Dear folks,
May I ask you to mention my daughter, Maryana, in your prayers? She is 26 y.o., married to a man she loves and admires, and she is currently with a Ph.D. program in Comparative Literature at Harvard University. It's her fifth year in that program, and she is now an "ABD" ("all but dissertation"), because she has already passed all exams and requirements for this program quite successfully. All she needs to become a Dr. is just to sit down and write her official thesis proposal, and then the thesis.
The reason I am asking for your prayers is that a short time ago, Maryana suddenly announced that she is not going to pursue her degree, at least in the nearest 2-3 years. Her reasons are, chiefly, that "this whole academia thing" is fake, that no one is really interested in this humanities business, and that all these Harvard dons are phonies who are just eating up each other like spiders in a can. She refuses to be like one of them and therefore she does not see any point in pursuing her degree.
It's iteresting that a few years ago Maryana had a similar crisis when she was still an undergraduate at Tulane. Back then, it was largely under the influence of her then-boyfriend who held some waco opinions, for example that one should not work for too much time as an intellectual, but, rather, alternate the intellectual pursuit with a physical one (and he became a bouncer in a bar). Fortunately, thank God, Maryana at that time met some good people - especially one married couple from New York where both the wife and the husband are academicians in humanities, - and they persuaded her to listen to reason rather than to her boyfriend. I wish she met someone now who would explain to her that she does not HAVE to be like these "phony" professors, and that it is always better to have a degree that she really earned than to throw it in the garbage...
Anyway, please pray for Maryana, her mom (Lesya, baptismal name Alexandra), and me (George).
Thank you so much.
