The Mighty Thesis, Part I

One of the most satisfying moments in my life was the day I got this in the mail.

In case you couldn’t tell right away, it’s my thesis. Bound, copyrighted, PUBLISHED. For all two people who would ever want to check it out of the college library for research…

Seeing my name on the binding, on the title page, made this the most fulfilling of all my exploits. To put so much effort into something you love to earn this:

provides me with a sense of accomplishment beyond any I’ve yet experienced. Except for maybe that one time I ate an entire Awesome Blossom by myself and did not puke.

I don’t want to be braggy, but you guys don’t know what I went through to earn this phrase:

These are difficult to obtain in their own right, but I went through a very special form of hell to get mine. Thus, bragging rights are fully in force.

Right off the bat I had a ton of people questioning my decision to go to grad school. This endeavor will lead to a job, correct?

Heck yeah, you need a PhD to teach at college, which I will most certainly be doing!

Oh, young Natalie.

I got a lot of flack from people (who shall remain nameless because I don’t want to suffer a verbal ass-kicking later) because I saw education as an enrichment in its own right, not as a “tool of the liberal establishment to brainwash America’s youth.” Yes, there are people in America who think that way. These are usually the same people who think that educating women is pointless, since they’re just going to have babies and quit their jobs anyway…

Personally, I worked a temp office job right after graduating with my B.A. and I hated every boring minute of it. All I could see were people working insane hours doing mind-and-soul-destroying work of staggering mundanity, all so they could get overweight and unhealthy from sitting for twelve hours a day in windowless offices eating heart-attack-inducing fast food at their desks and alternately cursing at the industrial-sized copier that was always eating everyone’s papers. Maybe that kind of life is for some people, but it’s not for me.

I searched high and low for jobs that might suit a creative English graduate, but found very little to entice me. Marketing? Eh. Sales? Eh. Editor? Sure, if you can find such a coveted position while living in Los Angeles (when will National Geographic or In Style ever get back to me, I ask you?).

Every godforsaken day at that temp job, I found myself fiercely missing my studies of literature and art and all things beautiful, and realized what I really wanted to do was to be a college professor so I could study it for the rest of my life and get PAID to do so. When I sent in my admission forms, I had every ambitious intention of getting my PhD and living happily (and dorkily) ever-after.

At the beginning of my second year in grad school, the stock market saw its biggest crash since the Great Depression. Maybe you’ve heard of this Great Recession? Education jobs were being cut left and right, including in my department, and my tuition skyrocketed every subsequent year.

Welcome to the Real World, young scholar. Please hang up your hat and make yourself as comfortable as is possible on a couch made of syringes all filled with the AIDS virus, and we’ll get you a heaping plate of tough-shit for your meal, followed by suck-it-up for dessert.

I kept optimistically plugging away for several reasons. I kept the (unrealistic) hope that things would get better, and there would be a job waiting for me at the end of all this (nothing is as sad as a naively hopeful young woman about to be shot in the gut with a stun gun). My reasoning at the time was that I had already invested my time and money into this endeavor, and I didn’t want to see that wasted. I was truly good at what I was doing, and I thought I might be one of the lucky ones who had a shot at achieving my goals. I would do anything, ANYTHING to not work in the corporate world – to do something for which I had tremendous aptitude.

Plus, that fall they were offering a seminar in Jane Austen, so…how could I NOT take that course?

I kept at it.

Hmm, this post is ending up longer than Moby Dick…

EXECUTIVE DECISION: I’m going to split it up. You’ll see the rest tomorrow. Don’t whine about it – whining is for losers.

Says the champion whiner…