It has been a long time since I did a Christmas Letter. This is the first since Moira and I went from being married to being roommates. From what I hear, she and Catie are having a good Christmas. If you know her, you already know why.
Santa has been good to me this year. I opened a credit monitoring email and found out that my rating is now "Good." How did this happen? Its a long story, but I will get there at the very end. I have been going to the University of Maryland. Unless you don't want to hear about my intellectual journey, keep reading. If not, just skip to the end.
For the last two years, I have been taking courses at the University of Maryland to test the waters for going back to doctoral school by actually going to graduate school again. In Maryland, if you are retired, over 60, are a resident and have a graduate degree already, you get free tuition, but you have to pay fees. Also, you can bypass using the free readings on the ELMS system and actually buy the books - often on Amazon. I got into the habit of doing that - and of budgeting for paying the fees - and last term, also buying into the meal plan. Maryland has very good food.
Going to school gave me a chance to see if I could still cut the mustard, including taking doctoral level classes. My aim was to study Grid-Group Theory - as if I had followed Aaron Wildavsky back to Berkley after his residency at American during the first time I went to doctoral school, I may never have washed out. I decided to apply to study sociology. The graduate coordinator two years ago, after I inquired about studying GGT, said that no one was working on it. I let him know what my goals were and he said I should just write my book.
I decided to try Organizational Psychology instead. I may yet take a class there, but I found out quickly that OP was mainly about preparing undergrads to work in human resources or doing HR consulting. This had been an option when I was an MPA student at American, where I did graduate before going back for more torture. The tentative plan was to write about a Cultural Theory of (Authoritarian) Capitalism.
When I started taking classes in spring 2023, an Anthropology of Work class was being offered at both the graduate and undergraduate levels. Perfect fit. I learned how to do an ethnography (on Uber driving and the gig economy) and used Grid-Group as the theoretical framework. The course went well, so I followed it with courses on Sustainable Development and Environmental Anthropology - offered remotely with our Chesapeake Bay Eastern Shore Campus.
In my environmental class (I had by then decided to write in the area of environmental anthropology) In the latter, I used GGT to explore how to use GGT to understand the dynamics of climate change. It was a small class, so the instructors added papers by McCright and Dunlap on the topic that referenced both. I found that grid-group had gone a bit off the rails - especially as it was now being used as a proxy for political partisanship - which did not sound right, so more investigation was required. The reason the topic of climate change is relevant to me needs little explanation - the Southwest is burning every year - each worse than the last. I anticipate that it will not get any better.
I also found that I still had the problem of starting papers too late, the paper in question being a Cultural Theory of Climate Change. A year ago, news kept piling up - so I kept looking rather than writing. This does not work well in doctoral school. I got a B+ on the paper and it was panic inducing, but I am reworking it for publication in an Environmental Sociology journal (the professor was a sociologist, not an anthropologist). I was already exploring doing sociology, but there were undergraduate course requirements t meet to apply.
With free tuition and nothing but time, I started taking undergrad sociology courses. The course descriptions looked a bit more like what I wanted to write about, so I switched majors. The important lesson was that I needed to take another year to decide whether to apply in either sociology or anthropology, and on whether I could handle the workload better than in the 1990s. I even took a math class in advance of taking a statistics refresher. I was told by the stats prof to do the graduate level course instead, given my previous experience doing that work.
Because my Climate Change paper was just sitting on my bedroom chair, I decided to take the Sociology writing course this past term, rather than starting to take stats instead - as at UMD you can only transfer 9 credit hours to a full-time program - and because the stats course was four hours, it was one hour more than I was given for free. It would have been an easy A.
Before going to UMD, I had been attending the YouTube theological seminary, climate academy and personality typing course. This is where I was radicalized to study climate change in more depth. Also, in looking at cognitive theory, which is based on Carl Gustav Jung's system and is a step up from MBTI, the confluence of this theory and GGT was looking interesting. This led me to look at Sociological Social Psychology as a career path.
So, this semester, I took the doctoral course in this subject as well as Conduct of Inquiry - both at the doctoral level and both using GGT as the core concept. The social psych course was key to my program, since the new grad program director was also the professor in this area. If he did not like my approach, my career as a sociologist was done. He did not like my approach. More importantly, I have given doctoral school a full test. I like sociology, but it does not like me back. More importantly, Jeff Cohen was right - and Long Doan agrees - I should just write my book.
The paper was pretty good, but I did not prove to him how GGT would be useful to the discipline. As it were, I gave it the old college try. I also learned what had happened with the practice of Grid-Group Theory. As I had been told by others who had Wildavsky for doctoral school, most of the work was now being done in political science (been there, done that) at the Northern Illinois University. Anthropology was not doing it either. My recent research led nowhere else.
This does not mean I will stop studying GGT and singing its praises, but it does mean that I am noting going to apply to a full-time program to study it further. I am not quitting school altogether, as having a University affiliation gives me access to free copies of journal articles, plus the kind of email address that shows I am either a professor or graduate student (I am still the latter), and this opens doors when trying to get published. They never told us how publish at American (or at least they never told me), but now I have a pretty good idea. I can also try to get a National Science Foundation grant to pay for doing research and eat well without getting a fellowship instead. As a professional proposal coordinator in another life, I do know how to do that.
As long as I take a course by next Fall, my status as a Golden ID scholar is good through Fall of 2027. There is a course in organizational psychology that looks interesting - and maybe that stats course. Going to school is a great way to get a handle on research topics and data sources. Oh yes, I also have access to statistical software and the computation storage space to hold large datasets.
I had been primed to apply the Anthropology doctoral program. However, the feel of overwhelm in doing that level of work is still there - and my own cognitive personality structure favors organizing knowledge and data rather than doing a deep dive into the group intuitional exercise of academic science. I cast a wide net instead.
So, for the third time, I am quitting doctoral school (the second was at Phoenix, which was part of the reason I am no longer married). There is nothing more freeing that quitting a doctoral program. Indeed, most people who start one do just that. I may apply to Phoenix again if I want the vanity degree in Management, but only if I can pay cash for it. Having had my student loans forgiven once, due to disability, I cannot do it again.
You have to have gone to graduate school to know how much being done frees up your schedule, especially at the doctoral level. Also, I am still studying the nexus between cultural theory an Jungian personality theory (the latter is still not in the academic realm - so quitting school does not stop my research - or stop me from bringing both GGT and Jungian theory in from the cold - and I have found a community of like minds to keep working).
I need the time, as the long awaited IRS data on the 2022 tax year just dropped in the last month and I have spent the week between the end of the term working with it. It is now time to start a new edition of my national debt book, as well as doing final edits on my recovery book rewrite, that article on global warming (the problem is not going away) as well as reworking my book on employee-ownership, which will turn into a series of YouTube videos. Check my channel for what I have already posted - but don't look for the impeachment stuff - I took it down for professional reasons.
Time is a luxury and I have it back. I am also no longer so tempted by YouTube. I had to cut back due to school and I have had my fill, as well as many of my fellow creators. I have been busy doing that to, speaking of burying the lead.
THIS IS WHERE TO SKIP TO.
Having been to school, I have gotten used to paying the fees and a bit for the meal plan. I have had buying a new Queen size bed on my radar for a while (my current bed squeaks) and not only can I afford it, but I tried yet again to apply for a credit card to get it sooner than later. I was denied, but I was able to get a store card from Prime. My bed frame arrived today, as well as the news that I have good credit. Not great, but good.
The important thing is that, because Prime includes buying from Whole Foods, I no longer have to worry about being hungry during the week before my Social Security check arrives. I have been budgeting for poverty every month. With credit, I no longer have to worry and without being in school, I have developed enough of a margin in my budget to keep the account healthy enough to have great credit.
So, the bottom line is, I am no longer considered poor! I have a place to stay (with subsidies), Medicare Advantage, a decent bed, access to the academic world - with matching computer power - and a credit line that includes buying food.
Christmas dinner is roast duck leg quarter, asparagus and sweet potatoes, served with a side of gratitude for not having papers due at the end of the term - but the practice of doing writing on deadline and so that I can pretend that I do without the risk of a manic episode. I also have time (and now wardrobe) to go to the Hill and talk with committee staff about tax policy, rather than simply sending in comments for the record (available on Amazon, YouTube and fiscalequity.blogspot.com). Looking forward to 2025! Because someone has to.
Merry Christmas!
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