A few thoughts on milestones

After three years of work, I completed my master's program and received my diploma at a nice ceremony last weekend. I enjoy graduations: the celebration, the sense of closure, the costumes, and the speakers, whose commentary adds a modern sensibility to old traditions.

It must be challenging to write an address for so many people at such different stages in their lives. The audience included thousands of bachelors, masters, and Ph.D. graduates from about a dozen different divisions, plus a few hundred more receiving professional degrees from the business, law, and medical schools. Dr. Lee encouraged us to continue learning throughout our lives, and to follow a path that excites us, even if the path our interests lead us down seems to wind or double back on itself.

This graduation felt very different from receiving my undergraduate degree. It's not anticlimactic, exactly; just different. I've already passed a number of the milestones many other graduates are just starting to approach. I've been in "the real world" for years, and in fact I'm staying in the same job I've had for the past six months. I'm not moving out of my apartment, much less the state. Things don't feel quite so final.

Mainly, I think it's that I've already been walking down that path I discovered for myself. I started the statistics program because I wanted to really understand the concepts behind the work I most enjoyed. All those problem sets, hours of staring at proofs, that moment of panic when an exam is handed out before I start reading the questions and realize I know this, I can do this – I can't recall ever having worked harder for something, and there's a great deal of satisfaction in that.

Maybe the milestones that feel the biggest are those that happen to coincide with neat beginnings and endings. People like me are supposed to graduate from high school, go to college, start a family, and so on. They're important moments, and we all agree they're important, and everyone knows the right ways to celebrate them. If life is a path, these are the major intersections with signs pointing toward them for miles around.

My first vacation by myself was to Hong Kong. One of the major tourist destinations is Victoria's Peak: a tram climbs a mountain south of the city center, dropping visitors off at an observatory with stunning views of the skyline and harbor. Most people take the tram up, shoot some pictures, maybe have lunch and buy souvenirs, and take the tram back down, but seeing the line (and ticket prices) for a round trip tram ride, I decided to walk down from the top.

I looked for the nearest downhill path, and started out on a paved walkway through the jungle which petered out pretty quickly. I ended up bushwhacking my way downhill through the forest for maybe five minutes before getting back to a proper path. The climb down took perhaps half an hour, and I don't recall seeing anyone else; just the occasional car, and messages and drawings left by people who had passed that way days or months or years before.

Looking back, getting lost on Victoria's Peak was one of my favorite parts of that trip, and certainly the most memorable. I discovered that path through the forest for myself, and walked it with fresh eyes. Its significance was less clear in the moment than after reflection. Life as a whole seems to work the same way – for me, at least, which of course is exactly the point.