Probably everyone that reads my blog knows that Bill and I spent a LONG time in school. We didn't meet until after I had finished my undergrad degree at BYU. When we did meet, Bill was only a year into his undergrad, so we did that together. In the middle of that I did my Master's degree as well. Then we headed down to Clemson and spent six and a half years there working on Bill's graduate degree as well as two years afterwards plugging away at trying to finish his dissertation with no help or support from his second advisor, who had never helped much, but disappeared entirely once we had to leave after our funding ran out.
You may not know though that the entire reason we started a PhD was so Bill could get hired at a firm that required one, but partway through our time at Clemson, that firm stopped requiring it. A PhD in Civil Engineering is actually not that useful outside of academia, at least not for us, and while we started the grad school process thinking Bill was interested in pursuing that route, we quickly realized that was not the path we wanted to take. We didn't end up being able to go work for that firm after all either since when we were available, they weren't hiring.
So very recently we made a heart wrenching, but very good decision, to abandon whatever it would require to finish the dissertation, and move on away from that very long educational journey, as it a horrendous drain on life dissatisfied, and also wouldn't do much of anything career wise for Bill because of the things that had changed in the eight years since we started the journey. To say it was disappointing is an understatement. I do not regret our time in South Carolina even a bit. We loved it there, love our friends, love how our family grew there. We had two kids there and all four of my kids spent years there. But it is so hard to walk away from something you've put so much of your time and your whole self into. Bill did get his Master's degree and is considered ABD(all but dissertation) for his PhD. Stopping doesn't take away the expertise he has and knowledge he has gained. There is some measure of sadness though, a good bit of disillusionment, and a whole lot of relief. Ha!
All that being said, we had several goals when we started our educational journey. One was the educational part, but the second was the PE part, or professional engineer, which is a career step that requires Bill to have worked for five years under another professional engineer, then take a two-day long test to become one himself. He's a year or two away from the time requirement, and will take the test in October.
So while the grad school journey didn't go as expected, at the end of this year we will have reached the second goal we've had since we got married 12 years ago. And let me tell you, that is one amazing feeling. We are so close. And our life has normalized. No more extra hours working on dissertation. No more me working day and night to earn my paychecks so that we could survive on the student income. And more recently, no more living in a high COLA place that sucks every last cent we are earning out of us so we still felt poor.
I never would have asked for the path that we have taken. It's felt like an incredible grind for years and years. I thought we were going to settle in the Pacific Northwest forever. We planned to. But life has taken a different path than that, and seven months post being laid off in the middle of Covid, we are in a much better place than then and so many of our huge goals are coming to fruition this year. They wouldn't have without this huge upheaval in our life.
This weekend was the perfect Saturday. We had not a single thing we had to do. But I got to go to my FiA workout group. I got to go to my South Jordan run club. And then after I came home and we ate lunch, we were able to drop the kids off at their cousins' house and come back to go snowshoeing in the canyon behind our house. We spent a few beautiful, glorious hours out on the mountain enjoying the world.
We got sun. We got clouds. It snowed for a bit. We had 18 inches of fresh powder to snowshoe in. We hiked a ridge line for a couple of miles and then dropped down into the valley to snowshoe back. Glorious is the only word that I can come up with that describes the feeling. We have been working so hard for seemingly endless years. We've had so many disappointments. So many trials to overcome. But this weekend we had the perfect day. We came off the mountain, picked up our kids, grabbed them some pizza and us some Chinese food, and watched Newsies while we ate it all.
I keep just marveling at the place we've come to in life. We're building a house. We have jobs that take care of our needs and have room to grow. Our kids are in a good place. I didn't particularly want to move to Utah. I liked Kirkland. But so much good has come here, and I remember back eight years ago when we left Utah I felt sad about leaving the beauty and majesty of the outdoors. I had never planned to live here again, and I mourned some of the things that weren't available elsewhere, like the slot canyons, and the hikes so close to home, and the national parks. Coming back feels like this precious gift to do so many of those things again and share them with our kids. So while I didn't think I wanted to live here, it's a GREAT place to live and we're settling in and I feel so good about it. After 2020, that is a precious feeling and I'm grateful for it. I'm sure there will still be hard times and unforeseen trials. But for now we're in a good place and it makes me very happy.
