Chapter 19. Leaving on a Jet Plane – This is the last Chapter people in 4 installments.

I had three major fears concerning my postdoc in Paris. Fear number 1 was that a long-distance relationship between myself and Ann would not survive. Since she was planning to join me in 6 months or so, I was hoping that this would be a manageable concern. My second fear was that some family emergency might occur while I was so far away, and I would not make it back in time for it. I would be 3000 miles from home and anything could happen. As the most scientifically trained and medically aware family member, I felt that it was important for me to aid the family in medical emergencies. This would not be possible while I was in Europe. My last worry was that my research might not work or that my time there would not be professionally productive. If I was to discover that I could not do the research that Renee and I wanted to do, or if something went wrong, it could be very hard to get a second or replacement postdoc. I tried to mitigate the professional concerns because Bill Jacobus was very supportive of a future post doc, and it might be feasible to return earlier if necessary. Some people asked me if I was worried about not liking being abroad. I said that for one year I felt I could put up with anything, so no, I was not worried about likes or dislikes. I had even been capable of having fun at car accidents, so enjoying my time abroad was not a big concern.

At the end of my Ph.D. studies I was largely broke and in debt. I had huge student loans that would take years to repay and very little cash in the bank, no assets, no stocks, no house and needed to sell my car to have some spending money when I moved to Paris. However, I wanted to get engaged to Ann. While I have to admit I was not as romantic as I might have been about it, I casually told her one day what I wanted to do. We would get engaged in Paris and plan to be married about a year after returning to Toledo. I even suggested that we could consider the anniversary of our first date, December 11, as a future wedding date. While I did not say so, I would “officially” ask her (on bended knee) to marry me. My aim in making the plan for an engagement was purely pragmatic in that I had no ring to give now and no resources to get one. So it was a promise of a ring. She said yes and we did not talk about it again.

A hard copy of my thesis was distributed to 5 distinguished faculty members in Michigan State, also known as a thesis committee. These five people were to read my thesis, make comments on it, listen to me present it, and grill me with questions to make sure I fully understood what I had written. This process was called defending the thesis and is an integral part of the process of obtaining a Ph.D. Dr. Dillon and I had read, re-read, and rewritten my thesis over several weeks if not months. Now it was with the thesis committee and my thesis defense date was set. The date for moving to France was also set. With luck I would be getting on a plane on January 18th. But I couldn’t think about that — I had to focus on my next big day; the thesis defense.

The conclusions in my Ph.D. thesis were fairly simply stated. In it, the question that was asked is, are creatine kinase kinetics in pure solution similar to what is seen in the living tissue? The answer is “yes, maybe.” However, in my thesis I said that a little differently. A quote from my thesis:, “Solution kinetics may accurately reflect the kinetics occurring in the tissue only if the purification procedure has not caused the enzyme to be damaged or altered such that the kinetics are changed.” So after years of work and hours and hours of research the 164-page thesis was concluded with a qualified “yes.” A succinct answer in a thesis is nice, but it is a sobering thought that all that effort is distilled down to a few words.