Enter the Doctor

So, after what can only be described as 13 years since I first entered my R1 Midwestern university as a Masters student, I am now Dr. no matter where you go.  In some ways, it’s kind of hard to believe, not the least of which because, in the end, it wasn’t nearly as hard as I made it.  Which is to say, I spent far too long dreading the process and the result, and not enough just getting the work done; yet, in the end, the actual work part was challenging and – dare I say it – enjoyable.  In retrospect, anyway.

The defense itself…well, I keep having this nagging feeling that my committee let me off easy, because, while challenging, overall I found the defense itself kind of enjoyable.  They asked some tough, fundamental questions that I struggled to answer, but what I took away from that (in fact, what they pretty much said outright about it) was that those are areas I need to grapple with more to come up with satisfactory answers for myself.  They were all very complimentary about the dissertation itself: my outside member kept saying that I had a subtle grasp of the material that successfully avoided the usual proclamations that are made about XX Culture and People (in her words, “the XX people are YY, blah, blah, blah…”), and the member of my committee who came in late and with whom I never had any classes seemed engaged and interested in parts of the dissertation that I wouldn’t have thought noteworthy.  But I was especially pleased that my advisor and my ex-advisor, who remained on my committee despite having moved on in his own career, both seemed satisfied with the final result.  Ex-advisor even asked to use a bit of it for a class he’s teaching next fall…color me surprised/pleased.

So now I’m a PhD.  And I have absolutely no idea what to do with that.  The advice I’m getting is to just take a breather, and I suppose I should…I’ve just been going at full speed for so long that I don’t quite know what that would look/feel like at this point.  But, if I had to guess, I think it would involve getting to know my kids again, getting a better handle on my parenting skills, getting to know my husband outside the grad student persona, and mulling over what I might like to do next.

Can’t quite believe it…

Can’t quite believe I’m resurrecting this blog!

Or that I’m just days away from defending my dissertation. I can’t say that I have a lot of faith in it at this point – partly because I finished in a rush and couldn’t even say what I wrote anymore, partly because I still – still! – don’t quite have the courage of my convictions. I’m arguing something, but I’m still not 100% sure what that is, and I’m even less sure that it has any kind of real relevance. I hear this feeling is kind of par for the course, but I’m not convinced. And then, there’s the fact that I didn’t really check my bibliography carefully before I sent it off; I think my footnotes are okay (maybe), but the bibliography could be way the hell all over the place.

At any rate, one trip to Hawaii and I’m off to defend, for better or worse.

Kids are good, although Boy is not quite on board with the separations (this upcoming trip will be the second in a month). Girl is doing better with it – partly because she understands better when I explain what I’m going to do, and partly because, right now, I’m kind of awful to be around anyway. Short-tempered, cranky, worried…at least – hopefully – it has a shelf life.

At any rate, still here, still anxious, but still chugging along.

Working on my new leaf

I was putzy to a friend.  She’s an establishing scholar – on the academic track, doing good research, teaching – and she’s smart and will be a success, I think.  Her research and mine historically have overlapped some; our perspectives are different, but there’s enough similarity that I’ve sometimes felt competitive/insecure about the work she’s doing.  The thing is, she’s the better scholar in many ways – she takes the time need to do the work, her fundamental skills – understanding of complex theory, language abilities, etc. – are superior to mine.  I have my own strengths – I can apply theory to everyday life relatively easily – but I have yet to try and grasp theory in any meaningful way.  I cobble together bits and pieces that I read and hope that something sticks, I work in fits and starts (of necessity, anymore!), and I’m far too emotionally invested in the stuff I work on to make a good scholar.  There’s got to be some distance there, you know?

I recently let some of my insecurities get the better of me, and corresponded at her in a particularly putzy way.  Nothing serious – I mean, generally speaking I’m mostly of the fly-in-the-face variety of annoying, rather than outright troublesome or malevolent.  But I’ve been feeling crappy about it ever since, even post-apology.  I can’t help but think that maybe our relationship has come full circle, and that maybe we’re just heading off on very different paths.  I’d hate for that to happen, because I enjoy her company and her conversation when we get together, but I feel like I’m falling behind and just can’t keep up anymore.

Not sure how that constitutes turning over a new leaf…except to say that I’m trying to make my peace with this and turn more fully to the person I have to become, not the one I used to be or have been trying to be for so long.  You know, I went through this once before: when we left Hong Kong, we also left the ‘circle’ – the group of people who knew Hong Kong intimately, who were part of it (even as expats), who could lay claim to it.  It’s a common thing among TCKs – the sense of mourning over the loss of something in which you could once claim belonging – and one that people who still belong/never belonged just never quite get.  This is very much the same kind of feeling…and I have to figure out a way to work through it and make a new identity for myself that folds these things in, even as it accepts that I’ll never have full membership in any of them.

(Thinking about it like this, it occurs to me that one of the things that spurred my putzy comments to her on some pictures she posted was that *first* TCK issue, since she’s been in HK and doing the rounds there.  It was like I felt the need to pee all over her pictures in order to try to claim my own ownership of the place – in that sense, she was just kind of an innocent bystander who got caught in the crossfire between my now-and-then selves.  Hm.  L. is right – this blogging thing is cheaper than therapy and works as well.)

Never Mind…

Okay, so, that whole password thing?  Never mind.  I decided that I want to try and use this blog a bit differently than I can if I’m password-protecting every other entry, so I went ahead and deleted the protected posts.  Hope you enjoyed them, if you had a password!

And now on to other things.

I watched Jason Sperber‘s Today show segment this afternoon with real admiration.  For years I’ve been struggling – and I mean internal knock-down, drag-out fights – with my identity; am I a ‘mom’?  Am I an ‘academic’?  At times it’s seemed like I was both and neither all at once, and not in a good way.  More in the sense that I’ve constantly felt like I’m falling short on both ends of the spectrum: not committed enough to the ideals of perfect parenting (Complete! With! Baked! Cookies!) on the one hand, and clearly not committed enough to a life of academic rigor, based on my paltry research output over the last five years or so.

But Jason’s observation that it’s not about these clear-cut roles – stay-at-home-parent vs. working parent – but about versatility and making the right decisions for you and your family really hit home.  I think I’ve been trying too hard, and for too long, to fit myself into an idea of what it means to be a ‘mom’ and an ‘academic’ that bears little resemblance to me and my own situation.

Let’s face it: I’ll never, ever be a mom who lives solely for the sake of her children, no matter how much I love the little pissers.  And I’ll never be an academic in the university-employed sense of the word.  The first is just something I’ve never been – hell, when I used to go to the hoikuen (public daycare) in Tottori to spread the international love, I could only take so many 4 year-old reenactments of Crayon Shinchan before I beat a hasty retreat to the shokuinshitsu (staff room) for tea and conversation.  I used to think it was because they were other people’s kids…turns out, not so much.

But if I’m being honest, then I should admit that the same is true of the latter identity.  I have a hard time handling the inevitable ego-pummeling that comes with serious academia.  I’m terrible at networking and making connections with people whose research corresponds to mine.  I get nervous in front of a classroom of almost-adults, and the thought of actually passing judgment on them makes me break out in a sweat.

Even so, I am a parent and I am making progress towards finishing my PhD.  The question, then, isn’t one of living up to expectations and ideas of what a ‘mom’ or ‘academic’ is, but rather one of deciding what kind of parent and what kind of scholar I want to be.  I want to be a parent whose kids know their mom loves them without reservation.  I want to help guide them as they make their way through their own lives.  I want our home to feel like a safe place for them – one that’s cosy, loving, and stable.

I want to be a scholar whose work makes a contribution, however small.  I want to teach ordinary people to think of things from a different perspective.  I want to foster communication between people who seem to have nothing in common and little to say to one another.  I think I may have a book in me, if my committee (should I get to the defense stage) thinks the dissertation would translate well to a book project, and I may even still have a paper or two left.  But I’m increasing thinking that I’d like to turn my attention more fully to translation.  There’s a lot of scholarly work in Japanese that should be translated into English – too few people have too tight a lock on information right now, mainly by virtue of language ability.  I’d love to make a difference there, and to bring to light some texts that deserve a wider readership.

I guess this is a mini-manifesto of sorts, but it makes me feel a little better just writing it out.  I’m not there yet, but I feel like I’m heading down the right path for once.

This, that, and the other

I know I’ve all but abandoned blogging over the past year; my ambitions for the blog are much greater, but my energy is pretty much fumes at this point.

To bring my three or four remaining readers up to date: M. finished his MBA in December, passing his last two classes with flying colors, and he’s now beginning the process of looking for a new job.  His current one has a term limit that will be coming up in a year’s time, so he’s on the clock.  That said, he did get a raise this year, so we’re in good shape in the short term, at least.  He’s missing classes and the enjoyment he got out of doing something just for himself, but the kids love having him around more (well, Girl does, anyway.  Boy’s going through a Mommy thing right now, so he’s less excited – although he does bring M. his little plush football every morning and goes long while M. throws it to him, so there’s some kind of connection there).

The Girl is enjoying her last year of preschool.  She’s picked up some bad habits, but I think more of those are from me than her classmates, so I’m trying to tone things down a bit.  Four is easier than three in some ways, but the headiness of a little autonomy seems to drive her to do things and behave in ways that are sometimes counter to her best interests, which can be kind of exhausting.

She sings or talks – or sometimes does both simultaneously – almost constantly, which is also exhausting.  There are times when, as horrible as it sounds, I just don’t want to be around her for a little while.  I love her with all my heart, but she just wears me out with the sheer energy she has coursing through her little body.  I’m kind of dreading the same thing with the Boy, who, at just two, is still baby-cuddly and a little more effortlessly sweet than she can be now.  I’ll miss the baby he’s almost finished being…although I am looking forward to him having the same degree of independence that she has now.

And I’m still trudging around the foothills of Mt. Doom, back bent from carting around my f***ing dissertation for too long to be useful.  I’ve pretty much extended my grad student tenure into the realm of unemployability – at least, in academia – and have been coming to terms with that over the past year or so.  I’m still pushing ahead with the thing, mostly out of sheer will than any kind of motivation, but it’s slow going.  I think I may be on academic probation at this point, since I have failed to meet a couple of goals set out by my advisor, but she’s basically said for me to just keep going and send things in when I can.  I think my ideas – especially the most recent one, which ties things together at the broadest level – are solid, and maybe even good, but I’m constantly having to push past inertia and burnout to write anything, and what I do write doesn’t seem to do them justice.

But, that’s as it is.  If I do finish the thing, I’m hoping it will happen this year.  2010 is shaping up to be a bit of a watershed year for us: M. will need to have a new job by this time next year, the Girl will be in kindergarten, the Boy may or may not spend some quality time in preschool, and I hope to be done with my dissertation, for better or worse, by the beginning of 2011 (especially since my candidacy expires in May of next year).

And you?

(strictly speaking)…

Actually, the 3.96 GPA is meaningless either way – it just sometimes makes me happy to know I had it. It’s certainly not going to translate into gainful employment or anything.

Still bringin’ up the rear

Thanks for the kind comments on the last post. It’s mostly just venting on my part…I feel overwhelmed (so what’s new?) and buried under a mountain of things I need to get done.

I suppose I should be grateful, though, that I’m starting to get bored with messing around online. I can waste whole days doing nothing but staring blankly into the computer screen while small children raise themselves…not good for them, not good for me. But Facebook and Twitter only get you so far (I use them because they’re one of the only ways I get contact with the outside world), and everything else is kinda depressing, truth be told.

Still spinning my wheels on the current chapter, which is late, and which is making the next chapter even later, which will probably itself result in being put on academic probation. So much for the 3.96 GPA – it’s kind of meaningless if I can’t actually get the final thing done. I’m getting there, but since a lot of it involves reading/translating Japanese, it just gets very slow sometimes.

But, in the overall scheme of things, I can’t really complain. So far – knock on wood – H1N1 hasn’t found us (unless the plague we all had about a month ago was it…but I never had a fever, although the kids did, so I’m thinking it wasn’t) and I might even get them fully vaccinated (round 2) before it does…we’ll see.

Aaaaagh…another pointless post.