"The future is such a foreign country"

I arrived at work, blissfully sleepy; I do not drink coffee but had a freshly made cappuccino in hand when a co-worker asked me the question that everyone seems to ask these days.

“So, Mary. How is that whole grad-school stuff coming along?”

Too tired and happy to pretend, I told him I had no clue.

Throughout undergrad, I wanted to be an academic. Really give myself to water-issues or deforestation or climate policy. So what changed? I witnessed academics up-close, saw their working habits and personal relationships. The work never stops, does it? Such a heavy career path that more-regularly-than-not requires an all or nothing commitment.



“Things have changed,” I said. “I have so many choices, not a bad one in the lot, that I do not think there is a wrong decision. And I do not have to make that decision today.”