Back in 2012, I lost my job in San Francisco. Our whole company did. One day I went into work and the atmosphere was horrible – people were scurrying around, carrying boxes, holding back tears. A bunch of suits had flown out from New York and laid everyone off. Some left that day, and some left a few months later. I didn’t know what to do.

In 2013 Nastja and the kids and I left the US. We had five suitcases. Everything else, we either sold, gave away, or stored at my mom’s house in Berkeley (thanks mom! Sorry!). We moved to St Petersburg, Russia, the city where we first met way back in the previous millenium. Some beautiful people at European University St Petersburg gave me the chance to re-enter academic life and I did a masters degree there. It was fabulous. I was hooked.

The world kinda started going to hell in the meantime, what with Russia and Ukraine, but maybe I just started paying attention to it in a different way because, you know, political science.

In 2014 I got a PhD position at the University of Zurich. But the bureaucratic system at Zurich didn’t like my MA from EUSP for some reasons that aren’t important anymore. The upshot was that I did a second masters in Zurich in order to become more comprehensible to the Swiss system. I fell in love with political geography. After the Swiss MSc I officially continued working on a PhD, even though I was kind of working on it all the while. It was a confusing time and none of us really understood what was going to happen. We got through it by taking deep breaths and thinking about things one step at a time.

My academic advisor moved from Zurich to Lausanne and I followed. But because the family had moved so many times, and the kids were integrated into German speaking school, I was allowed (very kindly) to live in Zurich and commute periodically, rather than having to uproot again, settle again, and teach a new language to the kids, besides.

I fell in love with urban geography. I fell in love with midcentury French philosophy. I know that sounds pretentious. But my perspectives changed. My conversations changed. I looked at the world differently.

The world continued going insane. It’s not so much a rightward drift as a global authoritarian assault, the rise and normalization of fascist thought, speech, and practice. The countries I love most have gone so far off the rails that I barely recognize them. Then again, this has all been a long time coming. We’re just living in the flowering of it now, I think. Or maybe I’m just thinking differently because of how I get to spend my days. I feel so tremendously lucky to be where I am, to be doing what I’m doing. It’s hard, it’s scary, but it’s beautiful.

I’ve been writing. A lot of people have helped me in my writing. A lot of very smart, very experienced, and very kind people have endured a lot of atrocious writing from me.

This past year, I wrote a dissertation. I’m really proud of it. I didn’t leave any gas in the tank. I put everything I had into it. Every sentence, every word. I labored over it all and didn’t leave anything as “eh, that’s good enough.” I slaved at it until every single thing was the best I could make it. I know it’s not a world-changing work, and I expect that I’ll look back at it soon and see its weak points. But my defense is that it was absolutely the best that I could do at the moment. And that’s all you can do, really: give your utmost, at whatever level. That’s what I did. I love this thing that I wrote. I’m totally sick of it, of course, but I love it.

Six weeks ago I defended my dissertation in a private defense at the University of Lausanne. Five amazing professors spent hours and hours with me, taking apart my arguments, discussing my work. It was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. And it was so much fun. I am so honored that they engaged with my writing, that they spent their time and their energy on me. I passed.

I revised my disseration according to many of their suggestions. The work became stronger. I got lots of ideas for future projects. My advisor approved my corrections.

This Wednesday, I stood up in front of a small group of people in Lausanne and defended my dissertation publicly. They passed me.

And so this is a long and convoluted way to say that I just got my PhD and became – at long last – the final one in my family to be called Dr Wolfe. I was the last holdout, but I did it. Dr Sven Daniel Wolfe – that’s me now.

I can’t quite believe it, but it’s true. I get jolts of euphoria just thinking about it.

It’s been six years since we left the USA. California was very good to us but we’re also very glad that we left. It has been an amazing ride.

Thank you for reading about my family and me as we engaged in this wholesale restructuring of our lives. I hope you’re having a beautiful day, wherever you are in this wonderful – messed up, but still wonderful – world.