Cath is my cheerleader. She graduated BYU Law and was teaching there by the age of 22. Her mom who never graduated college when she was young (in lieu of raising her family abroad because her Ambassador husband took them to Sweden and Japan while they had 6 small children) just finished her Ph.D. at 58. So, our topic of conversation theses past few Saturdays has been "Who Am I really?" brought on by developments in my personal life. My thought was, once your parents die, who do you want to impress? What is your impetus behind personal success? Who do you want to be proud of you? What can you take with you beyond this life? What legacy do you leave behind ? (Besides your children, for whom you don't can't really take credit for based on the principles of free will & election...alhthough, I'd like to because they are so smart and wonderful to me). So I started on the topic of 'impressing myself', since there is no one else I'd rather impress now that my Father's gone. What could I do that would really make me feel like "I'd arrived & conquered". For many years, that's been going back to school. A law degree? An MPA? an MPH? So Catherine and I have been challenging each other. She wants to act & sing in a play (because she was always so studious and serious) and I want to go back to school and get a Ph.D. or an MPH. She was saying how easy it would be to get the MA program out of BYU and it occurred to me that I don't just want to get an MA out of the way by writing some lame thesis on say, a post modern study Emily Dickenson's or Virginia Wolf's virtues of feminine solitude. I want to do something that pushes my boundaries. Like research about male expressionism and masculine archetypes through the writings of say Chuck Palahnick or Norman Mailer. Or perhaps throw in a ModernYungian analysis of gender roles. Anyway, I came away from 11 miles almost high with the idea of doing something new with my brain, something that would occupy a few years and inspire my heart. I think if I'm doing that while my children are also in school, I stand a better chance of being able to help them be better students too. It's been so long since I've been to school, I feel like my brain is on a warmer plate in the microwave. The MA, Ph.D. route would lend itself to writing and research--which I would love if I could find a way to make that work. But I could do the easier thing and go for the MPH, where I have experience and could just get a different job in the same field. But I'm leaning toward lighting my fire and writing a book, or short stories more than going down the same boring path I'm on now. The end. AP 9:37 | 