The Grad School Diaries: Crossing the Road

As it turns out, the question isn’t so much “Why did the Graduate Student cross the road?” as it is “HOW did the Graduate Student cross the road?” Why is moderately obvious: the other side of this road is the location of a large shopping center that includes several places which sell food, including a Cracker Barrel, a Bob Evans, a Steak n’ Shake, a Subway, and a McDonald’s (just to name a few), whereas this side of the road only features the Pontiac dealership where we’ve taken our Torrent for service, and the waiting room here offers only a drink machine and a coffee pot. Unless we want to go hungry for the duration of however long it will take them to fix the car – and there’s really no telling how long that might be – we need to cross the road, which in this case is Saginaw Highway, in Delta Township just outside of Lansing. How we are supposed to manage this crossing is an entirely different matter…

It’s the middle of winter in Central Michigan, and while I’m pretty sure this road has sidewalks on both sides of it (I remember seeing them when we were here in the summer) no one is bothering to plow them, since there are no houses around here and no one is likely to walk along them. Except us, of course; even getting the corner where there’s a traffic signal on Saginaw will mean slogging through two or three feet of snow, and when we do get there the intersection does not feature a crosswalk or a walk signal. We’ll have to wait for the green light (which won’t be visible from this direction) and then run like heck for the other side, hoping that none of the oncoming drivers is in the mood to jump the gun and go while the light is still red...

It’s never the big things in life that change the way your existence actually unfolds; it’s always the little things. A year ago, I had never operated a snow thrower and cleared my driveway so that I could get to work; today it’s not even remarkable to me anymore; just something I do on particular mornings before heading off. A year ago I’d never had the experience of going to work in my parka, or of needing to suit up to go outside, even for a moment, even just to cross the street from my parking structure to the Business Complex. A year ago I’d never even owned a snow brush or an ice scraper, let alone carried one in the back of my car against the possibility of having to clear the windshield before I could drive away, let alone actually having done so. A year ago, a hat was something I wore to keep the bald parts of my head from burning in the sun, not to keep my body heat from escaping and my ears from aching with the cold. There have been a thousand little things like this, all of them trivial, all of the combined taking up only minutes out of my day, but collectively a complete change in my life and how I live it…

This is why a lot of people believe that kids should go away to college; “away” being defined as however far the speaker thinks one must travel to experience a different lifestyle and experiences that one’s home city, home state or home climate can not provide. It’s certainly not the first time I’ve lived somewhere outside of my childhood home; it’s not even the first time I’ve lived outside of my home state; my travels have taken me to much stranger and more far-flung places than this. But this time is different; this time I have committed to this place for four or five years, with no prospect of leaving early unless disaster strikes and I am unable to complete the doctoral program. And, just as importantly, this time I have no real prospect of ever going “home” again, whatever that might mean. Certainly, there is nowhere in Redondo Beach for me to go back to, and no sane reason to go. And even if I am successful, in that time just four years into the future and yet unimaginably far away, there is no telling where the winds of fortune may carry me next. Will it be a return to Southern California, a voyage to New England, or the Pacific Northwest, or the Atlantic Coast, or even somewhere else in the Midwest, possibly somewhere even colder and snowier than here?

I have no way of knowing. I’m adrift in an almost featureless white expanse of time, with no real choice but to put my head down and press on through the winds, hanging on to the belief that there really is an “other” side – and that somewhere over there, the promise of hot food and cold drink may still come true…