I have also been waiting for a final decision about the fellowship process that began way back before the semester even began. As I wrote before, the committee decided against nominating me for a dissertation fellowship since I don't yet have a chapter to use as a writing sample. Instead, they nominated me for a fairly new award (I didn't know it existed, actually). It's designed for students who've made large contributions through their teaching, administrative, and research jobs, and although it doesn't include tuition remission, the prize money would have allowed me to work halftime for full pay next year. I thought I was a good candidate for this award, and so did my grad director-- after all, I have held teaching, administrative, AND research jobs on campus over the past 6 years, and everyone has nice things to say about my work in those capacities. Unfortunately for me, the award went to other students.
More fortunately, the team members of the Katherine Anne Porter project wanted to keep me on as a worker next year. They have offered me funding that will give me a break from teaching, which will make my schedule more manageable. I am optimistic that this arrangement will allow me to continue working on the Porter project, will let me more time with Nora, and will still give me enough work time of my own to continue making reasonable progress on my dissertation. I had hoped next year would give me a chance to make rapid, focused progress on my dissertation-- but if that was not to be, this feels like a good back-up plan.
It is not lost on me that this opportunity is available because I have diversified my interests and my time. (This is what Nate tells me, at least-- that all along I was "diversifying." I always called it "spreading myself too thin." But he's right, obviously, even if I didn't see it that way until he said it.) If I had never taken the Porter job, I would likely have a chapter finished by now, so I may have at least had a chance at a dissertation fellowship. But those are so competitive that my chances of winning one still would have been slim. As it turns out, spending my time on the Porter project has not only been enjoyable and interesting-- it has turned out to be the most pragmatic choice I could have made. Moving forward, I've decided to stop asking these types of questions: What will give me the best chance at a fellowship? What will help me finish the dissertation the quickest? What will give me the best chances on the academic job market? These are the types of questions I've been taught to ask myself when establishing my priorities, but they are not working for me anymore. I am trying to direct my focus more toward questions like these: What will give me the best quality of life while I work toward finishing my degree? What work is worth sacrificing family time to conduct, and what work is not? How can I diversify my skills and interests so that if the academic job market doesn't work out, I will have other opportunities available to me? How can I spend the next few years so that I won't resent putting all my eggs in one basket if that basket doesn't work out as I hope? I feel more committed to completing the dissertation now than I did a year ago, which may seem ironic. I just feel less committed to the somewhat narrow life path of doing what might give me the best shot at becoming a college professor.
The first major change I've made in this regard is to start blogging publicly, under my own name. If you've enjoyed my writing, and especially if you've enjoyed the posts where I've talked about how my work informs my experiences of motherhood, please visit me over at Feminist Mom Studies. I see this blog as a complement to my academic work-- both in content and in form. The attention span people have for blog posts is forcing me to develop a precision of thought that has never been a strength for me. And the content I imagine for the blog gives me a place to talk about everything I've learned as a mom, a student of feminism, and a teacher. Should a graduate student be spending time on a blog like this? It depends on who you ask, I guess. But again-- this is something I enjoy, and it is something that allows me to utilize and improve the skills and knowledge I've been working hard to develop over the past six years, so I'm going to do it.
I have made the conscious choice, though, to be careful how much I disclose about Nora in that very public place. And for that same reason, I've decided to set this blog to private within the next few weeks. I don't know how much I'll continue to write here. I owe my grandmother a few posts once in a while (Hi, Mimi!), and I'd like to keep writing about Nora more personally, but the type of writing I was doing while pregnant and figuring out motherhood no longer feels compelling to me. So we will see. If you'd like to continue reading the blog past that point, please leave a comment below or send me a private message via email, facebook, twitter, or text and I'll be happy to add you to the list of readers and/or to the list of people who receive each post automatically in the email inboxes.
In the meantime, thank you very much for reading along with me here. This blog has been an important way for me to keep in touch with my family members across the country, and it has also been a place where I've sorted out a lot of the issues I faced as a pregnant grad student and new mom. I'm thankful to have it and hope to share these posts with Nora someday. Even just looking at the list of tags I can choose from in that bar on the right provides me with an interesting snapshot of how I've spent the past several years. Before I close things down, I did want to share a few more recent pictures of what we've been up to lately!
Nora came to campus twice last week for end-of-semester activities. I don't know with whom she is more enamored: the Testudo statue or my good friend Katie.
Nora and I went out to dinner before Mother's Day (Dad was at an Orioles game) and she insisted on wearing her bunny ears. She spoke to everyone who commented on them, and I love when she gets in a mood to show off her talking to strangers.
We saw the extended family for Easter and Mother's Day, which is always fun. Nora cannot get enough Lily time in her life. These two are the cutest.
A childhood friend of Billy's got married a few weekends ago, so we had a fun night out with Chuck and Patti while Uncle Brian babysat Nora. When she woke up the next morning she was very excited to tell me everything she did with Uncle Brian! She ate "spugbetti"! She watched Frozen TWICE!
She insisted on taking a picture of our "same same boots and dresses." I could not refuse this request, obviously.
