I'm at the mid-point of my fourth semester in my PhD program. How amazing!
As the weeks roll by, I am gaining insights about doctoral education, about being a life-long learner, and about endurance. A PhD candidacy is an intense, rich experience. It seems to me that there is nothing on earth quite like it.
Since I last wrote to you, we had a wedding. Our oldest son Joshua married Sonika, an Indonesian woman with a wonderful laugh and a warm heart. Their wedding was in Maui. Let me tell you, Maui in December is a very fine place for a wedding. On Christmas Day, their first as a married couple, the newlyweds drove the famous Road to Hana with breathtaking vistas. Their happiness was ours.
The wedding was a wonder-filled, surreal experience. After turning in three major research papers the day before, I completed my last exam by 9:00 PM and left for the airport at 4:00 AM, just seven hours later. The flight was twelve hours long, but smooth and relatively comfortable. Upon landing, we were thrust into a tropical, nautical paradise, far from the bitter cold wind in Philadelphia. We lodged in the home of a brother I had not seen in a decade. For a week, I spent my mornings watching the sun rise over the ocean from his deck.
During my PhD candidacy, normal life continues to happen, to go on just as it did before. Once in a while I have to make space for it. I need to feel normal life as it happens around me, instead of only rushing through the months ahead, careening from project to project. Each time I pause my PhD program to feel my life, I'm glad I did.
I entered my PhD program as a person with a full, normal life, and after graduation, I will still be a person with a full, normal life. In the future, whatever I do with my education will be done by a person with a full, normal life. Even if my doctoral education and credentials disappeared, my life would be filled with people and meaningful experiences. Light, love, and joy await me, regardless of how this doctoral experience concludes.
Times like this wedding help me remember.
As the weeks roll by, I am gaining insights about doctoral education, about being a life-long learner, and about endurance. A PhD candidacy is an intense, rich experience. It seems to me that there is nothing on earth quite like it.
Since I last wrote to you, we had a wedding. Our oldest son Joshua married Sonika, an Indonesian woman with a wonderful laugh and a warm heart. Their wedding was in Maui. Let me tell you, Maui in December is a very fine place for a wedding. On Christmas Day, their first as a married couple, the newlyweds drove the famous Road to Hana with breathtaking vistas. Their happiness was ours.
This photo is of my husband and me, and our two sons and their wives. The water was a jewel-tone, turquoise color and the cliffs beside us were black, formed by lava.
The wedding was a wonder-filled, surreal experience. After turning in three major research papers the day before, I completed my last exam by 9:00 PM and left for the airport at 4:00 AM, just seven hours later. The flight was twelve hours long, but smooth and relatively comfortable. Upon landing, we were thrust into a tropical, nautical paradise, far from the bitter cold wind in Philadelphia. We lodged in the home of a brother I had not seen in a decade. For a week, I spent my mornings watching the sun rise over the ocean from his deck.
During my PhD candidacy, normal life continues to happen, to go on just as it did before. Once in a while I have to make space for it. I need to feel normal life as it happens around me, instead of only rushing through the months ahead, careening from project to project. Each time I pause my PhD program to feel my life, I'm glad I did.
I entered my PhD program as a person with a full, normal life, and after graduation, I will still be a person with a full, normal life. In the future, whatever I do with my education will be done by a person with a full, normal life. Even if my doctoral education and credentials disappeared, my life would be filled with people and meaningful experiences. Light, love, and joy await me, regardless of how this doctoral experience concludes.
Times like this wedding help me remember.
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