Wednesday, July 18, 2007

Part of the reason this is no fun is that I'm choosing NOT to do something

"I'm not going to finish my PhD" doesn't have the same exciting quotient as "I'm going to graduate school in Wyoming." Choosing a negative, thats definitely part of the problem here. I've been lucky enough in life to spend most of my time agonizing over positive choices : who what where when why : to study, to live, to read, to be with.

In all of these choices there has been the implied negative choice: by coming to Wyoming I did not go to Arizona. The negative was in the background. Here: I'm not going to finish my PhD, the negative is in the foreground and the positive has yet to be determined. Some small part of me finds that exciting: maybe something truly unexpected will happen (a movie script, a career switch, the unknown unknowns). But most of me is consumed by looking for the positive. Because when I find it, I won't feel so uncertain.

Distractions and then hope

I haven't been ignoring the idea that I might not complete my PhD. I've been consumed by it and scared of it, so much so that I haven't bean ready to share it yet. Some unconscious damage control? Well, now it's out there. My head has been spinning with thoughts about my future : Teaching, first and foremost. Community college or high school? Trip to Thailand with my cousin? Should I move out of Laramie? I love living in Laramie, but it was never meant to be a long term prospect. Where should I get my teaching credential, if thats what I do? Could I still get in-state tuition at Cal State Long Beach? Teach for America? Do I need to wait tables in order to make ends meet this fall? Maybe swallowing my pride is the cost of going to Thailand for 6 weeks. I do want my PhD. I want to teach biology/ecology at the college or university level, but I just can't right now. I can't focus, the work doesn't self-motivate. I may regret this decision 10 years from now. But when that day comes I will try to remind myself that right now, this just isn't right. If the regret is deep enough, maybe I'll get my PhD then. But not now.

Hence the need for a little perspective. On to the next post and to reminding myself that 1) ending my graduate studies now does not mean I can't return to them later, 2) I've often thought about teaching high school, and 3) even with my PhD I've anticipated working at a community college. Maybe I'll start sooner than I expected.

Some perspective on my crisis of confidence

Erica Murray, a woman with whom I went to college but have not kept in touch, writes:

Miracles

I was in a cab this morning to Logan Airport and my loquacious driver queried my plans to the point where I found myself explaining to this perfect stranger that I was going to France to get my cancer cured.

And, to my shock, it appears that is indeed what I am doing.

Life’s pace, daily priorities, distractions distractions—and I just haven’t given this journey its due psychological, spiritual, or emotional prep. Funny how in speaking plainly to a taxi driver I finally heard where I was going.


Erica is writing about her life and leukemia at http://ericamurray.blogspot.com/





Erica's friend Erik is blogging at http://myyearofnewthings.blogspot.com/. Erik looks vaguely familiar to me but I don't think we knew each other at Oxy. Erik has been digging through his garage and found a newspaper review of a play at SCR in which the reviewer mistook him for Will Farrell. "THEN, on the next page of my scrapbook, there's a retraction that basically says "in last week's review of SCR's Pinocchio, we mis-identified the actor who played the stagehand as Eric Patterson.... I realize I'm about sixteen years too late, but I kind of want to send them a letter asking for an apology for misspelling my name. ("In the 1991 review of SCR's Pinocchio, we misspelled...")"

Reflecting on the high school diary he found:
I don’t know what this string of words says about sixteen-year-old Erik, but it makes me feel incredibly boring, and I wish that sixteen-year-old Erik would just come out of the closet and get laid already.

Much of Erik's blog is devoted to the recovery of his and Erica's friend Uma, who suffered a severe brain aneurysm in January of 2007.
…yell a message to Uma out your window, as loud as you can. Make it as un-PC as possible, because Uma likes it that way.

…even if you read this blog and don’t know Uma…even if you’re just coming across this blog post, randomly—a blog reader passing in the night—please take a second to tell a dirty joke, think a hopeful thought, and send out some love into the ether…