I have long known that I cannot commit. I have one foot in, one foot out. This non-committal stance has applied across the board my entire life. I do everything in my life to the master’s degree level. Relationships, running a business, formal study, career – I am a master, but I can never commit enough, specialize enough, to go doctoral. It’s just too much. Committing to one thing – anything, whether a person, a place, a profession, an industry, a field or discipline – is just such a small sliver of what the world offers. Can I help it that I want to jump into as many things as my longevity affords? And drink heartily of all these things and be master-level committed before eventually moving on?

I think the best illustration of why a PhD will never be for me comes in the form of two doctoral project/posts I saw recently. So specialized and specific that it almost makes my teeth hurt reading the names:

• Poetry, song and community in the industrial city: Victorian Dundee
• Vagrancy and poverty in the post-emancipation anglophone Caribbean, 1834-1900