Sigh. I needed to remember a name for the newsletter, so I cracked open my dissertation for the first time in years.
It is so heartbreaking to revisit, because I'd written it twice before discovering that committee was absolutely not the right fit. One prof was a very defensive Christian who seemed to think I'd chosen to study literary responses to the rise of stellar evolution just to pick on Christians. That hurt my humanist heart. But this was GOOD work. I should have been allowed to defend.
...And I know, I know, I can still turn the fun parts of this piece into a pop-sci book on the rise of the theory of stellar evolution in the 19th century. I should.
But sometimes it just breaks my heart to think how different things might have been if I'd been allowed to defend, and to get that pesky "PhD" next to my name. So many doors in publishing would have become easier to step through. No one gives a rat's ass about a scholar without credentials.
Ah well.
In another universe, perhaps.