There are two days left in 2014.  The universe spent most of the this year shitting on my face, and with my possible expulsion from the doctoral program pending review; it does not appear that 2015 is going to get off to a good start.

I have spent almost a year of my life depressed and stressed in a program that literally broke my spirit, I have spent many an hour in my therapist’s office trying to figure out what I should do about my degree. I had big big plans for this degree. It was my ticket to a full time university gig, and my ticket to improving basic skills writing programs at the community college level.

This degree was my ticket out of the United States. With those three fancy letters behind me, I was going to set off on my next grand adventure to the land of Kiwis and beautiful beaches. I wanted to finish off my prison sentence here and then go be a happy healthy adult in a country that feels okay about dual citizenship. I know that it is foolish to say that the degree is the only way to fulfill this dream, but it is almost impossible to get a university teaching post without with a doctorate.

While I love my job at the community college, and feel like I am reasonably good at what I do there, I do not know if I can be happy in this area after all that has happened. While I was in Estonia, I had decided to stay in the program, tough it out, get my degree, and move on. Now with a trumped up charge of academic dishonesty, and the supervisor who processes my time card withholding mine so I do not get paid on time, I am thinking that it is time to move on.

I have decided that I am going to see about transferring back to the University of Edinburgh. I am going to email the lovely woman who supervised my dissertation (she just so happens to be the same person who runs the PhD. program) and see if there are funding options that would allow me to stay loan free, and if some of the work that I have completed here could save me some time on completion there. It is a long shot, but,  that’s what I thought of my chances getting in the first time. Right now, anything would be better than staying in this program, so I am going to try and get 2015 off to a good, or at least, hopeful, start.

Right now, even the thought of being able to go back and finish my degree from a world ranked university rather than a school I am embarrassed to admit that I attend, sounds pretty darn good to me. I spent the last few months trying to salvage my education here and not give up because I thought that it would mean that the horrid people I am forced to be with once a week would win. I thought I would look like a quitter if I admitted defeat and didn’t finish out the program. I thought that I could put my head down and lay low for the next 214 days in hell.

I’m not a quitter, but there is a big difference between getting my soul crushed for a meaningless degree, and walking away to get the education I deserve, and should have had all along. The biggest mistake I have ever made was turning down a chance to stay in Scotland to come home for a boy.

It has taken me two years, and a lot of pain, but it looks like I finally have a chance to correct it.