The iPhone has taken Canada by storm… there’s nothing like stewing in your envious juices watching your big, brash older cousin get all the cool toys that you wait an agonizing year for access to to make a nation of consumers salivate. You know how I know that Canada’s gone iphone crazy? Every time I take my (scratched) iPod Touch out on the skytrain, people look over at me, trying to figure out if it’s the hallowed iPhone.

My sister-in-law Briana recently got one, and I have to admit, it’s really cool. That same week, my phone (a hand-me-down from my brother) bit the dust, and I decided to check out my options. I quickly discovered the lure of the iPhone and it’s many fancy features when I realized that there quite simply is no product out there that does as many things as well as the iPhone does. Validating that is the plethora of “me-too” and knockoff products that have come out that look exactly like it (ahem, Samsung…). I was really tempted to figure out a way to buy it (I am lucky enough to be a Fido subscriber, part of the Rogers network which offers the iPhone in Canada), but part of me just thinks - I’ve been a Fido customer for so long to get to this point so I can have no contract. Why would I sign another one that binds me for three years?

Then I started thinking about what that extra money that I would be spending for the 3G network would get me. an iPhone is $199 for an 8GB version. for CityFido (of which I am one of the lucky few subscribers), I pay $45/month for unlimited local calling, period. For $5 extra, I get voicemail, etc. If I had the iPhone, I’d be paying an additional $20/month for the 3G network. So that’s $70 (minimum) I’d be paying, me, a girl who swore I’d never get a blackberry because I couldn’t justify the ridiculous subscription costs. (not to mention why do I need to check my e-mails at every blinking moment?)

So - it seems that others have been giving the iReligion a second thought. I admit - the thought did occur to me that getting an iPhone, though sporting an apple is the trademark of cool these days, is really just another symbol of being part of the massive consumer culture, and an expense that could do a whole lot more good elsewhere. Smarter folks than I have been writing about this - first on the Gateway blog, then repeated on Resonate, and then picked up by the Toronto Sun. What would 3 years of an iPhone buy you? What would it buy a homeless guy in the DTES? What would it buy an orphan of HIV in Africa?

This line of thinking brought me back to reality - I just applied (last week) for a researcher position on a project called A-PODD, the African Policy on Disability and Development, a project that brings together universities in Ireland and South Africa to study case studies of how national policies on disability are being used (or not) to affect the lives and health of citizens with disabilities. I applied to work on their Sierra Leone case study. Who knows whether I’ll be selected. The point is - great as my current job is (and I will be there awhile), I will not be in Vancouver long enough for a 3 year contract of anything. I even feel wierd buying furniture!

The case study in Sierra Leone has a particularly interesting premise - they are looking at how national policies about disability in the wake of Sierra Leone’s long civil war may help to develop the country itself. Sierra Leone’s war left hundreds of thousands with disabilities stemming from amputations - citizens needing jobs, people with families, members of their country who want to be able to be a part of bringing it out of war.

In light of that sort of story - it is extremely hard to justify a purchase like the iPhone, even with the newly-earned salary fattening up my wallet (more like finally paying my bills).

I’m hoping to get back into my travel blogging soon, and I thought in honor of that I’d put up this nifty thing I found today: From the people who brought you “Bed-in-a-bag” and “Salad-in-a-bag,” here comes the Wheelchair in a bag.

Given that I’m paddling on a weekly basis, and hoping to do an overnight soon, I’ve been thinking of how I’d navigate the issue of getting around (on dry land) on a paddling overnight. Well, look no further - here’s a packable, pushable wheelchair, weighing the same as my regular day chair, and collapsible!

Okay so it has no user-drive system. And no real good way of pushing the chair itself. And looks about as easy to remain seated in as a church pew, but it’s the principle! The idea! This idea, plus a good engineer and some hex-wrenches from ikea and WHAMMO we’d have a little go-go-gadget packable wheelchair that fits in next to your insulating silk undies!

Okay, maybe not.

There have been a lot of times in my life when I’ve appreciated bus drivers for what they do, and the often funny, sometimes charming, way in which they do it. Today, however, was not one of those times.

While I am pretty jazzed about being able to transit myself around most places from my new apartment (and yes you would laugh to witness the little-girl excitement I have when picking up my PET-plastic grocery bags and setting out to grocery shop via skytrain and bus. I haven’t a clue why), there continue to be days - mostly evenings after 6pm - where transit seems to fail me in such enormous ways that I am often discovered swearing quite audibly in public places. Yes, I am a surly transit rider.

Tonight, I was late leaving work and I arrived at my bus stop just after when the :25 after bus would leave. Oddly, there were already about 6 people there, meaning the bus was either late or didn’t come. This bus, at it’s best, is a 25-minute-ride for me. Unfortunately it now traverses two separate construction zones each day so that each commute takes a bit longer. But at the end of the day, on the one truly rainy day we’ve had all summer, I waited almost an hour for a bus to come by. At the end of rush hour! Apparently a concert at UBC (the bus’ origin) had slowed it down. I defy you to tell me exactly how a concert slows a buses progress. A bus that already stops at every bus stop!?

In any case - leaving work at 7:15, I got home at 8:45. Imagine that! for a drive that is 15 minutes, 20 at worst! I do like taking transit for the most part, but there are some times when a well-placed four letter word is all that can release the frustration.

This morning I had another of those “people say the stupidest things to me” moments. I have these a lot lately, especially now that I deign to take public transportation. I always have felt as if I was public property on transit, but now that I regularly commute people are downright NUTTERS. So I’m next to the bus stop this morning, reading my book and clutching my lunch and handbag in that “I have a real job” kind of way, when a man driving a huge pickup truck with a canopy over it pulls to a stop in the left lane at the intersection. He’s maybe, 20 metres from me and down the street a bit, when he rolls down his window and starts saying something to me, and gesturing wildly. I look up, trying to figure out what he’s saying. He repeats and I Still can’t hear him, only I notice that his red light has turned green and he’s soon going to be very unpopular with the four drivers behind him.

I really wished I could have figured it out, but I was more annoyed/embarassed for him. I shouted back (still not really understanding what he was yelling at me about), and pointed at the green light in front of him. He tried to protest and I yelled “YOU HAVE A GREEN LIGHT!! YOU NEED TO GO!” back at him, as a chorus of car horns started to threaten his wellbeing. He pulled his body back into the cab of the truck and peeled his truck through the intersection and into the 7-11 in front of which was the bus stop I was standing at.

I studiously ignored him and dismissed it as another “day in the life of Public Property,” when the shouting guy showed up beside me holding out a card. What he said next just sort of made me laugh. What else do you say to people who make such assumptions of complete strangers standing at bus stops?

Shouting Guy: [pushing forward a business card] Yeah, I was just meaning that I’m a musician now, and I work at 7-11 but I worked in healthcare for years and years. If you ever needed an attendant (starts to mumble, now perhaps reconsidering his assumptions) or something… y’know, I have my truck and everything… I can drive, and, uh…. um. IF you need help you could call me.

Me: [staring somewhat bemusedly at the card, pretending to examine it] Um… thanks, that’s great. I, uhh, don’t use attendants, and - well, it’s funny. I drive myself places if I need to most times, but I choose to take the bus to work because it’s convenient.

Shouting Guy: Uhhhh.

Me: [Looking up at him, as he shifts from foot to foot, digs around in his pocket and generally displays how awkward this has gotten.]

Shouting Guy: Ya, well, I’m a musician too, so if you ever needed my truck, or ummm wanted to come see me play, you could do that too.

Me: Okay, great. Thanks! Bye!

Shouting Guy: [beating a hasty retreat]

Now, normally, I’d be all cynical and perhaps would have excoriated him in this post, but it was just so awkwardly genuine and so uncomfortable and slightly annoying that I just don’t have the heart to make fun of HIM. The phenomenon itself, however, is fair game.

WTF is the deal with me and transit? Holy cow do I ever get a lot of this sort of attention. Bless his heart but why can’t people stop and think for a second. Like this:So, I drive by a bus stop somewhere in Washington, DC, and as I’m stopped by the stoplight, maybe I see, oh, maybe a guy who looks JUST LIKE Dick Cheney. Maybe, for our purposes, he IS Dick Cheney, and I, as the motorist, perhaps watched FoxNews at some point last year. Now, before I notice that he’s also well-dressed, bespectacled in a way that suggests intelligence and wealth, and clutching an expensive briefcase, I notice a bald head, glasses and a slight stoop. I of course, in my well-meaning way, assume that he must be a frail elderly person, despite his size and heft. I think to myself, “aha! Those years of schlepping bedpans and escorting seniors around in the rec bus are put to good use. That frail older man must need a ride. He is standing on the curb minding his own business, and, oh look he’s raising his arm into the air as if he needs my help!”

Dick Cheney raises his arm, thinking to himself “&%*@. Stupid DC cabs. I’ve got wars to fight, people to shoot. DAMMIT. IF I don’t get there soon, Bubba’ll be all into the foreign policy and god knows what will happen…”

Meanwhile, I’m waiting for an interminably long light, and think, AHA! this is the perfect time to inform this poor, decrepit old man (who looks remarkably like the human side of Darth Vader, as it happens) of my services! I roll down the window and shout in his direction:

Me: “HEY! OLD MAN! I CAN HELP YOU! I SEE YOU WAVING, AND I’M COMING! I WORKED WITH YOU PEOPLE SO IT’S SAFE - YOU CAN TRUST ME, A TOTAL STRANGER, TO HELP YOU BECAUSE YOU OBVIOUSLY ARE IN DESPERATE NEED OF HELP!”

Dick: [raises his head up a bit, squinting in the direction of the sound.] Who is this idiot? Why is he talking to me? Is he a WTO protester? What if this is one of those threatdown Gamma situations they briefed me about, that one day the entire world might realize how evil I am and start shouting at me all at once, causing me to die of ear hemmorhage… I’ve always liked my ears…

Me: (note to self: he’s old. he must be hard of hearing too. I should shout louder.) SIR!!! IT’S O-KAYYYY. HANG ON AND I’LL BE THERE TO HELP YOUUUU!!!!

Dick: Seize her.

So - moral of the story - never make assumptions. you never know when things could turn out with a Secret Service interrogation in a dark alley. Really.

(Side note: Wow, it’s been so long since I blogged that the cookie has expired on my computer and I had to log in to WP again. I will endeavor to fix this problem.)

I have taken to adopting the very Vancouver-ish fad of trying to be nice to the environment whilst still owning a gas-gulper, eating my very jet-setting diet, and working in that most wasteful of fields, health care. The contradictions abound. For the first time in my life I live within the bounds of Vancouver-town, and have found myself with all the transit I know what to do with, two fresh grocers (of varying nationalities) within a very short walk, and access to an eclectic assortment of food and drink only a short ride, drive, or for the so inclined, cycle, away.

My co-worker is the cohabite of a pastry chef (though sadly, she has a serious dairy allergy. No pastry for her). They live in a recycled factory loft. They don’t own a car but they are members in a car co-op, for which she pays a small amount of money every time she walks to the end of the block to pick up her co-op car. This, of course, is for special occasions requiring more than just saddlebags, because of course, my co-worker commutes on her bike. Every afternoon I see her head for the locker room with her change, then minutes later see her walk toward the bike lockup in shorts, the neatest black climbing-type helmet, and her stripey reflective cycling jacket.

One of my other co-workers (who has since left for Midwifery school in Toronto) was a petite, freckly thing with a lovely Irish name and personality. She lived off of Commercial drive and cycled to work too - topped off by her purple flowered childrens’ bicycle helmet which she loved and hated in alternate weeks. She had been a doula (birth attendant) for a few years, and majored in womens’ studies at UBC.

It’s safe to say I come out of this group with “SUBURBAN WASPY MAMA” tattooed and blinking on my forehead. Me with my Gap-ish attire, my outlet-store student-chic shopping habits, and desperate fondness for the flat-pack goodness of Ikea. Oh, sure, compared to my emphatic co-religionists (that one was for you, Will), I’m more into thinking green, questioning the wisdom of our bleached-flour type communal meals, and generally wondering why we do what we do to sustain an unsustainable method of worship, but in the world of my co-workers, I’m an uncultured rube.

This is okay with me, by the way, because it fits with the transformation that’s been unfolding in my psyche ever since I was 21 and my (rather eccentric) father decided that he was besotted with the idea of me living in residence on a university campus. “I don’t like the idea of you driving back and forth each day - think of how much time and gas you waste! I don’t know why we don’t all just live right next to where we work.” At the time, he had been retired from his life’s work for only three or four years - a work in which he commuted a minimum of 30 minutes, and usually more like an hour, each way to work each day. It was only later that I started commuting over 20km each way in a gas-guzzling minivan to my very first real job that I began to feel the soul sucking right out of me as I stared at the traffic ahead of me.

Ever since, I’ve been the girl who’s looked to live as close as possible to whatever I was doing at the time. I lived on the SFU campus for an unprecedented 3.5 years (altogether), and though I certainly had enough of the slovenly surroundings, it was SO GREAT to walk to work/school/or whatever. When I got my current job, priority #1 was finding a place to live in that was close enough to work to walk or bus/skytrain it to work. In a perfect world, I’d be like my co-workers, donning my snazzy and/or recycled duds to use my human power to get myself hither and yon. Sadly, that’s the least of my worries in the mobility department, but the next best thing is a convenient bus route. I live a four-block walk from the only major bus route that stops right in front of my place of work. A gentle slope, just enough to make me think I’m being virtuously active, is all that separates me from my 42-seat limousine to work.

People often question me about my adamance about transit. They tell me that I, of all people, have the best excuse to not take transit, to drive my car exclusively, and never wheel anywhere I go. Some parents of a friend of mine who has a similar disability to mine cluck their Quebecois tongues every time they see me at the very idea that I gave up my minivan on purpose, and now am forsaking my wagon, for the bus. To them I say - where else could I get to and from work for $45 a month, all told? (My car’s gas tank currently slurps about $50 of gas per fill up, which lasts about a week if I’m commuting). What other conveyance allows me the luxury of a post-waking nap? A luxurious read? (seriously, that reason alone makes me take the bus more.) In fact, my primary concern with my car is whether there is any way I could get by without it and still get myself and my equipment to and from basketball/tennis/track/kayaking. Sadly, the answer is no. There is simply no bloody way for a 4-wheeled person to survive without an internal combustion engine (I’ll leave you with that image in your head to think about for awhile….).

On my walk up the hill from the bus-stop most evenings, I see vestiges of a neighbourhood built when energy was more expensive, families less affluent, housing costs a little cheaper - it seems that most back gardens grow food in some form. Often they are in elaborate arrangements, as if their owner was channeling their inner farmer. Most, however, are humble, and produce enough of whatever to feed the family a little bit of their grandiose North American diet. All the backyards have a tall pole, to which is attached a pulley and two ropes. IF you are my age and younger, you might not know what that is, but if you’ve lived in Australia or England… or everywhere else but in North America, you’ll recognize it as a clothesline, to which one affixes damp clothing to let dry in the… weather. My landlady scolds me in her thick Malaysian chinese accent every time I use the dryer. “I nevaah use it. So hot. I hang crothes up heah (above the furnace) - they dry so quick!” This is usually followed by a good-natured version of “you canadian kids are so wasteful.”

So - I haven’t broken down far enough to get out my clothes dryer and start wearing crunchy drip-dried clothes to work each day, but tomorrow, I am going down to my local farmers’ market for what I hope is the first of many trips until the last of the summer season markets (in mid october). I will haul my recycled-pop-bottle grocery bags with me to work, take the bus to Riley Park, and will do my best to buy veggies from people who picked them, to cook things with food that doesn’t already have a more extensive passport than my own, and to savour the fruits of the summer before they are dead to me for the year. I’m not going all 100-mile-diet… but I am letting the good-natured, well-meaning habits of my co-workers rub off on me. In the city, we have the luxury of being “good-natured.” Transit is plentiful, there’s a consumer base big enough to support farmers’ markets well into the fall, and we’re smart, well-educated young’uns. Why not challenge ourselves to see how far away from the commercialist, oil-heavy culture that we can?

What could be better than a regular guy who gets the worst news of his life, then goes on to record the most popular lecture anyone’s ever heard, write a book, make People Magazine’s 100 Most Influential People list, go on Oprah, go on Good Morning America, quit his job, spend time with his family, and then die of Pancreatic Cancer almost a year after doctors gave him a prognosis of 3-6 months to live.

Way to teach us the importance of living well, Randy.

So, a few weeks ago, I’m at my new-ish job and only one of my co-workers is there. It’s about 4:00 and we’re both killing time until we are leaving for a staff function together.

Suddenly, my mobile rings. I answer, thinking it’s will, or Buffy or a friend calling. Instead, a woman with a quite old voice answers the phone. She sounds (how does a person *sound* old?) about 60. I answer her cautiously, wondering who she is calling for. I have no grandparents, no older people in my life, and I don’t work with anyone of that description.

Her: “Is this [pause while reading paper] Joshlyn Tompskinsnin?”

Me: [bemused] “Uhhh, well, yes, in a way. This is Jocelyn Tomkinson” [listen to my perfect enunciation]

Her: “Uh, yes. Hello. Well, I got your name and phone number from the people at S. F. U. [she said it just like that, each letter like it's own word].”

Me: [instantly suspicious] “Um, you did? I see. What can I help you with?”

Her: “Well, I wanted to give you a computer code. I read about you, and I wanted to give you a computer code.”

Me: “…..”

Her: “…yes, well I have read about your story, you are the girl who is crippled, right?”

Me: “Uhh…. Ma’am, is there something I can help you with?” [gritting teeth]

Her: “…because I was in a terrible accident 10 years ago and I know you have pains - I was in an accident and I got a terrible whiplash in my neck. You know I walked away from that acciden-”

Me: “Thank God.”

Her: “Yes, well later on I had terrible stiffness in my back and my neck. I was on all sorts of drugs and then I was dependent and couldn’t walk and..”

Me: “Ma’am, I’m sorry, but I don’t know what it is that you are looking f-”

Her: “…I tried everything and my doctors just gave up on me, until I found out this therapy that most doctors don’t know about or they don’t want to tell you about it. It cured me, and it will cure you too, so I knew that I just had to tell you as soon as I read about you in the paper. Your professor and the newspaper woman at S. F. U. were very kind to pass on your phone number to me.”

Me: [to myself: Remind me to thank them for being so thoughtful...] “Um Ma’am, that’s very kind of you, thank you for thinking of me, but I think that you might be mistaken about this.”

Her: “Oh, no, dear, I must tell you that this doctor in this special type of therapy can cure any type of pain from all types of causes. I’m sure he could cure you too… Now how did you say you became crippled?”

Me: [I didn't.] “Well, I was born with a fatty tumor on my spinal cord, which prevented my spine bones from developing in the small of my back. The scar tissue damaged my nerves and so they are unable to send signals to my lower body to move or sense.”

Her: “Uhm….”

Me: “So, Ma’am, thank you for your thoughtfulness, but you see-”

Her: “Well is it permanent?”

Me: [gaping] “Uhm, yes.”

Her: “Well if Dr. Soandso could cure me of my whiplash and fibromyalgia, he can certainly help you walk again… I’d like to give you this computer code so that you can look him up - it starts with a small-h, then t, t, p..”

Me: “well, Ma’am, I’m sure he’s been a great help to you, but I’m happy with my health care providers at this point…”

Her: “Well you know, you have to give it a chance, his manipulations can cure more than just pain. I bet that you are in a lot of pain, aren’t you?”

Me: “Well, not so much, ma’am [except when I'm talking to you, I think to myself]. I have an implant that helps to control the pain signals so I don’t notice it as much.”

Her: “A what?”

Me: “Um, nevermind. What did you say that computer code was again?”

Her: “Yes, of course, I’m sure he can help you.”

Okay- firstly. WTF happened to confidentiality? THANK YOU SFU for giving out my personal information to this wingnut! This is the same woman who tried to contact me the last time I was in the paper, whom I successfully dodged by declining the reporter’s polite e-mail about the crazy wingnut who called her about my article in the paper, looking for my phone number.

Seriously, this is only an approximation of her wierdness. I had to explain the biology of my body to her so she would believe me that I couldn’t just (in her mind) “walk it off with Dr. Soandso’s help.” There was serious depth to her wierdness, and she seriously called the URL a “computer code” several times. In the end I gave up fighting it and just asked her to give it to me so I could get her off the phone.

I am so amazed sometimes at the depth of the wierdness out there. I mean, sure, well-meaning, but GEEZ.

Remind me to thank SFU for giving out my personal info.

I know it’s been a terribly long time since I blogged, and I’m sorry - but I’m about to make an admission that will both repay you in personal chuckles for the recent dearth of blogging, and may just get you maimed if you make fun of me for it.

(cue “Working World Barbie” voice over)

9-to-5 work is HARD!

There, okay. I said it. You are so not allowed to make fun of me, for one, because I managed to make the commute for the first two weeks back and forth to work on the bus (1.5 hrs each way) before completely giving up and paying my $1.50/L in fuel right into my car’s thirsty tank to give me a precious 1.5 hrs extra every day. For another, because I’ve been a student my entire adult life (which is a lot, at this point) and am more accustomed to putting in 80 hour work weeks between the hours of 10am and 3am 7 days a week. Being forced to get up at the same time each day, go to bed when my brain is still wired for complexity and my fingers are twitching, and keep a (gasp) routine, is, well, a challenge.

This whole getting up every day at a certain time thing is really hard. I’m usually okay after about 10:30 am, but 6:45am is well beyond my day-to-day response time.

Next, I’ve spent the better part of two weeks packing up my apartment and unpacking it in my new place, and that process always takes longer and is more expensive than you originally had intended it to be. The upside is that I love my new place (!!!) and have been enjoying a much shorter commute since I moved last weekend. I’m amidst a sea of boxes and newsprint now, with only my living room and kitchen dug out from the rubble.

So now I have my own place, mercifully free of roommates. But as with everything, there are difficult sides - now what do i do with myself on weeknights when there’s no roommate to chatter at?

Little known fact: I have a back deck on my apartment.

The weather this year has been so crap I haven’t been able to share it’s wondrous spaciousness with anyone, but we have an adopted porch swing and a fence and everything! I discovered not long ago that our Christmas lights were outdoor ones so I strung them up on our swing and have enjoyed evenings out on the swing ever since (whenever it’s dry).

Anyway, I’m sitting out here tonight - justifying it that because it was nice and blue sky-ish near the end of the day and because the seat is dry, I can sit out and blog. Despite the fact that SFU’s elevation and the general dampness in the air makes it like 8 degrees out. I can see my breath!

Ironically enough, I will be having a birthday/”house-cooling” party in a few weeks to mark the departure from residence apartment life…. if I can ever find a place to live. This has been my hardest transition to new housing - I feel like if I framed every “sorry, we wish you well but our suite has stairs” e-mail it would wallpaper my bedroom.

So… if you receive a frantic phone call around the 1st of August, you’ll know to make up your living room couch for me and 10 of my favourite storage boxes.

Having laid bare her fears of failure, our heroine conducted herself through the first day of her charge with aplomb; fears of inadequacy dispelled by the realities of gainful employment (and friendly co-workers).

L.M. Montgomery’s English aside, work was good. Nice desk, nice office, nice people. I have my own local (!), business cards (!!), and a desk that is primarily mine (near a window!). I am no longer the one who gets banished to the library to “research” when the “big kids” need my workstation… I am the one who will do the banishing (somewhat). I can barely believe it. No longer “6% in lieu of vacation,” I actually get sick days, one 1/2 day every month for appointments (paid), and other such good things. It’s so strange. I keep reminding myself to assume the role and the reality will come later.

Which brings me to the issue of blogging and work.
There are so many famous and unfortunate cases of people who ruined their careers by blogging indiscriminately about their co-workers or work content. This is not something I anticipate happening, however it does complicate matters, because my blog has almost always been about my life. Work has just executed a spectacular invasion of my previously hectic but flexible schedule, leaving me very little time in which to process and generate blog fodder. How do I balance this need for discretion with the need to diarize the minutiae of my life?

Tomorrow is my first day at work.

I’m a little nervous. I feel like I now know none of which I confidently assured my employers during the job interview. I feel like taking this job was a huge mistake.

I’m one of very few people in the world who doesn’t need to work. Before you get angry, that comes with a strict condition - you have to be able (/willing) to live with a $375 rent stipend per month and around $450 for everything else, including groceries, gas, entertainment and clothes. It’s not so much fun, but it does give me the luxury of not working while in school. But it also comes with severe restrictions on movement, lifestyle and dignity.

I’m not done school yet. My final project is not where I want it to be - but I felt that it was time. I realized all of a sudden that this was my decision to make, and my opportunity to make it. I’ve been in school for so long that I’d gotten used to the rhythm of school and class and professors calling all the shots, but in actuality, I do. It’s my turn to take hold of what I want, where I’m going - and I realized that I was letting a small thing like a due date keep me in the same rut I’ve been in for… too long. I realized that sticking around my faculty any longer was to risk having my work being further devalued, and being taken advantage of yet again.

I love my program, but it was time to grow up - graduand or not.

Oh, I’ll finish, you better believe it.
Only, I’ve learned recently that “growing up” and “graduating” don’t always happen concurrently - so it’s time to get on with things.