I often find myself day dreaming about what it is I really want to do with my life. I'm reading a new book right now, People of the Book by Geraldine Brooks, and early in the first part is a brief description of the protagonist's educational life, as relative to her mother's: "I realized a long time ago that she would never respect me for choosing to be a repairer of books rather than bodies. For her, my double-honors degrees in chemistry and ancient Near Eastern languages might as well have been used Kleenex. A masters in chemistry and a PhD in fine art conservation didn't cut it, either. 'Kindergarten work,' she calls it, my papers and pigments and pastes. 'You'd be through your internship by now,' she said when I got back from Japan. 'At your age I was chief resident' was all I got when I came home from Harvard."
I'd like to think I'm stupidly ambitious. Anyway, this passage got me thinking about my own nature and ability and I thought, "well shit, I ought to be a doctor in something." Sometimes I can't tell if I'm honestly smart or stupidly arrogant. I'm at least confident it will all come out a wash in the end.
Here's to my upcoming doctorate.
I loved that book! I listened to the audio version. I miss you. Too much.
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