Wednesday, January 30, 2013

The competing mental discourses of past, present, and future

My mind has been spinning lately due to a variety of issues, so this post might not be too organized.  This line came to my mind last night, and although it might have been a pithy Facebook status, I refrained from posting it.  Despite the fact that most if not all of my grad student friends could relate, I guess I want to appear more like I "have things together":

"Oh academia, how thou dost confuse, vex, annoy, and rattle me sometimes to the point where I go through the day with nostalgic thoughts of my past career; although the latter was quite stressful at times, I at least felt and knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that I was making some difference in human lives, as opposed to being isolated by my present academic tasks."

True, it was my job prior to going back to graduate school (as I already had a Master's degree in another field) that I felt inspired me to dig deeper and to think that maybe with a Ph.D., I could have more flexibility and would have more leverage to work in applied settings where I could make even more of a difference in the lives of those targeted by human rights abuses.  I also loved teaching, and I wanted to inspire other young minds to do the same.  However, I still vividly remember all those I used to work with, and I often miss it.  Then again, I have come this far in my program, and have undoubtedly been through more major life changes since I started the program than in the few years beforehand.  I guess I have to cut myself some slack in this regard; I know that all grad students go through these thoughts of frustration at some point. However, it is not just the past that sometimes exudes my mental energy when I should be reading journal articles or coding data.  I worry about the future-- not just the far away future, but the more immediate (i.e., next semester).  I worry that my funding is running out, because although it takes everyone in my program an average of 7-8 years to finish (and, I'm not talking about people with children), the university only funds us through five years.  Also, it doesn't matter to them that I officially took on semester off when my son was born, and unofficially took another off when my daughter was born.  Thus, I have been frantically looking for all employment options possible for the summer and fall, whilst also wondering how we might be able to afford to send my daughter to day care more than part time.  Although I am a person of faith, I still have a hard time letting go of these things and just doing my part day to day.  We don't even know what the next moment holds, let alone the next month or year, but sometimes these things can eat up our time to the point where we feel we can't make the right amount of progress in the present.

I guess for today, I will  just have to stick to my "to do" list, and then repeat again tomorrow.  However, these competing mental discourses of past, present, and future always seem to hang over our heads in the academic world.



Tuesday, January 8, 2013

Working-from-home guilt

Well, today is my first day home alone since the week before Christmas.  Both kids were going to day care on Tuesdays/Thursdays last semester since I was teaching a class on those days.  This semester, I decided not to teach so that I could really make some progress in my program, but it just feels odd to be completely alone at home for a 9 hour period without having to prep/teach class and all that goes along with it.  I know that I desperately need this time to read for my comp exam, do work for my RAship (which has been my primary source of income for almost the past 2 years), and think about/work on my dissertation proposal, but I often have what I deem a multifaceted "working-from-home guilt."  As I just mentioned, there are numerous elements within this sense of guilt; I will name a few below:

1.  Feeling bad (as I did a little this morning) that my husband dropped the kids off at day care, even though he was in a bit of a rush to make a meeting (he had asked me to drop them off, but later said that he should be able to make it).  Seems a bit silly, I know.  This also relates to the larger issue that some of us working moms (whether you work from home, work out of the home, or a combination of both as has been my case) deal with from time to time:   guilt about day care.  This waxes and wanes  for me; I usually kick the guilt feeling when I reflect on the fact that it is getting increasingly difficult for me to make progress on the days that I am home with my 10 month old daughter and my son is in preschool.  I have to keep telling myself that this is a job too, even if it is not a "conventional" job and I really need some time during the day to move forward.  I could go on about that, but I will just end with a *sigh*.

2.  Having a complex about household chores.  Since I am home, I feel like I should try to do more household chores here and there.  Especially on the days I am home with DD, I try to do a few tasks here and there when she is occupying herself, but sometimes I feel the tug between doing a household task and getting work done.  Of course, what I end up doing also depends on the time frame I have, DD's mood and feeding schedule, etc.  However, often at the end of the day I feel some sense of guilt if the house is *still* as chaotic as it was first thing in the morning because I didn't get around to giving it some semblance of order due to my work. 

I guess that within those two points I mentioned there were others, but I know that there are more elements to this guilt that I have felt/thought of before and they are just not coming to mind right now!