With a baby on the way, (now at 23 weeks, 8 inches and ~1 lb., we've decided to name him my son) it sometimes seems that my career options are limited by the responsibility of raising a family and keeping a steady income stream. I look back and wonder if I'll ever live to regret the decision not to finish, given that it seems now my professor was right: if you leave with the statement, "maybe I'll come back to finish it later," you probably won't ever do so. And I think that subconsciously I knew that, even then.
Timeline of my thoughts: I look at my blog entry preceding the defense of my research proposal, then the one directly proceeding it, where there is a hint of wanting to quit:
It's a relief, I guess. I'm also just tired, and I've been thinking of taking the M.S. and getting a job...*sigh*However, about five days later, in one of my blog posts, I refer to finishing the Ph.D.:
I certainly agree that my wife takes priority over everything else, that staying healthy is tied with my Ph.D. in close second, that running the AAFSA group is a distant third, but should still take huge precedence over blogging...However, then on April 22 I admitted I was looking for jobs and was making the blogsite private again as a result. So it really seems that I made my final decision to quit the Ph.D. program some time between April 11 and April 22. About the only big thing I know that happened between those times was the shooting at VT, but I really don't think that influenced me (unless it was subconscious). I didn't go for my Hammond interview until the end of June, and I was notified I got the job only a few days later.
It's so funny, because as a kid and teen and even in college, I was so concerned with the question, "what will I do with my life?" My view then was that carefully choosing my career path and following crucial steps in the process would produce unbounded happiness and success. What seems to have happened, instead, is that a somewhat-arbitrary set of circumstances simply showed me, along the way, that I would be happier changing course from my originally-perceived "perfect" career path(s). And it appears to be the case that teaching chemistry to highschoolers at a private school in Columbia was never "in my sights" as a goal, yet happened nonetheless.
I know that for some people, this would be a nightmare: I have a childhood friend that I think of as almost preternatural in his ability to plan and determine his own course in life. He was valedictorian, an athlete, he wanted to go to med school since I can remember him, and all he's accomplished has proven, at the least, that some people have a powerful drive and deliver on their own goals. I was just never that way. Maybe I never will be.
I wonder, as with kids who are not planned, if some of life's surprises are the best things to happen to us. The best laid plans of mice and men often go awry, and perhaps our preconceived notions of our own happiness and success are often flawed, much to our chagrin. Lou Holtz reportedly said that,
"Life is ten percent what happens to you and ninety percent how you respond to it."If that is indeed the case, then I wonder if I will one day look back upon my responses to life's happenings (i.e., my decisions) with regret or with pride. At the least, I have more options available to me if anything about my present choices should prove to be beyond accommodation and incapable of living with.
Here are my pipe dreams career-wise:
- Go to law school, perhaps while working as a teacher by going to USC, and become an IP attorney. With my technical background, I qualify for the USPTO exam.
- Get my left scaphoid non-union fixed and my 90° wrist bend back so I could enlist and attend OCS to become a pilot for the Navy or Air Force. (The age window is closing fast, however)
- Sign up with the Effa Bee Eye or the CIA. The new FBI drug requirements will help (modified 12/06), as I experimented a little during my senior year of high school. The CIA's requirements seem extremely lax, but, as with most things in the CIA, they're probably just unpublished publicly and highly flexible. However, I haven't used any illegal substances since I was 17 (roughly since November of 1999), so I should be good with either one.
