Having put my life in hock to the University of California for the last five years and three months, I return tomorrow to Sproul Hall to turn in my dissertation, reclaim my freedom, and receive the reward for my travails. So far this promises to include a lollipop (with wrapper: “PhinisheD”), a sheet of paper with a seal on it that I can show at Top Dog for a free sausage, and the right to annoy everyone by making them call me “Doctor” for a few hours.

It is very strange to me to reach this point, in part because I had ceased to think of my graduate career as having a natural termination until I started looking for a job and realized that nothing was likely to remain the same for long. It is a reflection that is, like most things touching time, bitter to make. I will not see some of my closest friends for months on end, once I leave. What I build with them now will have to last for who knows how long.

At the same time the thought of leaving California and the Bay Area, so much of which has frustrated me so long now, and the thoughts of the opportunities I have in front of me, are like finding myself out in the wide open after long confinement.

With all this on my mind, I wrote the dialogue I am posting below, though I must admit I was somewhat hesistant to do so. I feared it would be taken as making rather too much of something that is about to be one of my accomplishments. The truth is I have a mortal fear of blowing my own horn, and I am inclined myself to make little of this. Every fifth person you meet in Berkeley seems to have a Ph.D. or be working on one, and many doctors seem to treat their degrees as an excuse to indulge in unlimited amounts of cant. For a long time a doctorate has not seemed all that exceptional to me, or much of a reccomendation.

But on reflection, treating this degree as nothing much more than another hoop to be jumped through, would be ungrateful to the people who sacrificed so much to get me here, my parents and my teachers. That is not something I feel in the least. If there is to be too much of something I hope it is my gratitude.

DialogueWithStAlbert

(cdm | ReturnToSproul)