Time Flies

Time flies. Period. It doesn’t matter if you’re having fun or not, I don’t think. Rather, time couldn’t really care less about your emotional state. It just keeps on marching along, oblivious to its myriad effects on us mortals.

Take as an example the fact that I have not posted on this blog for an entire semester. Oh sure, I’ve had a number of topics spring to mind, but by the time I got in front of a computer, I just wasn’t as geared up about writing them down. I remember that I was going to rant about drivers in this state at one point. That one would have been good. I, at least, would have gotten a chuckle out of it. But by the time I got home it was time to cook chicken tacos, and the desire to vent about the Californication (and Texification, and Illinoisification) of our streets and highways had passed.

But alas, this semester has been entirely too busy for such things. I thought I was busy before, but let me tell you, adding a wife and a 5-year old will reduce what was once considered “free time” to something more akin to “that 20-minute break you take in the bathroom to get some time with your book”. I’ve finished four books this semester using this tactic.

So as everyone reading this is already aware (both of you), Jen and I were married on December 31st. The ceremony was perfect, and we have it on video. One of these days, when I have some spare time, I will burn DVD’s and send them to anyone requesting one. The burn takes about an hour per disk, so I need to find about 5 free hours to figure out how to do it, then an hour for every disk I need to burn. Essentially, I need about a month of free time, not including sleep, food, and 20-minute breaks with my book.

An interesting aside: I keep getting asked the same question: “So, how’s married life treatin’ ya?” It’s like people expect that the tilt of the Earth’s axis changes when you get married, and they want to know if you can detect the change. I think the first time I was asked this question was on January 2nd. My response at that time was (I believe), “Well, in the 36 hours or so that I’ve been married I’ve been shot at twice, run over by a VW beetle, and chased by the CIA…so not much has changed so far. We’ll see what happens next week, though; I hear the second week is always harder than the first.”

See, Jen and I were already living together when we got married. The one-hour ceremony didn’t (and in my mind, shouldn’t) actually have any effect on the relationship other than making it part of the public, legal record. If you want to know how different things in my life are, you should be asking, “So, what’s it like living with someone?” That was a hell of a change. The wedding? That was a fun way to announce to the world at large that the living arrangement was successful and we were both willing to continue with it for the rest of our lives.

And just because I am apparently some kind of masochistic, self-loathing idiot, I decided to take my comprehensive exams on January 5th. Well, actually, the university decided on the day, I was just along for the ride. And what a fun, exciting ride it was! There were clowns, and a pony, and…no, it kind of sucked, really. But I passed with relative ease, and could officially consider myself a PhD student in the program.

It’s funny. When you graduate with a Doctorate, they call you Doctor. So when you finish a Master’s… Never mind.

So I’m sitting here in the apartment, looking around at all of the unpacked stuff we have yet to prepare for our exodus to Rhode Island. We just got back from dinner at mom and dad’s. Mom grilled some steak fillets, pork chops, and chicken breasts, and we had some mashed potatoes and some salad. The weather was perfect, and as the temperature dropped and a slight breeze picked up, the entire night smelled like Lilac. The girls, Ellie and my niece Emma, were down on the lawn, playing with my sister’s Boxer puppy (and apparently, rolling around in some of Tucker’s fresh poo), and their giggles gently rolled up onto the massive deck my dad built a couple of summers ago. I was overcome by this feeling of comfort that can only be described as family.

And that’s when it hit me. People have been asking me for a couple of weeks whether I’m relieved at being done with my Master’s, or if I’m ready to make the trip to Rhode Island, or some other well-intentioned but idiotic sentiment. Nobody is ever ready for that kind of thing. Regardless of how excited you are about it, how much you’re looking forward to it, how good it’s going to be…you’re never really ready to leave something you’ve invested years into. And that’s what I’ve done for the past several years; invest myself in my relationships. And no, I’m not ready to leave them. If I had my way, I’d pack every one of them up and take them with me…or maybe ship them next day air or something, since our U-Haul is going to be pretty full as it stands.

I visited Mike’s grave today. I was driving back from making another delivery to our storage unit in Ft. Collins, and the thought occurred to me that I may not have another chance to stop by and pay my respects, at least not any time in the near future. Unlike every other time I’ve been out there, I found the marker immediately. I usually have to wander around for about half an hour before I stumble onto it, but today, I walked right up to it.

Michael J. Wilkinson
May 24, 1974 - March 5, 2000

Typically when I visit Mikey’s grave, I talk to him, tell him how things are going. I always end up bawling. Today was odd. I stood there and stared at the marker. I stared at it for probably ten minutes, not really thinking anything. And then my cell rang. A friend of mine from school was on the other end, and her opening line, after we exchange pleasantries, is always the same and was no different today: “So, I have a stats question for you.” So here I am, standing in the cemetery over the grave of my friend who’s been dead for ten years now, having a conversation about the statistical assumptions for ANOVA and multiple linear regression. We chatted for about 20 minutes; it was a beautiful day and I wasn’t in any hurry to get anywhere, so I didn’t speed things along. When I hung up, I looked down at Mikey’s grave and said, “So, yeah…that’s my life.” I told him I’d be back after I got my Ph.D., gave him a fist-bump, and walked to my car. Ok, so my fist bump was against that funky symbol in the middle of his marker, but I made due with what I had. And after ten years, I finally managed to walk away from there without tearing up.

It took me ten years to “get over” Mikey’s death. How the Hell can I be ready to leave all of these people I’ve been blessed by knowing? The answer, naturally, is that I can’t. Fortunately, none of them are dead, so we should be able to keep in contact with each other at the very least. But I’m not ready, regardless of that.

Here’s a moderately amusing tale that is only marginally related to the last five minutes of material. I’ve been accepted to the URI behavioral science Ph.D. program. I’ve been talking back and forth with the advisor they assigned me and the department chair, trying to line up courses for the fall and so on. So after perusing what’s available, I respond that I’m interested in taking PSY 532, PSY 612, PSY 603, and the directed study credits for the Master’s thesis research project I have to complete. They give me a code that is supposed to allow me to register, and I head back to try it out, but for some reason it gives me this big, red warning about not meeting the pre-requisites for PSY 612.

So by now, everyone is wondering, “WTF are all those letters and numbers, and more importantly, why should I care?” Well, PSY 532 is the introduction to statistics course that is mandatory for my program, and PSY 612 is a structural modeling class. Funny thing is that they both have a certain pre-requisite, an undergraduate statistics course. So I write back to my advisor and the chair, explaining the dilemma. My advisor gives me another code and says that it’s rare for a student to take PSY 612 without PSY 532; she asks how strong my statistics background is.

My response: I’ve had some. I sent her my unofficial transcript.

Her response: Hm. You may want to think about getting a Master’s in statistics while you work on your Ph.D.

I’m just going to wait to get out there and continue that conversation in person.

But this is the kind of thing I’m talking about. Here, the faculty knows who I am, they know what to expect from me, that kind of thing. In a few months, I have to start building all of those relationships again, convincing my new faculty that I am going to set the bar regardless of how high their expectations may be. It’s exhausting just thinking about it.

But my saving grace will be Jen. For every painful tear I shed for my losses here, she will be there to remind me that in reality, those people are only a few hundred dollars away. Since giving blood makes me queasy to think about, I’m going to have to start selling semen or something.

So in eight days, I will be putting on my sunglasses as I stare at my last Colorado sunrise, holding my Schweetie around the waist, doing my best to look like Kurt Russel in Big Trouble in Little China. Thank God the sunglasses will be there to mask the tears, at least until I can get into the U-Haul.

I should be done crying by the time I hit Nebraska.