The View from the Other Side

September 10th, 2009 | View Comments

For the first time in approximately 25 years, I am not a student.

I have no homework, no assigned reading, no exams. No teachers, no professors, no academic advisor. I am not enrolled in any kind of degree program.

That’s Dr. I-am-not-enrolled-in-any-kind-of-degree-program to you, by the way.

It is kind of amazing how much dead tree you can accumulate through years of schooling. In the course of cleaning out my grad office I discovered:

The coursepack for CS 525, Linear Programming. That was undergrad. I’d forgotten that I even took that class.
The binder of reference papers for one of my undergraduate theses (yes, I wrote two).
The binder of papers I had put together to read for interview weekend in Pittsburgh (I think I read two of them; still got into grad school).

The grad school adventure, she is finished. In the administrative lingo of my department, my status as a student is “terminated”. Have PhD, will travel. On with life!