Every 10 Years

Yesterday was my husband's first day of work at his new job (he's very excited about it, BTW and he thinks it's going to be great to work there). The night before he was cleaning out some boxes in the basement and the last thing he looked at before tossing it in the trash were his notes from his very first class in graduate school, in the Fall of 1997. Looking at those papers he realized that roughly every 10 years in the past 20 years there has been a big change in his life and he felt it was a nice act of closure to toss those papers away 10 years later, the night before his first day of work.

- In 1987 (OK, it was actually 1988, but he took the entrance examination in December 1987 -- we'e fudging this one :-) he started college, at age 16 (he turned 17 in May);

- In 1997 he started graduate school; and

- In 2007 he's finally done with his education (counting the post-doc years as part of that) and he finally starting a job in the "real world" (since the academic world didn't work out). At 36.

Sometimes we worry if our decisions to get Ph.D.s aren't making life start much later for us than for most other people -- well, I guess this is how it goes, particularly for those of us who started graduate school a little "late" (I started at 27, pretty late, right?).

I'm glad for him that he has this great "every ten years" pattern to his life (right now he's wondering where he'll be in ten years and it's exciting to think of that and dream about it), but it makes me realize that I don't really have such a pattern...

Let's see...

In 1987 I was starting high school (we're exactly the same age, K and I, but I started first grade at 7.5 and he started at 5.5).

In 1997 I started my non-degree year in Graduate School (I officially entered the program in 1998 -- I know, scary, it'll be ten years next year when I graduate)

In 2007 I'm in the brink of finishing my dissertation, no jobs in sight... (Sigh)