The Green* Man

I finally crossed the finish line of this doctoral marathon in the Summer of 2015.  We found our home -bye, bye, duct tape!- and I believe my husband is keeping an eye for that nearby library ;)

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What do you get when you cross a middle aged doctoral student with the life of the military enlisted?  A pre-menopausal periodic job seeker with acute phobia to duct tape.  While pursuing a higher degree is widely known by its secondary effect, that quixotic solitude, changing residence before landing a career-building job lassoes the academic loner to the ground, her idealism sinking deep into the quick sands of relocation.  One becomes the epitome of the myth of the Eternal Return, both incarnating and marrying the “green man” —Is there a sin for that?— where time is measured in deployment units, and as with the Bing Bang Theory, one ponders what unfathomed circumstances led her loving husband to sign in.

   

On the bright side, the vertiginous advances in technology have patched the doctoral pursuant journey with sustainable, yet flimsy, modes of virtual classroom attendance and research.   Wherever she goes, whatever she does information is there at the click of the mouse.  In fact, the student’s relationship with this immense lagoon of knowledge is built oceans apart, day after day, (hear the tune?) on a healthy skepticism and a Sisyphus-like obstinacy.  Soon thereafter, technology became the virtual family member and the constant reminder that in our semi-nomadic life, the only thing that restarts automatically after an improper shut down is Windows and that a safe mode is not part of the cookie-cutter, rudimentary pre-deployment package.  Sir, no, Sir!  However one takes it, the verdict is crystal clear:  Publish or die.  Hubby offered to bury my ashes in a nearby library.  As H. G. Wells would say, it is “romantic with a shadow of meanness.”  So, the years and the monies and the time invested in attaining a higher degree has thrown many a vicissitude our way, which have been caught up lately in the swirling throngs of hot flashes and memory loss, forcing all sort of sh…undesirable situations to hit the fan.  Duck!

This all truly makes for a magnificent wretched hagiography, in which one pays the mortgage of one’s own future while dealing with quite a few meanies and thinly witted characters, who seem to think that they stand on higher moral grounds than the rest of the populace.  In current parlance, when we get a chance to lay under the covers of anonymity, the trolls come out.  And then, one faces those prone to premature judgment, the eternal testers to one’s own resilience of emotional stability. Oops! Too late.   Wait! How did I get here?  I meant to whine very loudly so that you could hear about the egregious career problems and perceptions of stigma of … darn! It’s hot here … of a “dependent” —don’t you hate that word? Immensely!—  with latent menopausal symptoms and a phobia to duct tape.   I quit this grousing with the hero of La Mancha’s words: “Al bien hacer jamás le falta premio¨ (For each job well done there is always a price).  Here is to hoping!