Joseph Epstein, months after his 15 minutes of fame

Dear Joseph Epstein

I am a woman with a doctorate, and it must be difficult to know which one of those things you hate more, as you sit back in your armchair admiring your own intellectual legacy of brandy and wanking.

You resent someone who hasn't earned their title, which I kind of understand, as you've clearly worked for every letter of 'dickhead'. And so you mocked the PhD of Dr Jill Biden - without, of course, having turned a single page.

I'll tell you the story of my own PhD, not because it's particularly interesting, but simply because I know the opinions of a woman will annoy you. That's reward enough.

Doing a PhD is harder than you might think, Joseph. For example, you're supposed to read things before commenting on them.

I began my own PhD the day before I gave birth to my second child. To be fair, it wasn't a random coincidence. I knew both the enrolment and the baby were coming. It's just, there's never a good time in life for a woman to do either. My midwife visited the ward to check my stitches, and caught me reading Treasury's 1987 briefing to the incoming Minister. 'Isn't hospital boring enough for you?', she asked drolly.

Apparently, it wasn't: I stuck that thesis out for more than a decade, reading crap so dull that my tears stained the pages of overdue library books. I had little kids and little money, for most of it was working a full time job. It was gruelling. In the early years, I got so tangled in ideas that would not connect I felt I was being dragged by a deadweight, lungs filling with water, to the bottom of the sea.

And then, one day, a miracle happened. I was lounging in the sun on the lawn of our Naenae house, and suddenly, I just worked out what I needed to do. As I grabbed a pen and paper, all the disparate pieces fell into place: in a frenzied scribble, I sketched out a new, coherent structure for my stubborn thesis.

And then an unmiracle happened: my brain slid from PhD from ADHD and I wandered inside the house and the wind came up and blew my bit of paper away and I stood on the lawn and snot-cried. And then another miracle happened. I found the bit of paper, only a wee bit rained on, discarded much of the work I'd done so far, and began my thesis again, many more years ahead of me, but this time with success.

Why did I do it?

Well, because I was never that smart - or not in any conventional way. School was hard for me. I just made it into university, and didn't graduate. Later on, aged 25 and with my first baby, no idea how to get a 'real' job, I decided to try again, enrolling in a few undergraduate papers.

It was about self-worth. Maybe I chose a stupid way to do it, but I wanted to prove that I was smart after all, so I picked the hardest, most lofty goal I could think of. That seems naive now, almost silly. As the years dragged on, my goal changed: all that mattered anymore was that my kids - who had grown up alongside the thesis - would not see me fail.

The thing I proved was not to the world, but to myself, and it was not about being smart, but about being strong. That was far more valuable.

And that's why you see me smiling in this photo, Joseph. The feeling behind that smile cannot be taken away by a man like you, or a thousand of your ilk.

To conclude, you don't like my PhD? Get PhuckeD!

Dr Annanonymous