5 Questions

My qualifying exams have been taking up my whole life ever since returning from spring break 2 weeks ago. Before that, the semester was nothing but:

• scholarship applications (2)
• summer fellowship applications (2)
• article manuscripts for journals (3)
• conference preparation (1)
• applications to speak at yet more conferences (5)
• hustling my prospectus back and forth between my committee members (billions)

 Hence the irregular/nonexistent posts.

I am going to take a photo of my reading list once it is all organized... 400 articles and books, and somehow I have almost read them all! It is overwhelming. I really hope I can take my exam in May as planned so I can spend the 4 months of summer with M. Long distance marriages are lame! He still has coursework this summer but I can work on my dissertation while he is away.

Anyway my idea for this post was to answer the 5 questions that the "5 Questions" blog always posted. I have been reading the backlogs of that blog (hasn't been updated in a while and I miss it!).

Answer the questions on your blog if you are stumped on a post! I love reading about other people! :)

5 Questions
What scares you the most?
"Loved ones dying" is everyone's answer to this, but I have to agree! I only have one sibling, my little brother who is 3 years younger than me and I have to say I am very protective of him. He was accidentally shot a few years ago with a friend's handgun but survived. It was really terrible, like the worst after-school special ever. Years later I still have such a hard time believing how lucky he was, and I text him all the time telling him I am so glad he is still here! He is my favorite person in the whole world, and I don't know what I would do without him! And the poor kid has the worst luck but always turns out all right! I think he has given me a thousand heart attacks in my life though.

First love?
Very hard to describe. I am not sure if it is love or what, but it was very powerful and surreal. For a decade, I had this soul-link thing going on with a guy I went to high school with, but for some reason the situation refuses to work out. We liked each other from a distance in high school and were slightly friends but never dated. Ten years later, I was living in DC and he was living there too. By chance, we got together but I was moving across the country a month later. I would say we fell in love and did the long distance thing for a year, but something inside me wouldn't let me move back to where he was or invite him out to Seattle. It was really surreal. Finally we broke up because I didn't want to take it any further and he wanted to get married. I don't know why that is how it worked out. He still emails me occasionally but it never turns out well, so I haven't written back in the past two years. I still think about him sometimes, but something in my gut tells me it just isn't right, at least in this lifetime. So strange, especially after meeting up after all those years living in the same city at the same time, 1000 miles from where we went to high school.

What would you do over?
 Urgh three things:
1. My brother was in a car accident when he was 18 and needed to reach me by phone due to a really bad situation that occurred (this was pre-cell phones) and I was a waiter so I kept really late hours. Anyway, he called and called and I was too tired to get the phone downstairs and I figured it was my mom calling my brother to nag him to wake up for class, over and over like she did each morning (oh we both loathed that!). So I blew it off, and I have always felt guilty about that ever since, even though he says he didn't mind! He is a better person than I am! I couldn't sleep for months after that and I wish I had done something to help. :(
2.  I would have been friendlier in high school instead of a hermit. I don't know why I thought it was so hard to say hello and make eye contact with and smile at people; instead I kept my head down or something. I think that was so rude of me and I am embarrassed that I was not friendlier! I was the same way in college for the first part. Anyway, I am trying to work on that now.
3. Not be such a moody child! 

Where do you see yourself in 10 years?
This is the hardest question. I was just telling my husband I can only see to May 2012 when we both graduate from our respective schools. So much has changed over the past five years and I feel like my plans at 23 for the next 10 years were much more developed than what I have now. 
 When I was 23, these were my ten year goals:

• Save $100,000 in cash in various accounts and retirement, etc.
• Become a project manager and make $60,000/year (this was 2003 and I was a project assistant)
• Buy a house
• Have 1st child at 28

Reality at 32:

• I am now 32.5 and traded in my $$ plans for degrees, so I have no money but I will have two expensive pieces of paper that say I have an M.S. and a Ph.D within those 10 years. Useful? Maybe. Won't know til I find a job.
• I have moved 3x in 2 states since 23. The house ownership makes me squirmy, maybe because I don't have a real job (besides TAing) and I don't know where I want to live, and I keep hearing about my friends replacing roofs and furnaces and things. Maybe it is a fear of commitment.
• The children aspect? I am more confused on this than when I was little. When I was 23 I wanted 2. When I was 28 I wanted 4. Now that I am 32 I am less confident that I would be a great parent, so I am really confused on that. M comes from an enormous family and I think it is wonderful. He prefers more quietness. I am not sure. I just don't know. What is weird is if I visualize it, I have these children who aren't mine, but they live in my house? Maybe that means adoption is in my future? Who knows. It doesn't matter right now anyway because I am poor from school and M will have a billion dollars in student loans once he graduates next year. I will be very interested to see how next year turns out and where we end up! IF I can get beyond this dissertation.

What is your guilty pleasure? 
I love to walk my dog and watch him trot. He has such a jaunty little jog it always lightens my heart. He carries his ball in his mouth too and it is just funny. He threw out his neck a month ago after playing too rough over the holidays, and I was worried his little spirit was gone. He seems to be recovered, but I was really bummed for a while not having my walking buddy, especially with M being long distance. Living alone the past two years has allowed me to appreciate the little things and figure out what I like and what I am good at. I enjoy solitude and thinking and writing. I love to read under trees in the summer with my dog by my side (preferably husband too but we are working on making that happen!). I also love to organize things, but that is probably why I study Information Science! :)

What are yours?