Let me write to you a little about Rhetoric.
As I sit here drinking my tea in Starbucks,
waiting for a job offer to come in.

Congrats, Grad...

I'm sitting here at Northern Lights, the cafe where I held most of my office hours as a graduate student.

I got to UCLA around 10:30 this morning, thinking I'd need time for all the errands I had to run (pick up my cap and gown, graduation tickets, etc.) and hoping that I would like to stroll around campus a little to make a last goodbye.  I'm coming down with my mom, dad, and sister for my hooding ceremony tomorrow, and then it might be a while before I come back.

But mostly I'm just a little anxious.  I was walking around campus thinking, "I can't really get into this...I feel like a fish out of water..."  It's not like the feeling you get when leaving a home, like when I graduated from college and had to leave Candice and Kay and our Henry St. apartment.

I think it's because I'm not sure what having a PhD means yet--once I start teaching again, I'll probably feel a little better.  A PhD is a degree that teaches you lots of skills that you can use to make things easier for other people.  Right?  At least, that's what my version of the PhD is...

I felt better when I bumped into Emily and her family.  And then I thought that if I was really trying to have a final day of grad school, I should probably go eat a sort of crummy wheat bagel from Northern Lights and wash it down with some tea.

Somehow this is appropriate.  I spent a lot of time in grad school by myself, with some work in front of me, occasionally taking a bite of my breakfast/lunch/dinner at a cafe somewhere.  Aside from the meetings with students, the classes, the dinners here and there with friends--it's mostly been me and bagels.

And, for all of that, I think I did okay...

I finished my first full draft of my last dissertation chapter yesterday.

I still have a ways to go-- drafting the introduction, adding in all the notes I have not been bothering with for the past few years, proofreading, editing- but I almost feel like the worst is over.

And I want to cry.

Because it's over it's over it's over it's over. 

This time, the freedom might be real!

One day, I will not be a 31-year-old woman, living in a 250 square foot apartment, with no heater, no real air conditioning, and with a fridge that makes funny noises every time I close it.  I won't have to park half a mile away from my place, because I have no parking.  And I won't have to wash my dishes in the bathroom sink (which is, arguably, only 3 feet away from the kitchen sink that does not really work).

But we all know that, secretly, I will miss all this.

It will probably be better in retrospect, anyway.

I wrote this in May of 2005, nearly nine years ago, the night before my dad came with the suburban to help me move all of my things out of my college apartment in Berkeley:

Goodbye Henry Street, goodbye Andronico's, goodbye Barney's, goodbye Starbuck's, goodbye Anzu, goodbye Yogurt Park, goodbye Blondie's, goodbye Asian ghetto, goodbye La Burrita, goodbye Campanile, goodbye Wheeler, goodBYE Dwinelle, goodbye to all the little nooks and crannies where I have eaten lunch, goodbye Bancroft, goodbye Memorial Glade, goodbye Moffit and Doe, goodbye Music building, goodbye Foothill, goodbye Memorial stadium, goodbye, favorite bench, goodbye Au Coquelet, goodbye Pink House, goodbye Josephine Street, goodbye track on Hopkins, goodbye RSF, goodbye YogaKula, goodbye BART, goodbye San Francisco, goodbye Cheesecake Factory, goodbye FSM, goodbye French Hotel, goodbye Strada. Goodbye Berkeley.

I hope I'll see you again sometime.

I will always love this place.


And now, I'm sitting in Au Coquelet, working on the third chapter of my dissertation, eating the same brownie I would eat maybe once (or twice.  Or, you know maybe three times) a week, pretty much each week of my junior and senior years in college.

And I find myself wanting to tell Au Coquelet that I'll be here more, now.  That I'm moving to the Bay Area in June, the week after I get married.  That I'm going to be finishing my PhD.  That I made it to the final round of interviews for a professorship at a great community college, right down the street from the apartment I'll share with Adam in Mountain View.

And I find myself wanting to look into the faces of the college girls at the tables around me, and say, "it will be okay.  Whatever you are worried about now.  It will all turn out alright, eventually."

Because this is the place where I huddled up with my Dostoevsky, and where I finished Anna Karenina.  And where I wrote my best Jane Austen paper.  And where I crammed for my Bach final.  But it's also the place where I would come to get away.  Where I would tear up and desperately try to hide my face in my books.  Where I would sit with coffee and a brownie and relive, remember, and try to make sense of everything.

The cafe looks the same as it did 10 years ago.  Same stale brownies.  Same tea and coffee served in pint glasses.  And, while at some moments I feel comforted and settled, like I have come home, at others, I feel the need to shout out, "but I'm different now!  I'm changed!  Things have changed!  Please!"

...it's weird seeing your own ghosts, and just wanting to comfort them.  

Is Beck's Guero back in?  I think it is.  I keep hearing it at Starbucks (right now, they're playing the "Sun-eyed girl" song that I always liked)

and when I hear it I go back to the summer right after college and before I started grad school, when I didn't know exactly what I was getting myself into and thought I might be making a misstep, but I did what I did anyway.  And I would wake up every weekday morning and go work at Dr. Wilson's, and my parents were so busy (because all five kids actually lived at home at the same time that summer) that I would take my brother Chris to his soccer practices and games sometimes.  And we'd drive to the soccer fields in Palmdale with the windows rolled down, playing Guero or Bloc Party's Silent Alarm (two albums that I also wasn't sure I liked, but I listened to what I did anyway,) and I would play them very, very loudly.  Because this is how I like listen to music, but also because I thought that Chris thought this was great.  And it was always really sunny, and I remember Chris shading his face, with mannerisms that were way too man-like to be coming from my little brother.

And I thought, "I might like to go back there," and then I thought, "maybe I'm there anyway."

I was so much older then.  I'm younger than that, now.

So yesterday was February 25th.

I'm laying on my stomach in a hospital room for a small dermatological procedure ("suspicious" mole on my back that's been there since I was a kid. Sub story:

Dr: So your labs from the biopsy came back "suspicious," and the pathologist is recommending excision.

Kat: I can, however, vouch for its whereabouts on every single day since about 1988...

Dr. genuinely seems to think this is very funny. 

I remember that I make terrible, awkward jokes when I am nervous...)

Very Nice Nurse and Dr get me ready for the procedure, I don't feel anything after the initial shots for numbing, my face is turned toward my left shoulder, and I' looking out the window.  I see the window coverings, and I remember being wheeled through hallways with the same window curtains, and that they were one of the last few vivid things my brain remarked before seeing the machine that was going to hold my leg in traction.

Dr. apologizes for the weird sounds of one of the machines he's using, and asks if I'm comfortable and doing okay.

And, out of nowhere, I say, in a voice that comes out louder than I mean it to:

I had hip surgery here, in this building.  On this exact day, Febraury 25th, three years ago.  I guess it's just my day for getting things fixed.  But this is nothing.  You guys are awesome-- I don't feel any pain at all.  I was nervous, but now I'm not.

And Very Nice Nurse, Dr, and I chat for a little while.  They're clearly used to outbursts from nervous people who are trying to fight their very human instincts to feel annoyed and a little betrayed that someone is poking them with a series of very sharp objects.

Dr says that I need to come back in two weeks to get my eight stitches out.  He also says that they can keep an eye on the scar, that it should end up looking like just a little line, but some people scar differently than others.

And I think about the three faint pink dots at the very top of my thigh on my right leg.

And I am afraid that, one day, they'll be completely gone.

30.

Two drafts of "Personal Statement of Career Goals," one of what I really think, and one of what I ought to think.
Decaf Americano (because Regular espresso messes with me, now that I am no longer 22) and pumpkin bread.
Re-read/re-do resume.
Chat with D, retired, who reads the paper at Starbucks next to me most days I am here.
Final review of "Proposed Plan for Completion of the Dissertation."  It's done-- it's done.  No, don't look at it again.
Email friend, to see if dinner tomorrow night is still on.
Email adviser, attach latest "Proposed Plan for Completion of the Dissertation." Ask, politely, if the meeting time set for tomorrow is still okay.  Remind self that, whether email garners response or not, chances of adviser being in office at previously agreed upon time are about 50/50.  Accept situation with quiet resolve, plan for no funding and absent adviser next year, the year you plan to file your dissertation.
Pull up California Community College's job registry site, to remind yourself that there are jobs out there.  Convince yourself that you are ENORMOUSLY qualified.
Boyfriend texts, to tell you about the food he's eating for lunch.  It's the little things that make a good day, really.
Nonfat Chai Latte, because it's time for caffeine.
Goodbye, D.  Have a good rest of the day.
Peek at craigslist, too.  If no funding and career stall, you can continue work as private tutor to the rich and famous.  (Not exactly what you wanted, but the families often feed you pie, and, at Christmas, you get tons of swag.)
Review clauses for tutoring session later, and develop an hour-long lesson on Independent and Dependent clauses, with sub-lessons on noun clauses, adjective clauses, adverb clauses, and on simple/compound/complex sentences.  Hope to good lord Jesus that tutee's teacher does not expect them to know difference between relative and non-relative clauses, or coordinating and correlative conjunctions.
Think about pie again.
Yogurt, and a cup of tea, with too much Splenda.
Third draft of statement of career goals.
More tea or no tea for ride to new tutee's house?  Decide no, because, if you've never worked with a client before, you don't like your first question to be, "where's your potty?"
Blog.  Think about what's for dinner--if grocery store on the way home, then sweet potatoes with arugula and roasted edamame, if not grocery store on the way home, peanut butter sandwiches.  Resolve to get quarters.  Resolve to do laundry.  Resolve to work more on actual dissertation later tonight so that you can finish and graduate and get a job you like and have a nice apartment that you like and go to museums and see independent films and be with people you love and be happy.

Reconsider second tea.