Some advice, free of charge, because I like you

If you have a grad student in your life of the PhD variety, do not say, "When are you going to graduate?"

It seems to be fairly uncommon it is for people to understand how a typical PhD program works. Most people are used to the idea of high school (4 years), college (4 years), med school (4 years), most masters programs (around 2 years)... but it's difficult to comprehend why you would enter a program without having a defined timeline for leaving. The fact is, you finish a PhD when you've done enough new, at least semi-important, research. When you've contributed enough to your chosen field, you get a degree and leave. If you're a bit slow publishing and someone else "scoops" your findings by publishing first? Well, tough, and no, you don't get credit for it in some fields. I knew people who left programs after 5 years because they were scooped and knew they didn't have time to do another full dissertation's worth of work before their program kicked them out at the 7 year mark. Here, have a master's for your troubles, and enjoy finding another career.

For a lot of people, this is unsettling. (No, I'm not talking about the actual students. For them it's more nausea-inducing.) My father-in-law regularly is surprised that I don't know when I'll finish. I had thought it might be this spring at one point (HA! And I'll say it again - HA!), but then Rocco was conceived and born, and that slowed me down. When your biological clock's alarm sounds, it slows down your academic clock. That makes intuitive sense to me, so why does my father-in-law still think I'm on my way to mortarboard nirvana soon?

I'm a bit unusual, however, in that I'm not really rushing to get out. DT has a good, stable job, we're not sure if we want to move or not when I finish, and most importantly, I want to keep a good balance between my family and school. This means I'm watching newer students finish their degrees and go off for interesting jobs, but I'm happy where I am and generally happy to enjoy the process instead of rushing to finish.

That said, I would like to finish at some point, and that point seems to be moving further away every day. My brother once told me (while working on his own doctorate) that I shouldn't become obsessed with my research but that at the same time, "Every day you don't work is a day later that you graduate." Three years ago, that trade-off was easier to make. Now, I'm struggling more with how to prioritize as the years click by. I spent most of today on a field trip with WonderGirl, and I'm grateful that my schedule is flexible enough to allow that easily. However, I'm also aware that if I did everything her school requests (since I'm a student and it is therefore assumed that I have no commitments), I would have a hard time maintaining traction on my own research.

Someday, though, I'll be Dr. Ruth, I know it.

Wait, that's what I'm working for? Sheesh.

Four things

I was tagged by my non-blogging friend Patty...

Four jobs I've had in my life:

1. running a carousel in the mall (Does that count as being a carny? "Carny" sounds much cooler.)
2. library shelver
3. bookstore cashier and stocker
4. "The science lady" - outreach educator for a science museum

Four movies I would watch over and over:

1. Red
2. Next Stop Wonderland
3. Zoolander
4. Bull Durham

Four places I have lived:

1. North Carolina
2. Houston
3. Richmond, VA
4. Atlanta

Four TV shows I love to watch:

1. college basketball in general
2. The Daily Show
3. Six Feet Under
4. Nova

Four places I have been on vacation:

1. Nepal
2. Fiji
3. Banff/Jasper
4. NC beaches

Four web sites I visit regularly:

1. CNN
2. A Little Pregnant
3. Bitch, PhD
4. Duke Basketball Report

Four of my favorite foods:

1. vegetarian corn dogs
2. fried green tomatoes
3. tequila (that counts, doesn't it? It's made from a plant.)
4. strawberries, cheese and crackers (together, so it counts)

Four places I would rather be right now:

1. on a bike ride (it's actually cool outside right now)
2. eating lunch with DT
3. at the beach
4. sleeping, snuggled up with WonderGirl and Rocco and not worrying that it will teach them bad sleep hygiene

Four things I always carry with me:

1. cell phone
2. wallet
3. breastpump
4. secret decoder ring
   

Headline of the day

Police arrest nude man stuck in chimney

I have nothing to add.

Buy! me!

Somehow my school email address has landed on a new spam list this week. Usually I just get 4 or 5 commercial spam emails a day (compared to 20 school spam emails, but apparently I'm supposed to care about those) -- this week I'm getting 40 or 50 a day.

It's generally not a big deal, we have very agressive filtering software that uncermoniously dumps them all into a spam folder, which I check daily and delete. They virtually never get through to my real inbox.

However, these latest emails are trying my patience. All the subjects end! in! exclamation! points! and as I scan the subjects before deleting, the words! end! up! in! my! head! and it's like grinding teeth.

I miss the Nigerian bank spams. The grammar sucked, but the punctuation was understated and spot-on.

No snappy title, just frustration

Like many Duke alums, I have been following the lacrosse team, uh, situation? fiasco? freakshow? with a mixture of revulsion and dread about what else is going to happen. There has been a lot written, and I don't want to rehash everything, but a few points keep coming up for me:

1. Given all I've read about the lacrosse team's history and habits, I am profoundly grateful that I didn't know they existed when I was there.
2. As I read about the ever-emerging inconsistencies in the accuser's story, and the fact that she ID'ed someone with "100% certainty" who now appears to have a pretty good alibi, I am growing increasingly irritated that she is the current face of sexual assault. Reporting a rape is traumatic and frightening enough already. The publicity and (valid) questions are only going to make it less likely that the next woman who is assaulted will get the support she needs.
3. Given 1 and 2, there is no way anyone is coming out of this smelling like roses. An awful situation all the way around. DA Nifong has encouraged a runaway train.
4. I am embarrassed that I hadn't thought about this, but The Happy Feminist makes excellent points about the security guard who asserted that the woman wasn't raped. How is a rape victim supposed to act? As THF says,

   The guard's opinion is further fascinating to me because it illustrates very clearly the problems rape victims face. The guard for some reason felt herself qualified just by looking at Doe to determine whether Doe had been raped-- and felt no hesitation about essentially labeling her a liar.

5. I am incredibly annoyed that I can't get any good offseason recruiting/NBA defection news for basketball because my favorite board is completely taken up by discussion of lacrosse.

Here's my real issue, though. I am frustrated that this case will now define Duke for many people. I grew up in North Carolina, and I was influenced from a very early age by everyone who told me that Duke was for people who were rich, Yankees, white, jerks or, usually, all four. I always cheered for the Duke basketball team (except for that one embarrassing year where I wanted to fit in at school), but I kept those Duke stereotypes anyway. When it was time for me to choose a college, I ended up going to Duke because I had a tuition scholarship there and I couldn't justify spending so much money on another school if I could go there cheaply. It would have cost more to go to UNC. So I went, and I spent my entire freshman year on the bus to Chapel Hill to visit my high school friends there. I believed that I knew what the typical Duke student was like, and I let myself begin to feel quite isolated.

My sophomore year, I became more involved in the Duke and Durham communities, began to make more friends, and was shocked (shocked!) to find out that all of the stereotypes I cherished weren't actually true. Yes, there were jerks at Duke, and yes, something like half the school bought into the fraternity/sorority system, but I finally realized that meant at least half of the school didn't spend their entire life at kegs. I became very involved in community service, found a major that I loved and met my husband and a close circle of friends who came from a variety of ethnic and socioeconomic backgrounds. Duke ended up being incredibly good for me - I was challenged academically, I began many transformative relationships and I found out how rewarding it was to give my time to help improve the city in which I lived.

Now, everyone hears Duke and thinks, "Rich white boys from the Northeast raping poor black mothers who have to strip to go to school."

One of the things that has made this such a flashpoint is obviously the makeup of Durham, and the fact that is equally divided between blacks and whites. I've always wondered if racism is more defined in the South because we all actually live together. It's easier to "see" less racism when cities are more segregated. There is also clearly building tension between the school and the town. When I was there, Duke students rarely moved off-campus, so when you did, it was because you wanted to be part of the Durham community. Now, apparently it's more common, and the students that are off-campus aren't exactly there as ambassadors, they're there because it's easier to drink. I hate to think that all of the work Duke has done as an institution to try to be a good neighbor and partner with the community will be torn down by a group of drunken idiots.

On a personal level, though, I hate knowing that the small-minded people who had me convinced I was going to a school full of one type of person are having those beliefs supported and vindicated by this story. Yes, the lacrosse players are Duke, but so am I, dammit.

My biggest challenges today

In the Parent of a Boy category:
Figuring out when Rocco was still awake as I rocked him and when he was truly zonked but doing that creepy sleep-with-your-eyes-open thing.

In the Parent of a Girl category:
Summoning the activation energy to give WonderGirl a goodnight kiss and actually leave her room after she told me, "Every time you kiss me on the nose, I'll wake up and have a bright, glittery smile. Like this."

In the Overly Advised Grad Student category:
Asking for help from both Dr. Nice and Dr. Brilliant without having each of them assume the other would actually provide the help. (Didn't do this one well, still waiting for a response. Drat.)

In the I'm a Person, Not Just a Parent and Student category:
Um, showering.

Happy Easter

DT, WonderGirl, Rocco and I attend a Unitarian Universalist (UU) church. UU tradition is strongly rooted in Christianity, but it is a creedless church and pulls people from all sorts of faith histories. Just as an example, UUs are comfortable talking about Jesus as an historical figure but a mention of God in our church is usually either:

1. qualified ("God, Creator, Spirit of Life, Instigator of Patterns...") or
2. controversial within the congregation, leading to emails to the minister.

Despite these boundaries, yesterday we had an excellent, even spiritual, sermon on Easter. (In case you're wondering, yes, UUs do get dolled up for Easter, and yes, we did run out of seats in the sanctuary.) We read the biblical Easter story, where Mary Magdelene goes to Jesus' tomb and finds it empty, then mistakes the resurrected Jesus for a gardener. One point of the sermon was then that resurrection isn't the same as revival. It is appropriate in the story that Mary Magdelene didn't recognize her teacher; he was transformed.

The sermon, the beautiful weather we're having, WonderGirl's predilection for pretending to be a caterpillar who cocoons then emerges as a butterfly, Rocco's increasing engagement with the world and let's be honest, the wine I've been drinking every night on the patio, have all contributed to a sense of spring which I don't remember feeling for a long time. There is a transformational nature of spring for me this year instead of just the rebirth of the sun. Simply, it's good and I'm grateful for it. I hope I can hold it for a while.

In the same vein, a solution to our fertility problems was apparently right in front of my nose the whole time. An alternate view of Easter can be had via Overheard in NY:

Old man #1: Do you know why a bunny is connected to Easter?
Old man #2: No.
Old man #1: It's because Easter is about fertility and rabbits are animals that are always copulating.
Old man #2: Huh, I never heard about that.
Old man #1: Think about it. On Easter, you have the bunnies and the bunnies have eggs and the eggs have children in them.

--Penn Station


Overheard by: Amanda Matteis

Full of sound and fury

Right now, as I'm sitting at my desk trying to work, I'm listening to three of my officemates (oh, we are legion, the students in office 423! No matter how many you strike down, more of us will rise!) uh, sorry...

Anyway, I'm listening to three of my officemates talk to each other. At the same time. As in, all three of them are speaking at least 70% of the time - how do they do it? Granted, they're using a language I don't know - perhaps this language typically has a large number of placeholder comments, where they could all be saying "uh" the whole time, and only one is actually using unique words? I have a hard enough time following conversations with one person talking at a time. I'm so curious.

Uh oh, I just heard the words "office space" in English. This can't be good.