Graduation

I've had a nice visit with my family for the last few days. My parents came into town for graduation, and although I'll see my mom again in two weeks when she drives out to Michigan with me, I will probably not see my dad again until Christmas. This is kind of a strange thought. Since he has family and business and ski slopes to draw him to Utah, I have seen him pretty frequently over the last two years. For all that, it seems like there should be more to a goodbye than a hug in front of the Wilkinson Center while we parted ways, I to my office to pick up finals to grade and he to the Bookstore to deliver a milkshake to my brother. In fact, any goodbye for an extended period of time feels a little strange because the act itself is really no different than parting ways with a friend or family member for the evening, and yet it feels like it's a much more important goodbye and really ought to be different somehow.

But like I said, it's been a good visit. Graduation was nice - neither ceremony lasted much more than an hour (excluding time to line up and time to take pictures afterwards), and I actually enjoyed what was said by the speakers even if I can't remember a word of it now. It was sort of an odd experience, mostly because I've done it before. I may have been wearing more colorful attire this time, but it didn't feel quite as meaningful. Of course, that may also be because graduation is situated a bit oddly this time around. The first time, I had just finished my last final and I was packing up and leaving for Virginia as soon as I changed out of my robes. This time, I have been finished academically for several weeks, and I won't be leaving for another two. I put on a robe and shook hands and posed for pictures and received a fake diploma and ate refreshments in the department, but it didn't feel like it really meant anything.

Last year when University Chorale sang at August commencement, I remember looking at the doctoral students out on the front row and thinking how exciting it was that I was about to take that path myself. And I remember that when they had the doctoral students stand, my little sister (who, having missed her high school graduation to start summer term here, will go through her first graduation ever about the time I go through my fourth) leaned over to me in excitement and whispered how cool it would be to be at the very top of your academic career, to have gone all the way, and I agreed with her.

This year...nothing. I'm not really that excited about getting myself a hood in a few years and joining the ranks of acadamia. I'm not really excited about choosing to study a single subject not just for a few more years but for the rest of my life. I'm questioning the very purpose of the highest of higher education. I'm questioning the importance of the articles I will be writing and the research I will be doing - and I'm in a relatively "practical" field! Actually, that may be part of the problem. If I was going into something "impractical" then I could (maybe) justify researching just because it's interesting. But since the research in my field is actually supposed to help people, and because it often takes years to see even a portion of it trickle down into the schools, at which point the academic field has sprung ahead and is ready to critique the schools for entirely different reasons, I sometimes feel like what I'm about to do is a waste of time.

And there are no right answers! This would not be a problem (ambiguities are sometimes more interesting anyway) except that there are very real problems to be dealt with. How can it not be discouraging to know that no matter how hard you study the problem and promote change, you're never really going to fix it?

Actually, what this really comes down to is that I am feeling burned out from my thesis (still) and that I am starting to feel afraid of the next step. I really do know it's what I'm supposed to be doing, and I think that once I get into it I will remember why. And I want to do it, too - I love to learn, I love to teach, I am a pretty good teacher but not so good that I can't work on improving (for the rest of my life), and this seems like the best way for me to do what I can do best. I just need to get out there and get started, and if a week ago it seemed like the time between here and there was far too short, now that I've accepted that I'm leaving in no time at all I think I want to just go and get it over with.