I am up nice and early. Some, me for instance, might say too early. But I have a couple hours left to prepare for my comp defence. I probably hoped sometime in my naive youth that I wouldn't be preparing last minute, once I reached my PhD. I guess we all have to play to our strengths. Especially if we are uninterested in personal or professional growth. And really, if grad school is about anything else, it is about extending the period of youth when personal growth isn't a priority for many years.
I come to this comp of two minds. I am happy for the progress and for the praise I yearn for so greatly. (Nice call in the comments, mysterious, and I assume handsome, stranger). But, I also fear the closing of my adolescence and the horizon of adulthood. And I mean real adulthood, where work, finances, and family commitments are forefronted; not the faux adulthood of academic blowhards who think critically analyzing everything and everyone is a marker of being grown up.
As it turns out, being an adult is more about accepting frailty in yourself and others, than pointing it out. And for someone who has built his life on exposing, and mocking the failures of himself, and others, growing into adulthood does not play to my strengths.
So, wish me luck but not godspeed. I need a couple more years of self-absorption before I'm ready to be the person my Dad was at 20.
For Fuck's sake, I'm not even 40 yet, give me some time.
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