Life, as you know, rarely works out as planned. The day of my last post, a lot of big stuff was in the works for me. Most of it still is, but on the day of my last post, at least one of those things went wrong, completely out of our control. And that, my friends, is the way life goes.
This post is not, primarily, about that, though I’ll write about it briefly, and maybe more than once. In general, I haven’t been writing enough lately, and when I don’t write, I find it hard to keep my life straight. The one thing I’ve been doing a lot of lately is trying to keep my life straight.
So here’s the state of things, with some background:
When we lived in Los Angeles, it is no secret that I was relatively miserable with life there. Neither of us wanted to move to Los Angeles – I’d told more than one person that it’s the one place I’d never live – but it was necessary. One of us was working on a dissertation all the time in a cramped poorly-built one-bedroom apartment, and the other was stuck in an endless cycle of sleep 6 hours, spend 3-4 hours on trains and buses, and work 8-12 hours for The Man ™, with little time for anything else, including the cramped one-bedroom apartment and the beloved dissertation writer sequestered within. It is a sad state of affairs when the guy working on the dissertation in the drab, dark apartment under tremendous time pressure is the happier one. But it was to be expected from the circumstances, and it was ok because we knew it was temporary.
And now, now we’re in Denver. The dissertation-writer is now a professor, doing what he loves, and the former drudge for The Man ™ is drudge no longer, having the time and space to figure out what it is she wants. We’re in a good place, both literally and figuratively. And now it’s time for me to figure things out.
When I left my job with The Man ™, I returned to grad school after a year off. All of the coursework was done, and all that was left was research, so I figured it was worth a go. I won’t say I didn’t do this with some reservations, because I did, but having finally gotten my crap together after a decade in which my life hit more highs and lows than a bipolar heroin addict (no offense to bipolar heroin addicts), I thought I’d go back and try to finish things on my own terms, under my own expectations, and without 10 tons of other people’s problems on my shoulders while I did it. My husband, as always, was remarkably supportive. So was my absolutely awesome advisor.
And so I went back. I flew back and forth to the armpit of America all semester (I don’t care about those of you who’ve voted for New Jersey or West Memphis, Arkansas as The Armpit ™ – as far as I’m concerned, Lafayette, Indiana really does take the cake, and you’ll never convince me otherwise), and I frantically packed about 6 months worth of background reading and analysis into less than a semester. I wrote a prelim document which, while it was not perfect, was a significant chunk of work which would have pushed things forward (my advisor and I were both happy with it).
All in all, it went about as well as it could have gone. I can’t say that I didn’t get excited about the research or about making progress, because I did. Sometimes.
Of course, as always in life, other things were going on too. And those things are not the reason for what I’ve decided to do, although I’d be foolish to deny they may have had an impact.
But, you see, my husband and I had been having a conversation all semester about whether or not I really want this PhD.
I’m going to say something here that will perhaps offend some people that love and respect me, but it needs to be said. In the past 5 years – particularly since I left the Purdue CS department so unhappy (most grad students I know, it should be said, leave the Purdue CS department unhappy, and many very smart ones without the degrees they came for, but that’s a story for another day…) – the number of people that I love, respect and care about who’ve said something to me to the effect of “You’re so smart – you really should finish this PhD”, or “You really need a PhD” (for my own ego reasons, or because no one wants to see another woman give up her career for her husband’s – one favorite professor of mine was worried about me for feminist reasons – or because the speaker simply thought I’d make a good professor) , or “You’re so close to done – how can you stop now?” has been staggering.
None of these people are entirely wrong, with the exception of the person who was worried that I was giving up my career for my husband. My ego took a pretty good bitchslapping in the Purdue CS department, and being married to a very intense academic professional does mean needing to hold one’s own, ego-wise (this isn’t a commentary on my husband, by the way – my father is a professor, and from a lifetime of samples, I’d say the need to have an intellectual backbone just goes with the territory of being with smart people). So, sure, ego is a concern. And once upon a time, when I was very young and naïve, I undersold myself so that I wouldn’t intimidate people, spending a good bit of time hiding the fact that I was smart until it got me into a relationship with a lunatic that I almost failed to make it out of. That wasn’t good. So no, I’m not an idiot, and yes, I could get a PhD. And it is certainly inarguable that I have put a great deal of time and effort into getting through this many academic hoops. There are only a couple of hoops left. Those hoops, it can be said, are very big and would take a lot of my time. And the payoff at the end – emotionally, intellectually and financially – really wouldn’t put me ahead of where I am now. As for the possibility of “giving up my career for my husband”, in a strange sense, the move to linguistics itself was a career decision based upon my then-boyfriend-now-husband long ago. That decision was to stay at Purdue but transfer to a different discipline rather than transferring to a less dysfunctional CS department at another university while he finished up. Whether or not that was the “right” thing to do, from a feminist point of view, is irrelevant – it was my choice to make, and I’m happy I gave the relationship a chance to be what it is, regardless of professional outcome.
In any event, to those I love and care about who are in academia reading this, let me just make something clear: just because I am not choosing to become a high priest of the religion doesn’t mean I don’t worship at the temple or respect its rites. The long and short of it is this: it just isn’t what I want to do. And after I’d finished the prelim – after the only thing this was about was me and what I wanted, because my ego was satisfied that I could do this and that I’d done very well so far – I could finally step back and decide that without anyone else’s expectations or desires in the way. That perspective was worth all of the flying back and forth and reading and crunching ideas and wracking my brains to try to make a cohesive whole out of a bunch of disparate research.
Of course, there is this “something else” that was going on at the time too. Right around the time I defended my prelim, I was about 6 weeks pregnant. This was our first pregnancy – we were guardedly excited about it, but hadn’t told anyone. Looking at having a baby in the not-too-distant future and at where I really want my life to go certainly was an impetus for trying to get some real perspective, but it wasn’t the reason for my decision – in fact, being a grad student and taking care of a kid is a lot more compatible than working 9-to-5 and doing the same. But it played its part in getting me thinking. It emphasized what I already knew – that I cared a lot more about getting into a position where I could teach and raise a family than I did about being called Dr. Grothoff. Mainly, I care about being happy. A piece of paper, a “significant contribution to the field” and a ticket to possibly get in line in the tenure rat-race just aren’t going to do that for me personally right now.
And so I made a decision and gave myself a few weeks to think about it to make sure. I’d leave the linguistics program for good, work on my German and refresh my math skills, and go back to school for a teaching certification in a year or so. That decided, I set off to get through Christmas and not do a whole lot of thinking (or anything else). We planned to tell my parents about the pregnancy at Christmas, and I planned not to worry for a while.
Of course, I’m finding that people never talk about these things unless they go well. And this did not, unfortunately, go well. A couple of weeks later at the ultrasound – hours after my last post – we saw that the embryo had stopped developing right around the prelim, and that I would soon miscarry. The next day I went in to the hospital to complete the miscarriage (there was absolutely no chance that it would continue – there was really nothing there), and it wasn’t pleasant. But it happened, and we’re all right. It was a pretty routine occurrence, and as much as it might seem like I should be devastated right now, I’m really not. Disappointed, certainly, but since most first-trimester miscarriages are due to one-time genetic defects, I’d really rather it have happened early on. Mostly, it was just uncomfortable and weird. Thursday, you’re pregnant. Friday, you’re not. And there wasn’t a damned thing to be done about it.
Now, you may be wondering why I’d mention this on a blog to begin with if I’m OK and don’t want pity (which I really, really don’t). Well, first of all, it’s part of the story, and it’s my story to tell. One thing I’ve discovered in the last few years is that people may not want you to tell your own story because it makes them uncomfortable, but it’s your story to tell, as long as you don’t shove it down anyone’s throat. But I’m also discovering that nearly every woman I’ve talked to about this – let’s just guess 95% – has been through one or two early miscarriages, and no one talks about it until they run into someone else that has. Yes, its traumatic, but geez… it’s much worse if you think it really only happens to people who are sick or ill or somehow defective, and clinical numbers from the doctor’s office don’t really fix that perception. The thing that made me feel the most normal was having someone tell me, “yeah, that happened to me too.” Because even when you’re emotionally ok with it, it’s about 2 weeks of Teh Suck physically afterward, and so you really do need someone to tell you, “Yeah, that happens.”
So anyway, that was more than I wanted to say about it, but that happened too.
So it’s been one of those months. Up and down and back and forth. And now, now I’m studying for a math exam required by the state to teach, and looking at taking the GRE again, since they won’t take my 7-year-old scores (rip-off!).
And so with all of that, here’s the executive summary: I’ve finally decided to do what I want to do, regardless of what anyone else thinks, even the people I respect most. And for the next year or so, I’m going to work on my own projects and being with my family and doing what makes me happy.
And that, my friends, is just about as good as it gets in life, even if it takes 10 pages to give the setup for it.
Professional computer geek and linguist living in Germany, doing infosec stuff and being the freakiest mother ever.
