And stay out!

I had a revelation earlier this week about the true purpose of graduate school.

You see, graduate school is populated by life-learners--people who feel that they could, and so do, spend much of their life in the classroom. While safely ensconced in academia, we are protected from the real world, from much of industrial bureaucracy, from all that job stuff. And because of it, people like us can spend almost 30 years of our life without ever having to join the conventional workforce, without participation as a "productive" member of society. THIRTY YEARS!

The solution to getting these crazy larnin' bastards back into civilization? Graduate school itself.

Graduate school is the school to end all desire for further schooling. After graduate school, nobody in their right mind ever wants to go to school again. Ever.

Thus, it is my firm belief that PhD candidacy is nothing more than a societal tool to prevent people from spending *literally* their entire life in school. And boy does it do its job!!!

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On similarity and dissimilarity

I’ve mentioned before that I once had hoped to find a partner who was passionate about the same things as me until I met a guy who loved classical music equally (if not more), but turned out to be incompatible just the same. Based on that, I had decided that corresponding passions were not of the utmost importance in finding a mate. Well, I think I’ve changed my mind again.

It is inarguable that dissimilarities between two people are integral to a meaningful relationship. Being with someone else is about learning from them, about sharing moments and different viewpoints; it is hopefully about creating something that is larger than two people, and that can't be done with two people who are effectively the same person. So I am not saying that I want to find someone who is the same as me--as with everything else there is a balance to be struck.

But where then lies this balance? If such things could be quantified, should we strive to find someone with one-half similarities and one-half dissimilarities--an even 50-50 sort of balance? I am inclined to say no, that when it comes to relationships, a far more lopsided proportion is optimal. Last night, my friend Shawn told me about a "rule" he heard regarding this same question: for a relationship to work well, the two participants must have at least seven things in common. These are not just seven half-assed skin-deep things ("I like balloons, seashells, blue, PB&J, gerbera daisies, Charmin Ultra, and money." "Ohmygod, *I* like balloons, seashells, blue, PB&J, gerbera daisies, Charmin Ultra, and money!!!"). They are core-of-being passions, things that define you, and so you can imagine that when too few correspond between partners, only detriment can follow. Why seven? Who knows--and frankly I don't think the particular number is important. The point is that there is a threshold number of things to be jointly held in high regard, and it is not small.

The silver lining may be that people often have many passions, and this threshold can be reached any number of ways. However, certain interests are bound to be more important to someone than others, so the caveat is that the most important ones must match, or else the relationship is doomed from the start. As an example, here are just ten of my passions, some more important to me than others, and in no particular order:

- photography
- classical music from the romantic and 20th century periods
- rock climbing
- science
- food (as something much more than mere sustenance)
- Radiohead
- philosophy
- piano
- well-crafted films (admittedly highly subjective; perhaps surprisingly, Lilo and Stitch and Bring It On fall into this category as do In the Mood for Love and Pulp Fiction)
- stained glass

From this list, I can extract a small number of things that my partner must be able to appreciate, at least to some extent. After all, I cannot imagine being able to share my life with someone who has never found a piece of music stunningly beautiful; to me, music like that is one thing that makes life worth living. In other words, strong similarities are crucial because they afford sharing. It is through our similarities that we connect with one another.

In a similar vein, dissimilarities afford learning. To me, that's what is exciting about a relationship--having another person's experiences and knowledge to draw from, being shown new things and new ways to see things you already knew. Shawn also had something to say about dissimilarities that made a lot of sense to me: they are beneficial only if the other partner has some intrinsic curiosity about them. If I were dating someone who had long ago decided that food was merely something he had to eat to stay alive, I would deem that an unreconcilable dissimilarity. On the other hand, I would not be discouraged by a guy who liked the small amount of classical music he had been exposed to, but didn't know where to start listening on his own. It is the difference between active dismissal and simply not knowing, and while the latter adds spice to a relationship, the former breeds only bitterness.

You might by now be thinking that to concentrate on common interests is to ignore the more general things that should agree between two partners: their world view or the degree of intellectual curiosity that drives them through life, for example. But I am wholly convinced that a guy who loves what I do will also match me in broader ways, that his corresponding passions will be indicative of our wide-ranging compatibility.

Goddamnit. I'm never going to find a boyfriend.

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