I'm going to miss his tweets

Any here want to make me their honorary grandfather consider it done. LLAP
— Leonard Nimoy (@TheRealNimoy) January 15, 2014

I am honored to have so many honorary grandchildren. Blessings on all. LLAP
— Leonard Nimoy (@TheRealNimoy) January 15, 2014

I'm so proud of all my honorary family. Be kind to one another and make the world a better place. Love, LLAP
— Leonard Nimoy (@TheRealNimoy) January 17, 2014

Please, be kind to one another and make the world a better place. Live long and prosper Mr. Nimoy.

A Year Later: Still Not Back to Normal

I do yoga two to three times a week. It was in class this week that I realized I'm not back to my old self.

Let me explain. About a year ago, I was in yoga class when I did a downward dog and felt a little woozy. As the class went into the second downward dog, so did I, only I went from feeling woozy to feeling an incredible sense of dread and became lightheaded. I went into child's pose and didn't move.

I was covered in sweat, and not the kind from working out. It was a cold sweat and I only felt dread and nausea. I left yoga class early and by the time I got to my office, I realized I really needed help.

One of my coworkers drove me to the nearby urgent care, where I was told to go home immediately and call 9-1-1 or go to my nearest emergency room if the symptoms I felt during yoga came back at any time.

I was 28.

Then began a several-month odyssey to figure out what was wrong. My insurance was billed more than $20,000 and I was billed for $5,000 (don't worry, I negotiated several of those bills down).

I had only been at my place of employment for seven or eight months and I was starting to burn through my sick leave.

I was meeting with HR reps and learning about the policies of "What happens if I run out of sick leave? What happens if I need open heart surgery this summer? What happens if I end up disabled from this?"

I realized I could never lose my job or my benefits. It's bankruptcy or death if I do. Because the U.S. does not have a national healthcare system, I can never ever give up a job with benefits. It would take a quarter of the income I'm earning now to just maintain the premiums, not to mention the several thousands of dollars I spend each year out of pocket on co-pays and prescriptions.

Would I like to chase my dreams and start my own editorial business or go back to academia or move to another state to be closer to my family? Absolutely. I can't afford to leave a job that has decent job security when I know I have this ticking time bomb.

Would I like to move to an area that is less critically under served so I could get more reliable healthcare with shorter wait times? Yes, but I can't leave this job and its benefits.

All it takes is for one thing to be slightly off and I could be right back where I was last year.

I didn't feel well for more than six months. It was exhausting. I felt so ill all the time.

I realized I still don't feel 100 percent this week; I can't do the balance poses I could a year ago. That sense of balance is completely gone.

What makes it worse is that several people at work don't understand. Because I look fine, I should feel fine. So, I have doctor's notes, paperwork, and proof.

I hate feeling sick. It's this exhaustion that is never really gone. I can't spring out of bed. I have to be extremely careful about how long I'm standing and how I'm feeling.

I barely have any sick leave because I have to use it all the time.

I tie myself in knots to minimize how much sick leave I use, but those efforts are not appreciated, so I have stopped trying to tie myself in a bow. I have sick leave and I have the legal right to use it.

On No Longer Being a College Instructor

A little more than two years ago, I taught my last class. There were a whole host of problems with that adjunct job (the least of which was that I was lied to about how many classes they had the budget for me to teach), but I still enjoyed teaching. In fact, the reason I didn't walk off the first day when I realized how much I had been lied to was that I wasn't going to abandon my students or leave them in the lurch for the administration's misdeeds.

I miss teaching. I was following my passion. I had even used those words, "following my passion" to describe how I felt. Of course, I was delightfully naive and only two months into the academic job search at the time.

Turning off what you were trained to do is hard; I still plan classes, read up on pedagogy, and research the newest and most effective teaching methods. It's all moot though. I won't take part-time work and I won't accept a position without health benefits.

Why?

Because I am worthy of a salary. Because I don't want to have to declare bankruptcy from medical debt. Because I have been on the adjunct hamster wheel and I am not getting back on that ride.

Technically, I could try again when the MLA annual conference comes to Texas next year, but the reality is that my PhD is stale. I have zero articles and no book contracts. If I want to get back in, I've got a lot of work to do so and I'd rather follow my new passion: creative writing.

I do look back at my teaching evaluations. I was always above center of mass. I even had one quarter where I was 4.7 or a 4.8 out of 5. I had great written comments. Students would take as many classes in sequence with me as they could, even if they weren't morning people. I have many thank you notes, which are very precious to me.

It would be a lie to say I don't feel like a failure. I feel like I failed myself, my adviser, my department, my university. I still can't go through the boxes with my graduate school books and papers.

I have teacher's copies of textbooks so I could write more syllabuses for introductory and culture classes, but I never made it that far in the interview process. Now, these books are outdated and I'm no longer a teacher of record so I won't be able to get new copies to write updated syllabuses.

I'm torn because I spent thousands of dollars on books for my academic library, and the reality is that they have been in the same boxes since I moved to Georgia and then Texas.

Unopened boxes. Unrealized dreams.

My therapy has been to put my teaching and job application materials online for free. I have my syllabuses and sample PowerPoint presentations on my academia.edu page. At least my work is helping someone else. Perhaps in a pathetic sort of way, I'm hoping this digital portal helps my job search and attempts to get back into the academy.

The reality is that I did as much as I could have done from a non-Ivy school to try to get a place on the tenure track.

I didn't win the academic lottery. I didn't have the name-brand recognition. Plain and simple.

So here I am, no longer a college instructor.

A dream without a goal is just a wish

A dream without a goal is just a wish, and if wishes were horses, beggars would ride.

I haven't really been working on the world traveling goal very much. It's something I'm going to have to decide about very soon, because I'll need to know if my employer will grant my leave of absence request, or if I'll be handing in my notice.

I'll need to time it carefully, because as annoying as some of my online classes are, I don't want to have to pay a lot more for them. My employee discount is saving me approximately 60 percent off the sticker price of this degree. I don't want to pay thousands and thousands of dollars to finish what I started; $4,500 a year is more palatable than $10,500 (or $24,000 if I lose my Texas residency as a result of this wanderlust).

I have a few projects in the pipeline: I need to write a lecture on fairy tales and dictatorships for when I guest lecture for my friend's class. I also need to finish translating some poems for a top-secret project.

I really need to move on the graduate school scholarship application, but I need to figure out which two professors would actually help me out with the letters of recommendation.

My goal for today is to finish up my short story for my advanced fiction class. It's due Friday, but I have family coming to visit, and I think I need to clean up the house a bit more.

In a sad side note, it's looking like the dog has lymphatic cancer and not a fungal infection. We're doing a Hail Mary next week, and then going from there.

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.

Second Semester of the MFA Started; New Year's Goals Update

My second semester in the online MFA started Tuesday. I'm a special kind of masochist, so I'm taking four classes this term. So far, it's not too much to handle, but I do find it difficult to fully engage with four digital classrooms of discussion boards.

It's particularly hard to engage in some of my online classes because it has become increasingly clear there is little to no departmental-level support for online course development. As is such, some classes are extremely well developed and integrate universally accepted best practices, while others, well, others have instructors who struggle with the basics of the Learning Management System (LMS).

I guess one thing that pisses me off about the explosion in the digital classroom environment in the U.S. is how many people in universities across the country are running online programs, persons who have never, ever ever ever in their lives taken an online course. Not even a Coursera course. These are jobs I've applied to and I have taken far, far more online courses than the people the institutions end up hiring, and what is the result? A mediocre digital class experience for the students.

It's hard to separate my professional jealousy of being shut out of the academy with being a student again. I try to keep the fact I already have a doctorate under wraps, especially in courses where it is clear the faculty member is out of his or her depth.

Anyways, to my New Year's resolutions for 2015.

I have started one knitting project using yarn I already own and a pattern I already have. I am about 40 percent of the way done with the blanket, although the project has been plagued by several knots and frays in the yarn. This means more ends to weave in and it is becoming increasingly frustrating to knit with this yarn. I'm used to a knot or something, but I've found three knots in the yarn (as in the yarn broke and was tied at the factory) and one spot where the yarn was not properly/completely twisted.

I am working on being more active and losing weight. My fiance bought me a Fitbit (my request) for a belated Christmas present, and so far, I'm not showing any signs of a nickel allergy. I've also managed to get below 170 pounds for the first time since my synthroid dose was halved. Hooray! The Fitbit showed me that I was far less active at work than I thought I was. Oops.

I am going to ask my new boss for personal development funds to cover the two classes for the technical writing program that fall outside my MFA degree. Based on the current class I am taking, the courses in the technical writing program are very well designed and developed. I would like to take more of them, assuming they are all as well done as the one I am taking now.

If I can get these professional development funds, then I will pursue the technical writing certificate concurrently with my MFA.

I'll be applying to the scholarships in a few weeks; I'll have to check with HR to make sure I'm permitted to apply for student scholarships when I receive a staff discount on my education.

I'm still working out how to do this world trip. Don't have any details or specifics, but there was a hiccup today as far as the finances when I ended up needing brakes and my power steering fluid flushed along with what I thought was going to be "just an oil change" at the dealership.

I'm also maintaining this blog. I'm trying to make sure I meet my weekly update schedule, which is why I'm finishing this at 2 a.m. before I go to sleep.

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?