I am no longer ABF. In fact, I haven’t been ABF for nearly three months. I’ve moved, arranged my office, attended orientation, and started teaching. Despite these things, there has never been a moment when I started feeling different. Participating in graduation didn’t do it because I wasn’t even done with my dissertation yet. My defense didn’t do it because I still had revisions to make, and the act of filing may have been the most anticlimactic, since the person who received my paperwork did not seem to care that I had just completed seven years of intense study at her institution.
Maybe it is the lack of some kind of symbolic passage into my career as an assistant professor or maybe it is the fact that I’ve been busy preparing for the beginning of the semester, but I still feel like a graduate student teaching a few more classes. Maybe the realization will come with my first-ever adult-sized paycheck, but I suspect that it will actually come at some moment that isn’t particularly special. I remember walking down the hallway of my college dorm room and being struck by the realization that I was a college student. Maybe someday I’ll be struck by a similar realization about my new role. Either way, it will sure be nice to get those adult-sized paychecks.
