When you enter into grad school, what you’re basically doing is entering into a contract of indentured servitude. You exchange approximately seven years of your life in return for the promise of a doctorate. People did it in return for their passage to America, and now I’m doing it for the promise of the future. After all what’s seven years in the grand scheme of things?

Within the past seven years, I have graduated from high school and college. I have lived on the other side of the world, and seen things that most people can only dream of seeing. I’ve lost friends, and made friends that I know I could trust my life with. I’ve moved across the country, leaving everyone I know thousands of miles away. Watched my parents divorce and remarry, and my brother go off to college. I’ve had my heart broken and have since mended it. I’ve lived.

So even as I consign my life to academia for the next seven years, I know that this too will become a part of who I am. It’s more than just an investment.

This is my life.