Time on My Mind

When perchance the next you meet a fellow soul pursuing an advanced degree, you might want to know the following: We in the biz like to inquire "How far a long are you?" rather than "When do you think you will finish?" We get defensive at the latter question because it often feels like a veiled way of saying, "What the hell are you doing anyway and when do you think you'll actually get a real job?" We are well aware that in the outside world it seems we take an awful long time gazing profoundly at our navels. No doubt there is a fair amount of navel gazing and time wastage We make very little money and seem to produce almost nothing until the very end, and then all we can squeeze out are three letters (one of them is even lower case). Don't worry, we feel plenty bad about not contributing to the world in the conventional sense of productivity (i.e. cashish). But we prefer to focus all that we have done rather than on all there is yet to do. As you might imagine, gazing at the mountain peak when you've got innumerable switchbacks ahead can be overwhelming. Sometimes it just feels good to take in how far you've already climbed.

Annoying lecture finished.