A wrote a letter to Santa for my class the other day.
Dear Santa,
I want a nap. A nice, long, nap in a sunbeam. Curled up, warm and toasty.
I want time to play with my kids, build things with them, read to them, dance with them.
I didn't finish the letter since I had to give the lecture... but I realized that if I wanted time to be with my kids, then I've got to design my life to do it. These early cuddly years are slipping away and if I choose now to enter into a PhD program, then I will probably be spending way too much of that precious time shushing them up so I can write. That's not what I want to do with these years. In 10 years very few of these kids will want to hang with me any more (yikes, 5 of them will probably be grown up and moved away), but now I am the most precious thing to them. The PhD will wait. It is patient. But children grow up either way.
I also don't want to commute anymore. So I've got to design my life where I don't need to do that. That will give me back 6-12 hours per week of precious day time to be with the kiddos.
So I think I see possibilities opening up for me that would allow me to get an MBA in sustainable management - all on-line while working/being trained in as grant writer, and still have enough time to spend more with my kids then I do now. My schedule would be ultra-flexible and adjustable to whatever challenges come my direction for a while. Plus it would let us stay put in our house, stay near my family, and it would allow me to serve a wider variety of people than a specific PhD discourse community. (oh and it pays better now and probably 15 years down the line). Those reasons are all really appealing.
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