hopes of escaping the academic system sooner.
It felt less like giving up and more like trying to reach shore before the sinking ship began to tilt.
May 2021
Our yearly salary contracts expired in May. With no progress in the Laurentian investigation, research funding remained frozen and inaccessible. Months had passed with little clarity, leaving our projects suspended in a strange limbo. Technically alive, yet unable to function in the way they had originally been designed.
Fortunately, Lucie stepped in once again. She assured us that she would renew our contracts and temporarily cover our salaries using her own research funds. It was a huge relief considering everything. At a time when nearly every part of the future felt unstable, knowing I could at least remain financially afloat removed one layer of pressure from an already overloaded mind.
After deciding to shorten my studies and transition into a Master’s degree, Lucie gave me only one condition. I needed to complete and submit a scientific article before writing my thesis. I accepted immediately. At first, I assumed this request was simply a matter of respecting the work already completed. After all, abandoning nearly two years of research without producing something tangible would have felt wasteful.
Later, however, I realized there was a more practical reason behind it. This was Quebec, and in Quebec, Master’s theses are generally expected to be written in French. For someone with limited French like myself, this created an obvious problem. Fortunately, there was a loophole. If I submitted a manuscript to an English-language scientific journal beforehand, I could request permission to include that publication directly into my thesis in its original language.
In practice, this meant that most of my thesis could remain in English, while only selected sections would still require French. A bureaucratic bypass. A quiet workaround within a system I was not fully prepared to navigate otherwise. The downside was equally obvious. There was now an enormous amount of work ahead of me, and productivity would need to increase considerably.
The Insidious Nature of Greed
Parallel to everything unfolding academically, another storyline continued developing in the background. In the previous chapter, I mentioned how cryptocurrency investing had slowly evolved from a casual hobby into something more serious. By February 2021, it was no longer just a side interest. It had become a growing part of my daily focus.
After learning about the research funding crisis, my attention gradually drifted away from academia and toward markets. And honestly, it made perfect sense at the time. The supposedly stable structure of university life was beginning to unravel, while crypto appeared to be doing the exact opposite. Within weeks, my portfolio had grown beyond anything my academic salary could realistically provide.
I began imagining a not too distant future where I could buy my own place without loans. Perhaps not immediately in a large city, but somewhere stable. Somewhere permanent. At the beginning of the year, I had laid out a practical set of expectations. A twofold return would have been my minimal expectation. Fivefold would have been excellent and a resounding success. Tenfold was the absolute lottery dream.
By March and April, however, greed quietly began shifting the goalposts. I had already achieved roughly a fivefold return, yet satisfaction never arrived. Instead of stepping back, I leaned in further. I convinced myself that I could outplay the market by rotating between altcoins, chasing momentum, and attempting to ride different waves within the broader cycle as money flowed unpredictably from one project group to another.
Losing Perspective
At the time, it felt strategic. In reality, it was becoming dangerously close to gambling. The constant movement of money created tunnel vision. I became increasingly focused on short-term gains while losing sight of the bigger picture. The market was overheating, but I was too distracted by success to recognize it clearly.
My thinking became increasingly grandiose. Apartments. Houses. Multiple properties down the line. If I played things correctly, I told myself, I could become a millionaire by the end of the year. My tenfold lottery had just become another stepping stone towards an absurd hundredfold. With precognitive skills, or absolutely masterful timing, perhaps achievable. But I lacked both the supernatural skill and experience needed to pull off such a feat.
By late April, I was chasing one final move. One more doubling that would push my portfolio into six-figure territory. Meanwhile, warning signs were everywhere. Bitcoin had stalled. Momentum was fading. The market had stretched too far, too quickly. There was no fuel left.
Then came the correction.
The crash arrived in early May and hit hard. Within weeks, nearly all of my profits disappeared. I was mentally devastated. Even if recovery remained possible, I had missed the opportunity to secure something that briefly felt life-changing.
Still, there was one unexpected benefit. The loss pulled me away from obsession. Trading stopped dominating my attention, and for the first time in months, I redirected my focus fully back toward academic work.
Just in time. Because the months ahead would demand far more from me than I yet realized.
Administrative Fallout
Changing study programs was not simply a personal decision. It came with an important administrative reality that needed to be resolved. Once I received approval from my supervisors and the higher-ups within Metal Earth, I went to the UQAC administration office together with Alexandre to explain our situations and formally request the downgrade from PhD to MSc.
Technically, it was possible. The university allowed program changes of this kind, though they admitted they had never processed a case quite like ours before. Alexandre and I had a legitimate reason. The financial collapse tied to Laurentian had placed us in a uniquely unstable position, and shortening our studies seemed like a practical solution.
There was, however, a complication in my case.
As a non-French foreign student, I occupied the most expensive tuition category available under a Master’s program. Canadian students and French-speaking international students paid relatively manageable yearly fees, usually somewhere between three and six thousand dollars. Non-French foreign students, however, were charged dramatically more. Up to four times as much.
An Unacceptable Proposal
When the administration explained the numbers to me, I nearly stopped listening halfway through.
They estimated I could be expected to pay roughly twenty-five thousand dollars retroactively to cover two years of Master’s tuition.
I remember feeling completely blindsided. I tried to remain calm and explain that I had already been paying tuition during my PhD years. The problem, from their perspective, was that doctoral tuition had been significantly lower than Master’s tuition in my category. In other words, they wanted the difference.
Not the woman sitting across from me personally. She was simply doing her job. But the system itself suddenly felt predatory. It felt as though I was being penalized for trying to salvage an already collapsing situation.
The administrator consulted a colleague. Neither seemed entirely sure how such a request would be handled. Since UQAC functioned under the larger University of Quebec network, they explained that the case would need to be reviewed at a higher level. A decision would come later.
Whether I voiced it aloud or kept it to myself, I remember drawing a line internally. If they truly expected me to pay that amount, then I was finished. I would pack my things, leave Canada, and never look back. There was no version of reality where I would allow myself to be cornered into that kind of financial trap. Everybody loses.
The Weight of Uncertainty
Summer had barely begun. I was now expected to intensify work on a project whose future remained uncertain, dependent on decisions far outside my control. For the first time, I began to question whether the previous two years had been building toward anything meaningful at all.
The structure that had kept me mentally functional throughout lockdowns and isolation was beginning to crack. Stress no longer felt temporary or manageable. It became constant background noise. Some days I would lie in bed wondering what the point was of pushing myself so hard if the university could ultimately dismantle everything through bureaucracy alone.
Yet stopping was never truly an option.
There remained a narrow path forward, but it depended on variables entirely outside my control. The only thing I could influence was the amount of effort I put in. So I kept working. Reading, analyzing, interpreting and writing. Attempting to force momentum where certainty no longer existed.
During this period, I spent a great deal of time alone inside my own head. The internal dialogue became increasingly loud. Thoughts looped endlessly, rehearsing scenarios, arguments, frustrations. Sometimes that dialogue spilled outward. A whispered sentence while pacing the apartment. A frustrated remark spoken into an empty room. Small leaks of pressure escaping an already overloaded system.
Cracks Beneath the Surface
The summer weeks settled into repetition. Work, eat, sleep, repeat.
The only interruptions were quiet walks through Parc du Moulin or increasingly disciplined gym sessions that became one of the few stable routines left in my life. But even during those moments, my mind rarely rested. The uncertainty remained constant. It fed resentment toward the university, toward the situation, even toward the region itself. I had begun associating Saguenay not with place, but with frustration and rage.
What exhausted me most was not simply the workload. It was the internal strain.
The mental dialogue had become relentless. Analysis layered over frustration, anger layered over fear. It felt like carrying multiple competing voices at once, each trying to interpret what was happening and decide how to survive it.
And this is where things become difficult to explain.
Dividing the Weight
Long before Canada and Denmark, during a few particularly dark periods earlier in life, I had experienced something unusual during times of prolonged stress and uncertainty. I hesitate to frame it clinically because I have no qualifications to do so, nor do I believe it fit neatly into any diagnosis. But the closest description I can give is that under enough pressure, my mind seemed capable of dividing responsibility across different versions of myself.
Not separate identities in any literal sense, but psychological roles that emerged under pressure. Some more disciplined, colder, or emotionally detached. Some capable of functioning when the others became overwhelmed.
Over time, when life stabilized, those divisions faded and reintegrated naturally. But reintegration does not necessarily erase what was created.
The Cost of Endurance
The pressure had reached a level where I no longer believed one version of myself could carry everything alone. Whether this was a coping mechanism, an exaggerated stress response, or simply the mind improvising survival strategies, I cannot say. What I do know is that I leaned into it, consciously accepting the risks it came with.
I never truly understood what lasting effects something like this might carry. I suspect more than I realized. Even then, I felt that repeatedly dividing oneself psychologically was not something the mind was designed to do without consequence. These colder, more disciplined versions of myself existed for a reason. They had to be efficient, emotionally restrained, and focused on survival.
Looking back, I sometimes wonder whether parts of those states remained behind longer than I realized. Whether each episode chipped away slightly at older parts of me — a softer trust, a greater empathy, a willingness to believe more easily in people or systems.
It is difficult to measure something so internal with certainty. Yet over the years, I have undeniably become more guarded, more individualistic, more calculating in how I navigate the world.
Perhaps that was growth. Or perhaps it was simply adaptation leaving permanent marks behind.
I allowed myself to compartmentalize. To separate fatigue from discipline, emotion from execution. When one part of me felt depleted, another stepped forward to continue the work.
It sounds strange even writing it now. Yet in my mind, it made perfect sense. The goal was simple: keep moving forward, no matter the cost.
When It Rains, It Pours
As if things were not going poorly enough, one morning I managed to chip one of my front teeth. It had already been repaired once years earlier after a rather unremarkable accident, and of course, this was the perfect time for it to become a problem again. When it rains, it pours.
Fixing it was not a major issue in itself, but by that point I had developed a mild anxiety whenever I needed to deal with any kind of service in Chicoutimi. Part of it came from the general sense that everything around me was steadily unraveling. The other part was the ever-present language barrier, which made even simple interactions feel unnecessarily complicated.
Fortunately, the person I spoke to on the phone knew enough English, so setting up the appointment was straightforward. That was about where the comfort ended.
Once I was in the chair, it became clear that the staff treating me did not speak any English at all. Being in a dentist’s chair is already an exercise in trust. Being in one while having no idea what the person working on your teeth is saying adds an entirely new layer of unease.
At some point, I decided the best strategy was to mentally check out. I imagined I had been abducted by aliens and was now lying on some examination table, surrounded by beings performing procedures I could not comprehend. The only reasonable hope was that they knew what they were doing and would return me in one piece.
At one point, the dentist said something. “Mords.” With various instruments occupying my mouth, I could only respond with a confused sound and a raised eyebrow. “Mords,” she repeated. I raised my hands slightly in surrender. She then mimicked a biting motion. Ah. Bite. Right. Understood.
By the time the procedure was over, I walked out of the clinic in a strange, detached haze. Not from any medication, but from the sheer absurdity of the experience. Somehow, despite everything, the job had been done properly.
The alien French ladies, it seemed, knew exactly what they were doing. A small, almost trivial victory in the grand scheme of things. But at that point, I took whatever wins I could get.
Controlled Overload
As the summer progressed, so too did my work. Slowly but surely, the article manuscript was beginning to take shape. The routine itself, however, was becoming increasingly robotic. Days blurred together into an endless cycle of reading, interpreting, writing, correcting, and repeating. Once the gyms were finally allowed to reopen earlier in the year, I immediately resumed physical exercise, and by summer I had settled into a steady routine of going two or three times a week.
The more overwhelming things became mentally, the harder I pushed myself physically. It was as if the two had become inseparably linked. The mounting stress, uncertainty, and frustration had to go somewhere, and the gym became one of the few places where effort still produced immediate, measurable results. As my mind drifted further into chaos, my body was reaching some of the best shape and strength of my life.
Deadlift and squat numbers climbed higher than ever before. StairMaster sessions became increasingly absurd. At some point, climbing the equivalent of the Empire State Building became routine, followed eventually by an ascent matching the height of the Petronas Towers in a single uninterrupted session. Looking back, it almost feels like I was trying to physically outrun my own mind.
Brief Escapes
There were also a few rare moments that briefly interrupted the mechanical rhythm of that summer. On a couple of occasions, Taylor and I went on short hiking trips within the Saguenay Fjord National Park. Being from Alberta, she was an avid hiker herself, and I had sorely missed that kind of activity since arriving in Chicoutimi. The destinations were not particularly far away, but without a car I was always dependent on others whenever I wanted to escape the city.
Those outings did not magically solve anything, but they helped reconnect me, if only briefly, with a world outside the shrinking cage of work and stress that my life had become. Standing atop those hills overlooking the fjord, even for a few hours, reminded me there was still a reality beyond routines, deadlines, bureaucracy, and psychological exhaustion.
Then there was the music.
The endless soundtrack accompanying my long walks to the university, gym, or grocery store. Around that time I had discovered bands like Haken and Frost*, whose songs became inseparable from that chapter of my life. Certain tracks resonated with me in a strangely precise way. Lyrics from Repeat to Fade in particular seemed to echo the monotony and emotional attrition of those months: “There’s only one way out, repeat to fade.”
Even now, hearing those songs instantly transports me back to that time. They no longer feel like mere music, but like fragments of memory preserved in sound.
By the end of August, I had finally completed the discussion chapter — by far the hardest part of the article to write. The foundation was there. What remained now was the exhausting cycle of revisions, corrections, and somehow stitching the entire manuscript into a coherent final product.
Revision Warfare
As my primary supervisor, Lucie wasted absolutely no time descending upon my manuscript with an avalanche of red comments, corrections, suggestions, and tracked changes. Entire paragraphs were reshaped, reorganized, or rewritten, only for us to revisit them days later and partially undo previous changes in favor of new ones. At some point, we reached the amusing stage where Lucie was effectively correcting her own earlier corrections — one of the unavoidable quirks of academic writing, I suppose.
Despite the chaos of revisions, I appreciated the speed at which she worked. Time was rapidly becoming my greatest enemy.
My other two collaborators, including my secondary supervisor, remained almost entirely silent. In the emails I had emphasized repeatedly that I was aiming for an early October submission due to the uncertainty surrounding my degree transition and the looming risk of having my studies spill over into yet another semester.
Days passed. Then more days.
After a polite reminder email produced little response, Lucie and I eventually decided to continue as though our collaborators simply had no major comments to add. There was no time left to wait indefinitely for perfect coordination. At that stage, progress mattered more than perfection.
Yet despite reaching such an important milestone, it was becoming increasingly difficult to stay motivated. The university still had not responded regarding the tuition situation. The entire future of my studies remained suspended in uncertainty, and no amount of work could resolve that lingering question hanging over everything.
When It Rains, It Bureaucracies
When mentioning the administrative tangle Alexandre and I found ourselves in after requesting our study program changes, I forgot to mention another delightful little complication.
The CAQ.
Normally, when you move to Canada on a student visa, you simply deal with the federal study permit. Except in Quebec, of course. Quebec also requires its own separate document called the Québec Acceptance Certificate for studies. Because apparently one bureaucracy was not enough.
Unlike the federal study permit, which is generally tied to your status as a student, the CAQ was linked specifically to the type of program we were enrolled in. In our case: PhD. Once we requested the downgrade to MSc programs, both of us had to reapply for entirely new CAQs reflecting the change.
We submitted the requests early in the summer. Eventually, the documents arrived. Mine was correct. I promptly submitted it to UQAC and moved on. Alexandre, however, got obliterated by bureaucratic incompetence one final time. His new CAQ had been issued… for a PhD. Not an MSc. Meaning he could not officially complete the downgrade process. At that point, he was simply done.
The process had already taken months, his mental state had been deteriorating for a long time, and the idea of restarting yet another administrative battle was too much. He refused to reapply. He no longer cared about graduating. His only remaining goal was to finish the semester, complete the research work he still owed for the article, and leave Canada behind for good. And that was exactly what he did.
There is only so much bad luck, stress, and institutional absurdity a person can absorb before they finally throw their hands up and walk away.
The All Clear
Around early September, I finally received the university’s decision regarding my tuition situation.
They accepted the PhD tuition payments I had already made over the previous years and agreed to apply them toward my modified study path. I would only need to pay MSc tuition fees for the single semester I remained enrolled under the new program, along with any potential additional semesters if I failed to finish in time.
It was a massive victory. Everything had been hinging on this moment for months.
The instant I read the email, it felt as though some great bell had gone off inside my head. A deep reverberating sound cutting through months of uncertainty and exhaustion. The path ahead suddenly became clear.
I had one month left. One month to finish everything. And there was still an absurd amount of work remaining. But now there was no hesitation left in me. No more doubt. No more paralysis. It was time to shift into maximum gear.
My routine immediately intensified. I woke up, ate, and worked until afternoon. Ate again, then continued working into the evening before rushing to the gym, where I pushed myself harder than ever before. After returning home, I ate once more and continued working late into the night until I finally passed out from exhaustion.
Day after day. Harder and harder. As if sheer momentum alone could carry me across the finish line.
Final Stretch
By mid-September, after what must have been the seventh or eighth major revision, Lucie was finally satisfied with the article manuscript. At last, I had something resembling a final version.
Now I just needed to write an entire thesis in roughly two weeks. In French. Well… sort of.
In reality, I wrote everything in English first, then translated it using software before sending it to Lucie for language corrections. Honestly, that woman was an absolute godsend during this period. I genuinely do not think I could have finished all of this without her help.
The workload was insane. Sections had to be rewritten multiple times in completely different formats. The article itself in full scientific detail, then restructured portions for the thesis chapters, then condensed versions for abstracts, conclusions, summaries, and introductions. Looking back, this was probably the period where I unintentionally developed most of my writing skills.
Conveniently enough, those skills would later become quite useful for things entirely unrelated to academia.
By the end of September, things were finally starting to look hopeful. I was going to make it. Then my secondary supervisor finally replied to an email I had sent over a month earlier. With corrections. At the absolute worst possible time.
I nearly lost my mind.
Lucie, thankfully, calmed me down quickly. The changes were manageable, she said. She would help me deal with them. I just needed to focus on finishing the thesis. The bell rang again in my mind. Double down. We could still do this. Where one version of me might have failed, many of us would succeed.
Pushing the Limits
By October, a single phrase had embedded itself into my mind and repeated endlessly like a mantra:
“I will not be stopped. I can not be stopped.”
One evening during leg day at the gym, I pushed myself especially hard during heavy sets. By the end of them, I was completely winded and slightly dizzy. My legs felt weak beneath me and I barely had the strength to continue.
I finished the session and headed toward the locker room.
The cleaning staff had just washed the floors, and the heavy perfumed smell of cleaning chemicals hit me immediately. Combined with the warmth of the room and my already exhausted state, it made me nauseous almost instantly. I wanted to get changed quickly and leave for fresh air.
Instead, my stomach insisted I make one stop first. I stepped into a stall, closed the door behind me, and just as I was about to sit down… Everything went black.
System Reboot
In a strange hazy dream, the loud ringing in my head slowly gave way to the distant sound of a fan spinning somewhere nearby.
I opened my eyes in confusion. The gym. Locker room floor. My legs awkwardly sticking out beneath the stall door must have looked like the Wicked Witch of the West after Dorothy’s house landed on her.
My composure returned surprisingly quickly. I stumbled out of the stall and lay down flat on a nearby bench, somewhere between amused and deeply embarrassed by the absurdity of the situation. Thankfully, nobody else had been there to witness it.
After resting for a while, the weakness slowly passed. The cool air outside helped even more. Looking things up while I walked, I was relieved to discover that passing out during or after extremely heavy leg training was apparently not uncommon. Intense exertion could redirect blood flow heavily into the legs, especially combined with poor breathing, overheating, exhaustion, and dehydration.
In other words: I had essentially overclocked myself. Yet somehow, even that ridiculous episode became part of the larger story of that period.
As I continued walking home through the cold autumn air with a smirk on my face, I repeated the phrase aloud this time, almost as if defying nature itself:
“I will NOT be stopped. I CANNOT be stopped.”
Nearing Deadlines
I was entering the final week before the Monday submission deadline. Working at maximum capacity.
The final revision of the article was nearly complete. My thesis was approaching the finish line as well. The plan was straightforward in theory: first submit the scientific article to a journal, then immediately submit the thesis to the university based on that article submission. Afterward, I would still have two months left to complete an additional project course required by the new MSc credit structure before finally addressing whatever thesis corrections came back from the reviewers near the end of the year.
If all went according to plan, I would somehow complete one of the most absurd academic loophole-jumping feats imaginable, all while navigating bureaucratic chaos, collapsing funding, lockdowns, and relentless psychological pressure. And somehow… it was actually working.
With each passing day that week, I could feel myself getting closer to the end. Yet paradoxically, I also kept working harder and longer with each passing day. The final push. Fatigue had temporarily lost its grip on me. I was a machine.
Then came Thursday morning. Lucie called me. In her deceptively cheerful tone — the one she used whenever masking impending disaster — she informed me that we had “another small problem.”
Oh no. What was it this time?
Well, after speaking with administration, she had learned that all course credits needed to be officially completed before thesis submission. Our entire workaround plan had just collapsed. I could no longer finish the additional course afterward.
It felt like a hammer came crashing down onto everything. Not because it completely ruined the situation, but because it meant I would now have to extend everything into another semester. More wasted time, more money and more administrative purgatory. Deflated, I told Lucie that this was probably it then. No way around it anymore.
But she hesitated. “Not necessarily…” Then, cautiously but hopefully, she asked: “Do you think you could write a course report in three days over the weekend?” I answered instantly. “I’ll do it in two.”
At this point, it was obvious we were all-in.
One More Impossible Task
I was allowed to choose the report topic myself. Naturally, I picked something closely related to my research work while still being different enough to avoid simply recycling material.
I gathered several articles and a reference book, ignored everything non-essential, including proper meals, and started writing. And then something strange happened. The information simply began pouring out of me. Hours blurred together. Thought became momentum. Momentum became flow and by early evening, it was done.
An entire fifteen-page review report on porphyry mineralizing systems. Complete with figures, references, formatting and everything. Written in under a day. Even I struggled to fully process what I had just done.
I sent the report to Alexandre and asked if he could quickly proofread it for me. He got back to me surprisingly fast with only a handful of minor corrections. More amusingly, he openly admitted that he was shocked by how good it actually read considering the absurd timeframe.
Honestly, so was I. That night, I sent the report to Lucie for final review and submission.
Mounting Momentum
At this point, the accomplishments were becoming increasingly ridiculous.
A scientific article assembled within months under catastrophic conditions. A Master’s thesis completed in roughly two weeks. Now an entire course report researched and written in less than a day. I genuinely think I may have broken some kind of unofficial academic speed record somewhere along the line.
By Friday morning, I was overflowing with confidence. Despite everything that had happened since the collapse of our funding months earlier… despite the lockdowns, the isolation, the bureaucratic warfare, the mounting psychological strain and constant uncertainty… I had somehow managed to force my way through it all.
Against all odds, I was going to make it.
The Final Stretch
My report was accepted almost immediately. Credits were rushed through administration and officially granted in time. Final article and thesis submission was scheduled for Monday.
That weekend was probably the happiest I had been during my entire time in Chicoutimi. For the first time in what felt like forever, the pressure had lifted.
I shared a bottle of wine with Alexandre and we drank to survival, success, and whatever uncertain future waited for both of us afterward. My mind drifted through a surreal haze somewhere between euphoria and exhaustion. At times I would simply stare blankly into space while my thoughts struggled to adjust to the idea that there might not actually be more work waiting around the next corner.
My brain no longer understood the concept of rest.
Even during moments of calm, some part of me remained hyper-alert, continuously scanning for unfinished tasks, hidden complications, or incoming disasters. But by Monday morning, I had finally begun letting go. For the first time in months, I was almost ready to relax.
Then I opened my email. And everything exploded again.
Collision Course
The third collaborator on my paper had finally replied to the discussion manuscript I had originally sent back in August. And she was furious.
I will not name this person. The purpose of these stories is not to shame individuals, but simply to recount events as I experienced them.
The collaborator had previously worked in academia at Laurentian and had studied some of the same geological material I was working on. Our projects were never meant to directly overlap. Hers focused primarily on geochronology and age dating, while mine centered more around geological processes and interpretation. However, under Lucie’s guidance, my final manuscript had ended up including a small amount of age dating work as well.
And our ages did not perfectly agree.
The differences were relatively minor, but the uncertainty ranges also did not fully overlap. That was enough.
The collaborator launched into a full-scale email meltdown on the very day we were supposed to submit the article. Various higher-ups were copied into the exchange. Claims were made that this violated the original project scope agreement and that publication of my work could jeopardize her own unpublished research.
After everything I had endured… after months of stress, endless work, mental deterioration, institutional chaos, and near burnout… I now stood at the finish line watching someone threaten to destroy everything because they themselves had not yet finished publishing their own work.
I reread the email chain multiple times. The more it sunk in the more heat rushed through my body.
I was absolutely furious. Not frustrated. Not upset. Livid.
I was out for blood.
The Brink
I called Lucie immediately.
She had already responded diplomatically within the email chain and was trying to arrange a direct conversation with the collaborator. When we spoke, she explained that she still hadn’t managed to reach them. Likely because they were working in the field somewhere. Lucie promised she would continue trying. She also reassured me that even if necessary, we could delay submission by up to a week without compromising the overall outcome.
On the surface, I remained calm. Internally, I was a furnace.
All of the focus, pressure, compartmentalization and psychological intensity I had built over the previous months now redirected itself toward a single target. My mind immediately began evaluating scenarios, outcomes, and countermeasures.
The Raging Tempest
Lucie and I discussed options in case diplomacy failed.
Without going into unnecessary detail, we both understood that we ultimately held stronger cards than the collaborator did if things escalated further. The knives were out. But there was still hope that they would not need to be used. The following days were brutal psychologically.
At times, I managed to calm down and remind myself that the situation was temporarily out of my hands and that Lucie was doing everything possible to resolve it. Then reality would crash back into my thoughts again and reignite the fury instantly.
Everyone I spoke to during that period knew the situation and reacted with the same disbelief. Even if the collaborator had not intended actual malice, the timing of everything felt catastrophically destructive. And my mind responded accordingly.
The anger kept building. Pulse after pulse. Closer and closer to boiling over.
The Storm Breaks
Days later, Lucie finally called me back. She had managed to speak with the collaborator at length and the entire situation ultimately turned out to be one massive misunderstanding that had spiraled into an equally massive overreaction. One that had nearly destroyed everything I had worked toward.
In reality, even if there was some overlap between our work, the collaborator’s methodology was far more precise than my own. Their future publication would have no problem refining or overruling parts of my results later on. And honestly, I didn’t even care about this anymore. At that point, all I needed was to submit the article and escape the endless spiral my life in Saguenay had become.
The sheer amount of chaos that accumulated around this project as I approached completion was genuinely unbelievable. Yet somehow, through relentless effort, stubbornness, and Lucie’s unwavering support throughout the ordeal, we had made it through.
The article was submitted later that same day. Moments afterward, I submitted my Master’s thesis as well.
And then it was over. Slowly, the storm lost its fury. The ragged clouds finally began to part, revealing the sky beyond them once more. After nearly two years of chaos, pressure, isolation, uncertainty, and psychological exhaustion, the machine had somehow dragged itself across the finish line.
I had survived.
