On Defending

I successfully defended Geraldine a month ago and it’s time to finally describing the experience in writing. Leading up to the defense I felt overwhelmed. My two main concerns were the logistics of making my committee comfortable during the defense and, of course, trying to remember what I researched. I felt that both of these points should not have concerned me. After all, my committee members could take care of themselves and I spent two years conducting and writing the research, therefore remembering it shouldn’t be that difficult. Nevertheless, I also spent every year of my doctoral program buttering up my committee members and department by cooking and baking for nearly every seminar, colloquium und party. I knew that they anticipated me doing something special, but I didn’t have time to do much. In the end I made muffins and brought juice. I wanted to bring coffee and a hundred other things, but it just didn’t work out and no one seemed to care. My advice for future candidates is to get someone else to take care of the food and drinks if you want them at your defense.

As for my other main concern, in the last round of revisions leading up to the defense, I changed the names of three of the four patterns I was discussing, reworded my hypothesis and added a bunch of definitions for further clarification. I couldn’t remember any of my changes and every time I tried to give a brief overview of the whole dissertation (aloud, when no one was listening except maybe the baby), I tripped over my words and didn’t feel prepared. In the end, I wrote out everything I wanted to say, made a PowerPoint presentation of the main points, and wrote down anticipated committee member questions with answers for a cheat sheet (as my committee chair advised me to).

The morning of the defense my son wouldn’t fall asleep before I had to leave. He was crying as I walked out the door, which made me cry. I think I cried most of the 20-minute drive to campus and worried about him eating, sleeping and hoping my husband would have a positive 3 hours alone with the baby so that I’d be able to leave again sometime in the future.

I was the first one to arrive to my defense. As I turned on the computer, my committee members started entering the room. Then a few friends entered. Then a few other professors, not on my committee, entered the room, one after the other, after the other. Soon I realized that nearly every professor in the department was sitting in the conference room. The only ones missing were teaching or on leave. I felt very intimidated by this and wondered what sort of questions they would ask and how they would be critical of my work.

Then it was time to start. I had to give an overview of my work. I thought they wanted a 2-5 minute presentation, but 20 minutes later (I think I read my notes verbatim the entire time), it seemed that I had given enough of an overview to appease those present at the defense and the questions started.

The questions were much simpler than I anticipated. I started to relax and enjoy the process. I realized I usually had an answer without having to search for one and when I didn’t, another committee member would join in and I didn’t have to say much. The non-committee members present also asked questions and eventually, I was asked to step out of the room. While waiting I talked to other professors and friends and within a few minutes, a committee member walked out of the room, said “Dr. Kelsie, come back in.” What a relief.

I walked back in and was met with handshakes and hugs from committee members. I even received a gift. They then gave me lists of all the words I either mispronounced or that stuck out due to coming from the West Coast and left. During the debriefing with my committee chair, I received a list of minor changes to make before submitting a copy to the grad school, was verbally offered three courses for the fall, took a picture, and then it was all over. I think I received a congratulatory handshake from each professor in my department that day. I then realized they all came to support me and because they thought I had an interesting research topic, not because they wanted to give me a hard time. Once I figured that out, I felt great.

I officially graduated 9 days ago. After wearing my doctoral regalia around the house for a week, I officially received my academic hood on a Sunday morning. Since finishing my paperwork for the graduate school and uploading the final copy of Geraldine, I’ve been able to relax and reflect. The Road to Dr. Kelsie ended and I haven’t decided on my next journey. I have linguistics on my mind non-stop and have been enjoying reading the books that weren’t related to my doctoral research but still accumulated in my office these past 4 years. I plan to start turning Geraldine into journal articles this summer and am enjoying the freedom I feel to research and read. I still change the country I plan to live in next at least once a week, but have yet to renew my expired passport.

On Preparing to Defend

The office door next to mine has an essay warning graduate students of mandatory snake fights. Since that office is for an English professor, it's not surprising that there is a lengthy metaphor in small print hanging on the door regarding dissertation defenses. I've passed that door with its essay thousands of times and read the essay once or twice.

I hate snakes. I don't want to read anything that could even possibly be related to snakes. I refuse to go to the Amazon, Africa, India or Papua New Guinea for linguistic research because of the snake populations there. I even limit my job applications to positions in areas not known for snakes. Arkansas? No thanks, there are tons of snakes there. Australia? I'm still trying to convince myself to apply for two positions in Sydney, but the fact that Australia is home to most of the world's poisonous snakes is making it difficult. If only something exciting would open in Ireland, Greenland, Alaska or Norway, I'd be set. But back to preparing for my defense.

My defense is in two days. I'm supposed to be preparing an overview of my research and answers to anticipated questions from my committee members. Instead, all I can think about it stupid, ugly, horrifying snakes and the analogy that my defense is supposed to be the equivalent to a snake fight. I'm beginning to hope that English professor next door gets a big, painful zit this week for causing me extra anguish by feeding my stress with a reminder of my biggest phobia.

Luckily, I'm walking into my defense teamed up with Indiana Jones, and, as we all know, Indiana Jones hates snakes. There will be no snake fight on Thursday. I've had three other forms of oral exams with these committee members during my 6 years of graduate school. The two members that ask the most challenging questions already sent me comments and told me that my dissertation will pass the defense. My dissertation chair will help me if I get stuck and everyone wants me to look good. Although I feel a huge disconnect to my research due to the demands of parenting, I know Geraldine better than anyone else and everything will be fine. I just hope that I won't sound like an airhead on Thursday during the 2 hour question and answer session on my research. And for anyone reading this thinking that it would be a fun joke to show up to my defense with a rubber snake, a picture of a snake, hissing sounds or anything remotely related, please don't. I will never speak to you again and if I will blackball all of your research for the rest of your career if you do. Bring me a dataset instead. :)

On applying for jobs, round one

My son is sleeping and I might have five whole minutes to write this blog. He is wonderful, labor and delivery were positive experiences and I enjoy being a parent. I don't sleep for more than an hour at a time, I am usually still in my pajamas when Hubby comes home from work, I remember to brush my hair and put on deodorant every other day and I am mastering holding a baby with one hand while trying to do everything else life demands with the other.

Besides adjusting to parenting, I'm trying to apply for jobs. Job applications in academia are demanding and no two job announcements have the same requirements. All jobs seem to want a cover letter and a CV. Those are the easy parts. Many require three letters of recommendation. The remaining application materials can include research statements, writing samples, teaching philosophies, copies of student course evaluations, syllabi of past courses taught, and syllabi of courses hoped to be taught in the future. Whether or not these materials are required mostly depends on the size of the university and its status as a research or teaching college. Jobs that are opening right now are more often research oriented, which requires me to send a version of my CV that highlights my research and leaves out most of my teaching background. Although the types of requirements for each job overlap, each document must be tailored for the position.

The first round of job applications will end sometime in December. I don't anticipate being contacted by any of the departments I'm applying to, and will likely choke on whatever I'm eating (or my spit if I'm not eating) if someone does contact me. I don't aim to come across as pessimistic, this is just the reality of applying for tenure track jobs.

The jobs I'm applying for will interview at either the annual Linguistic Society of America or Modern Language Association meetings, which are both the first weekend in January in two different Midwestern cities. After that, interviews involve flying to universities, giving a lecture, teaching classes, and schmoozing with department chairs, deans, professors and students for 24-48 hours. Again, I don't think any department will select me for an interview out of the 100-200 applicants for each position and I won't make it to this later stage this year, but it doesn't hurt to try.

I update my CV regularly and have a few versions of cover letters, but I haven't written a teaching philosophy since teaching high school 8 years ago. I have no idea what to write for a college position, nor if they require the same type of BS that teaching philosophies for K-12 positions do.

I have one writing sample ready. I really should have written another paper over the summer, but somehow I found 30 minutes to start transforming part of Geraldine into a journal paper on Wednesday. I hope that by the time I finish it, it a) won't be too late to apply for the position that requires it and b) it won't be obvious that I am not sleeping. Being that most students don't sleep in graduate school, (b) might not be an issue to worry about.

It's hard not to think about living in a new place with each job description I see. My thoughts tend to evolve from: I could apply for the job but there's no point > Wait, I do actually qualify for that job so I'd better apply > Quick, look up the university town on a map and get an idea of where on earth it is > Calculate how far away that is from anyone that I know > Read about the university and its department, would I even fit in there? > What variety of English would my son acquire if we lived in that area? > Am I a bad person for wanting my child to sound like me and have caught/cot merger instead of like his dad who doesn't have this merger? > Shut up stupid, you don't get to make decisions based on those things if you want a job next year > Crap, when am I going to have time to write an application?

Usually these thoughts come to mind when I'm trying to take a nap or at 7am when I am awake, my son is finally asleep and I have enough energy to eat breakfast. The only thing that shuts these thoughts off is an adorably cute infant who wants to feed for the millionth time, a screaming infant who is mad because I'm changing his diaper or praying the rosary. I swear I've prayed the rosary more times since my son was born than in the last 5 years.

And here I am at the end of my thoughts, my son is still asleep (not for long though), I have dirty dishes to wash, I should get dressed (or at least put on deodorant) before someone from my birthing class stops by in an hour, and I still have a mountain of documents to prepare for job applications. Thankfully, I still have 3 weeks before the first closing date for an application. Maybe before then I'll get to sleep for an hour and 15 minutes at a time.

On trying to keep my chin up

Writing this blog today points out how little my summer occupations had to do with Geraldine. Has it really been 3 1/2 months since I wrote about my dissertation? Oops. I feel like I worked a lot this summer, but my focus changed from spending 4 hours a day on Geraldine to other projects. I published a paper, turned some of my dissertation findings into a paper for a conference in Germany, rewrote an entire semester's worth of lectures for the online classes that I teach, adopted new course readings and started preparing myself for entering the job market. Meanwhile, I recovered from complete linguistic burnout and enjoyed my first summer in 6 years that didn't include taking classes or teaching summer school. It pleases me to write that I can now talk about linguistics again without feeling a need to go on vacation.

The semester started two weeks ago. The first day left me feeling out of place. As I walked across campus, the incoming students meandering around lost in the crowd seemed very young and I felt old. I couldn't help but wonder, "Why am I still a student, this is supposed to be my first day as a professor." Of course it might not be that surprising that walking across a campus 9 months pregnant in clothes that don't fit anymore while surrounded by clueless 18- and 19-year-olds dressed either for a night in a club or a pajama party would lead me to think that I no longer fit in. None of the other TAs were in their offices, most of the department doors were closed, I had my office to myself and it did not feel like the first day of fall semester.

My online classes are running smoothly and I've tried to be on campus as much as possible, knowing that I won't be there for the remainder of the semester as soon as my body decides to go into labor (I'm due in a week). I'm impatiently waiting for news about my contract, which currently expires in December. I had to reapply as a TA, but was told that my chances of receiving a renewal for the spring were slim because on paper I am too close to graduating. Never mind the obvious facts that all of my committee members were out of the country over the summer and we agreed to wait on final revisions, some of my committee members are still out of the country and it is impossible to defend now, and in a week or two it will be physically impossible for me to show up to a defense. I think the department made a decision regarding my contract yesterday, but no one has informed me of the outcome.

In other news, I started a job search for next year. I've found about 10 jobs I can apply for so far and they all happen to be in the US. I'll probably apply for 50 jobs this year with the hope that I'll be invited to interview for 2 of them. Yesterday I found out that there is a job opening 2 1/2 hours from where I currently live and for which I perfectly qualify. It seems that there's no better way to have my excitement erased than to tell other people. The responses I've received so far include:
"Isn't there anything closer?"
"You're planning on moving?"
"You're applying for jobs? What are you going to do with your baby?"
"What would your husband do if you get a job?"
"I'm not writing letters of recommendations for current students, but good luck"
Perhaps my sarcastic response of writing "Thanks for the encouragement. It's really nice to know that 9 1/2 years spent becoming a specialist, earning competitive scholarships to support my work, taking out student loans, living on food stamps, finding work shoveling animal poo and the like" will explain why I feel discouraged and out of place with wanting to be a professor and a mother. I don't doubt my ability to make it all work out, I just wonder how long I'll feel guilty for wanting both.

On revisions

Somehow I managed to coerce myself to work on my linguistics to-do list every day this week. I'm not exactly sure how it happened, as I mostly remember wanting to eat ice cream, doing plyometric exercises so that if I ate ice cream I wouldn't regret it, watching my my ceiling fan, playing card games on the computer and staring off into space.Yesterday I never got around to working on research, but I did work on a syllabus for the upcoming courses I will teach this fall. Despite my extended periods of procrastination, I think I finished revising a paper and will be able to send it to my editors next week.

When I first received the editors' comments, I was surprised that they were helpful, encouraging and supportive of my research. Somehow I expected editors' comments to be very demanding and mean. After reading through the comments and noting the deadline for revisions, I ignored them for two months and concentrated on Geraldine (or more specifically, figuring out what was happening with my defense, graduation, funding and life in general). As I reread the editors' comments on Monday, I felt reassured in my belief in myself to address them, but as the week passed, I had a few moments of despair (pregnancy has suddenly made me understand why all of my pregnant teachers growing up were moody... these hormones shouldn't be underestimated). I sucked it up and made myself keep working anyway and am pleased to write that I have a stronger paper and I like it much more than the draft I originally submitted.

One difficulty of revising my work has been that this paper is not related to Geraldine. Geraldine focuses on historical changes words for body parts. The current paper focuses on sounds in a central Asian language. I haven't done anything with sounds for 2 years. Switching from semantics back to phonology is the linguistics equivalent of Michael Jordan becoming a golf player. I'm rusty on a lot of the vocabulary as well as the language under investigation needed for this paper. In reading it, I wonder how I ever knew enough to write it in the first place. Maybe if I re-read a paper from my BA or MA course work, I'd stop wondering how I was ever that intelligent and wonder how I was ever that clueless. :) Despite thinking that I forgot everything from my 5 phonology seminars, it seems that it is easily retrievable and I could teach phonology at some distant point in my academic future.

In addition to wrapping my head around completely different theoretical work, it has been interesting to note how my writing has changed since starting Geraldine. After reading hundreds of articles, I am no longer a patient reader. I want to know the claims of the study immediately and then I want to be convinced that the claim is the best choice for the rest of the time reading the article. The paper I'm currently revising is left over from my last semester of course work (pre-Geraldine) and didn't get to the point in the way that it should. At first, a few of the comments I received were hard to address because it seemed like I would have to rewrite sections (thus the trigger of my despair and whining), but once I turned off the comments and read the paper, it was really easy to see the flaws, rewrite sections, and delete other information that wasn't immediately related to my claim. Sometimes deleting sections is hard, but I'm finding that if I don't read something for a while, it's a lot easier to get rid of it. I hope it will be this easy when I force myself to re-read Geraldine next week. Convincing myself to re-read 15 pages of text was enough of a challenge, I'm not sure how much ice cream it will take to force myself into reading the 150+ pages of Geraldine....

On reestablishing a daily research routine

For 16 months, I devoted an average of 4 hours a day to working on Geraldine. I took most weekends and major holidays off from my research, but continued to work faithfully up through the final submission to Indi at the end of March. After deciding to delay my defense, I took a break from my daily routine and have since struggled incessantly with forcing myself to reestablish a daily research routine.

One of the problems with being an academic is there are no longer have deadlines. There are no syllabi stating due dates for research proposals, abstracts, rough drafts, presentations or final copies. Although my 3.5 years of graduate coursework certainly prepared me to work on a similar schedule, I'm finding that it becomes increasingly more difficult to discipline myself now that I do not have weekly meetings (classes) with others (professors) who expect me to produce scholarly work (term papers). At first I wondered how some of the smartest people I studied with hadn't started their doctoral research, writing chapters, or had even dropped out of school. I'd read accounts of people who finished their dissertations and just never submitted them to the graduate school. Before I couldn't understand how this was possible, but nowadays I feel like I could live the rest of my life without ever feeling an urge to read another linguistics paper. Suddenly, I understand why so many people progress so far into a PhD program only to never finish.

Sometimes I am surprised that I even wrote a dissertation. In the last month and a half, I think two or three people have asked me about my dissertation research. Each time this happens, I quickly explain my research questions, methodology and results. Those asking about my work seem interested and impressed with the amount of effort required for my research, yet whenever these conversations occur, I feel like I am having an out of body experience. I see and hear myself explaining my research but feel like I am observing myself from across the room. Who is that smart person who conducted that work? I could never do that! And then it occurs to me that I am the person talking, I did the research, and it's not that big of a deal. I certainly don't feel any smarter than I was at any other time in my life. Even talking about my accomplishments makes me feel like I'm violating unspoken modesty rules.I feel very unaccomplished until I force myself back into the world of academia and 5+ years of training kicks in. Someone asks my opinion about linguistics in pop media and I automatically critique the claims. I hear someone talk and subconsciously start to analyze the speaker's regional roots, contact with other languages and socioeconomic status. I read a research paper and find myself forming an opinion before I even finish the abstract. Even if I've become lazy and temporarily detached from my research, my intellect will still get the best of me once activated. Sometimes I'd rather have a super power, like being able to teleport, but I guess being an academic isn't that bad (most of the time).

A week ago I made a summer research to-do list and have been forcing myself to check off tasks. It seems ridiculous to have to include "e-mail X and ask about Y" on my list, but checking it off motivates me to do more work. I remember hearing somewhere that it takes 28 days to break or make a habit. I guess taking more than 28 days off broke my habit of daily research and it will take at least another 28 days to reestablish it and feel motivated to do so. I have no idea when I'll have more than a month at a time to do research again, but in the meantime I'll keep chipping away at my to-do list and hope that some sort of divine light beam of brilliant motivation with strike my intellect and it will make a difference in my academic career.

On not graduating

I finished grading exams for another set of students. Usually I would be happy that my teaching obligations are done for another term, but my lack of excitement saturates all of my current feelings regarding school. I've taken a month off from research and told myself that I'd have to start again as soon as my students' finals were graded. That means I have to resume research today, but I don't have a strong desire to do it. I know many people who defend then submit their work to the graduate school never to look at their dissertation research again. I don't think that I'm that person, nor do I think it's unusual to be completely burnt out after completing a dissertation, but I sure wish I had a stronger drive to pursue my research. Luckily, I have a lot of deadlines this summer that will force me to work regardless of my desire to do so.

In my month away from researching, I've been able to enjoy a few hobbies (wow, I have hobbies?!?). I started cooking again and knit a bunch of stuff for the baby.  Meanwhile I've been trying to figure out how I can both be a top linguist in my field and a great mom. The two seem diametrically opposed and I've spent the last few months trying to convince myself that my pregnancy isn't an academic shot in the foot. There is more to think about then I thought there would be before becoming pregnant. Suddenly moving to Europe for a post doc in the next year sounds overwhelming. Then again, so do labor and breast feeding. At least I stopped having dissertation-related nightmares.

I thought that delaying graduation would leave me feeling left out, but it hasn't. I happily delete all e-mails concerning cap and gowns and ignore anything else having to do with graduation. What I didn't expect is the mountain of paperwork I've been shifting through due to the fact that I'm staying on for another semester. Because I applied for graduation, no offices on campus planned for me to return. Teaching contracts came out last week (which is about a month later than normal) and even though my department told me I would come back in the fall fully funded, it seems that no one else was informed of this decision. Among other things, paper work has included:
notifying human resources that I am returning so that my insurance isn't dropped (3xs)
notifying the graduate school that I am returning so that I can enroll in classes (4xs)
notifying my loan companies that I am still in school and my loans should still be in deferment (2xs)
requesting permission numbers so that I can enroll
signing weird documents with information about my marital statues and husband's contact information so that I can enroll
paying a $40 graduation fee so that I can enroll in classes again (1x only, few!)
owing $600 to human resources to make up for the health insurance deductions that weren't taken from my paycheck this semester (better only be 1x or they might as well fire me)

Other things that have been awkward include receiving mail addressed to Dr. Kelsie, taking a graduation trip without having graduated, receiving a really awesome camera for graduating without actually graduating, and not knowing what to tell people when they ask about school, which at the moment usually sounds like this: "How's the dissertation going?"
"Fine. Everything is done."
"Great! When are you graduating?"
"I don't know."
"Why not?"
"I'm pregnant so my committee delayed my defense until later notice. I'll let you know when I receive later notice."
"Oh, you're pregnant, I couldn't tell. Congratulations."
to myself: "Give me a break, I look like I swallowed a basketball. Geraldine couldn't have made me look this huge."
At this point, I'm convinced it would have been easier to go through with the defense and graduate. Oh well.