The threshold of mortality - Happy 50th
Turning 50 is like stepping across a threshold. And there at the other end is a casket...or an urn...with your own sorry butt somewhere inside. I understand mid-life crisis. It's trying desperately to not cross over. You can cling to the door frame, but you are inevitably sucked inside. While graduate school seemed like a good way to stave off the crossing over, you get pushed over the edge anyway and the normal humiliations of being a graduate student seem amplified in that the life lessons that you will learn will only last so long. And some of the better ones will never be applied to a large group, like how to deal with homework and hotflashes...both your own.