Well, I have confirmed that the lengthy, insightful, and occasionally witty blog entry that I composed last night / this morning (it was sunrise when I finished, so...) has, in fact, been eaten by the database.

Grr arrgh, indeed.

I suppose that it gives me a chance to write something perhaps better, especially in light of this morning's phone call (that’s, what ...five for this week?)

Let me start with some background: the man about whom I am very serious is separated from me by about 900 miles. Twenty hours drive time -- even if you drive like I do, Nebraska never ends -- or two and a half by air from where I live. (Although, after having gone to Minneapolis four times in the past 12 months for an average of three weeks at a shot, “where I live” is subject to a broad definition at this point.) He’s a graduate student at University of Minnesota in the process of finishing up his second MS. The field in which he is studying is biostatistics, which is a branch off of the larger discipline of mathematical biology -- a subject which fascinates me and apparently causes our friend Vanessa’s head to explode if she tries to comprehend what he’s doing.

His first Masters was earned here, at University of Colorado - Denver; computer science with a bioinformatics focus (bioinformatics being the computer science powered side of mathematical biology.) Since he truly loves mathematics, and the CU Health Sciences Center biostatistics program was in its infancy, he elected to go to U of M for his next step -- which was supposed to be a PhD, but U of M decreed that he needed a biostatistics MS before entering their PhD program. So, he’s getting the second MS out of the way, and applying to several different PhD programs, including U of M’s.

He also had a First Author publication before he got his first MS, has been an author on three more papers since, with another in the works. The man is both smart and driven.

No, I’m not at all proud of him; why do you ask?

At any rate, the bane of his existence of late -- and therefore mine by proxy -- has been his PhD applications, handled by a service known as SOPHAS; the Schools of Public Health Applications System, also known as “the circle of Hell that Dante left out because it was too grim". (Thank you for the turn of phrase, dearest.) Or, as we have taken to calling it: SOPH-ASS. If it seems that neither one of us is particularly impressed by their service, you’re not wrong. Don’t take my opinion as gospel, though; here are D’s own words on the subject:

The financial aspect, although annoying, is an investment. The time that he has had to put into this is unforgivable. SOPHAS is the brick wall against which D. has been beating his head for the past couple of months, in addition to carrying a full-time class load in something rather more demanding than Underwater Basket Weaving (we will not go into the special Hell that is his Analysis course at this time), his TA duties, and RA work. No grad student has the time to devote to the sorts of hoops that SOPHAS demands an applicant jump through, which leads me to think that the people responsible for this service have never tried to go for any degree over baccalaureate. Add to this the fact that SOPHAS appears to like having all submitted applications achieve a certain degree of ripeness before sending them on to the schools themselves -- with no regard to whatever deadlines the schools themselves have set for applications and admissions.

In other words, if D. had submitted his applications in the form of cream, the universities would have finally gotten them in the form of blue cheese.

This is why, every time I’m there, I spend an absurd amount of time in the kitchen, cooking enough food to provision the Shackleford Expedition to Antarctica. Twice. Every meal that he can just pull out of the freezer is equal to roughly two hours that he can spend on homework, other work, or sleep. Plus, it equals $20 that he doesn’t have to pony up to Pizza Luce. (Not that I have anything against Pizza Luce in the slightest; they’ve been our salvation after a couple of horribly delayed flights, since Luce delivers until 3AM. However, even their menu gets old -- and expensive -- after a while.)

So, the latest part started on Tuesday afternoon. D. called -- unexpectedly, since we had talked the night before.

He got home from class / office hours to find a message on his answering machine. From The Ohio State University (yes, they capitalize the “the”.) OSU wanted to get all of his application materials straight so they cold enter him in a fellowship competition. His reaction was a three-way tie between “#&$*&%!^ SOPHAS; they had to call because those morons sat on everybody’s application until the deadline went by”, “OMG, they really really like me” and the pragmatic “my GPA and publication record tripped a flag for the fellowship requirements; SOPHAS is handing them a bunch of applications that are technically late through no fault of the applicants, and they need to get the ball rolling as fast as possible.”

It’s a good fellowship. OSU would be paying him as much as U of M is, only without having to take on TA and / or RA work; his job would be to attend class and put his dissertation together. OSU has a couple of well-recognized names in the field: Stanley Lemeshow is pretty much to biostatistics what Stephen Hawking is to physics. OSU probably has more immediate name recognition than U of M, which could make a difference when it comes time to look for that first faculty position. Columbus is cheaper in terms of cost of living than Minneapolis. And did I mention that it’s a really good fellowship?

But...

D. confessed to me that he now has empathy for what I went through, being bounced around from address to address as a kid. I could have lived a long and happy life without ever having him know what that felt like. Sympathy I can live with, but he didn’t need to have personal experience. He uprooted his entire life: sold a house that he loved, moved away from his parents, old friendships, from here and all that makes Denver into Home. The rodina. A place where, as he puts it, the streets know our names. Yes, his military career had him moving from place to place; yes, he has chosen a new career that has the potential to be highly nomadic. Yes, as a professor and researcher, you have to go where you can do the best research, and yes, you probably won’t be able to spend your entire academic career in one place.

That, however, is the rational side of his brain talking. On the other side is a four-year-old kid pitching a grand “do’WANNA!” fit.

He wants to stay in Minneapolis. I want for him to be able to stay in Minneapolis; joining him there, obviously. He has been visiting friends there for over a decade; it was one of the reasons that he applied to the university in the first place. Those friends, most of whom I had never met until this past June, have accepted me into their circle nearly effortlessly. One of those friends (one who I did know previously) was part of the Muddy’s Java Cafe tribe, lo these many years ago; when I was there in December, Lexi and I talked about the possibility of getting work studio space together. She and her ex-husband Michael made sure that I got out to play as much as I wanted. One of D.’s classmates loaned me a car for while D. was out of town; I can’t drive D.’s car as it’s a stick shift. To leave these connections behind and go to a place that neither of us is familiar with would be painful beyond words; both of us place a high value on friendship, and especially the concept of chosen family. The fact that several people who he has known since high school seem to have taken the “out of sight, mostly out of mind” approach since he moved hurts him; since there have been times in my life when I had to turn to friends instead of family to keep myself sane and healthy, I understand, and ache with him.

(Of particular ironic potential is the fact that one of the school that he has applied to is the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center, but that’s a whole different issue, and deserving of its own post, which I will make within the next 24 hours. No, really; I promise.)

He wants to be able to put down roots again, even if it is for but another year or two; a desire with which I am in complete agreement. He wants to be able to buy a house again; not a huge one, just big enough to comfortably house two humans with pack rat tendencies, a seven year old Olde English Bulldogge, two sixteen year old cats, and a ferret without everyone tripping over each other and the furniture. He wants a yard for Maggie-pup; again not a huge one, just a space that she can call her own -- like she had here in Denver. (Yes, we dote on the fuzz and consider the impact that any plans will have on them. Deal with it.) He wants a home that is Ours in the way that his condo almost was, but without the stamp of his ex-wife. He knows that I’ve come to love Minneapolis, and wants me to know the city as he does; not as a frequent visitor, but a resident. It is at times like this when I see the mark of his family history in him, whether he sees it or not; his father’s mother came from a little village in Lithuania which no longer exists, but her family had lived in that area for 500 years. Roots mean something to him, and to me as well. And right now, he literally has no idea which of six cities he might be living in come autumn.

Now, imagine dealing with this mostly through 900 miles of copper and fiber optic cable.

So that’s where we are; up in the air, clinging to one another as the only guaranteed thing in the other’s live at the moment.

Next up: today's installment of "Tales from a Harried Grad Student", which hopefully isn't going to disappear into the Twilight Zone like this one did last night. (Helpful suggestion du jour: text editor or word processing programs are your Friend.)