No More Diaper Changes

Hi all!  I've finished grading my students' final exams, so this is another semester in the books.  The class I taught this semester was great.  My students were interested and engaged, and I will miss this class.  My work on the Katherine Anne Porter project keeps moving right along, and this weekend I'll get to talk about the project in front of Porter scholars and some of her personal friends.  I'll also present on my own Porter research at a conference this weekend, which will be my third conference presentation of the semester, and each one has come from a different (yet unwritten) dissertation chapter.  Is it any wonder I haven't gotten that first chapter yet?  To me, it is not.  I have been working hard.

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.

More Light Moving Forward

My dad used to say the winter solstice was his favorite day of the year.  He hated the days of waning daylight that are especially noticeable in Portland, where I remember it being dark at, like, 4pm.  The solstice was his favorite day because it meant from here on out, every day was going to get a little bit brighter than the last.  I spent my solstice grading final exams.  Billy graciously took Nora up to his parents' so I could make my way through them at home.  I finished them before bedtime, thus bringing to an official close the semester that has felt so heavy.  Oscar's ill health and death have cast a long shadow.  I was due to sit for a translation exam on Dec 13 to satisfy our program's foreign language department, so the need to prepare for that loomed ahead of me all term.  Although these things are minor compared to the other heavy sorrows I've shouldered throughout my graduate career, they had an impact on me, and they have made it hard to see how much progress I've made. In the spirit of optimism about the future that the solstice represents, I wanted to write a post documenting all of the things that I managed to accomplish in this term.  Otherwise, I'll be inclined to forget, and that feeling of "I didn't get anything done!" that often plagues me will start to set in.

So, in no particular order, here goes!

• I finished revising my dissertation prospectus and filed it with our program!  Despite having completely changed my research topic after my comprehensive exam, I managed to get it in just in time to meet the "9 month" guideline our program has encouraged.  
• I made it through another semester working as a TA for a large lecture class.  There are advantages and disadvantages of this arrangement, but I love teaching and often feel handcuffed by being a helper in someone else's course.  I am fortunate to have worked with a professor who has genuine appreciation and respect for me, so that definitely makes a difference.  But next term I get to teach my own course, with my own curriculum, and I can't wait.
• I did my best to work 10 hours per week on the Katherine Anne Porter Correspondence project.  I finished getting all of the 5000+ pages ready for digitization, completed the inventory of them, and did the best I could to correct and complete the metadata records.  My rewards for all this work, so far, are being able to see the letter images together online and being promoted to "content expert" on the project.  This means that moving forward, I'll be doing less metadata work and more work that draws upon my knowledge of KAP.  In other words, I'll get to do the kind of stuff that could make a big positive impact on my dissertation and employment prospects.
• I hosted back to back birthday parties for Nora Jane.  What was I thinking?!  I guess I was thinking I wanted to give her family and friends a chance to celebrate her, and I wanted her to know how special and how well loved she is.  So, mission accomplished.
• I potty trained my not-quite-two year old.  She is now rarely having accidents, even at school.  She still wears a diaper overnight, but I LOVE not having to change diapers. And I love how proud my big girl is of herself every time she goes on the potty.
• I celebrated 10 years together with Billy.  Truly, none of the things on this list would have been possible to accomplish without him.  I hope people read this blog with that fact in the back of their minds at all times.  But sometimes it needs to be stated, explicitly.  My ten years with Billy have been the best years.  They are all helping me become my best self.  Here's a picture of us at Mythbusters Live, celebrating 10 years together while surrounded by a bunch of pre-pubescent boys in sweatpants: 

• I satisfied the foreign language requirement! THANK GOODNESS.  The saga of setbacks I've encountered in trying to get this requirement out of my way is very long, very annoying, and was ultimately very anxiety-inducing.  But it's over now, which means I no longer have to choose between working on my dissertation and studying a language that will not be mentioned in it.  It also means:
• I've advanced to candidacy!  Basically, this means that I have advanced to the status of someone who only has to write the dissertation-- all other degree requirements have been satisfied.  Most people advance to candidacy after passing their comprehensive exam, which I did last year, but the language requirement kept me from reaching this status until now.  
• I completed my first out-of-town research trip to Yale.  This deserves a post of its own, but since I haven't gotten around to that yet, I want to mention it here.  In early November, I drove up to New Haven so I could consult the Josephine Hersbt archive.  It was such a productive trip. I left Monday morning and returned Thursday, which gave me about 26 hours of research time in the Beinecke, which worked out perfectly.  I did a lot of work in advance to figure out what I wanted to see, so in my three days there I found all of the things I was expecting to find AND so much more material pertinent to my dissertation that has never been addressed in Hersbt scholarship.  Meanwhile, Nora and Billy did really well at home together during my 3 night absence.  I can't wait to have a chance over break to start working, in earnest, on the chapter that will incorporate this research!  Here are some pictures of my trip

So while I often felt like I was struggling to keep my head above water this semester, and I have a LOT to do over break if I'm going to have a decent writing sample to submit for my fellowship applications, I am proud of what I managed to accomplish this term.  Maybe next term I'll have a little more time for blogging?

New Work Opportunities!

Another reason for the lapse in blog posts lately is that we're in a bit of a transition period around here while Billy and I both adjust to exciting new opportunities at work!

Billy was recently named the Science and Operations Center Test Team Lead for the James Webb Space Telescope.  He has been working as a member of this team since he began working at STScI almost exactly five years ago, and in the past few years he has taken on an increasing number of supervisory roles.  He and his team work on making sure the "ground segment" portion of the telescope will work properly-- or, in other words, they test all the computer systems that will control the telescope and make sense of the data it collects.

I think Billy was a little unsure about how the news of his promotion might be received, since most of his coworkers are older than him and have been working on the project longer.  However, it sounds to me like the transition has gone very smoothly.  But since it's my blog, I will speculate for a minute: I would guess nobody who works with Billy on a daily basis could possibly be surprised when smart people put him in charge of more things.  Putting Billy in charge of things is what smart people should do.  And if you are a person who has to do smart things, and someone has to be in charge of them, you want Billy to be that person.  His work ethic came to mind a few weeks ago when my professor was emphasizing of a passage about a bull fighter from Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises. He writes, "Romero never made any contortions, always it was straight and pure and natural in line.  The others twisted themselves like cork-screws, their elbows raised, and leaned against the flanks of the bull after his horns had passed, to give a faked look of danger.  Afterward, all that was faked turned bad and gave an unpleasant feeling.  Romero's bull-fighting gave real emotion, because he kept the absolute purity of line in his movements and always quietly and calmly let the horns pass him close each time."  Billy keeps an absolute purity of line in everything he does.  This is such a part of him, actually, that he sometimes fails to recognize that other people resort to twisting themselves like cork-screws in their attempts to achieve the effects that he achieves naturally.  But the spectators who get to spend a lot of time around him, like me and his coworkers, can easily see the difference.  I'm very fortunate to have a husband who is so smart, and who works so hard, and is employed by people who continue to foster his excellence.  To say I am proud of him is such an understatement.  I admire him and learn by his example so much every day, that most of all I am happy for him in moments when he is rewarded for being who he is.

For my part, I've picked up a new part time job with the Special Collections department of our library system.  As you may know from my earlier posts, the University of Maryland holds the personal archive of Katherine Anne Porter, one of the authors whose writing figures prominently in my work.  The libraries have received funding from her literary trust to digitize a portion of her personal correspondence.  Eventually, the hope is to secure outside funding so that all of it can be digitized and hosted on a sophisticated online database.  They've hired me to work as the graduate assistant on this project, so I'll put in about ten hours a week.  For the next few months, it will be my job to organize and itemize the letters, prepare them to be shipped out for digitization, check the letters and the digital files for quality and accuracy when they return, and help to get the digital images posted to our library's KAP site.  Thereafter, I'll get to help with helping to create web interest for the project and its contents. For this portion of the project, we'll only be starting with the letters Porter wrote to her family members, which is roughly 5,000 pages of correspondence.

Those of you who are interested in my academic work can already imagine how unbelievable this opportunity is for me.  It will provide me with invaluable access to the Porter collection, a chance to learn more about archival research and digitization, and help me get my foot in the door in the field of Digital Humanities studies.  Since I'm approaching the point where I'll have to nail down the topic of my dissertation, the timing is also perfect.  One of the most thrilling things about archival research, for me, is the likelihood that you can discover a tidbit of information at any given time that will radically transform your understanding of the subject.  The opportunity to spend this much time with the materials and the people who can help me learn how best to make use of them is something I couldn't have even dreamed up if I'd tried.  Once again, someone has agreed to pay me for something I would gladly do for free if time permitted.

A note to future Nora:  I sometimes worry about what you will think when you discover that the universe planted you in this house with these two nerdiest of parents.  This basically ensures that the things you will be wildly passionate about in your life will be perceived as super lame by a large portion of the population.  But I will promise you this: Here, in this house, you will be encouraged to follow whatever paths those wild passions lead you down.  For however long you want.  With the force of our combined nerdiness and passion behind you.  When you look back up, you will be surrounded by people who understand why those wild passions are super interesting and valuable.  And that, little one, is exactly where you deserve to be.

A view of the Katherine Anne Porter Room inside Hornbake Library; or, Where My Nerdy Passions and My Parents' and Husband's Encouragement of Them Has Led Me.