A Complex Situation
The bizarro mouse cake I made recently was in honor of my wonderful friend who just finished her PhD in GeniusScienceCraziness. This coming weekend my brother is running a marathon in Vermont.
So I started thinking, which didn't go so well.
Either many, many more people than I thought earn doctoral degrees and/or run marathons, or I've got to find some different friends.
That is, of course, a joke. HOWEVER. A disproportionate number of my friends have either PhDs or have run marathons. Some have even accomplished both. In fact, BOTH OF MY PARENTS HAVE ACCOMPLISHED BOTH. The Vermont marathon-running, not-a-blog challenging brother, is, come to think of it, ABD.* And it's not like this weekend he'll be running his first marathon, it's his forty billionth, and he's younger than I am (not by much) so I guess he's running like eight of them a day or something. Oh yeah, and he's a computer genius. Self-taught. Did I mention that his wife also has a PhD? Well, she does. She hasn't run a marathon yet, but I'm assuming it's only a matter of time before she wakes up one Saturday and says, 'Hey, I think I'll go run 26.2 miles!"
I have a few friends who have not, to the best of my knowledge, run marathons nor earned PhDs. It is a safe bet, though, that these mere mortals have a few tricks up their sleeves as well. One of these people is, I suspect, going to be doing triathlons within a matter of weeks, and the other, The Hostess with the Mostest Hostessability, lives just down the road a piece from Martha Stewart and is probably plotting a bloodless coup. A bloodless coup that will, fingers crossed, be a huge success so that we can all stop feeling inferior about the fact that we don't eat purple eggs from our own French-speaking chickens. Yet another is a non-practicing poet, with an MFA, most likely because back in the middle ages when we went to graduate school, PhDs in creative writing didn't exist. Either did these crazy horseless carriages and wireless telegraph confabulations.
I actually DO have a Master's Degree. But I only use it when I really need to. For instance, when someone tries to outsnob me at a party and I need to smack them down...of course, this only works with people who aren't my friends and, therefore, are not likely to smack me back with, "I'll see your pissant Master's degree and raise you a J.D/MBA."
I don't really know where I'm going with this...except that the realization that so many of the people I care most about have done or are doing the two things I don't think I actually could do has flipped the switch on a tiny flinking spot of light in the recesses of myapparently hideously underachieving brain. It's not a particularly bright light, but it has the potential to keep me awake at night. I wonder what I'm going to have to do to switch it off.
*ABD stands for All But Dissertation, which I know because, hello? I know an absurd number of people who are now or have been in advanced degree programs and this is how they talk.
So I started thinking, which didn't go so well.
Either many, many more people than I thought earn doctoral degrees and/or run marathons, or I've got to find some different friends.
That is, of course, a joke. HOWEVER. A disproportionate number of my friends have either PhDs or have run marathons. Some have even accomplished both. In fact, BOTH OF MY PARENTS HAVE ACCOMPLISHED BOTH. The Vermont marathon-running, not-a-blog challenging brother, is, come to think of it, ABD.* And it's not like this weekend he'll be running his first marathon, it's his forty billionth, and he's younger than I am (not by much) so I guess he's running like eight of them a day or something. Oh yeah, and he's a computer genius. Self-taught. Did I mention that his wife also has a PhD? Well, she does. She hasn't run a marathon yet, but I'm assuming it's only a matter of time before she wakes up one Saturday and says, 'Hey, I think I'll go run 26.2 miles!"
I have a few friends who have not, to the best of my knowledge, run marathons nor earned PhDs. It is a safe bet, though, that these mere mortals have a few tricks up their sleeves as well. One of these people is, I suspect, going to be doing triathlons within a matter of weeks, and the other, The Hostess with the Mostest Hostessability, lives just down the road a piece from Martha Stewart and is probably plotting a bloodless coup. A bloodless coup that will, fingers crossed, be a huge success so that we can all stop feeling inferior about the fact that we don't eat purple eggs from our own French-speaking chickens. Yet another is a non-practicing poet, with an MFA, most likely because back in the middle ages when we went to graduate school, PhDs in creative writing didn't exist. Either did these crazy horseless carriages and wireless telegraph confabulations.
I actually DO have a Master's Degree. But I only use it when I really need to. For instance, when someone tries to outsnob me at a party and I need to smack them down...of course, this only works with people who aren't my friends and, therefore, are not likely to smack me back with, "I'll see your pissant Master's degree and raise you a J.D/MBA."
I don't really know where I'm going with this...except that the realization that so many of the people I care most about have done or are doing the two things I don't think I actually could do has flipped the switch on a tiny flinking spot of light in the recesses of my
*ABD stands for All But Dissertation, which I know because, hello? I know an absurd number of people who are now or have been in advanced degree programs and this is how they talk.
No marathons. No PhD. In fact, No MEd, either. I'm getting there, I'm getting there...
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Have no fear. I will always remain marathon and PhD free. Unless they offer a PhD in pop culture that you can earn in your pajamas from the comfort of your couch.
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Dude, no marathons or advanced degrees here -- just a lousy post-bac (okay, from Wharton, but still). You think you've got a complex? My big brother's PhD is from YALE. In MATHEMATICS. There are about 12 people in the world who can read his dissertation and understand it. And he finished his Masters at age 21 or something. Not that I'm bitter.
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Although I have run a marathon, I did read "bloodless coup" as "bloodless soup." This made me think about soup that is not bloodless, which is totally gross.
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I thought "bloodless soup" was the name of your Wii band.
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Not a runner but I do have a master's. I bet mine's more esoteric than yours is...ethnomusicology.
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"So I started thinking, which didn't go so well."
My favorite sentence of all time. Thank you.
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