From Small Beginnings...

So my life as an official media scholar begins at the beginning, a.k.a. the adjunct trail. The pay is about the same as when I was a grad instructor, but there are some nice perks to being a real professor (aside from the obvious perk of being able to teach, which I've always enjoyed.)

Psychologically, every graduate student wrestles with oceans of self-doubt. It can be a productive thing, because it keeps you honest and committed to learning. The down side is, years and years of self-doubt can be deeply caustic. On most college campuses, graduate students stick out like a sore thumb. They are the haggard ones, who walk not with the lackadaisicality of students or the complaisance of tenured professors, but that nail-biting freneticism of temp-workers everywhere, as if someone is charging them for every breath of oxygen (which, when I look at my mountain of student loans, is scarily close to the truth). To paraphrase a famous Half Life level, every grad student is an interloper.

That's why graduation doesn't hit you until you see your name on the office door: "Dr. Such-and-such". Then you realize, well, yes, come to think of it, I did defend my dissertation. I walked through the portal, after all, and now begins my second life. Now the game begins all over again. From small beginnings...