{"id":219,"date":"2021-06-09T22:42:13","date_gmt":"2021-06-09T22:42:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.ams.org\/livingproof\/?p=219"},"modified":"2021-06-09T22:43:20","modified_gmt":"2021-06-09T22:43:20","slug":"homeless-for-the-general-by-jeff-brown","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.ams.org\/livingproof\/2021\/06\/09\/homeless-for-the-general-by-jeff-brown\/","title":{"rendered":"Homeless for the General, by Jeff Brown"},"content":{"rendered":"
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I share with my students that I was homeless at the time I started the general exam for my PhD candidacy.\u00a0 That item comes in a list of several bits of personal trivia, some of them bizarre, none of them with any context.\u00a0 The homelessness mention seems to be one that makes the deepest impression, I think because many students feel substantially at risk of becoming homeless themselves, they recognize the stigma that homelessness carries, and they dread that situation. \u00a0That saddens me deeply.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Here, I\u2019d like to recount the comedy of errors that found me sleeping on unfamiliar floors during one of the most important exams of my life.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Frankly, although \u201chomeless\u201d is literally correct as a description of my situation, it was devoid of most of the connotations that accompany that term here in the 2020s.\u00a0 At no time during this episode did I ever feel that I was being persecuted; it simply was the confluence of several independent, impersonal mechanisms occurring at a most inconvenient time for me personally, with some of those independent events having developed quite suddenly, and I never had any thought that the situation was other than temporary. Nonetheless, it made an already challenging situation preposterously difficult. So, how did I find myself homeless at one of the most consequential moments in my life? Well, we\u2019ll get to that.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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I had lived very happily in dorms all four years as an undergrad, and when I went off to grad school, I signed up for my first year in the dorm there as well.\u00a0 However, the dorms at my graduate school had a different social atmosphere. They operated from much more of an in loco parentis <\/i>attitude, with evening (human) monitors checking IDs of those coming in after hours, inspections of the rooms to make sure unapproved items weren\u2019t present, etc., none of which had been in effect in my undergrad days.\u00a0 Even though I lived on a floor exclusively for graduate students (on whom enforcement of some of the rules were not as strict), it was an environment I nevertheless found stifling.\u00a0 Unhappy as it was for those nine months, in the long run that did work in my favor: I rapidly adopted my academic department and especially my fellow astronomy grad students as my social reference group, and this became the community I exclusively identified with.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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During that first year, I resolved to abandon the dorm once the contract was up, and when a classmate indicated he wanted out of the shared house in which he\u2019d spent his first year, I agreed readily to go in with him on a new shared student house.\u00a0 That meant I’d have to live by myself for that summer (his lease was for a calendar year, not an academic year), but that wasn’t a serious issue.\u00a0 I signed a three-month summer lease for a furnished apartment about five blocks from campus.\u00a0 I did own a car (an eight-year-old Ford gifted by its previous owner \u2013 my grandmother \u2013 to me after my college graduation), and I already knew it was not the most reliable vehicle.\u00a0 But the price had been right, it had gotten me from Washington to Texas, and I did not intend to commute daily with it, merely use it as shopping transport.\u00a0 I had very little in the way of possessions (I had, after all, been living in a dorm with summers at my parents\u2019 house for four years).\u00a0 My books and notes fit easily in my portion of the shared-with-three-others grad student office, with some space to spare.\u00a0 And with my books and notes in my office, literally everything else I owned could fit in the car.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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At the time, the General Exam in our doctoral program was given during the intersession just before the start of the second year of study.\u00a0 It ran four consecutive half-days, a single three-hour session each morning.\u00a0 As was customary, I took a single course during that summer term.\u00a0 Also that summer, I had some research duties that I embraced happily, and I spent much of the rest of my time in preparations for the General. \u00a0I knew that the end of my summer lease came about a week before the exam, but I did not worry about lodging arrangements most of that summer.\u00a0 My roommate-to-be and I hunted around for both a house to rent and a couple more roommates to share it with.\u00a0 We found a decent deal on a house in what seemed like an acceptable location that was being renovated after long disuse, so we paid our damage deposit and first month’s rent, made deposits on utilities, got a semi-commitment from another grad student to go in with us, and hunted around for a fourth roommate.\u00a0 These deposits drained my modest savings, but with my student stipend, there was not yet a critical cash flow issue.\u00a0 I gave notice that I would not renew my apartment lease.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The problem that hadn\u2019t been fully set out to us was that the renovations of the house weren’t complete, and once they were complete, a city inspection was required before it could be occupied.\u00a0 As it developed, multiple inspections failed.\u00a0 At the same time, my car’s electrical system went kazoo a couple of days before my apartment lease expired, and it did so on the far side of campus from my apartment.\u00a0 It was parked legally, and I could leave it where it was for a time, but it was unavailable as transportation and not at all convenient as storage; the cost of a timely tow and auto repair was beyond my depleted reserves during those crucial couple of weeks (and short-term credit was not<\/i> available to 23-year-old students at that time).\u00a0 Considering where the car was, trying to use the car as a place to sleep did not cross my mind.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The night before I had to vacate the apartment, I carried my possessions by hand from apartment to office, which was about a ten-block walk each way, a process I began about 11 PM.\u00a0 Campus police stopped me twice as I carried bags and boxes of stuff through the night. \u00a0I got everything ferried in three or four trips, and I got to sleep in the apartment starting about 3 AM.\u00a0 I was up at 9 AM, the apartment passed inspection, and I was out before the noon deadline.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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I slept in the department\u2019s common space the next two nights — which was of course against the rules — but it being the end-of-summer intersession, very few people were on campus working at all, let alone after hours.\u00a0 During the days, I tried catching up on the prep time I’d missed for the General Exam.\u00a0 I can\u2019t say this made for particularly effective preparations.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Another grad student learned of my situation and invited me to stay at his place until my living arrangements sorted out.\u00a0 (Like me, he also came from not-quite-middle-class circumstances.)\u00a0 I slept on his floor in my sleeping bag for another two nights before the General, and then for the first two days of the exam.\u00a0 At that point, word came that the inspections of the house had finally passed, we got our keys, and I moved my suitcase of clothes and sleeping bag into the house.\u00a0 I was still sleeping on the floor, but at least I did not feel like I was in willful violation of rules or imposing on anyone else.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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I finished the exam. Once the next month\u2019s stipend check came, I had my car repaired and the rest of the move-in was accomplished in a day. Later in the month I learned I\u2019d passed the General, in the middle of the pack of six who took it. I was a little disappointed, honestly; I like to think I\u2019d have done better if I\u2019d had stable living arrangements at the time, but all in all, it really didn\u2019t matter. It remains the only exam I remember taking where all that mattered was passing.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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And thus concluded that particular episode.\u00a0 As I\u2019d felt certain of for its entire duration, it was an accidental coincidence of inconveniences that went away as quickly as they\u2019d arrived, leaving no real long-term effect.\u00a0 Frankly, the deepest insight I took away from the experience was to notice that the one piece of significant personal charity I received came from the comrade who\u2019d offered me his living room floor, and whose upbringing was, like mine, from a poor socioeconomic state.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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As a postscript, the house arrangement failed after another few weeks.\u00a0 We still lacked a fourth roommate after the first month (and the third was about bail out on us to move in with a new girlfriend), and then on a Sunday evening, literally as we waited for the ten o\u2019clock news to start, a car drove up slowly, halted, and fired three shotgun blasts into the house across the street before speeding away.\u00a0 The others rushed out to check on victims; I called 911.\u00a0 That event put an end to the interest anyone had in joining us in that house.\u00a0 We broke our lease, got a two-bedroom apartment, and stayed in that complex until my roommate graduated.\u00a0 It took me most of another year after that to finish my PhD, during which time I lived by myself in a studio apartment.<\/p>\n

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\"\"Dr. Jeffery Brown is a Senior Instructor in the Department of Physics at Seattle University. \u00a0Born in San Jose, California, he grew up in transient, \u201carmy brat\u201d-like circumstances, never living anywhere longer than three years at a stretch until he went off to college.\u00a0 He was pursued by good fortune all his life, though it only caught up with him when he paused before a serious obstacle. He got his BS from the University of Washington in 1978 and a MA and PhD from the University of Texas in Austin in 1986. After a postdoc at Indiana and a postdoc-research faculty appointment again at the University of Washington, he was an assistant professor in the Program in Astronomy (then part of the Mathematics Department) at Washington State University from 1996 to 2000.\u00a0 He was made program director in his last year, at the end of which he felt obliged to resign, move back to Seattle, and take a software position in private industry. Laid off at the end of 2003, he reflected that he was much happier in an academic environment despite the lower pay, and in late 2004 took two jobs, one as a scientific programmer at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center developing an epidemiological population simulation for evaluating cancer screening strategies, and the other teaching physics and astronomy at Seattle University. In 2008 the grant at FHCRC ran out, and he transitioned to being a full-time lecturer at Seattle U, where he has remained and was promoted to Senior Instructor in 2017.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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I share with my students that I was homeless at the time I started the general exam for my PhD candidacy.\u00a0 That item comes in a list of several bits of personal trivia, some of them bizarre, none of them … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n

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