Harvard to Homeless

Well, the honeymoon is over. When I hit Cambridge, I was in a fantasy of sorts . . . or maybe a pleasure vacation that didn't seem to have an ending. All I knew is that I didn't have the burdens of teaching, I could go out on a Tuesday night and I had a lot of reading and writing and thinking to do but I'd enjoy it all. And for 8 months or so, I pretended that was all that was happening to me . . . all that would ever happen to me.

But today was the last day of classes. I've got a paper due tomorrow, another one due on May 5th, and then my last one due May 6th. And then that's IT.

So, unavoidably, I have to think about what I'm doing next year. And I have no idea. At all.

Which makes me think back to my very first weekend in Cambridge. My parents and I had driven out in my minivan and a moving truck. After we got all my stuff into my new place, we headed out for a goodbye lunch at Veggie Planet, a local restaurant that serves a stellar peanut/broccoli/coconut rice dish.

As my father, mother, and I sat and ate, my parents started in on me.

"So, what will you do after this year?"

"Um, I don't know."

"You gave up your teaching job in Mundelein, didn't you."

"Um, well, yes."

"A job with tenure, that paid you well, with benefits, and with a good pension."

"Yep."

"And now you gave it up to get a second master's, one that you don't functionally need."

"I guess so."

"So what will you do after this?"

"I don't know."

"Does this master's give you any new job opportunities?"

"I'm not sure."

"Are you thinking about your employment beyond this yet?"

"Not really, not yet."

"You know you can't count on us to support you. You're 38 years old.

"I know."

"Do you know what you're doing?

"I'm not really thinking that far ahead, I guess."


The rest of the lunch went on like this. When we were done, we walked out of the restaurant, and AT THAT EXACT MOMENT, walking right by us, was a homeless man who had his stuff in a Harvard Graduate School of Education bag. You couldn't have scripted it any better.

My mother, without missing a beat, said "That'll be you in 9 months."

Well, now it's nine months later, and I have a debt and no real job prospects.

We'll have to see if my mother was right.