During our first conversation, I asked M what he did for a living. When he said he was a student, I was instantly disappointed. In my mind, he'd just been knocked down a few rungs. What 27 year old is STILL a student, I'd thought?
I hadn't had any direct exposure to graduate school before then, so I didn't know that 27 is actually quite YOUNG in the world of Ph.D.'s. My father had completed some graduate education, but that was before my time. I have an aunt and uncle who also have graduate degrees, and while that was while I was a teenager, they also lived far, far away, so I still never really knew much about it.
Growing up, though, it was just expected that I would go to grad school. For much of my life, I wanted to be a doctor. At the beginning of high school, I changed my mind and decided I would become a lawyer. My family had no problem with the mind change, but there was no option (in their minds or my own) to downgrade below graduate school. Education was just too important, almost as if it were already granted that grad school - law school or at the very least a master's degree - were the lowest expectation that I must at least fulfill. An expectation from my parents, yes, but also from myself. (And I'm fine with that, both then and now. I have similar expectations for my own son.)
Education was also very important for M's family. He comes from a long line of educators. His paternal grandfather (Dada) was a headmaster of a school in India. His maternal grandfather (Nana) got his bachelor's degree in India in the late 1930's and he would boast about completing such rigorous studies when "people didn't even go to school at that time!" All of his aunts and uncles on his father's side were or are well educated. One of his aunts started her own school in what was a slum at that time in Karachi - Orangi Town. On his mother's side, his grandfather (Nana) also made sure that his kids were educated. My mother-in-law completed a bachelor's degree before her marriage - not all women in that time went so far in their studies and she's always been very proud of her academic accomplishments.
M's own father (my father-in-law) also grew up wanting to be a doctor. He went to medical school in Bangladesh for six months, but had to stop his expensive medical studies because he needed to work to support his mother and two sisters. Instead he took admission in another school for a master's program in Zoology (it was cheaper and less rigorous, so he had more time to earn money.) Eventually, when M was 19 years old, his father completed his Ph.D. (He even came to America twice in the late 80's - early 90's to collaborate with an American university for his doctoral thesis work.)
In M's immediate family, there were also no options besides graduate school. All the kids were told, even as infants, that they would be doctors one day. This would morph from doctor to engineer when M would show his intelligence in that area. But it didn't stop just at grad school - even when he was 10 years old, his father would tell him that he was expected to go to America for higher studies.
And he did. And years later, on that occasion of our first conversation, when he was telling me about it, I was disappointed! It took me some time to get to know all about what it's like to be working for a Ph.D.. It's very tough and all-consuming. Especially if you have a tough advisor. M often jokes that the letters actually stand for phira hua dimagh, or 'crazed mind.' Like, go for a Ph.D. and you'll definitely end up nuts. It wasn't fun to be in a relationship with a guy who's going through that. But I've rambled on enough for one day, I'll write more later about the effects of dating a Ph.D. student.
Sneak peak though - that phira hua dimagh can be contagious!
