At this time of the year, I remember moving from the Baltimore-Washington area, where I was born and had my own schooling, to a much smaller town with less traffic, less humidity and plenty of promise.
When I realize how many times I have reflected on what was indeed one of the great changes in my life, I am reminded of my dissertation. As was typical of many things in my life, my dissertation was not a typical one. I had to explain the idea to my advisor to persuade him it made sense. During my orals, I had to explain it again. When applying for teaching jobs, I had to explain it several more times. It got to the point where I really did not want to go through it all one more time. Many years have gone by and now nobody knows or cares what it was about.
It has always intrigued me what a big deal the dissertation is at one point in time and how completely unimportant it is later. You may know a few people who wrote master's theses or doctoral dissertations without the slightest idea of what those papers were about. In many cases, if you get a copy of them and read through, you still won't know what they are about because they are filled with technical language and advanced concepts.
I have been writing this blog most days since 2009. So, when I realize it is the anniversary of my coming to the upper Midwest of the US, the part that was the "Northwest Territories" at one time, I realize that I have thought about coming here, my younger years, the ups and downs of it all, enough. Here is a web page of several blog posts about leaving the East Coast, coming to a small Midwestern city, and teaching college.
In the case of the dissertation or Lynn's dissertation or our moving here, it isn't that I have really exhausted all the angles. One of my most advanced philosophical friends said the other day that really putting one's mind to work on the subject of his ball cap could encompass the whole world and everything in it. So, in the case of a long paper or a big move or even a random day in the life of……, I could launch all poetic and encyclopedic but I don't want to. Just what my sister wrote the other day after reading my reasons that people would be happier if they wrote a blog:
Dear Bill
Here are all the reasons I don't want to write a blog:
1. I don't want to
Yours, Sis
--
Bill
Main blog: Fear, Fun and Filoz
Main web site: Kirbyvariety
