Teacher Conferences

Nora and I both had conferences with our teachers this week, and both went well!

I had lunch with my advisor to discuss how my exam went and what I should be thinking about as I begin working on my dissertation prospectus.  He congratulated me on the day of the exam, but it was nice to hear his more specific feedback.  It was also helpful to talk through where I see my project going from here.  Coming up with a plan for what I need to do next helped me put a bookmark in my brain for when I get back to serious work again after the holidays.

Nora's school is also on a "semester" schedule, so her teacher had us come in for a parent/teacher conference.  Billy and I both enjoyed hearing a "professional" opinion about her development, and it helped put into perspective just how much she has advanced since she started full time care.  The evaluation rubric was broken down into skill categories like cognitive, behavioral, social, motor, and then each individual skill was ranked as "never," "sometimes," or "always."  It was cool to hear which skills she demonstrates most frequently at school, like how much she loves turning the pages of books and playing with different sizes of balls.  She had "always" marks all the way down the line in the "motor skills" category, so I guess that is her most advanced skillset.  We even learned something new about her-- she knows how to say "bubble"!  This expands her list of "words" to bubble, hi, no, yes, Oscar, Mama, Dada, and ball.  She doesn't pronounce them perfectly, but she says them the same way every time.  She clearly knows what hi, no, yes, ball, and Oscar mean, as well.  In fact, we both think it's funny that she will exclaim her version of "Hi Oscar" when she sees him but does not clearly refer to us as "mama" or "dada" yet.

Oscar was also the first to receive kisses, which she started giving this week.  She puts her mouth on you, says "mmmm" and jerks her head away as she says "mmwah!"  It is way too cute.  We've also been working on blowing kisses, so sometimes when she gets going, we can get her to put her hand up to her mouth and say "mmmwah!"

She does love her books.  She does not care for reading pages in order, sometimes "reads" the pages with her mouth, and often peruses two books at the same time.  On account of these things, I have decided she has a postmodernist sensibility.

A          ccccccGGGGGGGccqqq   66    

(That's her contribution to this blog post.  She likes to hit the caps lock key repeatedly to make the light on it go on and off.)

Comprehensive Qualifying Exam

I survived my exam on Tuesday!

When Vickie was little, she used to read these books about Cam Jansen, a girl who had a photographic memory.  Cam would look at something, blink her eyes, and say "click," and her brain would remember that image.  As a parent, I have been frequently been reminded of this scenario because there are so many moments where you want to freeze time, absorb the moment, and preserve it forever.

When I walked out of my exam, Nora came running toward me for a hug and my advisor walked up to Billy, shook his hand, and told him I'd done a good job.  Then Billy gave me a big hug, too.  CLICK.  It doesn't get any better than that.

The whole day was a pleasure, really.  My exam didn't start until 2pm, which was a bit anxiety-inducing for me, since it meant waiting in anticipation for the whole day.  I wasn't nervous about it, I just wanted to get it over with.  I didn't feel like teaching my students, but at least that kept me somewhat occupied.  I did some final review because I was determined to remember the names of the characters from all the books.  The delayed start time also meant I got to spend the whole day accumulating messages of encouragement.  My friends and family called, sent messages through facebook, email, and texts, and sent packages, videos, and flowers.  I always feel well supported but it was overwhelming and touching to discover how many people committed to memory that the 27th was my exam date, made a point to wish me well, and reaffirmed their confidence in me.

There were only about five minutes of panic in the whole day.  As 2pm approached, I began to get kind of nervous, but I went to the conference room and waited.  At 2:03 I was still the only one in the room.  The combination of wanting so badly to get my exam underway and fearing that it might get postponed made me feel physically ill and I really thought, briefly, that I would vomit.  I made a mental note that if I ever have the privilege of serving as a professor on an exam committee in this capacity, I will arrive early and put the student's mind at ease.  Then one of my professors showed up and did precisely that.

From there on, it was smooth sailing.  I felt really good about my 20 minute opening presentation beforehand, and I delivered it pretty seamlessly.  My professors asked me questions about my specific interests for about 40 minutes, and I felt like I had something insightful to say for all of questions.  We took a brief break, after which my committee members asked me more general questions about the larger scope of the list.  Everyone tells you that if the exam is going well, it feels like a conversation among colleagues (rather than an interrogation), and you can actually start to enjoy it by the end.  I enjoyed the whole thing.  I enjoyed the aftermath even more.  After getting my hug from Billy and Nora, we talked briefly with Katie about how things went before heading home.  On the drive, I called my mom and told her I'd done well.  I called my brother and told him I'd done well.  I played Paul Simon's "Father and Daughter" and had a moment of sadness about not being able to call him.  Katie and I picked up the food and when we got home, Billy, Nora, Vickie, Tres, and Anne-Marie were waiting.  Billy put Nora to bed and the rest of us spent about two hours eating, talking about the test, marveling at Anne-Marie's baby bump, and generally catching up on the time we haven't been able to spend together as a result of my exam preparations.  It was wonderful to have a chance to celebrate with the people who reminded me during every minor and major freak-out that I was going to be fine.

Since then, I've done a lot of reflecting on the exam itself.  I feel like I have fully redeemed myself for my disaster of a capstone defense by demonstrating absolute command of the material and complete composure throughout.  My advisor, who has seen me tear up in meetings and full-on cry in that capstone defense, made a point to tell me how impressed he was with my composure.  I've been thinking about this after the fact, and I think there were several contributing factors.
1) I chose my committee with care.  I didn't pick any professors that I thought might be intentionally confrontational. So even when they pushed me farther on claims I'd made, or asked very specific questions, it felt like they were confident I'd have an answer.
2) I read every text on my list and prepared at least one thing to say about each of them.  This freed me from  experiencing any kind of underlying, foreboding fear that they might ask me something I absolutely couldn't answer.
3) The period of time since I defended my Master's capstone has included countless lessons in maintaining my composure.  I helped care for my dad while he was dying.  I managed his estate while carrying a baby and a full graduate courseload.  I spoke at his memorial service while so sick from pregnancy hormones that I was taking daily medication. I delivered a baby in posterior position without an epidural but had to accept that I couldn't do it completely medication-free.  I spent countless hours soothing a colicky infant.  I've spent over a year figuring out different ways to get her to stop crying, and I've persisted through things that needed to be done in spite of her tears.  I've endured the seemingly endless parade of questions and judgments that other people, even strangers, feel entitled to make toward pregnant women and new mothers.  I flew across the country with a baby at a moment's notice to say goodbye to my dying grandfather.  And, importantly, these things have forced me to learn when I need to ask for help, how to seek it, and who I can rely on to give me what I need.  I knew all of those people were in my corner, and the composure I'd developed from all those experiences was at my disposal.  So nobody was going to freak me out by asking a question about a book.
4) I knew that whatever happened, my husband and my daughter were going to be waiting for me when I walked out of there, my closest friends in the area were coming to my house that night, and nobody in my family cared whether I ended up crying or not.

It was such a great day.  I am so thankful to all of you who read this blog for taking an interest in my life and for finding a variety of ways to encourage and congratulate me.  I can't wait to someday tell Nora about this whole experience.  I want to make sure she understands that I was able to keep going because the 2ish hours I got to spend each day with her and Billy reminded me that no matter what happens academically, my life is rich and full in the most important ways.

In the week before the exam, Vickie dropped off a care package including this mug and polish, and Mom sent me flowers that have lasted over a week! My mom also sent me a tanktop that says "I am a mom; I can do anything" and a matching onesie for Nora. I believe this now more than ever!

Katie brought champagne to the celebration and Nate and Ashley had congratulatory flowers sent to to the house, which I got when I arrived home.  The florist had our neighbors sign for them, and since the congratulations card was visible, our German neighbor told Billy "We are proud of Liz, too, for whatever!" when he brought them over. :)

If ever wife was happy in a man, Compare with me, ye women, if you can.

Gonna try with a little help from my friends.

I also owe a special thank-you to my graduate school partner-in-crime, Katie, who was basically at my beck and call for two straight days.  She gave me feedback on my presentation, ran through sample questions with me, stopped in to check on me before the exam, kept Billy company while he and Nora waited for me to finish, and helped me return my rental car and pick up dinner before we all celebrated together.  Chalk another one up for Team Waitlist!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving from our home to yours!

On Thanksgiving last year, Nora was at the peak of her bout with RSV and we had to call her doctor around 10pm that night to ask about the side effects of the albuterol we were using to help her breathe.  We had to skip Thanksgiving dinner and wouldn't have had anything to eat if Billy's family hadn't brought us leftovers.  We were exhausted from holding Nora around the clock so she could breathe and sleep.  To say this Thanksgiving is much better is a serious understatement!  After seeing how cranky Nora became after a few nebulizer treatments about a month ago, my expert medical opinion is that the albuterol was a key factor in turning our happy baby into a colicky one.  (If you're curious, I believe the other main culprit was overtiredness, since I didn't know a newborn shouldn't be awake for more than two hours at a time.)

To say that we are especially thankful for her good health this year is a serious understatement.  We're also fortunate to be looking forward to enjoying much more holiday cheer this year for several reasons.  We have a happy, adventurous toddler, we'll get to spend the holidays with Billy's family, we're looking forward to the arrival of Nate and Ashley's baby, and in January we'll get to go meet him.

We just returned from Thanksgiving dinner with Billy's family at his aunt's house.  Nora loved sitting at the table with everyone almost as much as she liked eating her Thanksgiving feast.  Turkey, stuffing, sweet potatoes, rolls, and corn are among her favorite things, so she was quite thrilled about having them all at once!

  

I'm also happy to report that I've figured out the argument for my opening presentation during next week's exam.  There's no rest for the weary yet, but it's with a full heart and a full belly that I get back to work for the evening.

Wishing you all the very best, from our house to yours!  XO

104 down, 0 to go.

I've finished reading all the texts on my exam list!

As you can see, Nora took an interest in the stacks yesterday... but there they all are.  I finished my reading today, as planned, just over a week ahead of my exam on November 27.  This means I can take a bit of a break for the rest of the day before I begin preparing for the exam itself.

I guess this is as good a time as any to explain a little bit more about what the exam is like for those of you who are curious.  One week ahead of the exam, my advisor will send me the "questions" I'm supposed to answer in the exam.  There will probably be four, and they will be worded sort of like elaborate essay questions you might see on a final exam (if the reading material for the class was my exam list).  I'll get those tomorrow, which means I'll have about a week to review my notes, synthesize my ideas, work on my answers to the questions, and figure out other things I want to try to make sure to bring up in the exam.

The exam itself is a two hour oral exam.  It begins with me giving a 20 minute presentation from memory, in which I talk about my project by answering one of the exam questions.  For the remaining 100 minutes, my committee of four professors will ask me questions and I'll have to answer them.  Generally, the idea is that I'm supposed to meet two goals.  First, I'm supposed to prove that my list is comprehensive for my field (in this case, 20th Century American Lit) and that I have a firm understanding of all the texts on my list.  Second, my composure during the exam is supposed to demonstrate that I'm capable of thinking on my feet, taking questions seriously, and speaking authoritatively about my own original ideas (like one would be expected to do in a job interview).  How the exam goes seems to depend a lot on what approach your committee members take.  I expect the questions my professors give me to be difficult but fair.

Some of my classmates have stressed out about forgetting what they read, or having trouble thinking of answers, or feeling like their professors might dismiss their ideas.  I have two main fears.  First, I worry that I will not understand my professors' questions well enough to answer them.  I still struggle a lot with what I consider academic jargon, and especially since it's a high-pressure environment, I worry that I'll just blank out and have to ask them to rephrase their questions so much that it might make me look dumb.  I'm also terrified that I will cry.  I cried in my master's defense, and I have gotten choked up a few times while discussing my ideas with my advisor.  I care about this stuff a lot, I'm very invested in the work I've done, and especially now that it deals with gender oppression and procreation, some of it strikes very close to home.  Plus, this work is intimately tied up with the losses I've experienced since I began graduate school.  A few weeks ago, an envelope fell out of one of my books, on which my dad had been keeping score of the last game of crazy 8s we ever played together.  For me, the personal is definitely political, and vice versa. I absolutely cannot cry this time... but how do you practice "not crying"?

After the two hours are up, they ask you to step out of the room so they can briefly discuss your command of the material and your composure during the exam.  Then they bring you back in and usually tell you you've passed.  It's unusual for anyone to fail; more commonly, your advisor asks you to delay your exam if s/he thinks you're not ready to pass it.  Nobody has suggested that I should postpone my exam, but my committee has had a pretty hands-off approach all the way along, so I'm not sure any of them have a particularly clear idea of what I plan to talk about.  And people do periodically fail, though given the nature of that disappointment, I've never asked one of those people why they think they failed.  So I don't know how exactly that would play out.

My advisor, in particular, loves these exams and has quite a romanticized view of them.  He sees the exam as the moment when a student shows that her research and her ideas prove she is ready to make the transition from being a student to being a colleague.  But part of the reason I've been successful up to this point is that he has always treated my ideas as if they are worthy of serious consideration, so part of me just feels like all I have to do in my exam is prove him right.  In one of our meetings this semester, he told me "You're a mom.  You can do anything."

I am considering getting this printed on a tanktop to wear under my clothes for the exam. : )

A Day in the Life

A few weeks ago, my high school friend Jo did a couple of posts that documented "a day in the life" of her attempts to balance motherhood and with her career.  I was amazed and intrigued by how different our day-to-day lives seem to be, even though we're both professional moms who share similar values on a lot of parenting questions.  People are always saying things to me like "How do you get it all done?", so maybe they care to read about it on a micro level.  Plus, I've done "day in the life" posts before (see here and here), and I enjoy looking back on them.  So whether or not anyone is interested in this level of specificity, I thought I'd keep track of what I was up to on an average work-from-home Monday so that in the future, when this whole semester is a blur, I can remember what putting one foot in front of the other looked like as I prepared for my exams.

10:08pm Sunday night: Billy turns off the TV and we say goodnight.  I'm surely asleep by 10:11.

11ish pm: I wake up to the sound of Nora's coughing fit.  She does this once every night, and we don't know why, but our pediatrician is unconcerned about it.  I try to figure out why she's doing it at this time, since it normally happens around 4 or 5am, while I listen to see if she needs me.  She doesn't.  If the coughing wakes her up, she goes right back to sleep, so her mom does the same.

5:22-6:00am Monday morning: I wake up.  I get up to pack up the lunch for Nora that I prepared the night before.  I fix her bottles, pull clothes and sheets from the laundry, and prepare her school bag.  I make coffee, eat breakfast, feed Oscar, and let him out.  Once Billy is up and in the shower, I go get dressed.

6:00-7:00am Nora's already awake and waiting patiently, so I get her up.  I change her diaper, get her dressed, nurse her, and we say goodbye to Billy, who is leaving for work.  I finish getting her things together and start to get excited about getting out of the door early when I realize that I can't find her left shoe.  I spend at least 15 minutes searching the house and the car for it.  Luckily, she sits patiently in her pack and play and "reads" a book, laughing at me as I get increasingly frustrated.  (How do you lose baby weight?  Lose everything else first, and you'll make so many trips up and down the stairs that you won't need to exercise.)  When I finally give up and sit down to put a different pair of shoes on her, I see the toe of her left school shoe peeking out from behind the boxes I need to mail today.

7:00-8:00am I get Nora in the car and drive her to school.  In the car, we listen to Alice Walker's narration of The Color Purple.  I spend about two hours commuting every day, so audiobooks on my iPhone have allowed me to make use of this time.  I limit my listening to those novels which I've read  before and otherwise wouldn't have time to re-read.  I wonder what others in my program would think if they knew how many pages I've reviewed in this way, but I don't care.  I drop Nora off at school, get her situated, get her teacher up to speed since she was on vacation last week.  I drive back home.

8:00-8:20am: I shower and get dressed (again).  I realize I am starving so I eat a piece of last night's pizza.

8:20-10:00am: I finish reading Morrison's Beloved, review my notes from when I read it in a grad class, and write up my exam notecard on the novel.  I cross it off my list and triumphantly place it on the top of my "finished" pile even though I still have to figure out 4 lesson plans for it in the near future.

10:00-11:25am: I read Amy Kaplan's intro to Cultures of United States Imperialism and take notes on it.  Somewhere in this block I also took a 12 minute power nap.  I do this almost every day, sometimes twice.  Billy thinks the idea of a 12 minute nap is absurd; I think it's the only thing that keeps my brain functioning.

11:25am-12:05pm: I eat another piece of pizza, I check facebook, I work on this blog post, and I talk to Billy briefly on gchat.  I spend about 20 minutes of this window attached to my pump and yield just over 4 ounces.  (So it goes these days.)  I portion this out to Nora's bottles for tomorrow and rinse my pump parts.

12:05-12:55pm: I read Donald Pease's follow-up intro to the Kaplan one from earlier, take notes on it, and put that book in the finished pile.

12:55-2:10pm: I plan our meals for the week and make my grocery list.  I go to the post office to mail a few packages, but the empty parking lot reminds me that it's closed for Veteran's day.  I go to the grocery store, get our groceries, and stop for our mail on the way home even though I should have remembered that there is no mail today.  Facepalm.  I put the groceries away.

2:10-3:00pm: I begin reviewing Didion's Slouching Towards Bethlehem.

3:00-4:05pm: I listen to The Color Purple on the way to and from picking Nora up from school.  I chat briefly with her teacher and learn that Nora said "Wow!" while eating her lunch and she had fun playing outside.  She seems to have gotten over her hesitations about walking on the rubberized, padded playground matting.

4:05-5:00pm: Nora and I meet Billy at home to begin the best part of my day!  We play with her together for about a half an hour.  Today, this means watching her run around the living room and playing peek-a-boo by putting a bucket over her head.  Then I prepare asparagus and stuffing to eat with the rotisserie chicken I got at the grocery store.  While I'm waiting on those things, I watch Nora pull all of the food containers out of "her" cabinet and make her lunch for tomorrow.

5:00-5:30pm: Nora, Billy, and I sit down to eat dinner as a family.  She seems to have fallen out of love with vegetables, but she still takes a few bites of asparagus.  She can't get enough rotisserie chicken and she discovers that she likes stuffing.

5:30-6:10pm: After dinner, we play for a little while longer.  Then Billy cleans up the kitchen and washes the dishes and bottles while I get Nora ready for bed.  Bathtime, jammies, brush her teeth, empty her diaper pail when I remember it's trash night.  While I do that she "reads" herself Go, Dog! Go!.  This apple doesn't fall far from the tree.

6:10-6:30pm: I watch Friday Night Lights on my phone during Nora's bedtime nursing session.  I could be listening to my audiobook, but watching good TV while cuddling my baby is my one singular indulgence every day.  When 20 minutes is up, we say goodnight to Dad, set Nora down in her crib, and she's done for the night.

6:30-6:45pm: Billy has funny things he found on the internet to show me.

6:45-8:10pm: I finish reviewing Didion, read my notes from when we read her in one of my graduate classes, write up my notecard, and put Slouching Toward Bethlehem in the "finished" pile.

8:10-8:30pm: While waiting for tech support on audible.com to help me with my audiobook account, I get caught up on jezebel and gawker for the day.  An Elmo scandal? Why!?!

8:30-9:15pm: I begin reading Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five.  Oscar helps.  I normally try to work until at least 9:30 but I become convinced that my brain itself is "unstuck in time" and quit a few minutes early.

9:15-10:00pm: I bring my laptop up to the bedroom, where Billy is flipping around between Maryland basketball and Monday Night Football.  I work on this blog post and we relax until bedtime.

All in all, it was a pretty standard but rewardingly productive day.  As it turns out, it was a good thing I got so much done yesterday because today was a complete wash in terms of getting my own work done.  (I spent the whole day teaching and grading.)  Tomorrow, I get to work from home again, which means crossing more texts off my ever shortening list!

Foot on the Floor

My friends who've already passed the comprehensive exam generally tell me that their productivity came and went in waves.  After a particularly productive week, they'd find themselves letting off the gas a little bit, and then they'd get back to serious work a few days later.  I can see how this is a productive approach and how, to continue with the analogy, it would keep you from running out of gas.  Unfortunately, I do not have this luxury.  When you have a small child, all kinds of things come up that are out of your control to throw a wrench in your plans.  Like Friday, when she had a fever and I had to stay home with her.  Or today and yesterday, when her school was closed due to Hurricane Sandy.  It's tempting to think, "You know what? I'm ahead of my reading schedule this week, I'm going to take a night off and hang out with Billy."  But I feel like I have to keep my foot on the floor whenever I'm traveling the open road because I never know when I'll come up on another roadblock.

That said, my reading is going well.  Here's my list:

As you might guess, I've finished all the texts that are crossed out.  Today I reached a major milestone: none of the novels left on my list are over 300 pages long.  This means that everything left could feasibly be completed in a single day.  My apprehension about completing the list is decreasing while my apprehension about being able to consolidate my thoughts into the presentation with which I will begin the exam is increasing.  So it goes.

I must get back to work, but in case I haven't said this emphatically enough before, I want to say it now: this thing that I'm doing, which is really hard, is also a really, really exceptional privilege.  I can feel myself getting smarter every day.  Periodically I get to read articles that I read early in grad school over again, and it helps me to realize how far I've come intellectually in just a few years.  Having all of these ideas in my head concurrently is an unbelievable feeling that I assume could only be achieved by reading them all practically at once.  Basically, what I have gotten the chance to do is put together a list of the texts I think are most important, for the topic of a field and dissertation of my choosing, and then I have gotten to sit down and read all of these texts.  The minutes in my day that I don't spend with my daughter and/or husband are occupied with reading, thinking, and talking about art.

If I walk out of that test in less than a month, and they tell me I didn't make it far enough in the journey to pass, I won't be sorry for one minute of the ride.  I will have done what I set out to do: the best job I could.  And I only have to keep my foot on the floor for four more weeks before I get there.

Exam Visual

My comprehensive exam list is supposed to have about 100 books on it.  I went to the library last week to pick up as many of my remaining books as I could, so while my list is not quite finished and I don't have all the books I requested yet, I have most of them in my possession.  This is what that looks like:

By mid November, I am supposed to have the entire contents of these books in my brain.  I'm supposed to be able to speak intelligently about how they relate to my research interests and how they relate to one another.  I'm supposed to be ready to present a comprehensive but specific argument about them to my committee of four professors, after which they will spend the remainder of the two hour exam window asking me anything they want about these books and my project.

Eep.  I'm hoping that by shifting each of these into a "done" pile after completing them, I will be able to reassure myself that I'm making decent progress.  We'll see.  I'll try to post another picture in a few weeks for comparison.

Until I am sure I can't

I'm not sure I can do this.  This meaning:  Keep up with diaper changes and doctoral studies.  Balance work and home.  I'm not sure I'll be ready to pass my comprehensive exam in a few months... never mind complete my dissertation.

But I keep telling myself:  I might not be sure I can do it.  But I have to keep going until I am sure I can't.  There are a lot of reasons I'm still in grad school, but the main one is this: whenever I begin to really falter, I stumble upon whatever it is I need to keep me going.  A professor gives me the encouragement I need to hear.  A friend offers me a reminder of something important I'd forgotten.  Billy takes on a little bit more of the load at home.  I read something that reminds me why I want to be here.

I just finished one such book.  I struggled to keep reading it, even though I wanted to.  I could barely keep my eyes open, barely squeeze in enough time while Nora slept, could just barely force myself to pick it up and mute the TV while Andy Roddick played what might have been (but thankfully was not) his final match.  I know this doesn't bode well for how successful I'll be when I am supposed to be reading something I don't feel like reading.

But it reminded me that there's a chance.  Maybe a slim one.  And since I promised myself that I'd put continue to put one foot in front of the other until I was absolutely sure I couldn't take any more steps, here I go again.