The next installment on my 2012 Retrospective series:

Finishing my PhD meant the end of a lifetime school career.  With the exception of a few months between the births of my two kids, I was a student my entire adult life.  Until June 2012.

I’m still grappling with the loss of the “student” discounts for movies and museums and so many other things…

This resulted in an identity shift that’s much larger than putting aside the laminated student ID card that I carried in my wallet everyday.  Not being a student somehow means that I’m a grown-up now, in a way that I wasn’t before.  It gives a feeling of no longer being “in progress” but of having reached an endpoint of a journey.  There’s something in my soul that has had a hard time accepting that feeling and figuring out what’s next.