Chapter 5: Difficult Choices, Simple Decisions

It is safe to say that the path I traversed to reach my PhD hardly went according to some strategically laid out plan. It would be more correct to say I rather backed into the endeavor after several years dabbling in this or that before discovering it was something I wanted to pursue. Over the course of these wanderings I was never much concerned with niceties like careers, making money, or even worrying too much about what the future held exactly. Perhaps I even adhered to this mindset to a fault as there have been plenty of instances over the years when finances were ludicrously tight. However, I have always operated under the premise that if lack of money was my biggest problem, I really didn’t have much of a problem at all, at least compared to much of the world that regularly gets by with less material wealth than we have in the United States. This thought was never too far from my consciousness at most times and I believe it has been key to my making it through schooling and life up to this point with my good humor intact.