Captured

When Alyce tells me a story I always find myself wanting to capture her, just wrap her up and keep in my pocket for later. She throws her whole self into the telling, using great gestures, faces, and variation in volume. The rest of the world keeps moving while Alyce stands still in time, elaborating on, for example, how Cinderella is twenty years old and now to old for school, unlike Alyce, who is just the perfect age.

She is indeed the perfect age for school. This afternoon we are taking Alyce to her Junior Kindergarten orientation, where she will meet her new teacher and maybe introduce herself to some new friends. Unlike the rest of the world it seems, Alyce doesn't actually start class until next week. We are all very excited about this development, for all the reasons you might imagine (ranging from the educational all the way to some quiet at home). I loved school so very much and I hope with all my heart that Alyce does, too. Loving school helped me get through a lot in my life, even when things (school included) were difficult. Most of all I want Alyce to feel that magic I used to feel when I'd sit in a new classroom, just thinking about all the things I might learn.

Seriously, I'm not making this up. I really did love school that much. I still do. (Career graduate student, anyone?)

Good luck, Alyce!

Less adventure, more sulking

I'd like to interrupt all this talk of adventures with a little sulking. I know, fun for everyone! Gather around and prepare yourselves for some complaining, and maybe even a teeny-tiny pity party. Still here? Good.

I have had some incredible days with my family lately, and we're planning on having a few more of those this weekend (camping!). There have been many days where you'd have found me wishing that I could maybe just stay home with The Children, and maybe even homeschool them. Yes, I actually consider that some days. I even snoop around a few homeschooling blogs every week, just in case. Sometimes I imagine us taking walks in the woods or playing in the snow, learning about all kinds of everything. (Like just this morning Alyce and I tried to feed some sour crab apples to a spider and an earwig. We learned that they do not enjoy crab apples, and I accidentally squished the spider in the process. But, still.) But when I think about it a little longer I realize two things: first, Alyce loves going to preschool more than just about anything. She loves her friends, her teachers, the toys, the slide, the toys, and her crafts, and when she has been enrolled in a school she always comes home telling us all about her exciting days. (Me: "Alyce, what did you do today?" Alyce: "I played". But she says it with great conviction and depth.) She's very excited about Junior Kindergarten, which begins in two weeks. She's the kind of excited where she's sleeping with her new lunch box in bed at night.

Second, I both want and need to work. I want to develop new skills and discover new interests (and old passions), though for the moment my need to work is outweighing everything else. I am excited to sponsor dear Matty for permanent residency, but the reality of his Canadian move is that he can't work in this beautiful country until all his immigration is done (which could be as early as December or as far as next May). So while I'm hoping to find a job that I enjoy, that keeps me away from the house all day doing things I'm good at and things that challenge me, we also just need a pay check. And it needs to be big enough to cover the expenses of a family of four.

So I find myself in a position I've never really experienced, and while I knew coming in that finding a job isn't easy, it never occurred to me that September would come and find me still unemployed. I've had some very wise friends remind me that summer is a terrible time to find a job--especially August, with all those employed people taking vacations, the nerve--and I'm so very grateful for the help I've been offered by those friends who themselves had trouble finding a job back in the day. I have not given up all hope and I remind myself to be patient. But lately I'm frustrated, impatient, scared, and a little sad. Especially when that recruiter told me last week that I should just go home because she had nothing. She actually told me to go home. In case that hasn't happened to you, believe me when I tell you that it sucks.

So I find myself, as one does, questioning a lot of things. What is it that potential employers aren't seeing in my resume? Why am I not standing out? Dear god, did I include the wrong phone number (oh yes, I've checked just to be sure)? I might not have any direct business or management experience, but it never occurred to me that my two degrees (and half of a third), five years of teaching experience, and a whole bunch of time spent volunteering my time with social services groups, faculty committees and boards, wouldn't help me stand out to an organization or business. Three months have gone by and I'm left in virtual silence. Maybe I should check my phone, just to make sure it's working. Or maybe I'm just naive and you'd like me to stop complaining.

I also find myself wishing that I could go back and time and have a little talk with my eighteen year old self. I would tell her to stop worrying about her weight already, and also not to major in the Humanities. This might not be a popular opinion among the Humanities-loving people I know, and of course I agree that learning for the sake of learning, learning how to think critically, and learning how communicate are vital to a healthy society. I have spent years developing these skills and I don't want to give them back. But it wouldn't kill my degrees to do a little bit more for me. Seriously, Master of Arts? You've got nothing for me? I gave you a THESIS. And of course if I hadn't wound up in a graduate program in the Humanities I probably wouldn't have met Matt from Alabama, and then where would I have found Alyce and Shira? So yes, yes, it's good and all that I chose the Humanities, but that doesn't change my frustration today. I feel extremely qualified to apply for another graduate degree, and that's about it. And another graduate degree won't pay the bills right now. And plus, didn't I just leave one of those? I know that I have a lot to offer an employer, but it seems that first I need an employer to trust my education. I need an employer who can see the potential in my skills as a researcher and writer (and, evidently, as a complainer).

And now we come to the end of my pity party. I will put on my big-girl panties and get back to it.

Momentum

Alyce now declares on a daily basis that she would like to be a princess when she grows up. She is confident that will be a successful princess who does princess-type things, in a beautiful castle with a queen, king, and prince, and that Shira will also be a princess, but in a different castle, maybe next door. The cats will live with Shira.

Alyce is driven by something these days, something that fuels her princess-obsessed mind to do whatever it takes to achieve her goals (making crowns, wearing princess dresses and fancy shoes, arranging a special make-up room where she can spend her day applying princess make-up--pardon me while I sob in the corner over that one). It's commitment for sure, but it's also something else. Maybe it's momentum.

Momentum can be tricky, and not always a good thing (though in Alyce's case, I will happily support most princess-related activities because it makes her unbelievable happy). It was momentum that kept me a graduate student, and it was a force so strong that I'm still having some difficulty with my decision to leave grad school, even though I know it's the right thing for me to do. I don't really miss working on my dissertation, and I no longer want a future in academia, so I think it must be the strength of that momentum that keeps me looking back. I wonder just how much of what we do every day, and the choices that we make, are motivated by physics (it's physics, right, where they tell us that objects in motion want to stay that way unless acted upon? Newton? Has anyone ever describe that law as eloquently I have just done? I think not).

The pull of academia has always been strong in me. I was often pretty successful at school (except when I wasn't--I also failed quite successfully at times) and that alone propelled me to consider an academic future (the old 'since you can do it you should do it' philosophy I've come to resent). My family was so proud at what I accomplished in high school, and in the degrees that followed, and they always seemed so invested in my success. These expectations weighed heavy on me, even when I was grateful for their support. So, where they didn't finish high school, I did. And then I kept going. And going.

This is not to say that I ended up in a PhD program only because other people thought it was a good idea (even I have people-pleasing limits. No, really, I do). For many years I so enjoyed spending my days poured over books and I even sometimes enjoyed learning Sanskrit and Tibetan.* There are a lot of valid complaints about graduate school (resources, isolation, constantly feeling like a fraud, being used as cheap labour so that universities don't need to rehire permanent faculty), but there are some incredible perks to be had as a junior academic, like surrounding yourself with a community of people who love books as much as you do. That, and the freedom to do most of your work in your favourite coffee shop, if you please (and I pleased a lot). I was smitten with graduate school from the start.

But I should have spent a little more time asking myself how I really wanted to my future to look. I didn't ask myself at all, and instead listened only to that part of my brain that believed I'd come to enjoy writing papers for scholarly journals (I don't) or that I'd have no problem finding a permanent faculty position, in a department that also wanted to hire my PhD (in the same field) husband, in this fantastic job market. I didn't listen carefully enough to that part of me that knew academia wasn't for me, nor did I pay attention to those dreadful warnings about how tough it was going to be for 34,038 PhDs to fight for the 238 available jobs. Nope, I was on a path and I couldn't stray, or so I thought.

Momentum even beat out my other goals and dreams (small as they were) for a life that didn't involve becoming Dr. Professor in the study of religion. I have spent so much time daydreaming about doing something else (it rhymes with widmife), it's a little embarrassing that I staying in grad school so long. But for so long I trusted momentum over the courage I would need to find in order to do something else. I was moving forward, however slowly, and that force was almost all powerful. Thank goodness I met someone who talked some sense into me and suggested an alternate reality where I didn't become a professor just because I thought it sounded like a good idea when I was 20 years old.

So for those of you who have been reading this blog for awhile (thanks, by the way), you know that I finally put an end to all this last fall. But now, in this midst of all these crazy transitions, when everything feels as though it's hanging in the air, waiting to collapse at any moment unless I move forward with new decisions/opportunities/commitments, I'd love to find some new momentum. It's as though I turned my back on it last year and now it's giving me the cold shoulder. But I need some of that drive, some of that push, some of Alyce's vision, maybe, for a life where you could actually become a princess.

Sometimes she's awfully wise, that Alyce. One day I'm sure she'll make a benevolent, if bossy, princess.


*Though I was truly terrible at it.

Phase Two

There is this feeling around here like everything is beginning anew. We've moved on to Phase Two of our family's adventure. Phase One had both of us in graduate school and one of us working as an assistant professor, and the future was outlined in the both of us settling down in academia, probably somewhere in the U.S., most certainly without family around. There were certainly more children to be had someday soon.

Phase Two shares few of the same details.There will still be more children to come. But instead Canada will (hopefully) be our permanent home, family will certainly be close by, and we will not be Professor and Professor. Actually, we have no idea at all what we'll be doing for work (well, I do know what I'll be doing eventually, but for the time being I'll be doing something else). We also don't yet know where we'll be living (me and the girls are staying with my mum for now), or where Alyce will begin school in the fall. This is a lot of unknown, and if I didn't know better, I'd be starting a massive freakout right about now.

Cue freakout.

But strangely, I'm not freaking out. Things feel ok. I'm missing Matt already (especially when I was cleaning out three litter boxes tonight: gross), but I have a good feeling about all of this (except for the litter boxes). Now I'm not saying that I'm completely at ease about all of these unknowns, in that very sophisticated-yet-casual kind of way that I covet in other people (along with their effortless style), but I'm not freaking. I've been known in the past to stick my head in the sand when it comes to annoying, grown-up tasks, but I don't even think that's it. All I can describe is that I feel propelled in a forward direction right now, and I'm enjoying it. Here are all the things that I know:

• I will find a job
• Matt will be home in five weeks
• We will find a new home
• Immigration will occur
• Alyce will begin school in the fall
• I will take the morning off from my new job and sob while I walk her to school that first day

I have had a terribly long couple of days and I'm exhausted. Where all this positive talk is coming from, I don't know. Let's just enjoy it while we can, shall we?

P.S. Does anyone have any suggestions for job-searching in Southern Ontario?

A little tired. A little complainy.

We're all still adjusting to this crazy mess of a move. In case you were wondering, Shira's been able to sleep through the chaos. With just a few bumps, her sleep has been great. We even found her a new crib. It's been a big week.

Matt leaves for Poland this weekend, so I'm hoping to sneak in at least five naps before he leaves. Should I say that louder in case he didn't catch that? FIVE NAPS! One for every week that he is abandoning us. It's all starting to sink in now, that he's really leaving us for more than a month. I am so grateful that I'll have my mum around to help, but since she's at work until 6:00 every day, most of each day will just be me and the girls. I will now use this opportunity to solicit invitations from friends who would like to have us over for a visit. We are a crazy bunch, but we mean well.

I had a second interview last week for a job I'd really like to have. Fingers crossed please, internet. This world of job seeking and interviewing is so new to me and I'm not sure I like it. One of the perks of academia, at least for the stage I was in (i.e., not yet searching for a tenure-track position), was the way jobs had a way of finding me. Sometimes I'd have to submit a CV to a department chair, but other times the department chair would contact me and offer a TAship or even a part-time teaching contract. (Excuse me for a moment while I dodge the stink-eye coming my way from everyone else in the world who has had to find work the regular annoying way.) This is to say that my academic behind is being kicked by this new world of job hunting. 

I know. Poor me. But with the month I've had, and the move we've had, I'm just in one of those moods. But it's nothing a little nap can't fix, right Matty? In fact my mood is improving just thinking about it.

Happy Monday, everyone.

Ten things about my day

1. I began my day being slightly irritated by Pomegranate, who didn't let blinds stand in the way of sitting in a window.

  

2. Who am I kidding, I began my day sleeping in an extra hour and not caring at all about Pomegranate. It was Matt, up early with Shira, who took this photo. I didn't become slightly irritated until later. 

3. It's beginning to hit me that I won't be spending much more time in Delaware. And by not much more time I mean next week I'm leaving for good. Am I sad to say good-bye? I'll miss some incredible people a whole lot, and there are a few things about Delaware, and the U.S. in general, that will be hard to part with, but mostly I'm just excited. 

4. It also hit me that enough with the reflection and nostalgia, and finish packing already.

5. I think my priorities might be slightly off kilter when I worry about packing up my stand mixer, because what if I need to make brownies the day before I move? What then?

6. I realized today that one of the perks of having children is being able to indulge in some delicious luxuries for the children. Like tomorrow is Shira's birthday and I declared that we really should have a birthday breakfast, with pancakes or french toast, because it is her birthday. Shira, of course, would be happy eating cat hair, which she daily.

7. I packed away, for selling or for giving away, piles and piles of books that I've been holding on to from my dissertation research. This is such a big deal that I can't even talk about it. So right now, I won't.

8. In other news, I'm seriously thinking of packing away, for selling or for giving away, our three cats. 

9.  You know how, as parents to a young baby, you sort of waffle around about introducing certain foods to your baby, because you're not sure if they can chew it or handle the carbs or the sugar or whatever, and then your baby disregards you and tackles the bowl when you're not looking, grinning at you with a mouthful of contraband food? You know what I think? It's about time someone made a decision. And it's about time that someone wasn't me.

10. Tomorrow my baby turns one. This time last year I was watching the series finale of 24, which was made all the more exciting by contractions every six or seven minutes. The next morning, Shira was on the outside. Now she looks like this:

 

Sleep well, Shira. Tomorrow is a big day.

Still Waiting by the Email

A couple of weeks ago I posted about the anxiety of hitting the send button on an email to my dissertation adviser. It was a big email, wherein I explain that I am taking time away from my graduate program to explore some new opportunities. It was a difficult email to write, cowardly even. I realize that I should have called her, even if our relationship has always been email-only. Do you think that is why she has not responded? Not even a tiny bit?

That's right. I'm still waiting to hear back from her. Maybe she doesn't think my email was worth a reply. Maybe she read my note and thought to herself, "Well, finally. I knew she wasn't committed," and then forgot to reply. Or maybe she's annoyed that I've wasted her time.

Whatever the reason, I'd really like for her to acknowledge my decision. Perhaps I should call her? Probably not.

Recovering Grad Student Seeks New Forms of Torment

As a teacher. A high school teacher, that is.

So this is my big plan. Disappointed? Hoping I might have really thought outside the box and opted for a new career as a secret agent, or maybe a mad scientist? I don't have the wardrobe to pull off the secret agent job and I have no business being a science-y scientist (or, as it turns out, a social scientist. Moving on then.)

Nah, I think I'll make a great teacher instead. I have been teaching in universities for five years under the title of Adjunct Lecturer (and no, I don't know what that actually means). I have taught various classes in Religious Studies at two universities and it has been, hands down, the best part of being a graduate student. My first class was an intensive summer session course on world religions. It was a chaotic mess and I was utterly unprepared, but I enjoyed myself so much and I think many of the students did as well. Before I knew it was teaching regularly at a couple of different universities, in that grand old tradition of hiring graduate students instead of actually hiring (and giving benefits to) tenured professors. I can't say I minded, though--I loved getting the teaching experience and the extra money.

When I would return to my own research and writing after a semester of teaching, I would realize quickly that I missed the classroom. I'd miss the chance to talk and listen, to engage with an actual human rather than another online journal. I had landed in academia because I like ideas; I was now learning that I enjoyed ideas most when they were alive in a classroom discussion. I found myself more and more weary from the isolation of research. What I'm saying is that this seed was planted a long time ago.

And then I had kids. Isn't this how so many stories begin?

My daughters have changed me in so many ways. For one, I'm really tired now. I don't ever remember feeling so tired. In fact, it's just after eight and I'm having to prop myself up in front of my laptop. In my head I'm negotiating between an eight-thirty and a nine o'clock bedtime as I write this. Second, I can carry a lot of things at once. I can remember myself complaining about having to lug a bag of books home from the library, on the subway no less, every week. Now I can carry my two children, my bag, fourteen toys, and a bag of groceries in from the car. And I usually only drop one of those things, and it isn't usually a child.

But mostly having my girls has changed the way I want to live in the world. I'm feeling charged to work practically in the lives of kids (and not just my own). Academics can be a lot of things, but in my chosen discipline, practical was not one of them. For many people this is a great thing, and I salute their ability to stay the course and analyze/translate/critique/argue. Of course I could have become a teacher with my PhD, but that would have required that I finish and defend a dissertation I did not want to write. I would have had to analyze/translate/critique/argue, and my heart is just not there. But that charge I feel leading a classroom, of working each day with kids who are learning to explore the world, this, I think, is where my heart is.

Perhaps I am romanticizing the daily life of a teacher. Perhaps. But I've been close with many teachers and I see how hard they work. I've seen the emotional ups and downs of becoming invested in the lives of their students, and how they so often struggle against that large brick wall of educational bureaucracy. No, I don't think being a teacher easy. Nevertheless, here I go.

Because we don't know where we will be living next year, it is difficult for me to dive right into this new path of mine. I can't start an education program or look for work until we, say, pick a state. Or a country. But I can still move forward this year in preparation of these bigger steps. Since I have a few (cough) years of secondary education I am able to cobble together the pieces of an almost-English major, so I am enrolled in a few more English courses next semester to fill in some holes. I'm peeking around at jobs, testing the waters for when I'm ready to actually begin. I'll use the rest of this stolen time to work on my writing. Not a bad way to spend some time, don't you think?

This post is far too long. Night everyone.

Dear Adviser: It's Not you. It's Me.

It's been two days since I emailed* my thesis adviser and told her that I was leaving my Phd. To be honest, I didn't say "I quit." It was more of an "I'm going to take a year and pursue other opportunities and then reassess" kind of an email. Should I feel a bit weaselly about not just coming out with it? I don't, after all, have any intention of returning to my dissertation. I don't think I do, at least.

No, I don't want to return to my PhD. I don't enjoy it and I want to move forward. But I'm learning that it is really difficult to turn away from it and not look back and try to grab hold of one little piece, just in case. This shouldn't come as much of a shock, especially since I started this quitting process months and months ago and here I am still going on about it. To you. On my blog. No one could ever accuse me of making a snap decision here. Some days I wish I had been a bit snappier about this whole thing.

I hold on to these little bits and pieces in case I've made the wrong decision, which makes all of this about the scariness of trying something new. If I tell my adviser that I'm leaving and never turning back, then my choices today become awfully real. But I think there is more to it than simply needing a back-up plan. This is about pride again. (and, of course, shame). I've spent years attached to my identity as an academic, as a soon-to-be Dr. Professor. I research and write and publish and go to conferences. I am a specialist. These last two years that we've been here in the U.S, even though I wanted to quit, even though I've often been very unhappy, I still held on to that piece of myself. If I could stay connected, even just a little, to that part of my identity wrapped up in a PhD, then I could maintain some semblance of order.

The important people in my life know where I stand now (though there are still some friends I haven't had the chance to talk to yet), and they have all been so incredibly supportive. I haven't written much about it, but my parents really took me by surprise with their reactions. They both seemed genuinely happy for me. And where I expected my friends to judge me, they instead asked me excited questions about what I might do next. And Matt, he's been listening to this for years (bless him). As much as I look up to my adviser, we have always had a distance between us, even when I lived full-time in Toronto. We've never had that student/mentor relationship that you see in all those ivy-covered movies. Telling her is difficult, but not scary. What made writing that email so difficult was the finality of it all. I was a graduate student, and she was my teacher. Seven years ago I asked her to work with me on a project, and now I'm severing that relationship in an unnatural sort of way. Until I sent that email I could still rely on that relationship to hold together what felt like a vital part of myself.

It's final. Alright self, on to something else.

*I realize it seems incredibly lame to give this message over email, but we live in two different countries right now. I don't think I've ever called her on the phone in seven years. But, it still is kind of lame. I'm owning the lameness.