Like Sausage

Penny editing whilst the boys make noise

It was an uninspiring weekend, weather-wise, so we puttered about the house tending to the sort of homestead minutia that always seems to reside a few rungs down the hierarchy of priorities. I put away the four or five loads of clean laundry that had accumulated in the upstairs hallway, and then I cleaned out the cookstove real good; every so often you’ve gotta vacuum up the layer of ash that accumulates atop the oven box, ’cause if you don’t the oven won’t get hot enough to put that nice crackly crust on your sourdough bread and what is sourdough bread without that crackle? Pig food, that’s what. I spent a bunch of time in the basement, cleaning and organizing, and cursing myself for not having kept it cleaner and more organized the way I promised myself I would after the last round of cleaning and organizing. The basement is something of an albatross on our on-going attempts to create order around here. It’s an over-used space – we need a stand-alone workshop like a submarine needs waterproofing – and is particularly prone to disorder. And when something is “particularly prone to disorder” around here… whew. Watch out.

For much of the weekend, Penny’s and my conversations centered around credentials and qualifications. She’d recently had a long conversation with a dear friend of hers, someone who for various reasons is struggling with her work situation. Right now, Penny’s friend works at a university, and I know for a fact she’s real good at what she does. But she doesn’t love her job, and furthermore feels as if she lacks the credentials to move into a position that might feel more rewarding. “I don’t have any letters after my name,” she told Penny. “I’m not qualified.”

Compounding all this is the simple fact that Penny’s friend really just wants to be home. She wants to pull her children out of school, which she recognizes is not working for them (she had to ask her daughter’s art teacher if perhaps the class could do something a tad more creative than color between the lines). She wants establish a small farm and perhaps consult with young folks embarking on their own small farm dreams. She wants to just stop running all the time; with three kids in school, and both her and her husband working full time, she feels as if she has precious little time to slow down and do many of the things she feels most called to do. And the truth is, she could do any and all of those things; she’s smart as a whip, kind, socially nimble, a quick learner, a hard worker; basically, the polar opposite of me. She is qualified, and she doesn’t need any letters to make it so. But for various reasons – financial, mostly, but I wonder if there’s also an element of unacknowledged societal pressure at play  - she can’t quite step off the treadmill. She can’t stop running.

As many of you know, I did not finish high school; Penny made it a bit further along the presumed American middle class educational path, but she does not have a college diploma. Amazingly, the lack of letters after our names has somehow not kept us from living a meaningful life. Indeed, I rather strongly suspect this lack may have actually liberated us to live a meaningful life, but that’s a topic for another day.

I guess I feel the same about credentials and qualifications as I do about so many other aspects of life: You can give up a big ole chunk of your life to earn ‘em, and another big chunk paying for that privilege. And maybe, under certain circumstances, that’s exactly the right thing to do. But for anyone considering whether or not to walk that well-traveled path, I humbly offer following analogy: Credentials and qualifications are, in so many ways, just like sausages. It’s a lot of fun to make your own. It’s sure as heck cheaper. And you’ll know exactly what’s in ‘em.

Signed,

Benjamin Hewitt, PhD*

* Proud Highschool Dropout