In awe

Yesterday at work, my coworkers and I were talking about the relative ease with which one can obtain a PhD. As a card-carrying Doctor of Philosophy myself, and with two other non-practicing PhDs in the room, I commented that a PhD seemed impressive to me only before I actually had one. Having gone through grad school and then a short stint as a post-doctoral fellow, I've seen all sorts of people receive PhDs: smart; not-so-smart; insightful; dull; motivated; bored; and altogether absent. It seems to me that the secret to getting a PhD is enrolling in the first place, because most supervisors and departments are loathe to have a grad student not finish -- it simply reflects poorly on everyone. True, the very weak students might fail multiple committee examinations, suffer numerous dissertation re-writes, or, at the very worst, receive a "Master's degree in lieu of," but even that's not such a bad way to put an extra two or three letters behind one's name. Of course, I don't mean to disparage my own education or that of others. But it's funny how things can seem overwhelming or downright frightening -- that is, until we actually try them and (hopefully) succeed.

Marathoning is a similar phenomenon. A long time ago, when I was 20 years old, my boyfriend at the time used to run for 30 minutes a few days each week. I was amazed! How on earth can a person run, without stopping, for 30 minutes at a time!? Only when I began running myself and was eventually doing 45-60 minutes at a time did this cease to be incredible to me. When I moved to Toronto several years later, I met my now dear friend, Siobhan, who was training for a half marathon at the time. When Siobhan suggested that we train for a marathon together, I looked at the training schedule and was unconvinced that I could run so long, week after week. But as we plundered through our plans, 20+ km runs became, and remain, my norm. True, in those early training days, Siobhan and I would run, eat, and sleep away the rest of the day, whereas now I'm usually showered, changed, and out the door again within an hour or two of my long runs. But what once seemed impossible now seems merely average to me; I spend most of my time marveling at the elite and sub-elite runners who can complete a marathon in under three hours (something that I'm pretty certain will always remain beyond my abilities).

These reflections seem especially relevant this week, as Siobhan just had her first baby. Note that I have two adorable nephews and one very adorable niece, courtesy of my sister, and that my sister is the world's most amazing mother (next to my own). She does it all, and then some, and she has raised the three most wonderful children imaginable. She works her butt off. But she's always been my big sister (by many years), and so I've always kind of thought of her as being more mature and capable than me. On the other hand, Siobhan and I are the same age and I relate to her in many ways, so to say that I am in awe of the fact that she is now a mother would be an understatement.

I have a hunch that having and raising a child is probably more difficult than any PhD or marathon. On the other hand, the vast majority of parents seem to get through parenthood, and oftentimes decide to do it several times more! I imagine that most of parenthood is like running the final, difficult, but immensely rewarding miles of a marathon over and over and over again. As one who's never done it (that is, neither parenthood nor repeatedly running miles 24-26), I'm sure that's a wildly inaccurate analogy, but it's the only one I know.

Congratulations, Siobhan and Jeremy!