Tomorrow marks my last week of work in Texas. I was offered a new, fast-paced position closer to my family, and I start Sept. 8.
I'm nervous about doing my full course load and moving several states. I'm tired just thinking about it.
I had movers at my old place on Saturday and I'm staying with a friend and her family until next week. I'm very grateful for her hospitality. I'm reading a book to her eldest as a birthday present. I got her a boxed set of R. Dahl books, but I think sharing the experience of having one read to her will make it more special.
I said goodbye to my knitting buddy today. We're getting serious about podcasting now: KTOG podcast (knit two together). We have a lot of work to do on the front end, but I think a monthly podcast with weekly blog posts should be a sustainable formula.
When I have time to breathe, I'm going to set up the email, Twitter, and blog for our podcast. My knitting partner agreed to learn how to do the video editing.
I can't believe I'll be on the road home next weekend. It's just all so fast.
I can't believe I'm 30.
I can't believe the guy I went to junior prom with told me, "Do you know how hard it's been the past ten years to see you with the wrong guys and put our friendship first above my feelings for you?"
Yeah. Life is funny. Let's see where things take us.
P.S. Having to change my thesis project because working with a certain individual became an unprofessional shitshow. That is all I will say at this time.
Showing posts with label graduate school survival. Show all posts
Showing posts with label graduate school survival. Show all posts
Sunday, August 23, 2015
Thursday, March 12, 2015
Guest Post on PhD Talk
Twitter has been amazing for my postac/altac network. Case in point: I found Eva Lantsoght on Twitter. Like me, she's got her doctorate and plays the cello. She invited me to write an article for her blog and I happily obliged.
You can find my Thursday, March 12, 2015, guest post on self-care habits in the academy on her website phdtalk.blogspot.com right here.
Sunday, February 1, 2015
Balancing full-time studies online with full-time life
We all have the same number of hours in a day. For women, we get saddled with a bunch of invisible labor that adds to our domestic work.
All that invisible labor adds up. It'll burn you out. If your partner won't step up, then let the dishes sit in the sink until they smell. If you don't have clean dishes, switch to paper plates. There are bigger fish to fry and just because you were born with the vagina in your relationship does not mean it is all your job or responsibility.
When balancing school and work, well, something has to give and I've never really given a fuck about how my house looks. Next weekend I'll sing a different tune because I have company coming, but for this weekend, I have piles of papers, boxes, books, and lots on the to-do list.
Dirty secret about being a full-time student and working full-time? The to-do list never gets done. Embrace it now. There will be entropy. There will be dirty dishes. There will be stress.
What is especially true about online classes is the sense that you could be doing more or doing something right now.
To combat that desire to constantly check in with your online class, I set boundaries. (I could do a series of posts on boundaries and surviving graduate school, but those will come later.)
The syllabus says that you have to post once and reply to two other threads? Unless one of the other 13 threads is irresistible, leave them alone. You've done your part. Doing more does not make you A any higher.
I didn't used to be this way. I was that student. The one who did everything and then some. I made everyone else look bad. I know. I was young. Driven. A perfectionist.
As a recovering perfectionist, I've learned life is a lot happier when you do your best, but stop before it becomes a race to perfectionism.
If an online class has a more nebulous participation requirement like "continue the discussion through Sunday," then I look at this way, do I have anything substantial to add and write about? Will all I say be less than 100 words pretty much saying, "I like how you pointed out X. I agree."? Then it's not worth your time and it's really not adding to the discussion.
To survive your full-time job and your full-time online studies, something has to give. I recommend that it be your perfectionist tendencies before your sanity and home life.
Side note: After one semester, I'm pretty much over discussion boards. For the MFA workshop classes, the discussion boards make sense, but for reading reaction stuff, well, there really isn't a need to respond to many of the posts people put up. Three or four students rise to the top of the pack. These individuals always have something interesting to say.
I don't think class discussion boards are a replacement for what happens in a face-to-face seminar; I know this because I spent five years in traditional seminar settings. This is especially true when faculty don't provide a lesson or context for the week and just tell the class "Read X, Y, Z and answer the following questions in your discussion board post."
In my pedagogical opinion, online discussion boards should happen after the professor has posted either a written lecture, video lecture (with transcript for ADA accessibility), or podcast (with transcript for ADA accessibility). This lecture should be like what would happen in a classroom. The students should get an idea about what is important about this piece and the professor should fill in the gaps - not fellow classmates who may or may not have all the information correct.
The mere act of providing a discussion board and telling students to go talk there is the worst of the flipped classroom phenomenon. Give guidance, instruction, and some knowledge before telling the class "Go discuss this." Otherwise, it's like education through the University of Google and Youtube.
All that invisible labor adds up. It'll burn you out. If your partner won't step up, then let the dishes sit in the sink until they smell. If you don't have clean dishes, switch to paper plates. There are bigger fish to fry and just because you were born with the vagina in your relationship does not mean it is all your job or responsibility.
When balancing school and work, well, something has to give and I've never really given a fuck about how my house looks. Next weekend I'll sing a different tune because I have company coming, but for this weekend, I have piles of papers, boxes, books, and lots on the to-do list.
Dirty secret about being a full-time student and working full-time? The to-do list never gets done. Embrace it now. There will be entropy. There will be dirty dishes. There will be stress.
What is especially true about online classes is the sense that you could be doing more or doing something right now.
To combat that desire to constantly check in with your online class, I set boundaries. (I could do a series of posts on boundaries and surviving graduate school, but those will come later.)
The syllabus says that you have to post once and reply to two other threads? Unless one of the other 13 threads is irresistible, leave them alone. You've done your part. Doing more does not make you A any higher.
I didn't used to be this way. I was that student. The one who did everything and then some. I made everyone else look bad. I know. I was young. Driven. A perfectionist.
As a recovering perfectionist, I've learned life is a lot happier when you do your best, but stop before it becomes a race to perfectionism.
If an online class has a more nebulous participation requirement like "continue the discussion through Sunday," then I look at this way, do I have anything substantial to add and write about? Will all I say be less than 100 words pretty much saying, "I like how you pointed out X. I agree."? Then it's not worth your time and it's really not adding to the discussion.
To survive your full-time job and your full-time online studies, something has to give. I recommend that it be your perfectionist tendencies before your sanity and home life.
Side note: After one semester, I'm pretty much over discussion boards. For the MFA workshop classes, the discussion boards make sense, but for reading reaction stuff, well, there really isn't a need to respond to many of the posts people put up. Three or four students rise to the top of the pack. These individuals always have something interesting to say.
I don't think class discussion boards are a replacement for what happens in a face-to-face seminar; I know this because I spent five years in traditional seminar settings. This is especially true when faculty don't provide a lesson or context for the week and just tell the class "Read X, Y, Z and answer the following questions in your discussion board post."
In my pedagogical opinion, online discussion boards should happen after the professor has posted either a written lecture, video lecture (with transcript for ADA accessibility), or podcast (with transcript for ADA accessibility). This lecture should be like what would happen in a classroom. The students should get an idea about what is important about this piece and the professor should fill in the gaps - not fellow classmates who may or may not have all the information correct.
The mere act of providing a discussion board and telling students to go talk there is the worst of the flipped classroom phenomenon. Give guidance, instruction, and some knowledge before telling the class "Go discuss this." Otherwise, it's like education through the University of Google and Youtube.
Sunday, January 18, 2015
Dragon or Windmill? On Picking Your Battles
Is this a dragon or a windmill?
Dragons are meant to be slayed and windmills, well, by windmills, I am borrowing from my doctoral background and training, which is in Spanish literature. I am talking about the novel Don Quijote and how in one scene the protagonist charges at windmills, telling everyone else that they are giants.
Don Quijote expends a lot of energy going after windmills.
In graduate school, I learned how to balance micro and macro goals. There is the nitty gritty, day-to-day and there's also the bigger picture. On a day-to-day basis, certain things felt like dragons that needed to be slayed, but in the bigger, macro picture, well, they were just windmills.
My final year as a doctoral student, there were many things that as a first-year graduate student, I would have thought they were dragons that needed to be slayed. In my last year, well, turns out those things were actually windmills. Perspective comes with time and distance.
You have to decide very bluntly if the time, energy, and resources you put into something are adding to your final goal (graduation) or subtracting from it (taking longer or not finishing).
For instance, I have family members with lots of medical knowledge who taught me how to navigate and deal with insurance companies. Several other graduate students approached me to serve as the health insurance liaison for the Graduate Student Association. I was flattered. I would have been good at it. The last woman who served as the liaison took an extra two years to finish her degree because the position ate up a lot of time.
So, I said no. Rather, by that point I had learned how to say no. "I'm so flattered you thought of me. I don't have the time to dedicate to the position because I'm focused on finishing my thesis by next spring."
If you are not selfish and self-interested in graduate school, you will not finish. If your goal is to earn your degree, then you have to learn how to say no.
Decide what things are windmills and what are dragons. Now, if those windmills are truly giants in your world, then go ahead and charge at them, but do so knowing you still have a dragon to slay.
I’d save my charging at large things for dragons. Is what you’re about to spend your time and energy on a windmill or a dragon?
Your dissertation is a dragon. Work on slaying it. Anything that is not the equivalent of a dragon is not worth your time or emotional energy.
Windmills can wait.
Dragons cannot, since they breathe fire and all.
Speaking of fires, you will need to learn how to decide which fires to put out and which fires to let burn. Graduate school (and as I have found out work 40 hours a week) is about triage and time management. Life is a series of questions like "What is on fire, when is something going to be set on fire, and how do I put out this fire/these fires?"
Much like the dragon vs. windmill debate, you have to ask yourself about the big picture.
Will this really matter in five years?
Ten?
Fifteen?
Twenty?
You have to balance the tunnel vision of the moment in graduate school (or a moment at work) with the larger picture of the future. The pressure and stress of graduate school often makes it seem as everything you are doing in this very moment is the most important thing in the world.
On one hand, yes, you want to make sure your class performance is positive, but you have to resist the tunnel vision and ask yourself, will I look back on this in five, ten, fifteen, or twenty years and still feel this thing was still as important now as it was back then?
Think back of the things that stressed you out five years ago. What were the things that made it feel like the sky was falling? Five years later, would they still make the sky fall for you? The more things we experience, the more likely we are to learn how to manage and handle these events.
Graduate school is very similar. At times, the expectations and events will overwhelm you. It’s natural; it’s a brand new experience you have not adapted to quite yet. When the anxiety, stress, and panic seem overwhelming, take a step back and ask yourself, “Will this really matter in five years?”
Always ask yourself, is this a dragon worth slaying or a windmill I should walk past?
Dragons are meant to be slayed and windmills, well, by windmills, I am borrowing from my doctoral background and training, which is in Spanish literature. I am talking about the novel Don Quijote and how in one scene the protagonist charges at windmills, telling everyone else that they are giants.
Don Quijote expends a lot of energy going after windmills.
In graduate school, I learned how to balance micro and macro goals. There is the nitty gritty, day-to-day and there's also the bigger picture. On a day-to-day basis, certain things felt like dragons that needed to be slayed, but in the bigger, macro picture, well, they were just windmills.
My final year as a doctoral student, there were many things that as a first-year graduate student, I would have thought they were dragons that needed to be slayed. In my last year, well, turns out those things were actually windmills. Perspective comes with time and distance.
You have to decide very bluntly if the time, energy, and resources you put into something are adding to your final goal (graduation) or subtracting from it (taking longer or not finishing).
For instance, I have family members with lots of medical knowledge who taught me how to navigate and deal with insurance companies. Several other graduate students approached me to serve as the health insurance liaison for the Graduate Student Association. I was flattered. I would have been good at it. The last woman who served as the liaison took an extra two years to finish her degree because the position ate up a lot of time.
So, I said no. Rather, by that point I had learned how to say no. "I'm so flattered you thought of me. I don't have the time to dedicate to the position because I'm focused on finishing my thesis by next spring."
If you are not selfish and self-interested in graduate school, you will not finish. If your goal is to earn your degree, then you have to learn how to say no.
Decide what things are windmills and what are dragons. Now, if those windmills are truly giants in your world, then go ahead and charge at them, but do so knowing you still have a dragon to slay.
I’d save my charging at large things for dragons. Is what you’re about to spend your time and energy on a windmill or a dragon?
Your dissertation is a dragon. Work on slaying it. Anything that is not the equivalent of a dragon is not worth your time or emotional energy.
Windmills can wait.
Dragons cannot, since they breathe fire and all.
Speaking of fires, you will need to learn how to decide which fires to put out and which fires to let burn. Graduate school (and as I have found out work 40 hours a week) is about triage and time management. Life is a series of questions like "What is on fire, when is something going to be set on fire, and how do I put out this fire/these fires?"
Much like the dragon vs. windmill debate, you have to ask yourself about the big picture.
Will this really matter in five years?
Ten?
Fifteen?
Twenty?
You have to balance the tunnel vision of the moment in graduate school (or a moment at work) with the larger picture of the future. The pressure and stress of graduate school often makes it seem as everything you are doing in this very moment is the most important thing in the world.
On one hand, yes, you want to make sure your class performance is positive, but you have to resist the tunnel vision and ask yourself, will I look back on this in five, ten, fifteen, or twenty years and still feel this thing was still as important now as it was back then?
Think back of the things that stressed you out five years ago. What were the things that made it feel like the sky was falling? Five years later, would they still make the sky fall for you? The more things we experience, the more likely we are to learn how to manage and handle these events.
Graduate school is very similar. At times, the expectations and events will overwhelm you. It’s natural; it’s a brand new experience you have not adapted to quite yet. When the anxiety, stress, and panic seem overwhelming, take a step back and ask yourself, “Will this really matter in five years?”
Always ask yourself, is this a dragon worth slaying or a windmill I should walk past?
Sunday, January 4, 2015
New Year's Resolutions - 2015
One of the most important things I learned when I was in graduate school for my doctorate was how to set reasonable goals. It is very easy to beat yourself up when you perceive yourself to be less capable, competent, or talented as someone else.
The truth is everyone is engaging in the "I was up alllll night working on ..." or "My work is sooooo great" game of one-upmanship.
One thing that people do is set themselves up for failure. By not setting reasonable goals, they say, "Look, I've failed again." This feeds into Imposter Syndrome: if you never reach your goals, of course you're a fraud.
My (hopefully) reasonable goals for 2015 are as follows:
Personal:
The truth is everyone is engaging in the "I was up alllll night working on ..." or "My work is sooooo great" game of one-upmanship.
One thing that people do is set themselves up for failure. By not setting reasonable goals, they say, "Look, I've failed again." This feeds into Imposter Syndrome: if you never reach your goals, of course you're a fraud.
My (hopefully) reasonable goals for 2015 are as follows:
Personal:
- Knit at least two patterns from books I already own using yarn I've already purchased.
- Lose weight and maintain that weight at 159 pounds or less by next year.
- Exercise at least two days per week.
- Decide whether or not to pursue a technical writing certificate concurrently with my MFA.
- Submit to at least three literary journals by the end of the spring semester.
- Plan a trip around the world.
- Continue improving my editing skills and knowledge of AP Style.
- Improve workflow processes.
- Find more opportunities for professional development.
- Be the best mentor I can be.
- Figure out how to keep my job while taking a trip around the world.
- Apply for graduate school scholarships in January.
- Apply for the staff scholarship in August.
- Maintain a 3.5 GPA.
- Figure out how to maintain my staff tuition discounts while traveling the world.
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