It feels like a thousand years have passed. I woke up at 5 am this morning, staring into space, trying to remember what my dream had been. Why it had woken me up. It took me a second to realise that it wasn't the dream. It was the hand that had reached out from beside me and shaken my shoulder, to disrupt my snoring sleep. I do that. Snore, that is. Some nights more than others. It's funny to me. It's one of those things you don't know about yourself. Someone else has to tell you about it. "You snore when you sleep".
There were times when that was something I was so embarrassed about. It scared me when starting dating (or for that matter, if you ended up with a short term fling). It's usually not like that in the romantic movies, obviously. Girl meets boy, hook up and go home to sleep together in a bed. Girl snores unbelievably loud and makes strange sounds in her sleep. Of course, someone will inevitably tell you that "snoring happens if you are overweight and have excess fat and tissue in the throat area". Others will tell you that "you can't snore if you sleep on your side" [I can, does that make me special?]. Others offer "you don't sleep well if you snore,".
The last part always makes me laugh. No, it really doesn't make me sleep well - since the person I share my bed with wakes me up to stop me from snoring! If I'm sleeping alone and snoring, there's not a care in the world. I wake up refreshed and happy (as happy as I can be in the morning that is). It's when my snoring bothers others that my sleep gets interrupted. And to be fair, it's two people's sleep that is affected. Or, as it happens when I grew up, three people since I could hear my dad snoring away on the other side of two doors. How my mother could sleep next to it, I don't know.
I was going somewhere with this.... ah, so earlier this week I remembered to make plans for a celebratory drink with one of the younger people in the lab. They applied to grad school before holidays and have now been accepted into one of their choices. They have been very interested in talking about potentially going to grad school, career choices and such with me since they started in the lab as a tech. And when we talked about the drink they admitted "I think you'll have to give me some wisdom, I'm probably going through my quarter life crisis. I don't know if I want to do grad school anymore. 7 years in that town?".
I, being the honest and slightly blunt person that I am, responded "I'm not sure that I have any wisdom, I'm quite confused about my life choices myself these days". Well, apparently the mere thing that I'm about 15 years older, having gone to grad school and "having a successful career with a great job in science" [listen to other people telling me how it looks from the outside!] makes me qualified to talk it through with them. I'm partly joking here, I think I could offer them some thinking points to make up their mind, even if I don't have my own stuff sorted out all that nicely as I would've wanted.
I'm going to have to tread lightly in my talk with them though. It's more about asking questions than giving answers (they have to sort out the answers themselves). It's a little interesting though since when they started in the lab they were happy with the idea of a Masters, and staying in science. After a year, interacting in our fairly competitive environment they got more convinced that the PhD was the way to go. Not sure that it's really what they want, or what they think is expected of them? (Which of course is part of the problem most of the time, isn't it.... you go with what others expect, what you expect and sometimes don't really give it too much thought.). I'm glad for the heads up since I've been thinking about choices we make at times. The choices I have made that led me to this place where I am today, warts and all. How changeable some choices are, some closes doors that can't be opened again. And most of all, that pesky question that doesn't seem to be answered anytime soon; what's the meaning of all this, what's meaning of life?
No comments:
Post a Comment