The View From Kalamazoo

Despite skipping the gym all of last week (had to wait for the bus to Girl Scout Daycamp, it wasn’t like I was doing something fun or anything) I managed to be .5 lb down Monday. I’ve tripled-up on ab/related areas machines and I hurt Tuesday. Yesterday did the same (another .5 lb down!) and I hurt today. I’m relegating arms/legs to every-other workout – I don’t want to bulk, and my legs are certainly skinny enough compared with the rest of me..I don’t need to make my Michigan J. Frog look-a-like connection stronger, thanks. Eliptical trainer still fills me with fear and loathing, so another round of the bellydance class this fall seems likely – at least it’s fun cardio. I look goofy, but it doesn’t bore me to tears and I lurve my coin scarf – cheery yellow jingly goodness.

Spent the whole weekend bonding with my grandmother’s new sewing machine. (no, I still haven’t taken mine to be repaired….and Halloween is coming. DOH!) All told 9 pairs of pants needed shortening, and the 4 that were not slims I darted so they had some chance of fitting with a belt on – slims are, believe it or not, still a little big on Em so you can imagine what the regulars look like. I looked it up – we’re actually 5% for height on the chart – but at…1% max for weight. Need to gain 1.5 lbs to make it to the 3% line on the chart. (I found a downloadable height/weight chart by age for girls so I can manifest even more parental stress over Em’s weight – why wait til the next appt. when this is a much more effecient way to beat myself up over it!)

Also found a lunchbox (on sale. yo.) she approved of this weekend (and glorious palettes of washable markers). School start looms large (YES!) and apart from any random supplies/donations to the classroom I hear about after she goes back the only thing I have not yet gotten is good athletic shoes, and I’m waiting on those (since my mom expressed excitement in taking her school-shoe shopping at the end of the month). I lucked into 2 pair of leather shoes for her – a mary jane type and a suede chukka – on clearance (my favorite word. no, seriously) and that’s clearance several times over so I got them for around $6 a pair. What a find! W00T! And we have a folder that says ‘Girls Rule’ in neon pink on a lime green background. Who could ask for more?

Lunched with thesis advisor yesterday. Was nagged to edit something for publication. Yippee skippee.

What seems like a simple question – ‘Well, are you going to apply again?’ – is not so simple at all. Bri is happy in his job, is far from excited about the prospect of moving, is pretty pessimistic about this whole thing, in general – and I have to live with that. I also have to live with…me.

Lest I appear a total head case, let’s lay this all out: I am getting advice from more sources than seems reasonable – and the advice runs the gamut of ‘Follow your goals! Do it! Never give up!’ to ‘Academia sucks! Get out now, while you can!’ to ‘The economy is bad – how can you expect to be able to move a family, find employment, family insurance on top of funding issues? Are you never going to settle down?!?’ to (my favorite) ‘What happened this year was meant to be – it’s just not your time‘.

Riiight.

So at the face of this “no-brainer” there are the following pesky details: There is significant risk:

~Applying is expensive, and even if I am accepted somewhere else there is still the question of funding – it’s full, or a no go.

~I’ve already put my family into magnificent student-loan debt for the MA so finances aren’t pretty. How nice of me.

~The economy is crap.

~There is not only no guarantee that there will be a job for me at the other side – at fabulous 40 (by that time) will I be totally overlooked for what few faculty positions there will be?

~I already have over 10 years as a university employee, complete with the usual meager retirement bennies. This would be, in effect, a total start-over. Bri. is also a university employee – fewer years, but same issues.

~Moving would be a tremendous expense, and would mean (obviously) a new school for Ms. Thang – a new school that may be a far cry from the one she’s in now, and may require a lot more time in meetings, fighting for her rights, hiring of lawyers, and other niceties that I would have even less time to deal with.

~It would means a move now, presumably at least one move after to a new position (should there be one) – but if that’s term or adjunct I’d likely be looking at more moving. So that is hardly a good time-line for house purchase and Bri. getting a good job and being able to remain in it for the length of time it will take to get to the level he desires. If there is no position – what the heck will we do, then?

~It would be a lot more work, a lot more stress, a lot more uncertainty of person and place, a lot less time for my family.

but:

~To not go on will mean effectively flushing 14 years of education, goals, and professional activity down the toilet.

~To not go on means I will never be able to do the only thing I really want to do – teach medieval history.

~To not go on will mean I’ll have to give up something integral to who I am and how I see myself. To give up the self-identity I’ve had for 14 years – what a mindscrew that is.

~To not go on means to always feel like a failure, to always wonder if I could have done it..could have been good enough. To admit defeat.

~To not go on means I disappoint myself and countless other people who have given me support.

~To not go on means I may remain a glorified secretary forever – so much for wanting to do something meaningful. So much for wanting to be taken seriously.

My answer, then, (all feedback/commentary/opinions/pressures I have gotten over the last 6 months boiled down to lowest common denominator) comes from the questions:

Am I a bad scholar, or am I a bad mother?

Do I take care of my professional goals and my ego, or do I take care of my family?

Which label do I choose to own, all personal desires and dreams aside.

I can’t fail to notice that all of my preceding angst and waffling would be unnecessary were I male – the expectations would be different.

AD/HD Awareness Day: September 7, 2004

Mark your calendars, America! The first National Attention Deficit Disorder Awareness Day is September 7, 2004.Thanks to a Senate resolution that was passed in July and the strong-arming of lobbyists at the Attention Deficit Disorder Association (ADDA). September 7 will be dedicated to spreading awareness about AD/HD. Senator Maria Cantwell of Washington state, who introduced the bill, says, “My hope in identifying a National Awareness Day for AD/HD is to encourage an honest discussion about AD/HD, its impact on children and adults in schools, in the workplace, and in relationships, and encourage sufferers to seek relief.”

From the last week of August through September 7, ADDA, with the help of friends from the National Mental Health Association and the American Psychiatric Association, will launch a host of nationwide activities. Expert speakers will rally crowds in various cities, and you’ll be able to join teleconferences on medication, behavior, and symptoms simply by picking up the phone. (Other events remain unconfirmed at presstime.) While ADDA hopes to make AD/HD Day a yearly thing, don’t wait until 2005 to help start others on the road to treatment. Find out what’s happening near you today; call 484-945-2101 or visit www.add.org.

Talking books used to help improve health care in Afghanistan (Based on popular LeapPad books for U.S. children)

I bet they are spared from the scourge of … Barbie themed leap pad titles! Aiiee! Bob the Builder would be a better example.

“We can fix it, yes we can!”

I’m a coffee drinker. I enjoy my coffee.

This, however, is beyond my tastes: Cat droppings yield chic coffee

I’m OK with not being chic. I really, really am…

So, then, would these dolls be illegal in Alabama since they come with…uh…?

Inquiring minds want to know. It’s a mad, mad, mad, mad world.

Hella expensive ADD treatment. More here. Does it come in fashion colors?

Looks amazing – but I don’t have two grand to toss around. Du?

Over the past 10 days or so there has been a flurry activity on the subject of academic blog – anonymous v. non-anonymous. I’ve been reading a lot of comments on a lot of blogs, and digesting. After all that (and taking Tums) I think I’m ready to throw my two cents in.

I don’t think it needs saying that this is not an anonymous blog, has never been, had no intention of being. It’s not broadcast to the world – but you can find it if you google me. (which begs the question “Who the hell would google me??!!?” but lest I get sidetracked, and since my normal operating environment is made up of ‘we’ll save all questions til the end’…we’ll save this one til the end, too.)

This will be important to remember later.

Also, despite the snappy title, I don’t consider this a blog about academia..about any one thing in particular, really. It’s flotsam, it’s jetsam, it’s toast with jam.

At leuschke.org; the questions posed boil down to: academic blogs – why so many anonymous? why the drive to anonymity? might I suffer due to the existence of my blog? The answers to the first two, form the many comments, varied…and the answer to the final seemed to be yes, no, and maybe. The conversation following has been really good stuff – some of the best I’ve read since the departure of IA, I think. I haven’t commented there (anywhere, for that matter), but fortunately a lot of other have. Maybe I worry I have nothing important to add, or maybe I worry I do.

I’ll begin at the beginning (as Leuschke also cited) – this opener at Bitch. Ph.D:

“Which brings me to the question: why an anonymous blog? Well, because, like all academic types, I am paranoid. I am certain that everyone out there is as disorganized and lazy as I am, and I know that my own geographic discontent and frequent doubt as to whether I really want to be doing this are pretty common as well. But, as someone else once said, “I am busy trying to be the person my department and I have agreed to pretend I realy am,” so I want a space to try to figure it out (geographic discontent means leaving your therapist behind) without having to worry about adding “indiscreet and self-sabotaging” to “lazy and disorganized” as self-descriptors. Of course, by pretending, in real life, to be a person that I think no one really is I merely substitute “hypocritical” for “self-sabotaging.” Well, don’t we all.”

For space, I guess I’ll just jump through a few of the good points made in the discussion – read the whole thing, it’s really remarkable.

G writes “Thinking about what I wrote above [“As my friend Rex likes to say, the web is world-readable, and has to be treated as such. This site is the top google result for my last name, and has been for at least two years. Even if I erased some of the more embarrassing bits of the archives, they’d still be cached by archive.org. I’ve gotten used to that, and it does restrict what I say here, but I don’t think I really feel that as a burden. ” included for reader’s convenience, EMC], it may sound perilously similar to someone discounting the PATRIOT act because they’re not a terrorist, what do they care if terrorists have their rights curtailed? Or, more succinctly, if blogs are outlawed then only outlaws will have blogs. To clarify: I’m very interested in people’s perceived drawbacks of having their names attached to their blogs, and also in to what extent those drawbacks are actual, or upheld by experience. I’m very uncomfortable with the idea that such reasons might exist: first, I don’t want to get sucker-punched (it’s all about me), but second, I’m deeply opposed to my workplace telling me what to do in my spare time. Second, I want to mention that non-anonymity (nymity?) here has brought me unexpected dividends. Just last week I reconnected with a friend from grade school who I haven’t seen in nearly 20 years, all because of this blog. That’s highly cool.”

This may be a large part of the pit in my gut when I think about this issue. I resent the implication that I have to be “on” all of the time – sometimes I would just like to be me and I shouldn’t have to worry that part of being me is web-based and blathering on. Should I avoid other public places and public spaces? Faculty and staff here regularly demonstrate downtown against the war in Iraq – is that not a public venue? Are their opinions and their speech more protected than mine, here? (and I’ve had the same unexpected and pleasant re-connections pop up because of this blog with friends from high school and in my undergrad days, but that’s neither here nor there.) The advice my husband gave me, in regards to my concern about whether (inexplicably) my blog could harm me, was “Fuck ’em!”

Rana commented “I will also admit a bit of vanity in keeping myself pseudonymous; when I blog about being rejected by academia, it’s nice not having people going through what I’ve published and what I’ve taught and making assumptions about my “failure” to obtain a t-t job (the kind of speculation about inadequate credentials that poor Invisible Adjunct went through is an excellent example of what I’d like to avoid). Similarly, a lot of what I write on my blog is “fluffy” or occasionally poorly thought through; if I had to hold my posts to the high standards I set for my professional writings, a lot of the fun would be sucked out of it.”

Well, my CV is up for anyone to see, and some papers I had written lo those many years ago (which I had put up briefly close to 10 years ago, and which haven’t been linked since not-that-long after they were up) are still floating around the web. I google myself and find nearly all of those I had up, in fact. I’m listed as a source in some syllabi/bibs/etc.. I’ve found online, and that’s pretty darn cool, and all…but would the quality of writing of my undergraduate thesis, comparing with the years since I’ve had to polish (and, I like to think, mature) hurt me now? Dunno…

Tim Burke said “I feel able to be completely honest on my own non-anonymous blog but at the same time, I admit that its non-anonymity means that there are some things which are interesting to me, that I think about, which relate to academia, which I do NOT feel I can talk about. Most of those it would be self-indulgent to talk about in the first place, and so the world need feel no sadness at being denied such petty self-absorption, but there are probably a few issues which would be interesting to a wider audience that I can’t talk about in a non-anonymous context. But at the same time, I don’t feel any less honest, forthright or self-confessional simply because the world knows it is me. Now keep in mind, I also have tenure, so that’s a big qualifier. Also keep in mind one of the oddest things of all that I’ve discovered along the way, which is that a) just about no one in my field appears to read weblogs, let alone mine*I have maybe three friends in my own disciplinary specialization who have mentioned reading it and b) virtually none of my local colleagues read it, either. So there is also a kind of hiding-in-plain-sight thing that’s interesting to me, and might allay some people’s fears. But maybe I’m atypical: I wonder whether other non-anonymous academic webloggers find that their local institutional colleagues are aware of what they’re saying and doing?”

I think he hit the nail right on the head – TENURE. Everyone else is running like cockroaches from the light. And I thought similar things about my field and weblogs – most of them were other grad students – but I was wrong. I go into details farther down…

This other comment was great, long, and it’s all here;. Blockquoting that is a space issue in this already-too-long-entry. And so

Bitch, Ph.D. responded to another comment with “This question of intellectual courage is precisely what I was trying to talk about a few posts back on my own blog (and my comment here). I think I am groping my way towards an argument that intellectual courage needn’t necessarily mean putting your name to your statements: some of the stuff I am writing about (a lot of it actually) takes courage just to write, and that is why I put it out there. If it were attached to my own personal, easily googleable, very unique name, that might make it more, not less, courageous in the sense that it would then just be freaky or grumpy or bitchy me saying these things. If the speaker is anonymous, it could be anyone, which raises the question of whether these specific things*sex, procrastination, second-guessing, whatever*really are just me or whether, as I am trying to say, they are actually pretty common. Generalizable.”

This makes sense, and I think it’s part of why Invisible Adjunct was such a powerful force. My question is, however, whether those of us without that sort of purpose in blogging, without specific goals of posting things of courage or controversy (I would argue that mine, for example, has had neither. If I’m wrong, please comment and correct me.) should have to worry. I’m not using my non-anonymity as a tool for anything – but, still, Should I be paranoid? And, Why?

I’ll stop – but as I said, read the comments. There is a lot more I haven’t referred to here, good and meaty stuff. Also, lots of trackbacks to blogs responding in their own venues listed there I won’t list here. Some good comments jumping off this thread by Rana at Frogs and Ravens – “… I think it demonstrates is the profound degree to which I’ve absorbed the rhetoric of self-determination. That is, I’ve been firmly socialized into the belief that all success or failure can be attributed ultimately to personal effort and worth. Paradoxically, given that my training and education makes it easy for me to see structural forces at work in other people’s lives, grad school and academia in general serve to reinforce that belief.” Yeah, I get that one. It’s with me when I lay in bed at night trying to fall asleep, it stares me in the face when I wake in the morning. No, I don’t think this makes me a head case – just very successfully socialized. Go me. Yay.

So here is where we come to the question and answer period. I’ll try to answer the question at the top, and tack on ‘Why is this such a sore spot?’, ‘What do you think about it?’ and the less-existential-than-you-think ‘What the heck are you going to do, now?’

This past fall I applied for Ph.D. programs. Like every other example of this process I threw nearly all of my time, energy, money (that’s isn’t an exaggeration, either), and emotional wherewithal into it. I’d been done with my M.A. for somewhat over a year, at that point, and my over-riding attitude was ‘it’s time to shit or get off the pot’. More than an attitude, it was a gut feeling. It’s now, and if not now, soon. Or never. I don’t think anything in this paragraph deviates much from the majority of others also playing application bingo.

So in addition to complaining about the gym (who doesn’t?), running commentary on the ways having a kid with ADHD means I have a whole set of different relationships with her school and teacher, pediatrician, my insurance, and attention to new findings, studies, and information from drug manufacturers than most other parents I know I blogged here and there about the other large, looming thing in my life: applying. I never considered any of this particularly interesting, certainly not the least bit controversial, and since I mostly try to stay away from those subjects one does not bring up in polite situations I never thought much about it. People who want politics can love, or hate, my husband but they shouldn’t expect anything juicy from me (as long as the assumption isn’t made that he always agrees with me or I always agree with him it’s all good).

As I said, I have never stood on the highest peak and shouted my URL to the world. It’s linked to my page and husband’s area…some friends were occasional readers..but, let’s face it, I’m boring and inconsequential. The fact that it immediately comes up when you google me was never a worry since who the hell would google me, anyway? I’m afraid I can’t answer that question completely, but wish I could. Preliminary answer: more than you’d ever imagine, no one you’d expect, and maybe more than you want to know. And why? I can’t fathom.

So, jumping to the end, I’m going no where this fall. The economy crapping out meant that both more people were applying to go to grad school than usual and more schools had less money than usual. I got my share of rejections (and then some), but difficult as they were (as they are for any applicant) to open and read…the heart-breaker was getting accepted to a program I really, really liked but who, due to a new governor and budget cuts and the same sort of frightening scenarios I was already experiencing at the institution I work for, was utterly, utterly unable to offer me funding. Very sad and frustrating since I can’t very well move my family to a new city and state many hours away with nothing to offer but economic risk. So I deferred…hard to hold out hope that it will all turn around in a year, but a shred of optimism is, at least, better than nothing at all. I wallowed, I carped, I asked a variety of folks I know for advice and I moved on like any other applicant in a similar situation would.

Why am I laying all of this embarrassment bare again? Well at some point last winter I heard, from a friend at Unnamed Private University that she knew a few of the grad students in the department I applied to (a school which, note, did not accept me) were reading my blog. I found it curious, a little odd – but I’d visited the place when I was busy making decisions on schools to apply and met with a few who might remember me. Subsequently I hear that ‘all the students’ (all?!), ‘some faculty’ and finally, ‘the whole department’ (WTF?) are regular readers. Advice passed through the grapevine seems to suggest that this blog, somehow (I don’t know specifically what it was, and can’t figure out what it could possibly be, frankly) did me harm and if I re-apply there and elsewhere this coming fall I should take it down completely for those, roughly, 6 months of the application season.

So when Leuschke asks “Is there a plausible reason to think that I, as an untenured professor in a new gig, could suffer from the existence of this here .org?” my answer is – Plausible? yes. Reasonable, appropriate, professional, no, but plausible…I couldn’t have imagined it. I still can’t quite believe it, on some level. But yes, plausible. I hope the caveat that follows for you is ‘but not likely’, but that’s what I would have thought if someone had brought this subject up last fall. I’m a medievalist, for cripes’sake. I know a whole host of medievalists who barely manage email attachments, and most of the rest web surf, maybe, but blogs? Nah. And the other side of the coin is medievalists who blog under their own name plain as day (like Michael Drout). Tim Burke, looking at the field of history in a much wider sense, is a busy blogger. I still suffer from some disbelief, as I said. Or maybe it’s disappointment that the question even needed be raised.

I don’t blame the messenger – I don’t know who to blame. It, more so than any other good reason or good advice I’ve gotten why I don’t want to go into academia and the horrors that will follow (even Dorothea Salo tried. I’m dreadfully stubborn), really gives me pause. I can’t tell you what I’ll be doing next year, whether I’ll run the gauntlet again this fall – all I wanted to do was be given the opportunity to do good work..ultimately to teach (which I miss), to research and write (which I do even now, as I can), and cope with campus politics (which I already spend each day with, now). To finish what I started. I now doubt that my work has anything to do with it. I wish I could be proved wrong. This is not to say I don’t think it was largely the economy (and all of the things that comes from that) that was my real hurdle as an applicant, that I think my file was impeccable (respectable, yes, but no one is perfect. there are a lot of applicants out there with more languages, with topics faculty like more, without children) – I have a good grasp of reality, but the fact that the existance of this blog even came up in this context says volumes to me. Volumes.

How could I have known I should have been paranoid? And how resentful am I, now, that I am paranoid. How dare they?!?

Wasn’t it Groucho Marx who said “I would never join a club that would have me as a member” ??

It was also Groucho who sang “Hello! I must be going. I came to say I cannot stay, I must be going…” If this drives me away from academia…what would I re-name this blog?