Getting Smart

I didn’t know I was smart until I was in my thirties.  I mean, the signs were there. I got straight A’s all through high school without expending much effort.  My undergraduate GPA was 3.94. But I didn’t like to read as a child, and in a highly intellectual family like mine was, I was the oddball who preferred doing gymnastics and watching sitcoms over heady discussions of politics and philosophy.  It wasn’t until I was teaching high school English and enrolled in graduate school at Trinity College in the American Studies program that I had the first real inkling that I was smart. I took three courses with the same professor– Eugene Leach– who opened up this notion in my mind.  Gene told me that I was one of the best writers he had ever encountered in his many years of teaching. I remained skeptical until we had the chance to read papers submitted by previous students and I saw that many of them wrote like my high school students. Okay, I conceded. Maybe I am a good writer.  Maybe I am smart.

I spent six years commuting to West Hartford 90 minutes each way, one night a week to complete my MA.  The drive never felt like a burden because after class, I was high on the intellectual rigor, discussions, and challenge that Trinity gave me. As I drove,  I would sing along with my iPod, belting out songs of triumph and confidence. I devoured my reading assignments and found that I actually could enjoy reading.  When I finished my degree, I wanted to go on and complete my PhD in American Studies. I had discovered a strength that my parents had been trying to convince me I had since I was a child.  I was just starting to believe they were right.  

I was in my mid-thirties, married, with three children at home and a full-time teaching job.  Getting my PhD would have involved more driving, perhaps giving up my teaching job to go to school full time, more sacrifice.  But I was willing to do that. My husband, on the other hand, was not. We had a strained marriage as it was. We had struggled with poverty before we both started teaching.  My husband had issues with alcohol and pot, and he was finding the stress of our careers and graduate school to be more than he could handle. I knew other couples who made it all work– moved to a university town, got by on very little money, and followed their dreams.  I didn’t understand why we couldn’t try it, but he said no, firmly, unequivocally. It was my PhD dream or our marriage, basically. I chose our marriage.  

We dug into our jobs, bought a house, and saved money to help our kids with college.  And then in 2009 it all started to unravel. He was losing his hearing and became depressed.  His drinking got even more intense. He told me he wasn’t happy and never had been. I couldn’t take the conflict anymore and we separated. In 2011, while we were working out the details of our divorce, he died in a DUI.  My life spiraled out of my control, and I scrambled to hold together my kids and myself as we grieved. I helped them go to college as best I could. A year and a half later, my mom died unexpectedly. I felt like I had a permanent case of the flu for five years.  And just as I felt myself coming out of that flu, my daughter hit bottom and went into rehab for her own alcohol and drug addictions. Without a second thought, I paid for the rehab using my home equity line of credit, my credit card, and a gift from my dad.  

All these years, I still wondered if I could have done a PhD.  I still envied professors and the opportunities that I imagined they had.  I watched my brother-in-law and his family as they traveled the world for his research and lectures.  Attending conferences, writing papers, giving presentations, teaching a bit– it looked so important, so intellectual and worldly.  Now in my early 50’s, I wondered if I could still make it happen. On Facebook and Google News, stories popped up about people later in life pursuing an advanced degree. Why couldn’t I, too?  I applied. I was accepted. I started taking classes and, once again, commuting 90 minutes each way to school.  

But this time was different.  I didn’t leave my classes feeling high.  I felt drained. I felt depressed. I had trouble staying awake on the way home.  The drive felt scary, dangerous. The work seemed tedious, not inspiring. It felt like a “game” to get published, drop names, and disagree with classmates just for the sake of disagreeing.  In the middle of my third course, I was diagnosed with breast cancer. It’s not a horrible type of cancer– I tell people “I have a little bit of breast cancer” because it’s just a tumor that needs to be removed.  I’ll have a “lumpectomy” and radiation and I will be fine. But suddenly, everything is in sharp focus. Is this PhD really what I want to be doing with my time? No, it is not. Am I smart? Of course. I even went to a psychologist and had an IQ test, and, yes, I am very smart.  I may not be in the 1% financially, but at least I am in the 1% of something. I’m ridiculously smart.  

But you know what?  You don’t have to be THAT smart to get a PhD.  My classmates are plenty smart, but they are also many other things.  They are motivated. Most of them live and work near the university. They have jobs that allow them to go to school full time, or they are doing the grad student game of getting fellowships, assistant teaching positions, and loans.  They are good at putting up with the BS that comes with grad school– the name dropping, the game playing. Some of them have spouses who support them.  

I used to feel like I had been deprived of my PhD.  My alcoholic husband held me back. But writing this has made me reframe this story.  I chose my family. I chose financial stability. Those were good choices. The harder part to reframe is the lack of control.  I was not able to corral my life into the lanes that I wanted it to go into. I was powerless over my husband’s drinking, I was powerless over my mom’s smoking.  I am powerless over my daughter’s life, and I am powerless over my cancer. There’s a famous quote from Gilda Radner that says “Life is about not knowing, having to change, taking the moment and making the best of it, without knowing what’s going to happen next.”  I’ve always wanted to make my life into the life I wanted it to be, but I’m slowly admitting that, at least for me, life doesn’t work that way.  It’s improv, not script. It’s Iron Chef and there are lots of “secret ingredients” that you have to work with. It’s playing the hand you were dealt, not choosing the best hand.  It still seems like other people get to choose their hand, get to mold their life the way they want it to be. Maybe they do. Maybe no one does. Maybe I’m comparing my inside to their outside. Maybe it’s just me.  But ultimately, I just need to do me. Play the hand I have been dealt and play it the best way I can. That would be the smart thing to do.