PhD-ing Mamas! Acheiving and Believing in 2009! - Page 3

[nnaemeka]

hey there everybody!

busy semester already right??!!!

so we went to the conference last weekend. overall dd went with flow and since the conference was themed "Black Women in the Academy" she was quite the star as so many sister-mama-academics came by to greet us and give love. i had some friend-colleagues there too so dd had alot of aunties to hold her when i needed a break. the conference has me both inspired about my work and the transformative possibilities engendered by the university space and a bit freaked at the constant pressure and evaluation inherent to an academic career. there was a panel on work/life balance that offered some helpful tips and a venue to vent! but it doesn't seem to get any easier...

MLA, sheesh i don't know if i could manage dd and presenting and/or interviewing at a HUUUUUGE conference like that, childcare or no. nevertheless, thanks Ftmpapa for the info and the article. but that Slyvia Plath comment!!!!

speaking of pressure and evaluation, two profs i like alot didn't get tenure this past week. and the grapevine is aflame and my phone has been ringing off the hook! its really heartbreaking and scary. at the conference there was a workshop on tenure. sometimes we PhDers can only see as far as our defense while the tenure track demands serious preparation and determination as well---esp for parents and partners. what is your tenure plan?

as far as dissertation nesting, i hope to be there soon. dd will start fulltime childcare soon. i just got a scholarship for childcare and i'm so thrilled and thankful. i will finally have real time to write! (and think and read)! of course i'm a bit nervous on how dd will cope with that major change but i'm hoping since she's quite social and very active these days that ultimately she'll have fun crawling around and making new friends.

teaching is going well, though its hectic getting to campus in the morning and attempting to look and act together and professional! i sooooo wish i had applied for fellowships for next year, because the teaching and the writing and the mama-ing and the pumping and the partnering! whew! i need to write an essay for that collection and let it all out!

have a good, productive and restful weekend everyone!

[FtMPapa]

Nnaemeka - that's great that you left the conference so hopeful!

Carita - be gentle with yourself, you're coming through a rough patch with some lessons learned. Been There Done That!

I feel like the fog is lifting, my students were amazing today, I am feeling better about EVERYTHING now that the days are getting longer around here.

I have a question, though - I need to find some adjuncting work, in sociology or women's studies, VERY preferably online.

How do you find that kind of thing?

I'm wondering if I should just bookmark a bunch of HR websites at colleges/unis all over the US and Canada and see what pops up.

Any tips or insights?

[nnaemeka]

Originally Posted by FtMPapa

Nnaemeka - that's great that you left the conference so hopeful!

Carita - be gentle with yourself, you're coming through a rough patch with some lessons learned. Been There Done That!

I feel like the fog is lifting, my students were amazing today, I am feeling better about EVERYTHING now that the days are getting longer around here.

I have a question, though - I need to find some adjuncting work, in sociology or women's studies, VERY preferably online.

How do you find that kind of thing?

I'm wondering if I should just bookmark a bunch of HR websites at colleges/unis all over the US and Canada and see what pops up.

Any tips or insights?

That's a great question. I'm not sure, though I too could use the info. Let's brainstorm people!

Also, yes the CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS for "Baring Witness to Our Lives as Mothers in Academia" is due this April--- 2009.

[Carita]

nn - have you tried sreb.org they have a dissertation year fellowship that the deadline is not until next month. it doesn't include atution waiver, but at least it would reduce your teaching load. I was on their PhD scholars program and it was wonderful.

[lilgreen]

Hi everyone!!

I've seen this thread for a while, but have been too busy to make my entrance . So, now that I'm even busier, I decided that it's time, lol.

I just started my PhD this past fall in History. This week, however, I am submitting my application to transfer into the Women's Studies PhD program. I'm soooo insanely excited about that move.

I'm also pregnant with baby#3 and due in April. My two boys are 3 and 7.

I met with the Women's studies grad advisor this morning and she anticipates that I can be admitted to candidacy by next April/May (2010). I'm feeling a little stressed about that timeline, but I suppose I could just buckle down and get it over with, granted dh is willing to up his help at home and with the kids.

I have a question... How long is the average reading list for comprehensive exams? Are we talking 200-300 books/articles? Or is it more like 100? (please say the latter!)

Now that I've introduced myself, I'll try to be here more regularly to offer support and likely to ask for some, too

Happy PhD'ing mamas!!!

[nnaemeka]

Originally Posted by Carita

nn - have you tried sreb.org they have a dissertation year fellowship that the deadline is not until next month. it doesn't include atution waiver, but at least it would reduce your teaching load. I was on their PhD scholars program and it was wonderful.

i'm sooo applying for this! Carita you rock Mama! thank you thank you for this tip! funny, i've been thinking about you b/c after a extremely frantic, forgetful and flustered day today i've been wondering if i might have ADHD. maybe i'm just highly stressed but whatever the case something is up and i need some help. i'm going to seek advice at the Learning Needs and Evalaution Center on campus so thank you for inspiring me to be proactive.

anyway welcome Lilgreen! congrads on the forthcoming babe and on switching disciplines, Women's Studies PhD !
ohh and in our dept i think about we had to study 100-150 texts for comps. have fun!

[FtMPapa]

Welcome LilGreen, and congrats!

Comp lists will vary by department, and are usually flexible for each individual - Google will turn up a few exemplars.

Some departments don't even do comps as an exam - mine (admittedly - sociology) requires a "publishable" empirical paper, and another "publishable" paper.

My women's studies graduate certificate also has a big paper project, rather than an exam.

[Carita]

Originally Posted by nnaemeka

i'm sooo applying for this! Carita you rock Mama! thank you thank you for this tip! funny, i've been thinking about you b/c after a extremely frantic, forgetful and flustered day today i've been wondering if i might have ADHD. maybe i'm just highly stressed but whatever the case something is up and i need some help. i'm going to seek advice at the Learning Needs and Evalaution Center on campus so thank you for inspiring me to be proactive.

anyway welcome Lilgreen! congrads on the forthcoming babe and on switching disciplines, Women's Studies PhD !
ohh and in our dept i think about we had to study 100-150 texts for comps. have fun!

Glad to help. Its a great place for job contacts too as they host a conference every fall and several colleges set up recruiting booths.

You know, I have talked to a lot of ADHD moms and they all said their ADHD got way worse after pregnancy. Anything I may have had before (because they say if you have it, you've had it for life), I was certainly able to control and it worked for me actually - the hyperfocus part and being really involved/do everything. Anyway, I think the hormones stuff throws you way off the managing track. I have noticed an improvement this semester, but IDK if it is not teaching or if its that I gave up pumping, so I have just a little less hormones running rampant. DS only nurses 3-5x/day now, so its a lot different than the 10-12x when he was <1 yr... Anyway - I did not opt for drugs because I am nursing, but somehow it just makes me feel better to know. Plus I was able to explain it to my advisor.

[lilgreen]

Thanks for the welcome and the info on comps. My comps will be three take home exams to be written over a three week span. I'm already looking forward to being done, but I know I really could use the pressure to broaden my understanding of the issues I'm studying. So, it's all good

I don't know anything about adhd, but I can say that my ability to focus greatly diminished after pregnancy. it ended up being related to wild hormonal shifts that only increased once my period started again. I'm not one to jump at taking meds, but something wasn't right and so I started taking an ssri and everything evened out. Pregnancy and nursing can cause a lot of changes that can creep up on a woman, so I would say it's definitely worth interrogating.

[slsurface]

An update

I'm so close to finishing, yet I feel so far away right now. I've been working myself so hard the last two months. I write and do analysis for 12+ hours every day. I'm so tired today that I've got muscle spasms in my back, yuk! But the good news is that I'm almost done with Chapter 8...I hope to turn in a draft on Monday. That leaves one more chapter, the conclusions, to write and I'll be with the dissertation - excluding edits and making figures of course. My self-imposed deadline is the end of this month. But it might be the first week of March before I can have a complete draft for the committee to read. That will give them 3 weeks to read it and give me feedback so I have time to make changes and corrections...the university's deadline for submitting the defense paperwork and full draft of the diss. is April 15th. I'll be cutting it close!

Now if I can only mobilize my committee and get them to read the dang thing! I'm stressing about the fact that I can't get any feedback from them. No one is willing to read my dissertation to check for grammar and spelling errors either. Has anyone else run into this problem? What did you do? My DH has been a big help with reading and editing some of it for me, but I'm not sure that's enough.

I know this is a random stream of consciousness, but I just needed to share this with someone since I don't have anyone to talk about this stuff with.

[slsurface]

Originally Posted by lilgreen

I have a question... How long is the average reading list for comprehensive exams? Are we talking 200-300 books/articles? Or is it more like 100? (please say the latter!)

Welcome! Comps are very much department and discipline specific....sometimes even committee specific. In my department (in Anthropology) we have three different comp testing formats: 1) 2-eight hour closed book exams with oral defense, 2) 2-24 hour open book take home exams with oral defense, and 3) a published scientific paper. Which type of exam you have is dependent on your specialization and who is on your committee. My committee would only accept the 8 hour closed book exam. No matter which testing format, however, we all have to prepare 2 bibliographies with a minimum of 100 references in each. One bibliography covers the theoretical and methodological aspect of your dissertation research and the second covers the geographic area in which your research will be conducted. This format is nice because you choose the content of you bibs, but it is also a stumbling block for many because it is a very daunting task to choose theory, method, and region before writing your research proposal, and it is also difficult to get started building these bibs. But the idea is that these bibs will facilitate writing the research proposal and eventually the dissertation.

You should check with your department's graduate secretary or your adviser to find out the specific format for your comps. Good luck!

[Carita]

sl - do you have a writing center on campus? I would see if you can make an appt with them. That is what I did for my Master's thesis. They couldn't help with technical jargon, but at least they could spot embarrassing grammatical errors and run-on sentences.

or if you have a peer that is also finishing, maybe you can exchange documents?

lilgreen - what is an ssri? What did you take it for? hormonal imbalence?

[lilgreen]

Originally Posted by Carita

lilgreen - what is an ssri? What did you take it for? hormonal imbalence?

It's an antidepressant. I found out that I was suffering from pmdd (Premenstrual dysphoric disorder). My problem wasn't hormonal, but rather my response to normal hormonal shifts, if that makes sense.

[Carita]

that makes sense - i was thinking an ssri was a receptor inhibitor, and i had no idea how that was realted to hormones!

[missgranger]

Worth it? Frustrated grad student.

Hi all: I posted this in the general working/student mama forum, but another mama suggested posting in here.

I have reached a point where I am really not sure why I am in grad school. There is so much going on in my personal life that I'm sure it's totally coloring how I'm seeing school. Long story shortish -- I am separated from my husband because of immigration and personal issues and am here in the U.S. with two kids. I have reached ABD in my Ph.D. program, but have run out of steam with the dissertation writing itself.

I am just thinking with the economy so on the skids and the likelihood that my husband won't be contributing to my family income in the near future (he doesn't now and hasn't for a long time), I wonder if I shouldn't be on the job market trying to get anything I can find that is full-time and will pay enough to help me keep a roof over our heads and food in the kids' bellies. Right now, we're surviving on my student loans and trying to pinch every penny.

To add to the stress, my department just sent out a memo to its grad students that no more Ph.D. students will be accepted this coming year and all current MA students wanting to continue on with a Ph.D. need to consider other universities or switching programs within our university. This sounds like the department is one of the ones on the budget chopping block to me.

Should I try to write anything I can over the next couple of semesters and hope that my funding/eligibility for loans can be stretched out one more year or take my parents up on their offer to help me buy a small house in their area and start looking for employment there? My friends who are living in my parents' area are all hurting financially, too, so I don't know that job prospects are good, but I'm guessing they won't get better next year, either.

Anyone else panicking? Panic with me.

[Carita]

1) I think everyone gets this way with as an ABD - the question is - what will you do with it. If you can get a lucrative job in your field with out it, then it may make sense to move on, but in this economy, it seems unlikely.
2) How much time do you have left. If it is really only 1 year, then I would plow through. The downside is you may have to move where the PhD job is - you won't have a lot of flexibility in location probably - you may not end up near your parents. Having that PhD will overqualify you for somethings, but it will make you a better candidate for others.

Without knowing you, its hard to say, but if getting my PhD was my dream I would do this:
Massively work to get something fabulous going and subit abstracts for 2 meetings - one big prof conference, and one small one related to your discipline in the geographic area that you want to live. then NETWORK NETWORK NETWORK. You rarely get a job these days by just submitting a resume. This will position yourself in the best possible situation, and then if you get nothing - maybe some time with your parents is good. But in my field, at the very worst, networking will ensure me a postdoc which will help me bide my time until I get a faculty offer.

[missgranger]

Originally Posted by slsurface

I'm so close to finishing, yet I feel so far away right now. I've been working myself so hard the last two months. I write and do analysis for 12+ hours every day. I'm so tired today that I've got muscle spasms in my back, yuk! But the good news is that I'm almost done with Chapter 8...I hope to turn in a draft on Monday. That leaves one more chapter, the conclusions, to write and I'll be with the dissertation - excluding edits and making figures of course. My self-imposed deadline is the end of this month. But it might be the first week of March before I can have a complete draft for the committee to read. That will give them 3 weeks to read it and give me feedback so I have time to make changes and corrections...the university's deadline for submitting the defense paperwork and full draft of the diss. is April 15th. I'll be cutting it close!

Now if I can only mobilize my committee and get them to read the dang thing! I'm stressing about the fact that I can't get any feedback from them. No one is willing to read my dissertation to check for grammar and spelling errors either. Has anyone else run into this problem? What did you do? My DH has been a big help with reading and editing some of it for me, but I'm not sure that's enough.

I know this is a random stream of consciousness, but I just needed to share this with someone since I don't have anyone to talk about this stuff with.

I second the idea of the writing center or check with your university's English Dept. to see if any grad students are looking for tutoring gigs.

[debfsb]

intro: i'm debra, hi.

working on phd in religious studies.

just took my last prelim exam in the last 2 weeks. three 28 hour essay exams. DH has had a LOT of bonding time w/ DS lately! i defend these exams next friday.

then, on to dissertation proposal.

DS is 8 months. i'm really happy that i was able to do these exams this month. i'm proud of myself for that. at the same time, of course, i undercut this by thinking that DS has a hard time when i'm so busy - which is really not true since DH takes great care of him and i took breaks during my exam to nurse him. and i undercut my accomplishment by thinking there's no way i can keep working so hard b/c it requires DH to sacrifice so much time, etc.

anyway, this semester, i just want to end up ADB, with all exams and requirements done and a prospectus defended!

it's also really hard to keep good, consistent communication w/ advisor(s) after having to be on baby-schedule for 6 months. i taught a class last semester, but didn't meet w/ my advisor AT ALL. so, we'll see how he's doing at this exam defense. hopefully, i haven't fallen out of favor for lack of face time. ugh, i could go on and on... but you all know how it is.

just glad to know others are in the same boat...

[missgranger]

Originally Posted by debfsb

intro: i'm debra, hi.

working on phd in religious studies.

just took my last prelim exam in the last 2 weeks. three 28 hour essay exams. DH has had a LOT of bonding time w/ DS lately! i defend these exams next friday.

then, on to dissertation proposal.

DS is 8 months. i'm really happy that i was able to do these exams this month. i'm proud of myself for that. at the same time, of course, i undercut this by thinking that DS has a hard time when i'm so busy - which is really not true since DH takes great care of him and i took breaks during my exam to nurse him. and i undercut my accomplishment by thinking there's no way i can keep working so hard b/c it requires DH to sacrifice so much time, etc.

anyway, this semester, i just want to end up ADB, with all exams and requirements done and a prospectus defended!

it's also really hard to keep good, consistent communication w/ advisor(s) after having to be on baby-schedule for 6 months. i taught a class last semester, but didn't meet w/ my advisor AT ALL. so, we'll see how he's doing at this exam defense. hopefully, i haven't fallen out of favor for lack of face time. ugh, i could go on and on... but you all know how it is.

just glad to know others are in the same boat...

Hopefully, your advisor is supportive and understanding of life with a new baby. Don't be afraid of admitting that juggling everything is a bit difficult, and asking for advice on time management ... especially if your advisor has kids. My committee members all have children and a couple had them during their own grad school days and really have had solid advice on how to manage priorities when you're teaching and going to school and parenting.

Good luck and welcome!

[slsurface]

Well, I met with one of my committee members yesterday and learned some disturbing news. Apparently, this professor had a falling out with my committee chair and has been black-balled by the rest of the department. The easiest solution would be to remove this person from my committee. But it's not that simple. This person fulfills a departmental requirement that will not be met by anyone else. Not to mention, this person is the only member of my committee who has actually provided ANY support and mentoring! I am nearly done with my darn degree and I really don't need all this drama right now! I feel like my committee is about to implode!

On top of this, my adviser says they are too busy to meet with me and is not providing any feedback on the 8 chapters I have written and submitted :. I hardly sleep from all the stress of not knowing whether or not my committee will let me defend this semester. This is just so insane...I just had to vent and get this off my chest!

Needless to say, I really need some : sent my way!