Posts Tagged With: grad school

Family Bonding: Dissertating with Daughter

Trying to work on a dissertation with a two month old is a lot like trying to be Einstein, except you’re responsible for keeping this human Giga pet alive, you have the attention span of a drunk gnat, and you’re stumbling out of a sense-deprivation chamber after 24 hours.

Sure, you’re still smart-ish during the hours you’re not covered in poop.  You have brilliant ideas, but they’re more “Home Shopping Network” than academic journal.  Instead of transcribing medieval Italian, it’s all about how the first world desperately needs baby grooming centers.  Hear me out, it’s like grooming for dogs and cats except for babies, so someone else who is better trained and not sleep-deprived can clip these ridiculously tiny fingernails.

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How the hell do they grow so fast?

Or another gem, the Mom-petition app: scoreboards for local mamas in the same GPS-based radius for good-natured competition and solidarity.  How many times you got spit up on today.  How many times you tried microwaving before you gave up and ate lunch cold.  The app also features chat/message boards that are open from 2:00 am to 6:00 am, so moms awake (again) in the middle of the god-forsaken night can have friends to talk to while feeding spawn.

Because seriously, my single, partying friends are not nearly entertaining enough on my facebook newsfeed.

Misdirected brilliance means it’s another blank page in this Word document, waiting for me to type something in human words that don’t rhyme or mention Piggies Going to Market that will make my advisor second-guess my acceptance into the PhD program.

In my defense, it’s hard to be productive when there’s this constant ringing in the white noise of my house that sounds like the Final Fantasy VII-esque baby-bouncer music playing in a constant loop in perpetuo.

Routine is hard.

It must be my fault–some kind of post-partum lack of commitment–because Rin has been pretty consistent for the last month.  She wakes up around 6:00, downs a bottle, then naps again until 9:00 or so.  Then she’s awake all day with a serious case of grandma-enabled armitis, demanding skin-to-skin like she’s trying to group-huddle just to survive an Arctic freeze.

She dozes for a couple minutes in the afternoon, but not for long, and the slightest disturbance wakes her up, like the Princess and the Pea.  I’ll breathe and it’ll trigger her Moro reflex, arms stretched out in pure panic.  I’ve never seen such a light sleeper.  Remember the game Don’t Wake Daddy?  That was stupid.  There needs to be an adult version called Don’t Wake Baby that somehow involves shot glasses as the game pieces.

Add that to the list of good ideas I’ve had lately.

You’d think, given her love of a schedule, I’d have figured out some kind of time block each day to dissertate.  But it’s like those few minutes of alone time need to be utilized elsewhere, tasks more vital: take out the trash, vacuum the house, empty the Diaper Genie, wash clothes before these questionable stains set, maybe eat something from one of the healthier food groups.

Really, I have no idea where the time goes.  It’s like the clock is literally eating time or Stephen King’s Langoliers are getting a little too proactive.  A successful day, once upon a time, used to be 5 pages on a chapter.  Now, success is getting to take a shower, eat a real breakfast, or go to the bathroom.  Or, not and.  You can’t do all three.  You have to choose.  See, I took a shower yesterday morning, so today I get to poop.  It’s all about time management.

In the end, though, all those excuses don’t matter.  Every evening when I finally settle Rin in her crib and weeble-wooble myself to bed, it’s just another day my defense is delayed.

This dissertation needs to get done.

I’ve said before, it’s straight-up pride making me finish this PhD.  It’s not job security; it’s not the pipe dream of a tenure-track in this market; it’s not a raise.  It’s pride.  Luckily for my dissertation committee, I’m full of pride, so it’s been enough to keep me trucking alone–until now.

Now?  Now, it’s harder.  The other side of the scale is dipping lower.  Why struggle so much on a dissertation when there’s such little gain and when I’d much rather spend my time staring at her, watching her sleep, her chest rising each time I start to worry she’s stopped breathing, a little coo in her dreams (what is she even dreaming about, bottles that never end?).  I’d rather read Giraffes Can’t Dance again, even though I can’t stand it, because she likes the bright colors.  I want to make silly noises to coax out another adorable toothless grin.  Time spent reading medieval annals is time spent away from her.

She has consumed all my time, and I’m delighted.

Being a mother has taken over my day, all my thoughts, my best ideas.

Motherhood has taken over my purpose too.

Not the way you may think.  This isn’t “I’m a mom now, so my personal projects don’t matter anymore.”  They may rank differently than before–somewhere above shampooing my hair but below getting 4 hours of sleep–but my personal ambitions still matter.  I haven’t unequivocally sacrificed who I am to accept the mother-role.  Instead, Rin has strengthened why I do the things I do.

My daughter is now the reason I want to finish this PhD.  Sure, my pride is still a big factor, naturally, but even though she’s the reason I can’t find time to research in the 24 allotted hours, she’s paradoxically the reason I want to finish.

It’s been like this ever since I found out I was pregnant.  I want to be the person I want my daughter to be.  I play flute a little louder, even when I’m sight-reading, because I want her to be bold, to not be afraid of making mistakes.  I put myself out there more, sharing my fiction with readers, because I want her to pursue her passions.  I am more assertive (good luck, world) because I want her to fight for herself.

My daughter will learn from my example.  Not just her ABCs that I keep singing to her.  Not just Latin declensions we practice at bedtime.  Not just how to count or wash clothes or drive a car.  She will learn who she is from watching me.  I need to finish this dissertation because of that.  I want her to learn that she can accomplish anything she sets her mind to.

Do it for her.  Like Homer Simpson working at the nuclear power plant for Maggie.

Most gut-wrenching moment in the whole friggin show.

I’d want her to finish her PhD, no matter the obstacles.  Even if it means putting off a shower, breakfast, and going to the bathroom one more day to instead use that time to write, to finish, to succeed at what she started.

I want to finish this PhD for my daughter.  I want her to push.

So I keep going, trucking along.  Telling myself in my twice-a-week shower that I am still a smart cookie, that I can do this, that the paragraph I scribbled on a napkin while expressing breastmilk really does make sense, maybe.  It comes down to lots of one-handed typing and footnote citations that accidentally have ampersands and pound signs pressed into them mid-word.

But I keep writing.

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How 85% of my work gets done. #phdparenting

I keep working whenever I can.  It’s a sentence jotted down while breastfeeding.  A couple pages read from this newly published article after she’s swaddled and asleep, even though it’s past 1:00 in the morning.  Waiting for a chance to be truly productive.

And then, one miraculous afternoon, she takes a nap.  One that–praise be to all the angels and saints–lasts longer than 30 minutes.  I power through four pages of material, typing mad like someone who knows what she’s doing, that open Word document shamefully blank no more.  It’s glorious.

So you finally think that you’ve done it.  You’ve unlocked the thesis of this chapter like the sheer genius that you are.   You can be someone your daughter can be proud of.  You really still ARE smart.

And then it happens.

Your bubble bursts while you’re still beaming from your gold-star accomplishment.

Your two month old learns how to roll over–tummy to back–all on her own, right before your eyes, like a REAL genius, and you realize you’re a moron compared to the little thing that just pooped all up the back of her onesie.

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Every day, in between dissertation work and changing diapers, I watch her learn something new, and every new trick, I get more and more convinced she’s going to blow past all my hopes and dreams for her, rocket her way to two PhDs–no, three–with a great career and hefty paycheck, and cure cancer while walking on the moon and solving global hunger.

If sacrificing a little extra sleep to finish this dissertation or learning to research while holding her against my chest means I can inspire her to accomplish all the the great things she’s capable of, then I am making the smartest choice of my life.

I guess I should consider myself lucky that I’m her mother.

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Beginning of the New Semester

Ah, terrific.  The start of a brand new semester.  The smell of crisp, glossy pages of textbooks that will never be opened.  The touch of smooth, unwrinkled Scantrons, fresh from the 5-pack, that by the time we have our first exam, will be crumpled enough to jam the scanner.  And the disinterested, possibly stoned blank 2×4 looks of everyone in my late afternoon HIST 101.

“Today we are starting with the Bronze Age and the foundation of our earliest civilizations in Mesopotamia.  After the Neolithic period, when we developed agriculture and gained the means to form permanent settlements….”

My very first day of teaching (as a graduate student at the university where I’m completing my PhD), I walked into the classroom, totally rocking the Jansport backpack and an ironic history t-shirt with my dress slacks.  I was 5 seconds older than the students I was teaching, and they all knew it.  This was how Doogie Howser must have felt working at Eastman Medical Center.

Even ZZ Top was in awe of my cool.

My program dropped me into the classroom with little preparation, which backfired on some fellow grads but was really the ideal system for me.  Trial by fire.  Go big or go home.  Excellent, my kind of poison.  I was given a specific course my first semester but had Kim-Jong-Il levels of dictatorial control over the syllabus and structure with little oversight.  I was in a perfect position to learn what kind of professor I wanted to be and the pros/cons of every decision.

It took a couple weeks to find my rhythm.  At first, I was typing full-on lecture notes for every single little detail possible, complete with footnote citations in case a student ever dared to question my sources.  (They never did.)  I used to sweat blood over creating informative powerpoints.  I struggled with pacing and having the Goldilocks just-right amount material for a 75-minute class.

Those were my pre-briefcase experiences.  Now I have a leather, Indiana-Jones-esque bag that I sold a kidney to buy before my first semester at my current university.  So worth it.  That briefcase contains a piece of my professor-identity, like a friggin horocrux.

“Writing is critical for success, not just for you guys stuck here taking notes until 5:00 but also our early civilizations.  The ancient Sumerians created a system of writing called cuneiform, based on distinct wedge-shaped characters.  This was vital for record-keeping, harvest reports, business transactions.  Here, you can see a bill of sale on a stone tablet, written in cuneiform, for a field and a horse in exchange for silver.”

It takes time learning what kind of teacher you want to be.

I tell the undergraduate and graduate students I mentor that when you’re teaching, you create a persona beyond yourself, someone that can take the punches, deliver the lecture with finesse, and overlook the kid drooling three rows back.  Personally, I like to think I’m a cross between Jon Stewart as a history professor and Carmen Sandiego.

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The Venus of Willendorf statuette, c. 25,000 BCE

“Remember, fertility was critical for the survival of our Paleolithic tribes, and the Venus of Willendorf is one example of that.  Obviously, she’s a little…uh, well-endowed here, and as a result, scholars argue that she likely functioned as a fertility statue to encourage pregnancy or ensure safe delivery.  Think about it.  I’ve seen from TV, childbirth is scary, and even if you watch the birds do it and the bees do it and the woolly mammoth do it, actually giving birth to a baby back in the Paleolithic period had to be frightening.  If some shaman tribal chieftain pressed this into my hand during a contraction and told me it’d ensure a safe delivery, I’d have it surgically implanted.”

If I throw my pen at the girl clearly not taking notes on her laptop, is that a lawsuit?  If so, how much of a lawsuit?

My first very semester, I tried being a strict, no-nonsense instructor because I feared students challenging my authority.  I limited classroom discussions.  I was nervous whenever a student might ask a question I didn’t immediately know the answer to because I worried it would make me look weak.  Like a limping gazelle in front of a pack of rabid lions.  I didn’t let myself tell jokes.  I never left the podium because it could double as a riot shield in case of a coup.  I was miserable.  Teaching wasn’t FUN that way.

By examining the best and worst of my own professors, I’ve learned the balance of enjoying my job and still establishing lines in the classroom that can’t be crossed.  I always dress hyper-professionally because I am such a young instructor.  It evens out the laid-back approach I have while lecturing.

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For as Unabomber as I look on my off-campus days, I rock young professional wear.

I tell jokes that only I think are funny.  I wear Converse with my nice slacks.  I enjoy getting to know my students, whether it’s the kid in the front row who always wears an Attack on Titan jacket (rock on, Survey Corps) or the two soul sisters interested in studying abroad next summer.  I probably care too much, but it hasn’t backfired yet.  Maybe when my teaching style finally does reveal its faults, I’ll re-weigh the pros and cons and adapt.  Then again, maybe not.

“Here’s your Trivial Pursuit for the day for ancient Mesopotamia.  Forty percent of all the grain grown in the region was brewed for ale.  How about that, eh?”

Just the other day, my department head advertised a job listing for a new American history instructor at another state university.  A woman saw the salary and commented, “Who can possibly live on that?”  I laughed.  I laughed and I laughed.  The answer?  No one, lady.  Would you like the chicken or the beef Ramen tonight?

What adjuncts and non-tenure-track faculty do isn’t for the money.  Clearly.  We work for something else.  Sometimes, some semesters more than others, when the vibe of the classroom is dead, when you’re tired and stressed and scrounging for appreciation, it’s hard to quite remember what that “something” is.

“This is a Sumerian terracotta relief of a woman playing the harp.  Here’s the thing, these ancient Mesopotamians aren’t static or dull.  It’s easier to realize that when you imagine them coming together around the fire and listening to something so familiar to us as music.”

There!  Movement in the back of the room!  We’ve got a live one!

Student: “So…what did they make the harps out of…?”

Heads poke up like meerkats on alert at the beginning of The Lion King.  Even Laptop Girl has perked up to pay attention.

“Well, you see…”  I start to explain about the set of 11 stringed instruments (2 harps, 9 lyres) that have been uncovered in the region.  Suddenly, there’s interest.  They ask what other instruments have been found.  I tell them about the music guides we’ve found on stone tablets.

Hook, line, sinker.  We springboard into an active discussion on how we are still learning more as historians about the distant past and why history matters.  They ask perceptive questions about the hierarchy of Mesopotamian society, the building of ziggurats, Gilgamesh.  By the time we get to Hammurabi’s Code–“Eye for an eye, people”–a couple even Thunderdome-chant “Tooth for a tooth” back at me.

We all know it: next class will be a brand-new struggle to get them engaged all over again, but right now, that doesn’t matter.

Sometimes it’s easy to forget why we teach the way we do: why we make the decisions we do, organize lectures the way we do, even why got into this career in the first place.  But then, just when we are getting the most desperate, we get the reminders we need.

“All right, guys.  Thanks for a great class.  See you all on Thursday for Brendon Fraser’s personal favorite, ancient Egypt!”

A few kids even laugh.

Oh right.  THAT’S why I do this.

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Song of the Post: “Running on Empty” by Jackson Browne

Categories: General | Tags: , , , | 1 Comment

The Start

My husband is making me do this.

There is zero use sugar-coating that.  He’s got the proverbial gun to my head on this one, and worse, my nearest and dearest have rallied to support him.  I hate it when that happens.  They tell me starting this blog is good for me, like eating my spinach or listening to NPR.

So here goes nothing.

I am a fifth-year PhD candidate working on my degree in history (late medieval/early Renaissance Europe).  I picked up my Master’s back in 2012, and while smarter minds with greater self-preservation skills would have stopped there, I decided to dog forward for the gold.  Now I’m four chapters in, my Arbor-Misted liver is probably on the fritz, and I’m pretty convinced the light at the end of the tunnel is just a bug zapper.

Life would probably be a lot easier if I had the means to focus exclusively on my dissertation, like some of my peers, but that’s not a luxury Young Turks (the Rod Stewart variety, not the actual Ottoman Empire political movement) with ambitions actually have.  Our insurance company keeps insisting that I pay our homeowners bill in US dollars, not smiles, IOUs on a post-it, or my firstborn, which is unfortunate since my graduate school stipend ran out last year.  I worked in retail for a while to get by while the husband did a stint in law school, but those turned out to be terrible life choices for both of us, and we needed a change.

Now I work as a full-time instructor at a nearby public university which gives me the horror stories and tiny successes I’ll be filling this blog with.  Being a young (and young-looking) female instructor has its challenges.  I have been mistaken for a student more times than I can count, been asked out for a date in front of my class, and had to shut down budding rebellions before they break out the pitchforks.  I usually teach between 275 and 300 students each semester, and balancing the demands of a full-time teaching position with the obligations to my PhD has not been easy.

Worse for my mental health, I feel Hermione-Granger-compelled to take on more responsibilities than I should because I’ve convinced myself being a proactive over-achiever matters and, whatever, I’ll sleep when I’m dead or, you know, have tenure.  So it’s a life of committee meetings and the inability to say no, with a reward I’ll probably only get in teacher-heaven, certainly not on my paycheck.

In my free time (the sane use this for eating and sleeping), the husband and I are remodeling our Ghetto House to keep the walls standing and the squirrel that’s chewed its way to living in the attic satisfied.  It’s a lot like Tool Time without hazard’s pay.  I’ve hammered the 1x6s on the roof; he’s tiled and grouted the kitchen floor.  We’re both responsible for the gaping hole in the sheetrock behind the fridge.

It’s not the glamorous life they advertise on graduate school brochures.  You know, the ones with photos of students, looking deceptively eager to learn, smiling with their faculty mentors, who weirdly don’t have bags under their eyes or wrinkles on the suit jacket they’ve worn three days in a row.

I secretly write historical adventure fiction on the side to convince myself my career did turn out like Indiana Jones like I always wanted, and I ignore my Golden Retriever when she’s judging me for popping the cork before 5:00.  (Hey, I’m a world traveler.  It IS always 5:00 somewhere.)

So my friends have convinced me to start this blog.  Maybe they’re tired of listening to me vent.  But somewhere after rushing to teach with sawdust still in my hair from the house, having a student compare me to a porn star on a teaching evaluation, and religiously dodging both my dissertation advisor and messy workplace politics, I realized I have stories to tell that some people may find worth reading–maybe to avoid my mistakes or at least get a laugh from them.

This blog serves as some hard-learned life lessons about balancing academia with all the other vitals necessary for survival and happiness.  Sure, names will be changed to protect the innocent, and much like The Simpsons and Springfield, I’ll never overtly reveal my actual affiliations.  But I promise these experiences, the good and the bad, are all mine, for better or for worse.

On that note, cheers.  Let’s get started.

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In case you were curious, it’s 5:00…in Brazil.

SJ

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Song of the Post: “Doctor Jones” by Aqua

Categories: General | Tags: , , , | 5 Comments

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