On Goodbyes

During the first four years of graduate school, I focused on future jobs. Did I want to continue my career as a teacher or focus on research? After deciding that I wanted to work at a university rather than going back to a high school, the question became liberal arts college or research university? I have looked at job postings for the last three years, focused on adding to my CV so that I will be a competitive applicant, tried to explain patiently to what seems like everyone on the planet that I the only control I have as to where I work when I am done is in if I apply for a job or not. Since my doctoral studies started, I knew that I would move at the end of my degree, that my life here is temporary and that Hubby and his family haven't exactly accepted the fact that my tenure track job will not be here. I will need a job someday. I will get hired. I will get a tenure track job. I will move. What I am doing now greatly influences my future, but this is temporary. Needing a summer job is temporary. Perpetual poverty is temporary. Graduate school is temporary. Are my friendships here temporary?

Movies show characters that have been friends since childhood/ school/ college. I used to feel like I missed out on something because I didn't keep close ties with friends from high school, etc. Did I fail somewhere in interpersonal bonding? No, I just lived a life different from what is portrayed in Hollywood.

Graduate school has been a different experience. Something in moving across the country and studying with the same group of students for five years has created a new type of friendship. We may not spend a lot of time together outside of class, but knowing others' intellectual habits, opinions, research and scholarly formation creates an academic intimacy that I haven't experienced elsewhere. There is a difference between seeing pictures of someone with their family and seeing someone's name on a book cover. Family seems so normal and my life as an academic has been anything but what I expected for myself as an adult. I am happy for my friends that have taken the expected path of adulthood: job, marriage, house, children, but I feel a different happiness in seeing a friend's name listed in an academic publication, graduation announcement or conference listing. I understand the sacrifice and perceverence it took before the name was published and I feel pride knowing that they successfully became part of the acadamy.

Two friends from my cohort received their PhDs a few weeks ago. They are the first from my cohort to do so. We started together, attended the same seminars, completed the same assignments, read the same books, had the same committee members. Along the way others dropped out, flunked out, lost funding, transferred to other programs, decided to take other jobs, fell in love with someone somewhere else, etc. Of the 30+ students that were in my cohort, I am one of 5 that stuck it out (*I did drop out for a year, but I came to senses and returned). Now two are professors. I said goodbye to one of these friends this week. On Monday she will return to her home in Thailand and resume a position not as a lecturer, but as a professor. My other friends will stay here as a professor for a year until she finds work elsewhere. As the three of us sat in my livingroom, we discussed other cohort members, professors, publications, future work. At one point I felt sad, wondered if I would ever see my friend again, and felt insecure about my future. Where will I end up? How is this all going to work out? With time to reflect, I realize that those thoughts are trivial. I will see my friends' for the rest of my career in print. I might not see them across the hall, but I will see them when others refer to their theories, will spend time with them when students ask questions related to their research, and smile to myself when I see their books on list-serves, publishers' tables at conferences and in reviews. As a kid, I learned that when gnomes die, they become trees. As an adult, I'm learning that although scholars might not be with me in person, they are eternalized through their work. If gnomes become trees, scholars become books. Thankfully, curling up with a good book still gives me the greatest pleasure, as does knowing that I can read the same great story again. With this view, I see that I never have to say goodbye to these friends, rather "I'll look forward to your next book."