The Light at the End of the Ph.D. School Tunnel

For the first time, we're starting to see that there will be an end to the road we've been on for so long. (And, yes, I said "we" since I'm the one that's logging all those extra parenting hours while Matt's in school!). It's starting to get exciting & I'm hoping that excitement will carry us through the next 16 weeks as Matt completes his suicide mission to finish up the coursework.

We've been gearing up for this semester the past few weeks. Matt started back in full swing this week. We're only 3 days in and already I'm exhausted. Ha! I always forget how tiring it is to not have him home at night until after the kids are in bed. Trying to get 3 kids fed, bathed, homework done, teeth brushed, bedtime stories read -- it's nuts! By the time I tuck the last one in bed, pick up the house and Matt gets home, we just fall into bed exhausted only to get up and do it again the next day. And, somehow we do it thanks to a lot of caffine & prayer. :) But, I know that when it's all over it will have been worth all of it!

It finally feels like there will be an end to this crazy life we've led the past 5 years. Matt started his master's degree when Harrison was just 3 weeks old, with the intent of going straight through to the doctorate. And, that's what he's done. It's been tough and there certainly were times we talked about quitting, but now that the end is in sight, I'm so thankfult that we stuck it out. Last week, Matt was filling out a form that lists all the classes required and he had to fill in when he took them, etc. It's mostly for the purpose of making sure that a class hasn't been forgotten along the way. He was finishing it up and I made him stop and look at it -- it was FULL. I remember not so long ago, when there were just 2 classes filled in and now there are 19. What an amazing feeling that was to see it all there, almost completed.

Next fall he'll start writing his dissertation and hopefully be finished sometime in the spring, with a graduation date of May '13. It will be here before we know it.

The options after all of this are limitless. He has an amazing resume -- 10 years of classroom teaching, instructional facilitator, adjuncting at a local university. We'd always planned to move and have him join the faculty at a college. But, then we fell in love with Fayetteville, and our church, and Madeleine's school, all of it. It's such a great place to raise a family and it's getting harder and harder to move all the time. I think we've come to the decision that we'll just finish up the degree and see what doors are open -- and pray that we make the right decisions at that time.

So, that's it. Where we are right now. There is a light at the end of the tunnel, however small, and it's growing brighter by the day.