The Sacred Arts

The Mighty Thesis, Part II

Where were we? Oh yes, I was telling the story of this:

Thesis. Gnome added for dimension and whimsy.

I was at the economic crisis part, wasn’t I? That’s not the fun part. Sorry about that. It’s definitely the gnome’s fault.

Times got tough. I lost that terrible temp job due to downsizing. I couldn’t find anyone who was hiring except my local Starbucks. By that point, I had accrued some debt from being unemployed for three months and living on credit cards and a part-time piano teaching gig. Once I became a barista/piano teacher extraordinaire, the two jobs combined BARELY covered my living expenses, but no more. So I was not exactly set up for success at this juncture of my life, what with the debt hanging over my responsible head like a guillotine blade dripping with that Nickelodeon slime…

You know, like everyone else in 2008. Gosh, this is sounding like a Steinbeck novel. Or from what’s to follow, Faulkner (with less death).

Right around this time I discovered that no one was stopping me from drinking whenever I wanted, just to “take off some of the pressure.”

What a revelation! I’d pull the three AM shift at S-bucks so that I could teach piano lessons in the afternoon and then go to school in the evenings. My hours got all cockamamied, so having a drink when I got off work at ten AM was not very weird to me – I’d already been at work for seven hours while the rest of the world slothfully enjoyed their wee-morning hour snooze. After a while, a drink after the opening shift started becoming routine. Gradually I just never stopped drinking.

How did I afford this with no money, you ask? Well, when you’re drinking that much, you don’t really need to eat. It’s a secret alcoholics don’t tell you. Thus, food money became liquor money. Like a hobo, except I still had a place to live and the capacity to bathe on a daily basis.

This was not a very wise coping mechanism, but I was financially hanging on for dear life, severely depressed in my personal life and working several jobs just to stay afloat. Clearly I was not doing my best thinking. I mean, you try not to start saying “It’s five o’clock somewhere!” after having woken up at three to serve grumpy morning customers for minimum wage, then working all day at a job that requires warehouse-sized reserves of patience, and then not getting home from school until ten at night. It’s a miracle I didn’t start snorting coke in the lady’s room.

Through it all I got straight A’s on everything. And I mean EVERYTHING. I was one of “those” students. I had to be – this was the one thing at which I excelled and practically the only part of life I enjoyed, apparently, so I was not going to give up my dream for any greedy Wall Street dillhole’s mistake.

“Listen man, I’m not going to jail for you, or anybody!”

So eventually, as everyone here knows, I finally hit the fabled bottom, landing myself in rehab for nine months. I took an academic leave for a year, but I didn’t even know if I’d be able to go back.

*Dramatic Pause*

Of course I did, though. Do you not know anything about me?

Oh yeah, and I’ve already flashed the diploma photos. Got to remember to limit the spoilers in my stories.

By this time, I knew I probably wouldn’t have a job at the end of it – that PhD I lusted after would have to wait until the economy stopped being sucky OR until I earned enough money as a novelist to support my unhealthy addiction to higher education OR when unicorns start flying out of my kitten’s ears – but I was only two classes and a thesis away from finishing. It would’ve been criminal not to finish. Right? Plus my thesis topic was on film adaptations of Sense and Sensibility (a Jane Austen novel, for those who don’t happen to be addicted to Regency English Literature. Or humor. Or romance.) – it was a labor of love! I couldn’t just let it sit there, unfinished and unsung! No, I tell you!

I had to do it. For geeky Austenites like myself everywhere. No, scratch that – I was doing it for the world.

I came back in swinging, and finished school while job-hunting and working part-time to supplement the student loan I obtained by the skin of my teeth.

There she is, Miss America. Or what Miss America would look like if the world was a just and righteous place.

So this incredibly bleak story has a happy ending after all. Although, the story just continues, really, because who knows? Maybe someday education will have value again, and I will finally get to have my career warping molding adult minds in the name of literature and everything else that is pure and sacred. Or maybe I’ll make it as a writer, and work in my yoga pants with my cat hogging the desk; in which case, I won’t need that PhD after all.

Although I still kind of want it. Just because. Plus that way I could pretentiously force everyone to refer to me as “Dr.”

Oh, and if anyone wants to read my thesis, they will automatically become my best friend. You can find it in the stacks at the Cal State library, where the only other copy in the universe lives.

At least I can die saying I’ve been published.

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