Old Glasses

I haven't gotten new glasses since before I went to grad school. That feels like a lifetime ago. Maybe I should stop taking goofy pictures of my old glasses and do something about it.

The reason I haven't is that I haven't failed my old need-new-glasses test: I used to get new glasses every time I realized I had trouble seeing things like street signs in the distance. The last time, for instance, I remember standing at the top of a cliff talking with someone about a car wondering in the distance. A car they could see, and I couldn't, save for the long dust cloud pointing it out. Either that doesn't happen here, or my vision is stabilized.

Either way, the glasses are getting fogged with the scratches of nearly a decade of use.

Ph.D. In Anger Management

Packrat was right: Graduate school took a lot longer than I thought. This is something you should prepare for.

Higher degrees do not happen on anything that really resembles a schedule. Even if your research group dissolves and you defend and submit your dissertation, the document must still pass through the bowls of the university bureaucracy. Example: I defended in August and my dissertation was actually accepted last week.

You can't just leave the system while the dissertation makes it's rounds. This means that the worst possible time to leave is at the beginning of a new year, because you'll get stuck with a ton of fees that you'd never have a hope of recouping. (It cost $850.00 for mandatory health insurance which I would be in a position to hold and use for approximately 1 week!)

As a result of the ongoing limbo situation, every week or two something new and exciting must be dealt with using a careful combination email, phone calls, and credit cards. Someone needs more copies of the signature page, copyright clearance, a survey, or some inane form. Not only do you get to hate grad school while you're there, it hunts you down with fresh annoyance so you can regret it on a regular basis!