No Longer 'Into the Unknown'
Sometimes, one can be surprised by things that everyone else accepts as a foregone conclusion or a matter of fact. Today one such surprise took place. The director of graduate studies in English at one of the seven universities to which I applied telephoned me to offer a generous funding package for my doctoral studies. I was accepted on the 19th instant, but there were still some outstanding pieces of paperwork to file for a tuition waiver. Now, that paperwork is no longer necessary.
The university (hereafter referred to as University A, because it was the first to reply to me) has offered me a four-year funding package including a teaching assistantship with a seventeen thousand dollar per annum stipend, a full tuition waiver, health care, and an option for a fifth-year dissertation award of twenty thousand dollars, if needed. The assistantship offer may be enlarged to a twenty thousand dollar non-teaching stipend instead, though a few weeks are needed to confirm this. There are other additional awards which are in addition to those aforementioned.
Whether or not I accept the offer presented by University A, they have effectively ensured that I will be in a doctoral programme this autumn. Even if all of my other applications are rejected out-of-hand, I have been accepted with funding somewhere–and not minimal funding, either. Their offer was generous even compared to the standard awards of some of the other, larger universities to which I applied. Moreover, the confidence which they appear to have in me bodes well for how they think I will ‘fit’ within their department.
A Traditional University
Most important for me, in all of this, is the removal of that just-hinted-at possibility: that I might be rejected in all areas; that I might end up teaching rhetoric for a year, or even choosing a different field; that six years of hard work and occasional suffering would have resulted in a busted flush. Now, that dire possibility is dispelled. It is a possibility which, for more than six years, has weighed on my mind every single day, through every project, and in every term. In an afternoon it has been settled. I will go into doctoral studies; I will obtain my PhD.
All along, my friends, family, colleagues, and professors have assured that me this would be the case. Yet until now, I have never allowed myself to believe it, lest disappointment overcome me when it failed to materialise. I have always believed that the esteem in which others hold me is absurdly inflated and out of all proportion with reality, and I still feel this way. Yet this time, I appear to have been wrong in my estimations. Someone, somewhere, thinks that my interests and ideas possess merit and, at the very least, the capacity for scholarship.
Thea is delighted with the circumstance. It removes many of the larger concerns which hung, cloudlike, over our future life together. Now that we are certain of funding and a career, we can rest a little more easily. No longer is next autumn a location of impenetrable mystery. That pervasive fog, like my former doubt, has been dispelled.
