Coming to Nepal, for me, had a lot to do with happenstance, and a long series of questions I had to work through before returning to school to begin my graduate education.
I applied to Yale University’s School of Forestry and Environmental Studies last year after a long research process, during which I wasted untold amounts of time reading extensively about graduate programs and faculty members, and spent too little time just emailing and speaking with the professors with whom I thought I might want to work, which is what one should actually do if one wants to go to graduate school and pursue a Ph.D. In the end I decided on about four programs to apply to for a Ph.D. in Forest/Natural Resource Management, and tacked Yale on as an afterthought, at first, because I loved the sound of their program but would only be considered for a Master’s, since I didn’t yet have one. I thought this policy of Yale’s to be an obviously archaic remnant of a past in which attending graduate school was both rarer and cheaper, and it annoyed me. Professors I had worked with in the field in several different states had told me for years, at that point, never to pay for graduate school, so I was not really even open to considering Yale, to tell the truth, nor did I think I would necessarily get in.
In perhaps a telling move I did, however, drive a rental car the seven hours from DC to Connecticut to attend an open house in December of 2008, and promptly fell right in love with it. To me the air was electric with the possibility of progress in the conservation field, and the community was rich with a wide diversity of people and perspectives. The day I spent at Yale was gorgeous, and everything it should be on such a historic campus. As our program ended around 4pm I remember looking out the window to see thick, lush, plump white snow coming down in what might be fairly termed a blizzard, frosting the historic campus and all of its beautiful stonework with the kind of snow that is straight out of a Christmas movie. I, who since moving to DC had been craving a proper winter, and some decent snow, felt it get bumped up a notch in my list of priorities right then and there, and rationalized myself into promoting it to a pseudo “safety school” in case I was not admitted to a Ph.D. program, and decided I would apply.
This is where we will begin to take the condensed version, for in addition to being a cumbersome part of my personal tale, many of the people likely to be reading this blog, at its beginning, already know the story. A handful of days before the application due dates began to come upon me in January of 2008, fate and my personal life (perhaps I should say my love life) conspired to throw me a wicked curveball, and for reasons not worth going into, my life plan was abruptly altered. In the end I applied only to Yale before I completely lost my momentum, for it had the earliest deadline, and then did not apply to any of the other schools I had invested so many hours in researching and contacting. Generally a strong writer, I completed a terribly sub-par, half-hearted, un-edited essay the night that the application was due, hit submit right as the deadline struck, lay down on the floor of my bedroom, and cried. Submitting the application in this way wasn’t how I’d planned for things to go, and in a protracted moment of vulnerability I no longer felt sure that graduate school was what I wanted, or needed. I suddenly found that I, with all my short-term plans and long-term derivations, who always was heading in dozens of different directions and fully expected to pursue them all, didn’t know what I wanted any longer, and didn’t much care what I needed, either.
So it was that I went on with life, transferring into a short-term contract job for the few months I had expected to have to myself before summer and a return to school, and didn’t think about what was next. I was so disenchanted and lost that I pretty much forgot I had applied to Yale altogether, to be truthful, with the exception of a slight morbid curiosity that I felt around the time when the applicants were to hear back from the school. It occurred to be that being rejected from the only school I had applied to, the one that I had originally thought would be my backup plan, would really be the bitter frosting on the nasty little cake I was eating, in those days. And so finally, one Friday afternoon after a long week of work, when I was in the process of summoning my willpower to kick in that last hour of productivity, my phone rang with a 203 number and I rapid-fire googled to see if I wanted to take the call. It was the area code for New Haven, Connecticut, where I knew not a soul other than the admissions people and a smattering of professors, from Yale. When I hesitantly answered I was brightly greeted by the Director of Admissions from FES, and wondered briefly and seriously whether they now did rejections in person, over the phone. If so, I thought, this Yale University might actually be the world class institution everyone seemed to think it was.
The end of the story should seem obvious, given previous posts that announce my presence and affiliation, but my path had more twists in it than one might guess. I was of course being called to be notified I had been accepted (to my mild shock), and I remember managing the call very professionally and calmly, as if it were a work call, perhaps seeking to prove to myself and to this admissions director who had just given me her benediction that I was worthy of the gift. After I got off the phone I stepped away from my desk, flopped on my bed, and just stared at the ceiling fan for awhile, not shouting or laughing or running to tell my roommates, but just trying to work my mind around it, with a little smile slowly spreading across my face. I think I cried a little then, too.
Shortly after that lovely Friday afternoon phone call I received my financial aid package, had a serious conversation with my parents about finances, debt, and financial priorities, and decided I would decline. The cost was atrocious, I had been awarded no scholarships or grants, not even a Student Asisstantship, despite having only made $30,000 the year before, and only having about $5,000 in the bank. Although I could apply to a myriad of scholarships and grants, there was no guarantee I would actually be awarded one (and I wasn’t feeling optimistic given the fact I’d received nothing from the school), and the process of applying would be horribly time-consuming. I began to tell my closest friends this news, and one by one, they (or you, for those who are reading) began to tell me that I was, in fact, and contrary to my own opinion, going to Yale. I cherish the memories of these conversations, for at a time when I didn’t recall what I wanted or needed for myself, my friends recalled what I wanted and needed for me.
I had two particularly memorable conversations at this point. The first was a night out at my former roommates Brighton and Fred’s then-new house, with Julius and Rachel, our friends, all of whom know me pretty well. At that point I had been accepted for short enough time to still be shocked, and long enough to know I was not going to go. And as I told this to my friends over candlelight, pizza and a particularly tasty bottle of red wine that I’d be willing to bet Julius picked out, Fred, who was still fresh from work in his slacks and button-up shirt, looked at me fondly through thin, wire-framed glasses, leaned back into his chair, crossed his long legs in front of him, arms draped lazily over his head, and said with great finality in his big, deep voice, “Meredith: you are going to Yale.” And one by one the others repeated it, little smiles on their faces, with the two boys taking the lead on laying out the argument for why I would go to Yale, and relish it, and not worry about the details (also known as $70,000 of new debt). I remember being a little shocked and peevish about not being taken seriously for my “decision,” and then looking around at their supportive, bemused faces, and just feeling really loved.
In the days that followed I felt persuaded to want to go for the reasons they had laid out, but paralyzed by fear of the debt. And so I called Greg, my best-friend and most brilliant sounding board, whose judgement I trust so deeply that he is often both judge and jury on my hair-brained ideas, to see if I could make my argument against going cleanly enough that he would allow it to pass muster. I think, in hindsight, that I was looking for his permission to give up. I also think that were he to have given it to me, I actually might have. So we talked through the numbers, the ideas, the value added to my person and thinking and lost to my credit. And Greg, with whom my friendship has crisscrossed thousands of miles and several continents without a moment’s hesitation, whom I almost never see in person for more than a day’s time, but who is always my first phone call with news both substantial and trivial, unknowingly reiterated my DC friends, verbatim: “Mer: you’re going to Yale.”
And then he made three good points. The first, that if I came to the end of my life, and looked back, and was wondering what might have gone differently had I done otherwise, going to Yale would surely be on the list, were I to decline. The second, that the way our economic system is set up in America, we will always carry debt from some loan or other, between our cars, our homes, our payment plans, our education, and the like, so what nobler reason to acquire this debt than to educate yourself, and in so doing enrich your life? When I replied that I wanted to buy a house, in some eventuality, and would have to put off doing so for several years (an argument that held significant water with my mother), he brushed it aside. If you’re going to be in a position to be making payments to others for the rest of your life, he argued, why not start by paying for an experience that changes the way you experience the world? Plus, it wouldn’t kill me to rent. And finally, not quite a rationale so much as an ultimatum, this friend of mine who is closest to me in the world, probably the one and only for whom, were he to suggest I should go jump off a bridge, I would at least go to the edge to look and see what was under the bridge and take it under consideration, said in the most dead-serious, and convincing tone he could muster, “And, seriously, seriously Meredith, I’m not going to be your friend if you don’t go.”
These two stories still make me grin, and will warm my heart for a very, very long time. Nonetheless, unable to render a decision so big from the midst of my life in DC, I decided the last weekend before the decision was due to rent a car, and took off straight after work for a weekend alone in Shenandoah National Park, where I would do a three-day solo backpack through the park before I could come to a decision that was truly mine. Influenced more than a little bit by my yoga practice, where you are invited to “declare (to yourself) an intention for your practice” which you will focus on resolving through the movements and meditation, I decided the trip was in fact a meditation in itself, and that while walking I would figure out what I was going to do about this Yale nonsense I’d gotten myself into. I cringe a little to share all this detail (so much for a short version, eh?), but it is the true evolution of me getting myself back to school, no matter how hippie-dippie-earth-mama or cheesy it sounds. The intention I settled on for my walk was for me to make this decision about my future, and stick to it.
And so early on in the second day of my hike I came across a little stream, beautiful, cool, and clear in the sun, and sat down on its banks, and just stared into it for a little while, deciding to start with square one – what did I love to think about most in the world? What provoked me? What goals did I want to work towards in my life? I worked slowly through the re-establishment of my identity all the way through to the last question, which was “what do I need to do next to be able to work effectively on the thing (environmental conservation, and the way people interact with natural resources) I had identified as mattering most?” And so when I got up three hours later, I was going to Yale.
-M-
