"Still haven't lost my hunger, but only time will tell"

I'm currently less than one gestation period from making that leap from obedient apprentice of Newton, Hooke, et al to nameless device for the aims of the state, or worse yet a serf on the partition wall farm of opportunists or greedheads. There will be cups to piss in, addresses to change, crucial decisions regarding yet-to-be earned money, and a glance at the broad, homeworkless horizon. One general direction, most appealing to my contemporaries, holds a potential lifetime worth of important events like childbirth, new home purchase, tee-off times, and struggles with victory proclaimed merely at the gapstop.

The other, the preferred route, moves nowhere physically for some time. If that horizon bodes complacency, these pins and needles must be home. It was here that I promised myself indulgence for my muse if I could merely hold out . . .learn to shoulder grunt work, understand the fundamentals, prove your ethic to be unquestionable, try not to drink too much. Meanwhile, I learned the cold thrill of academics; the martial discipline that demands always some fraction of your focus, the all-or-nothing examinations that cannot tell a lie. If one has a skill, here is where to feed it. If a weakness, here it will be illuminated.

I want to write, and when I fail to earn my keep at that I should like to teach others what the desire to write has taught me. I'd like to be burrowed away in some back office, surrounded by text. Only to be brought out to lecture, denounce the government or give eulogies.

I plan nothing short of professional apostasy; certain suicide or at least whiplash from resistance to this career path potentia. A return to school, part-time at first, that will have me reading Voltaire or Tolstoy on lunch breaks between inspecting concrete pours and contemplating Omissions/Errors/Corrections. Eventually I'll attend a school I actually wanted to attend in the first place, whatever that may be a few years from now. I think I can only rest at a PhD.