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.

Spring BREAK

Every Sunday night, I decide which things I have to get done that week, which things I want to get done, and which things I'd like to begin if time permits. Then I map out my schedule to allow me to accomplish as many of these things as possible. With one full week to go before spring break, I was looking at my upcoming schedule and stressing out.  I was due to attend a conference during break, and I hadn't yet finished writing the paper I was planning to present.  (I've heard plenty of stories of people writing papers the night before or as they travel to the conference, but I need to plan ahead.  Procrastination is not really an option when, on any given day, your toddler could start vomiting and change all your plans.)  I also found myself feeling apathetic about teaching, even though we were set to discuss Katherine Anne Porter.  That is when I realized I needed a break. I spent my entire winter break trying to meet an intense deadline, which gave me no time to prepare to teach a new class.  Ever since the semester began, I've felt like I'm scrambling to keep up with the immediate deadlines without making much headway on my dissertation.

So I decided: rather than continuing to scramble, I would set a reasonable goal, reach it, and then give myself a break.  For that week before break, I decided I would prepare and deliver my lessons, work my hours on the Porter project, and write my conference paper.  I made an agreement with myself that whenever those things were finished, I was going to stop working, enjoy the trip to New York, deliver the paper, and then get back to work after the conference was over.

I finished my paper on Friday afternoon, so I kept Nora home for a mother/daughter day on Monday. Then I took her to day care on Tuesday so I could have a day to myself.  A whole day to myself!  It's amazing how much relaxation you can jam pack into a single day when you don't have a two year old following you around.  I took a long nap without setting an alarm.  I did some reading for pleasure.  I worked on a craft project.  I watched an episode of Shameless when Hulu foiled my plans to resume watching Scandal where I left off.  I went shopping-- in a store! And tried things on!  I got the massage that my mom gifted me two Christmases ago (thanks Mom!).  I drank an overpriced smoothie because, on the very few occasions that I skipped class in high school, my friends and I liked to drive to Lake Oswego to get a jamba juice.  On Wednesday, I dropped Nora off at school for a half day while I tried to pick up the house, got things ready for our trip, and continued working on my craft project.  I'm planning to write a separate blog post about the trip itself, but it was a really great weekend.

On Sunday night at the end of break, I realized I had that old familiar Sunday night feeling-- that ugh, I have to get back to work in the morning feeling.  I used to get that feeling every week when I was teaching high school, but I guess it is something I don't often experience as a grad student.  Now, there is always some work task hanging over my head, so I live in a perpetual state of knowing I have more to do tomorrow than I can actually accomplish.  I was hoping that my break would leave me feeling refreshed, recharged, and excited to resume my work.  I am not there yet, but I feel much better than I did before I took the break.  I've spent most of my time this past week preparing lesson plans for the next few weeks.  I'm hoping this will free up my time and my energy-- both emotional and intellectual-- so that I can begin working on the dissertation again in earnest, and with enthusiasm.

Truth be told, I've done a lot of thinking about how I want to move forward since finding out my project was not nominated for a dissertation fellowship.  Within the next month, I should know which funding options are available to me for next year, and some of them are promising.  The way the chips have fallen, though, has made me reflect further on the necessity of charting my own path rather than hoping I can make my work fit into the model the English department proposes is the quickest route to degree completion and the best preparation for the job market.  So I'm trying to be more conscious of deciding for myself how my time is best spent, and then spending my time in those ways.  It's easy to get caught in the trap of trying to figure out what will make me most competitive for fellowships, what will be best for my job prospects, or what will make my dissertation more marketable.  But I'm in graduate school because I want to learn, because I find the work rewarding, and because I think I have something to offer as a member of this profession.  So from here on out I'm going to try even harder to remember that those are my top priorities.

Academic/Life Update

Well, so much for waiting indefinitely to find out if I will be on fellowship next year: I will not.  I submitted my application to my department a few days ahead of the deadline, and I felt like I had done my best.  But the professors in my department who evaluate the applications decided against nominating me for any of the fellowships.  I met with our grad studies director this week, and it seems like the committee realizes that I've gotten a lot of work accomplished, but I cannot be considered competitive with those who have completed a dissertation chapter.  When I met with my advisor, he suggested that because I have been working on the chapters "horizontally" (i.e. researching and thinking through all of them somewhat simultaneously) rather than "vertically" (starting with one chapter and working on it exclusively until it's finished), it's hard to demonstrate to anyone else how far along I am.  I'm disappointed that I overtaxed myself trying to meet a deadline when, ultimately, it sounds like my application was kind of dead on arrival.  I'm disappointed that I won't be able to devote all of my energy to my dissertation next year, because I had hoped to make a considerable amount of progress.

The department did decide to nominate me for a different type of award, which comes with a flat stipend.  It does not include tuition remission, but if I were to win it, I would probably be able to carry a lighter teaching load for next year.  So my plans for next year will depend on that, but since I am not likely to hear about that decision until May, I guess there's nothing to do but try to put it out of mind and keep my nose to the grindstone in the meantime.

So far, I am really enjoying my schedule for the semester.  I teach Tuesdays and Thursdays in the afternoon, which gives me uninterrupted time beforehand for my own work on Tuesdays and my work on the Porter project on Thursdays.  It also allows me to work from home M/W/F, and I feel like I'm getting more done than I did last semester.  I don't have to worry about the foreign language requirement anymore, so that is definitely nice.  If fellowships are granted to students who work "vertically" rather than "horizontally," I may never be able to compete for one.  I already finished the conference paper I'm presenting on Josephine Herbst during the first week of March, so right now I am working on all of the following:
-finishing preparations for the ingest of our KAP metadata into Fedora
-denormalizing the KAP metadata so it can be better used for different purposes
-planning and teaching lessons on 19th Century American women's literature
-researching the history of birth control politics in the U.S., which is relevant to all four of my dissertation chapters
-writing a conference paper on Mary Austin, which I'll present over Spring Break
-revising a paper I wrote four years ago for publications workshop
-reading and commenting on classmates' papers for publications workshop

So, you know, Liz marches on.  In lieu of having better professional news to share, I'll post a few recent pictures of what's been going on in my life outside of academia, where taking a more "horizontal" approach pays more recognizable dividends.

Nora and her (second) cousin and partner-in-crime,  Lily

SNOW! I am so over it.  Nora loves it.

"Baby Julian" turned ONE!  We were excited to celebrate a year of successful parenting with our friends Anne-Marie and Jon and to see Julian host all his little friends. After waiting three days to don her "pretty pretty dress," Nora inquired "Is Julian gon like my dress?" before declaring "I'm adorable!"  She's not wrong.

Pretty pretty dress + cupcakes = Nora's happy place.

Our little Valentine

Delta Rae at the 9:30 Club with AM & Vickie

I feel it all around: I'm surrounded.

I'm Exhausted.

This is the first week of the semester.  I'm exhausted.

We have a five week long winter break, which accommodates an intense winter term for undergrads.  It also means I don't have to teach or come to campus for those five weeks, and I took a hiatus from my job with the libraries, so it was a "break" in that sense.  I took some time off around the holidays and while my mom visited from Oregon, as most people with normal full-time jobs usually do.  But in regards to hours spent working and mental energy expended, it was no break at all.


As a PhD student, I've been fortunate to be fully funded for 3.5 years.  (It was supposed to be 4 years, but I lost a semester of funding when I took maternity leave without pay.)  This means that by teaching 2-3 classes per year, I get complete tuition remission and get paid a small but significant stipend.  Since my funding runs out after this semester, I have two options for next year if I want to maintain fairly comparable benefits.  I can double my teaching load or win a fellowship.  Students who are awarded fellowships are given a semester or two to work exclusively on their dissertations, without having to teach or work on campus.  The stipends are still pretty modest, but they include tuition remission, so they're very highly competitive.  Theoretically, they are awarded to the students whose dissertations show the most promise.

My fellowship application is due February 7.  We have to provide a writing sample, so most people submit a completed chapter of their dissertation... but I don't have one of those.  I only started working on my dissertation after my prospectus was approved in October, and a lot of my time thereafter was spent teaching, preparing for the German translation exam, and working on the KA Porter project.  I have done some really important research for my first chapter, but when the "break" began, I hadn't gotten to the point where I was ready to start writing anything.  The semester I spent on maternity leave technically doesn't "count" against my time-to-degree calculations, but taking a term off means I am competing for fellowships with members of my cohort who have a one semester advantage over me as well as students who are years ahead of me.

It's a really stressful position to be in.  I'm very proud of what I've managed to accomplish since I began the PhD, especially in light of the personal highs and lows those years have included.  I'm not "behind," by any definition, in spite of everything.  But I'm also not ahead, and it feels like the fellowships will go to the students who are the farthest ahead.  And a fellowship would be a life-changer.  I've managed to stay on track despite having a child and two on-campus jobs, so if I could eliminate the jobs from the equation for a year, it feels like I could finish several chapters of the dissertation.

That means the month of January has involved a LOT of staring at the page and staring at the computer
screen, willing myself to become the first person to figure something out and attempting to articulate it clearly in writing.  It's not so much the schedule I've been keeping that exhausts me-- I actually sleep more soundly when I wake up at 6 and stay up to midnight or 1.  But my everyday life requires a lot of juggling to begin with, so trying to muster the mental energy required to spend 8-12 hours of my day deep in thought on my dissertation is... exhausting and hard.  I try to balance it with time I set aside for my family, which does help.  It's good for my spirit to spend evenings and weekends with Billy and Nora, not thinking about work, even though it means I have to get right back at it as soon as she's in bed, and I don't get much time to spend alone with Billy.  But anyone who has been around a precocious 2 year old can probably imagine that "relaxing" is not a term I would use to describe that time.

Tuesday was my first day of teaching, so it was convenient that I managed to complete the draft of my writing sample at 9pm on Monday.  It's been with my advisor since then, and I'll get his feedback in our meeting later today.  That means I'll have another week to make revisions before I send it off and hope for the best while waiting to see if it earns me the fellowship.  I've been trying to give myself a "break" in the meantime, both because I've stressed my body to the point of illness and because it will help to approach the revisions with a somewhat fresh perspective on what I've written.  But that's hard, too.  There are still classes to prepare and teach.  Deadlines to meet for the library job.  Dishes to put in the cupboards and a washing machine to reload.  Laundry to wash and clothes to put away.  Meals to throw together, despite an absence of time to grocery shop.  Long neglected emails to which I should reply.  Bills to pay.  Trips to and from day care and campus to make.  Perpetually runny noses to wipe.  Toys to trip over because I don't have the energy to pick them up.  Stories to listen to, about the vacations my coworkers have taken.  The list goes on.  This is what it means to be a grad school mom, but this is what I chose, and I don't unwish this choice.  I just wish to hang on until February 7 so I can get my life back to a more reasonable balance.  And I wish for a fellowship to make my academic life feel more sustainable. 

When I clicked "send" on the email to my advisor Monday night, I had hoped that I'd feel rested and ready for feedback by the time today's meeting rolled around.  I don't.  I feel like crawling up on my office rug and going to sleep.  But time waits for no woman, so I've decided instead that I will write this blog post and try to prepare for Tuesday's class before I go to get my advisor's revision suggestions.  But I might wait until when Nora goes bed tomorrow night to tackle them.

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?

I'm Surprised to See You Here

We started school at UMd this past week.  I will be juggling as many balls as ever this semester, but I'm looking forward to most of them.  I'm hoping to finish my prospectus shortly so I can begin working on the first chapter of my dissertation.  I'm preparing for the German translation exam I must take to satisfy the program's foreign language requirement. I'm still working 10 hours a week for the Katherine Anne Porter Correspondence project.  And I have the same teaching assignment I did last semester-- teaching two discussion sections of a senior Professor's lecture class on the novel.

I was excited to begin this semester because it is the first time since, I don't know, forever? that I feel like I have my feet somewhat firmly beneath me.  This is what the past several semesters have been like, in a nutshell:
Spring 2010: taking two seminars, working 20 hours a week in the Business Office, stressed out about being on the PhD waitlist, overwhelmed by my MA capstone.
Fall 2010: Teaching 101 for the first time, taking three seminars, working a few hours a week in the business office, worrying about my dad, trying to get pregnant, hoping Vickie would be able to find a job she deserved.
Spring 2011: Taking three seminars, working 10 hours a week in the Business Office, mourning the death of my dad, managing his financial affairs, helping to plan his memorial, feeling exhausted and sick from pregnancy.
Fall 2011: On leave from school, finishing my pregnancy, giving birth to a new human, discovering I was completely unprepared to care for a colicky newborn but doing it anyway.
Spring 2012: Wishing I had taken a whole year off, TAing for two discussion sections of a new course, spending as little time on campus as possible so I could be home with Nora, feeling sleep deprived and constantly hungry, struggling to get any of my own work done.
Fall 2012: Teaching my first stand-alone literature class, preparing for and completing my comprehensive exams, pumping while wishing my daughter wasn't in full-time day care, wishing that day care wasn't 35 minutes from my house without traffic, trying to overcome the shock of the death of my grandfather.
Spring 2013: TAing for a new lecture class, changing my research topic, researching for my prospectus, working 10 hours a week on the KAP project, getting sick every other week (2 emergency room trips included).

So yeah.  It has been A TIME.  This has not allowed a lot of flexibility in my schedule for, say, stopping to grab coffee with a friend I run into in the copy room.  Nor has it allowed me to attend many of the events my department regularly hosts.  For example, the only reason I was able to make it to a particularly important department event while pregnant was because the miracle that is Zofran ended the 36 straight hours of vomiting that preceded it.  There is no doubt, in my mind, about whether my absence at these types of events marks a lack of commitment to the program or to my degree.  It absolutely does not. And those who know me understand this, too.  But in any case, my absence has been hard to not notice, so I don't blame any one of the many (and I mean, like, every) friend or colleague who has recently said to me some variation of "I'm surprised to see you here!"  Surprised to see me at the orientation lunch (for a 30 minute break from the library job).  Surprised to see me at the Center for Teaching Excellence student engagement seminar.  Surprised to see me around the building.  Surprised to see me at the Alumni Lecture, reception, and dinner afterward.

I understand why they're surprised.  And the vast majority of them are surprised and pleased to see me, rather than trying to suggest that I should have been attending these events more regularly.  I feel a little awkward about this observation, though, because I would have really liked to be able to spend more time with these friends and to have attended more of these events.  So I find myself responding with comments like, "I'm glad to be back!" or "It's nice to feel like I'm part of the program again!" or "Nora loves school so I don't have to feel guilty about leaving her there an extra 30 minutes."  (Well, I'm still calling it school, not day care, so the residual guilt is still there, but that's another post.)

The alumni lecture was Friday.  I couldn't not attend: Lara Vetter, the alum who gave the lecture, writes on female Modernists and contributed to a digitization project while at Maryland (sound familiar?).  Plus, the dinner was hosted by a professor who sat on my exam committee and another who put in a good word to help me get the KAP job.  It still wasn't easy for me to swing, though.  It meant getting Nora out the door by 7am, meeting with my fellow TA from 9-10, teaching from 10-12, prepping from 12-1, working on the KAP project from 1-4, and then hustling back across campus for the lecture. Since I left the party early and still didn't get home until 10pm, it meant Billy had to leave work early to pick Nora up from school and was on his own with her for the rest of the evening.  In the interest of comparison, I'll share that someone told me mid-day Friday that she might come to the lecture but she really wanted to get home and get caught up on Breaking Bad, so she wasn't sure-- but she did hear that there was going to be wine there.

Dr. Vetter had so many interesting and useful things to say that I was instantly glad this other colleague and I had set aside our respective family/child and Netflix obligations to attend the talk.  One thing Dr. Vetter talked about was what she wishes she had known when she went on the job market.  She gave a lot of specific, helpful advice, but what it mostly boiled down to was: Be confident but not arrogant and Have your shit together.

At any other point in the past several years, this might have made me feel like I have no hope of ever landing a good academic job.  My confidence in my ability to achieve my personal and professional goals at the same time has been waning over the past few years.  I feel like every day there has been a reminder that I have not had my shit together (or, at least, not as together as it used to be).  But this semester, for the first time in years, it feels like I'm finally in the driver's seat.  I know better than to expect this to continue.  Something else will come up.  But in the meantime, it is nice to feel like I might be able to get things done.  Like I'm ready to teach the course I'm assigned.  Like I'm comfortable with how little I know about digitizing correspondence and ready to learn more.  Like I'm nearing completion on my prospectus.  Like Billy and I are managing to take good care of our daughter and she is thriving.  Like I can go out with my husband on a Wednesday night as long as Vickie or my in-laws are willing to babysit Nora.

It's a good place to be.  And it's about time, I guess, to find out how well I can work when the balls I'm juggling are not quite so heavy or cumbersome... before I run out of funding.  But that's for another post, too.

with Nora on my first day of school

Prospectus Draft Submitted

I finished the first draft of my prospectus on time!  I completed my last read-through around 9:30 last night and sent it off to my professor.  I actually felt a bit emotional when I hit "send" on the email because I realized that it was the first time I'd submitted any writing since before Nora was born.  Since she was born, I have been plagued by the "I have no idea how I am going to do this" feeling.  Every new stage of the process feels impossible.  But the thing I try to repeat to myself is "I may not be sure I can do it, but I'll keep trying until I'm sure I can't do it."  Since I took on the Katherine Anne Porter job, it has felt increasingly impossible to get "enough" work done on my prospectus.  So even though I may still need to spend several months revising this draft before it is good enough to be filed, it felt really satisfying to get the first draft under my belt.  And since it has been so long since I wrote anything academic, it felt good to finally be able to sit down and get all my ideas down on the page.  Blogging and paper writing may be very different types of writing, but it made me thankful that I've continued writing here.  Since I have attempted to undertake some more thoughtful posts, I do think it has kept me from getting *too* rusty.

So once I hit send, I gave myself a bit of a break until I get feedback from my advisor tomorrow.  I slept great, got Nora off to school, watched a little Netflix, took a nap, met Vickie at her pool, and then picked Nora up when she woke up from her nap to join us for some pooltime.  It was a lovely day that left me feeling a bit recharged and ready to hear whatever my advisor has to say about the draft.  I also realized that I have a lot of fun activities coming up in the next few weeks: my first Orioles game of the season, a day at the DC tennis tournament with Vickie, a concert with friends on my birthday, and then our trip to Oregon.  I will still have to squeeze plenty of work in around these events, but it is a relief to know I'll be doing them with this first draft behind me instead of looming ominously in the future.

When we got home from the pool this afternoon, Oscar was much worse for wear after what I thought was a minor injury this morning.  He went from refusing to come up the stairs to screaming out in pain, so we thought he had slipped a disk in his back like he did when Nora was born.  The vet informs us, however, that he must have done something to tweak his neck, so he's on a steroid that hopefully gets him feeling better soon.  It sure is tough to see your dog in pain and not be able to do much to help. That has put a bit of a damper on my planned relaxing evening with Billy, but I'm still enjoying a hard cider, a little TV, and blog updating while we watch the Orioles.

I also wanted to say thank you to everyone who has helped and encouraged me over the past few days.  Billy, Patti, and Chuck watched Nora for several hours on Saturday so I could work, and knowing she was happily occupied helped me stay focused.  I also appreciate those of you who checked in on me over the course of the weekend to see how I was doing!

Literary Words of Wisdom: Adrienne Rich

Sometimes it's best to just let the genius speak for herself.  From Adrienne Rich's ground breaking 1976 study, Of Woman Born: Motherhood as Experience and Institution:

"The most important thing one woman can do for another is to illuminate and expand her sense of actual possibilities.  For a mother, this means more than contending with the reductive images of females in children's books, movies, television, the schoolroom.  It means that the mother herself is trying to expand the limits of her life.  To refuse to be a victim: and then to go on from there.

Only when we can wish imaginatively and courageously for ourselves can we wish unfetteredly for our daughters.  But finally, a child is not a wish, nor a product of wishing.  Women's lives-- in all levels of society-- have been lived too long in both depression and fantasy, while our active energies have been trained and absorbed into caring for others.  It is essential, now, to begin breaking that cycle.  Anyone who has read the literature in the obstetrician's waiting-room knows the child-care booklets which, at some point, confess that 'you may get a fit of the blues' and suggest 'having your husband take you to dinner in a French restaurant, or going shopping for a new dress.'  (The fiction that most women have both husbands and money is forever with us.)  But the depressive mother who now and then allows herself a 'vacation' or a 'reward' is merely showing her daughters both that the female condition is depressing, and that there is no real way out.

As daughters we need mothers who want their own freedom and ours.  We need not to be the vessels of another woman's self-denial and frustration.  The quality of the mother's life-- however embattled or unprotected-- is her primary bequest to her daughter, because a woman who can believe in herself, who is a fighter, and who continues to struggle to create livable space around her, is demonstrating to her daughter that these possibilities exist."  (246-247)

So next time I write something like this, please remind me: when all else fails, pick up something by Adrienne Rich.

[S]he loved youth

Of the Professor in The Professor's House, Willa Cather writes "... he loved youth-- he was weak to it, it kindled him.  If there was one eager eye, one critical, doubting mind, one lively curiosity in a whole lecture room full of commonplace boys and girls, he was its servant.  That ardour could command him. It hadn't worn out with years, this responsiveness, any more than the magnetic currents wear out; it had nothing to do with Time."

I think about this all the time when I am walking around campus.  Especially on nice days.  I know what this is like.  There are so many reasons to love working on a college campus, but for me, being surrounded by kids who are at this stage in their lives is one of the best.

I made my campus visits as a high school senior.  I only visited schools that had already admitted me, so there was no anxiety about it.  I was making the most exciting decision of my life.  The weather was beautiful at all three of them: Valparaiso, Wake Forest, and Furman.  I could not wait for college to begin, because it felt like waiting for my real life to begin.  When I walk around Maryland's campus on a beautiful day, I can remember exactly what that felt like.  How beautiful and exciting everything was.  How cool college kids seemed and how much freedom they had.  How much fun they seemed to be having just walking around.  I think about how that "lively curiosity" college students have was inspiring when I was 17 and continues to be refreshing now that I'm 30.

Today was a beautiful day on campus, so I took a few pictures on my walking commute.

It's a rough life, right?

Somewhat relatedly, I took Nora to campus with me yesterday for my department's end of semester party.  This deserves a post of its own, but it's been a long week, so I'll keep it short:  It was a delight to see her in my work element.  I thought she would run around the mall, but she mostly stood in place and stared all around her.  My friends and professors were very excited to see her, and after about an hour of shyness she warmed up to the situation enough to show off her personality a little.  I'm at a stage in my program where I don't have much interaction with other members of the department unless I actively seek it out, and that's hard to do with so little spare time in my schedule.  It was extra nice to have everyone together in one place, to hear briefly how they've been doing, and to let them see that my current "project" is not limited to reading, writing, and teaching.

Remember Down Time?

Nora is sleeping in this morning.  I hope it is not illness related!  I've already gotten up, showered, gotten ready, made my grocery list, eaten breakfast, and packed my lunch.  These things all go so much faster when she is not toddling around at my feet or clamoring for my attention.  I had forgotten about that.

This gives me a chance to sit down with my coffee (which for once is in a real mug, not a travel mug!) to see how far I can get in the blog post I've been milling over in my mind for the past few days before she wakes or I have to wake her.

I can barely remember when I used to have down time.  Graduate school has a way of making you feel like you should treat every minute away from work like it is precious... but because I'm me, it also has a way of making me feel like I can't afford to spare any minute away.  Nonetheless, I did try to make a conscientious effort to take time off once in a while.  These days, my "time off" from school is spent mothering.  And my "time off" from mothering is spent doing school work.  I don't know quite how to find much time for myself in between.  To be fair, I don't need much time to myself.  If I have to split my time between two things, these are the two things I most want to be doing.  But when I put her down to sleep at night, and begin the effort to force myself to get back to work, I am envious of Billy, who gets to spend his evenings watching the Orioles, even though I am reminded every Wednesday, when I work at a desk for a mere five hours, that his work is no joke.

But I also know I cannot sit still to save my life.  In the downtime I do allow myself, I've been working on a quilt for Nora.  Two Mondays ago I gave myself a "me" day, which meant I watched Mad Men guilt free before spending the entire day running errands.  Maybe I am nostalgic for time to sit and "do nothing" not so much because my life doesn't allow me the time to do it, but because "doing nothing" is a state that seems appealing and yet has never really been a part of my life.

I don't know.  But Nora is peeping away on the other side of the wall, so I don't have a chance to think about it any further.  Isn't it nice how happy she wakes up when she sleeps long enough, rather than insisting on waking up just because she can tell there's activity going on in the house?

This blog post was also supposed to include this detail, which I didn't work in: I am thankful for audio books for allowing me to reclaim my commute.  My trip to the library to grade on Monday also yielded me the chance to peruse the books on CD selections, so I'm currently listening to A Hologram for the King by Dave Eggers.  This is a book I never, ever would have had a chance to read otherwise.  If you are ever trying to think of a gift for me, take yourself on over to audible.com.

The Toddler Room: Effects on Toddler and Mama

Nora loves the toddler room.  Why wouldn't she?  Yesterday when we walked in, one of her friends said "Nono!", rushed over to her, gave her a hug, and then led her by the hand over to the play carpet.  Her "friends" in the toddler classroom are actually her friends.  She gets a snack or a meal every twoish hours.  She blows bubbles, completes art projects, reads books, sings songs, plays outside with toddler-appropriate equipment, and dances to music.  She no longer even considers crying when I leave or when I return.  Mama, that's for babies, I imagine her thinking.  She has even started regularly napping for over one hour on her cot because her teachers had the good sense to place her next to their best sleeper.  Evidently, when she wakes up, looks over and sees that he is still sleeping, she pretends she is, too.

Nora started in the toddler room at 15 months, so she would've had a considerable amount of language development since that time anyway, but we feel like she's had a language explosion.  I couldn't even begin to create a comprehensive list all the words she says regularly with increasingly better clarity.  She is a little parrot, repeating everything we say and every noise she hears.  When Billy clears his throat, she clears hers.  When I lock the car as we walk into the house, she chirps "beep!"  When she pets or kisses Oscar she tells herself "nice, nice" because we are always emphasize using "nice touches" with him.  After we sing about the people on the bus going up and down, she walks around chanting "uppydown, uppydown, uppydown."  When her Uncle Nate is on FaceTime and asks her what's on TV in the background, she says "I dunno!" with perfect inflection, like she means it. This ear for sounds and pitches comes from Billy, I am sure.  He hears background noises that I am completely oblivious to, like when we are watching a sporting event and he gets annoyed by the pep band playing the same songs too much.  "There is a pep band?" is what I am always thinking.

As a working mom, most of the guilt I had about leaving Nora with others during the day has been eradicated by her sheer excitement about being at school.  Now that she is at an age where social interaction is more beneficial for her than my one-on-one doting attention would be, day care is a good place for her to be.  This should be good for me, too, and emotionally it is.  But professionally, I am realizing that guilt is a powerful motivator.  I got so much more done every day when regret about leaving her to complete my exam reading was dripping out of my pores, when the sight of every young child out and about with its mother made me cringe, and when Nora burst into tears nearly every time I arrived to get her at the end of the day.  But Liz, you couldn't have maintained that level of productivity much longer without losing your mind, you might be thinking.  I hear you.  (If you are actually thinking, Liz, operating at that level of productivity has already caused you to lose your mind, I politely decline to hear you.) My hope is that it's just taking me a little bit longer to adjust than it's taking Nora.  Now that she has settled into school, and I have settled into teaching, and I am beginning to settle into my library job, I hope this will lead to me settling into prospectus writing.  This week we are off for Spring Break, so I have made some good progress.  Time will tell, I guess.

Did you catch the part where I mentioned that she dances now? Over the weekend we discovered that she is especially partial to "Jump in Line" by Harry Belafonte.  Whether she likes this because of its beat, its instruments, or its prominence of what she thinks is the word "Nora," who knows.  But since her other main preference is for electronic music and rap songs about thrift shops, we gladly watch her pretend she's a hurricane in all kinds of weather... on repeat.

Nora's Last Day of School

Friday was Nora's last day of school.  We have had a universally positive experience with the child care providers we chose this summer, but the school was just too far from our home.  Though we know switching schools is the best decision for our family, we were really sorry to take Nora out of her current class.  Her teachers have taken such good care of her that she warmed up to them very quickly. They were also very sympathetic and understanding with me as I made the adjustment to leaving her.  Nora may have "only" been there for a little over four months, but in the scheme of her life, that's a long time!  When she started there, she couldn't crawl well, and now she is running all over the place.  I will miss getting the chance to see her interact with her classmates, as well.  At first, they really had no idea what to do with one another, but recently they really started playing.  They could hug one another, hand one another toys, walk over to see what one another were doing, and the like.  I am thankful that she was there for picture day so that someday I can show her this group shot of her first class!  I need to write a little description of each one on the back so I can tell her about each of them.

I was already feeling emotional when I went to get Nora on Friday as a result of the Connecticut school shooting.  When I picked her up I just hugged her as tight as I could until she gave me a look like "Geez, Mama, what??"  After I gave her teachers their thank you/holiday baskets, we made the rounds to give cookies to the other staff members who have also helped make her comfortable there.  I don't know if they knew about the shooting yet, but I was thankful to have an excuse to hug all of these women, too, because the news heightened my attention to the fact that the people who choose to look after our children in this country are some of our greatest resources.  I'm not be surprised when teachers sacrifice themselves to protect their students, because I know that most teachers sacrifice a little bit of themselves for their students every single day.

It was also nice to see Nora say "thank you" to each of these women in her own way.  I could tell how much time everyone spends with her by the way she would lean toward them to be held or walk up and hug their legs.  Obviously she had no idea what was going on, but she was quite thrilled to be the center of attention.  I was also surprised to see teachers I'd never met coming out of their classrooms to say goodbye to her and say nice things to me about her personality and habits.  It would've been a lot easier to leave her behind on that first day if I could've somehow seen the future to know that her "goodbye" would be this heartwarming.  I knew I trusted the staff when I picked the school, and I have watched as it became evident that Nora enjoys her time there, but saying goodbye put all of that in relief and helped eliminate some of the residual guilt I had about putting her in full time daycare.

Now Nora's stuck with me for about a month until she starts at the new center closer to our house and gets to meet a whole new set of people.  I know that will be another transition for her, but I think it will be much easier than it was the first time.  She knows how to handle being away from us, she enjoys interacting with other people, and she likes the additional stimulation she gets in a social learning environment.  I'll have the option to take her for full days, but since my workload won't be as intense, my plan is to spend more time with her in the mornings before dropping her off.  I'll also be able to keep her home more if she gets sick or overtired, so that will be nice as well.  I've finished my grading, so I'm looking forward to being a full time mom through the holidays and our visit west to meet her cousin Everett, who should be arriving any day now!

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.

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(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.)

On Being "Super"

There are a lot of reasons I continue to keep this blog, but one of them is that I care very much about the visibility of what I'm trying to do.  I don't want to get too theoretically complicated here, but one of the critical theorists I find most useful is Jacques Ranciere.  He has this theory about how artworks function in the community, and once I figured it out, it seemed like common sense.  Artworks (aestheticized objects) can make new ideas (or ways of being) visible to the community. When the artwork succeeds at making a new idea visible, it changes the way the community functions forever after by changing what the community recognizes and imagines as possible.  Ranciere calls this process the "redistribution of the sensible" -- that which is available to be sensed is re-arranged.  I'm not creating artworks, but the blog can function in a similar way.  As a woman trying to juggle the responsibilities of academia and motherhood, whenever I'm able to share my experiences in a way that allows others to perceive them, it changes the stakes for other women who want to consider juggling these responsibilities in the future.  

Trying to establish visibility for what it's like to be me is difficult, though, because it puts me in something of a double bind.  On the one hand, there is the impulse to focus on my successes and my capability for managing both motherhood and academics at once.  Doing this strengthens the argument that women can do both, and it proves that women who want to have babies and have academic careers should not be treated like delusional stepchildren.  It gets harder for professors to claim a woman can't have a baby in graduate school and maintain suitable progress every time one of us does it.

On the other hand, though, highlighting my successes at achieving this balance runs the risk of making other moms feel inadequate by comparison. I try to be as honest as possible about the struggles this balance involves because there are so many other things that make women feel inadequate as mothers. I don't want to be complicit in this problem.  There are already plenty of narratives about maternity that are pervasive to the point of silencing alternate experiences. We've all heard these:

I got pregnant on the first try!

I loved everything about being pregnant!

My maternal instincts kicked in right away.  I knew exactly what to do from the moment she was born!

They grow up so fast-- enjoy every moment!

I think the dominance of these narratives is damaging because it runs the risk of making pregnant women and new moms feel like they're alone and/or unusual when their experiences don't match up.  It took me twice as long as "average" to get pregnant, despite our precision of planning.  I found the experience of pregnancy largely difficult and unenjoyable despite my excitement about its end result. I suffered from a sometimes debilitating cluelessness about what to do with Nora when she was first born.  I did not enjoy every moment when Nora was tiny because caring for her was really hard.  None of this means I'm a bad person, or a bad mother, or that I don't love my daughter more than anything.  The more openly I talk about these things, the more I find that other women are willing to admit to some (or all) of these feelings, too... but at the time, I struggled to find voices that spoke the feelings I was feeling.

Although I've admitted all of these things on this blog, and it has resulted in the privilege of getting to talk more openly with other women about these issues, I still find myself stuck in this double bind of wanting to prove that what I'm doing is possible without making other people feel inadequate.  For the past four months or so I've continued to become increasingly aware that my successes sometimes make other graduate students and other moms feel insufficient.  They say things to me like, 

"You made the decorations for Nora's party yourself? Do you ever sleep?"  

"I could barely pass my qualifying exam, and the only person I had to take care of was myself."  

"I can't believe you have a kid; you always look so chic!"  

It's so easy for us, as moms, to believe in the idea of the "supermom" and measure ourselves as inadequate by comparison.  It's also easy for us, as graduate students, to believe in the idea of the "super student" and measure ourselves as inadequate by comparison.  But as someone who has these labels applied to her on an increasingly regular basis, I feel the need to clarify: the people who seem super are not so different from anyone else.  They have shortcuts, too.

Here's an example: There is another mom who picks her son up at day care around the same time I get Nora in the afternoons.  Her clothes are always flawless and perfectly pressed.  She shuttles her kid and all his stuff around with ease... while wearing heels.  Her makeup is simple but professional.  Her hair falls below her shoulders in perfectly tousled waves.  I found myself especially fixated on her flawless hair.  I couldn't get my hair to look like that even before I had Nora, and I have 20+ years of experience with managing unruly hair.  Then, one day when I was running a little late, I got to Nora's school at the same time this mom did.  Her hair was wet in a braid down her back, and her dry cleaning was hanging in the back window.  I could practically see the lightbulb appear above my head.  Wet hair, dry cleaning, and a later drop-off time.  When I had previously stood in awe of how she managed to look so flawless every day, the possibility of these shortcuts never even occurred to me.   

It's a bad idea to compare ourselves to others, full stop.  There's no way to do it straight.  If you take your weaknesses and pair them up with other peoples' perceived strengths, you're going to feel inadequate every time.  You just don't know enough about anyone else's life to make a fair comparison.

So in the interest of full disclosure, here are the shortcuts that help me seem more super than I am:

-My husband is amazing.  He is responsible for almost all the cleaning that has gone on in our home since Nora started day care.  He cleans up the kitchen and washes Nora's bottles every night.  He takes care of everything in the yard and does anything else I need him to do.  He is also exceptionally patient with me.  If I forget to do something he's asked, he either reminds me or does it himself.

-Financially, Billy and I are very fortunate.  Money doesn't buy happiness, but it does buy ease.  The number of times I've forgotten my lunch and had to buy one on campus is embarrassing.  How is this possible given the fact that I have never once forgotten anything Nora needed for her schoolday? I must not prioritize myself because I don't have to.  Why does my hair almost always look "done" when I'm on campus?  Because I have top-of-the-line hair tools that dry and straighten my hair in minutes.  Why did I eventually stop crying all day about leaving my daughter at day care?  Because we can afford a very high quality of care.

-I don't cook very much.  Nora eats fresh, healthy meals, but Billy and I have always relied heavily on takeout and fast food.  Since Nora started eating, I have made a concentrated effort to cook at home more for us, too.  The end result?  This semester, I've probably averaged 3 home cooked meals per week, and nothing I make takes much longer than 30 minutes.  This leaves plenty of room for improvement.

-If you walked into my house at any given time, there's about a 90% chance that the dryer contains a load of clothes I've completely forgotten about.  I think the only thing that has been ironed in my house since the semester began was Nora's birthday party dress.
-You know how much I love running?  I ran once this entire semester.

-I plan ahead compulsively.  Those decorations for Nora's birthday party?  I made them in August.  How did I cover 104 texts in 12 weeks AND teach a stand-alone literature class?  My lesson plans were also done in August, before the semester began.

-Nora sleeps a lot and very well.  We started sleep training as early as possible, and the result is that by the time this semester began, Nora was a champion sleeper.  She was down in her bed without incident by 7pm every single night of my exam preparations.  On weekends, she took extra long naps to make up for her inability to sleep well at school.  

The list goes on from there, and I'm sure there are plenty of other "shortcuts" I'm not even aware of... but these are the things that I recognize as having helped me to balance graduate school and motherhood these past few months.  So please know this: it IS possible to succeed as a mom and an academic at the same time.  Nobody has a right to suggest that women can't do it.  But it takes a lot of advanced planning, it takes extra time, and it takes a village of people to help.  There is one thing that seems to separate out the "supers": the way we think of time.  People ask me this question on at least a weekly basis: "Where do you find the time?"  And I think to myself: Who "finds" time?  I make time for the things that really matter to me, everything else falls by the wayside until I get a chance to catch up, and the people I keep close to me are kind and generous enough to stick with me in the meantime.

Other graduate students and/or moms: what are your shortcuts?  How do you "make" extra time?  I'm also convinced that learning "tricks of the trade" from women in similar situations also helps us to be evermore efficient... and for me, efficiency is the name of the game.

(End note: How did Liz manage this long, introspective blog post?  She's been working on it since Saturday.  After hitting "publish" I noticed that the font is all messed up, but I can't be bothered to fix it.)

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!