The Lemon Life | online magazine offering a fresh perspective on post-grad life.

Words: Adina Siperman

Image:laurennatclemson

There are many pragmatic ways to qualify my university degree.  Hundreds of numbers run through my head as I think back to my twelve months in grad school.  One of them is 4.5.  No, that was not my grade point average.  Rather, that is the number of pounds that I gained, being forced to sit on a couch for a year and read.  My only exercise came in the form of increased finger dexterity from having to flip page after page of my overpriced course kits.  Had I been able to incorporate my workload with my yoga practice, perhaps I could have had a less stressful year.  But somehow I could not find a way to attain nirvana while reading Levi Strauss.

Three is another number directly related to my Master’s degree.  In the Indian summer days of September and orientation, my dark tresses shone with a slight reddish hue.  I was fresh, virile and full of life.  By August, I had found three white hairs sprouting from my scalp.  No doubt the effects of months of fretting over word counts, deadlines and existential debates.

2.75 is a number that haunted me twice daily because 700 made me quake in my boots and 1.25 was out of the question.  Despite being the owner of a trusty little Honda Civic, I walked to the bus stop and paid my $2.75 fare.  My corporation of a university requested $700 a year for me to leave my car in a spot that was a twenty-five minute walk from my faculty.  And during the year of my degree, the pirates at my local gas station raised the price of gas to $1.25 per liter.  With a student budget fit for a peasant, my decision to ride public transportation was already made for me.

52.  That is the number of weekends I received phone calls from my gainfully employed friends asking me to go on various adventures of fun and frolic.  And it also just so happens to be the number of weekends I had to turn down said offers of gaiety in order to travel to small, out-of-the-way libraries for photocopies or simply just to stare at a flickering screen showing an open, blank version of Microsoft Word.

Speaking of computers, two is another number that I can conjure up, and not without vengeful thoughts. It was twice that year that for no other reason than pure shit luck that that evil hunk of machinery swallowed up my words, my thoughts, my soon to be overdue papers while in mid-sentence, obviously never to be seen again.  Needless to say, I vehemently converted to Luddism and now write everything, including this piece, by hand.

There are, of course, numbers that I could never even begin to compute.  It is impossible to say how many hours I sat lost in thought over the eloquence of a sentence or the profundity of an idea.  I can put no numerical value on the experience of sitting in a classroom full of interesting and interested classmates and discussing abstract thoughts.

“After all was said and done, after the blood, sweat and tears (papercuts, perpetually broken library escalators and aforementioned computer crashes), as I stood on the stage in my polyester gown and cardboard-covered hat and received my diploma, I felt accomplished and proud.  All the various calculations and deductions added up to two capital letters behind my name that would forever demonstrate my dedication to the search for knowledge.  For all the quantifying that I did of pounds and litres of gas and missed Saturday nights, the experience of standing before my family and receiving acclaim for my sacrifices was unqualifiable.

Of course, then the hardest work of all began: what the hell was I qualified to do with a Masters in Humanities?”

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