it begins with a book

Tomorrow I have my first meeting with my advisor for the doctoral program I am beginning this fall.

It feels so strange to type these words. I'm starting my Ph.D.

I had a feeling I'd get around to the Ph.D. at some point, but I had no idea it would be so soon or in this discipline. (You can read more about that here.)

Tonight, as I pack my bag for school (a weeknight ritual, involving preparing my lunch, tracking down my keys, putting coffee beans in the grinder and water in the electric teapot, etc.), I am slipping a book into my backpack. It is the book that seduced me away from Old-School Discipline and continues to inspire me as I pursue a Ph.D. in Mysterious Discipline. It is beautiful and compelling and important.

Tomorrow I will shared this book--worn and well-loved--with my advisor, who is interested my area of study, which I'll call InterDiscipline, but doesn't have much background in it. In my humble estimation, this unorthodox book provides the best introduction to the burgeoning field of InterDiscipline. And the pages, with my fading highlighter strokes and comments tucked away in the margines, provide the most raw testament to my own beginnings and growth in this area.

Inside the book, which I bought across an ocean and in another hemisphere, the price--60.00 in the local currency--is noted on the title page. The edges of the pages are beginning to yellow.

I see this book and know it changed me, and the course of my life, profoundly. I am excited to begin the next, and hopefully last, stage of my schooling.