For the past few years, I’ve been in a habit of giving birth every twenty-one months. We welcomed our sweet Evie in late November of 2007. Twenty-one months later in early September of 2009, dear Jonah joined us. And twenty-one months after that, in June of 2011, I birthed something entirely different: a dissertation. It tickles me that things just happened to turn out this way: for the past several months various people have been taken with asking me, “So, aren’t you about due for another one?” while glancing down meaningfully at my babyless midsection. And after all of the eye-rolling that I bestowed upon each and every person who asked me, I guess I was ready to give birth again. Just not to a kid.
Granted, this damn dissertation has been gestating for quite some time; in fact, I’d mark its conception at happening in late January 2008, when my topic first occurred to me and I started reviewing literature. (Yes, conceiving a dissertation is actually a lot less fun—and a lot more of a solitary activity— than conceiving a child.) So, we’re talking a whopping 42-month gestation period here. Makes the nine+ months that I carried each of my children seem like chump change. Though carrying the babies around in my ever-expanding magic belly was definitely physically harder, psychologically carrying around my dissertation caused increasing amounts of stress, discomfort, and urgency as the time of birth drew near— just like being pregnant. True, my dissertation didn’t make me have to pee in the night, but it did make me nauseous from time to time. I’m pretty sure it even left stretch marks somewhere in my brain.
And you know, babies kind of grow themselves while they’re still in the womb. I mean, there are definitely do’s and don’ts for a healthy pregnancy and all of that, but even under dire maternal circumstances, babies have continued to develop normally and on a set timetable (for example, week 11: fingernails and organ function begins. Week 20: tongue is fully formed). People who don’t even know they’re pregnant can grow a baby, for crying out loud! Dissertations, not so much. Left to their own devices, they gather dust, take up hard drive space, become outdated, and eat a gaping crevice right through your soul. Maybe writing a dissertation is more like taking care of a baby that has already been born, because you have to actually do something to it to ensure that it grows properly. Yeah, that’s probably closer.
Yet it still feels like I just gave birth, that something that has been developing within me for a long time is finally out of me. Where there once was nothing, now there is a 176-page document, and I made it. Granted, it’s definitely not as wondrous as looking down into the eyes of your newborn child and knowing that you made that. But finishing my dissertation is still a pretty okay feeling. It’s a little bit of a bummer that no one threw me a shower, unless you count the proposal meeting with my committee, and there were no cute party games or mixed nuts at that (arguably). I have received some very appreciated congratulations and well wishes, though no presents have arrived just yet (for my mailing address, please contact me).
All in all, yeah, I think this was a good thing for me to do in 2011. It seems to have given me small pieces of the fulfillment of having nurtured and birthed something without the aftermath of losing tons of sleep and having sore boobs for 6-12 months. However, upon reflection, this all does beg a question that I for one find to be rather intriguing…what the heck am I going to be up to twenty-one months from now? Guess I'll let you know come March of 2013.
Tuesday, June 28, 2011
Monday, June 20, 2011
Girl Scout Gains
I used to be a Girl Scout. Not that I was a good scout—I really wasn’t. If I remember right, I was usually late for meetings, always forgot my dues, looked jankity in my uniform because I was abysmal at arranging the various pieces, and had a tendency to be a bit on the insolent side with our leader. Even in those tender pre-tween years, I don’t know if I ever quite bought into the concept of Girl Scouts.
Regardless, Girl Scouts taught me at least one valuable lesson. It came in the form of this little ditty we used to sing: “Make new friends, but keep the old. One is silver and the other gold.” I’ve sung this tune to myself throughout the years (literally! But in my head), to remind myself that it’s okay to make new friends. I know it might seem silly that anyone would need to remind themselves of this—shouldn’t it be straightforward? For me, it hasn’t been. And I’ve often asked myself why this is.
I tend to explain this hesitation to delve into what I consider to be a “true friendship” (which perhaps I shall define in a latter post) with someone else by explaining my roots. I grew up in a town bordered by cornfields (or wheat or milo or soybeans, whatever), where the population vacillated between 650 and 700 people. My graduating class had 16 kids. Eleven of us were together through every year of school—preschool to senior year. Of that group, many of us ran around in diapers together, as our parents were friends. (I was even known to share a pacifier with one special friend.) I watched them learn to read. I watched them hammer balls over the fence playing kicksoccer. I watched them fall in love for the first time, get hurt for the first time; I laughed and cried and loved and lost with all of them. For 18 years.
It’s a special thing to be raised in this way. I wouldn’t trade it for anything. But to go out into the world beyond my hometown, where I was expected to pick up and make “friends” with people I’d never met? It was, to say the least, difficult for me. I didn’t think it was going to be this way. I was really good at meeting people, at introducing myself and striking up casual conversation. But I was really bad at taking a casual friendship to the next level. It felt like I couldn’t do that, like no matter how much I liked the person, they would never be a real friend. There wasn’t enough depth. These new people weren’t there when I’d been rejected by my eighth grade crush, they’d never driven with me on a sidewalk, they didn’t pick me first for their spelling baseball team in third grade. They didn’t know me; they couldn’t possibly. And I didn’t know how to let them know me.
Midway through college, I hit my stride. I had what psychologists might call a series of “corrective emotional experiences”—first I (accidentally) let a smaller group of folks know me, and I was surprised and grateful when they accepted me, even when I was real with them. And then I let a larger group of folks know me, when I joined a staff of resident assistants who I lived, worked, and played with. I came to know that friendships with people I’d just met could be just as meaningful—if not more so—as lifelong friendships, just in a different way. And, importantly, I learned that I was at least a somewhat likable person, which I hadn’t believed prior to college (yet I also hadn’t known that I didn’t believe it! See?! Knowing is half the battle.).
I still struggle. I still tend to take awhile to move things past superficiality in new friendships. In some situations, this has been a detriment to me. Yet in other ways, it has been a boon, because those friendships that I have taken the risk of moving forward with have been amazing. And because there are relatively few of them, I’ve been able to invest in them a great deal of emotional energy.
In my next posts, I plan to pay homage to both my silver and my gold friends, because they are both irreplaceable parts of my life story, and of me. So thanks, Girl Scouts…I guess you were good for something after all.
Regardless, Girl Scouts taught me at least one valuable lesson. It came in the form of this little ditty we used to sing: “Make new friends, but keep the old. One is silver and the other gold.” I’ve sung this tune to myself throughout the years (literally! But in my head), to remind myself that it’s okay to make new friends. I know it might seem silly that anyone would need to remind themselves of this—shouldn’t it be straightforward? For me, it hasn’t been. And I’ve often asked myself why this is.
I tend to explain this hesitation to delve into what I consider to be a “true friendship” (which perhaps I shall define in a latter post) with someone else by explaining my roots. I grew up in a town bordered by cornfields (or wheat or milo or soybeans, whatever), where the population vacillated between 650 and 700 people. My graduating class had 16 kids. Eleven of us were together through every year of school—preschool to senior year. Of that group, many of us ran around in diapers together, as our parents were friends. (I was even known to share a pacifier with one special friend.) I watched them learn to read. I watched them hammer balls over the fence playing kicksoccer. I watched them fall in love for the first time, get hurt for the first time; I laughed and cried and loved and lost with all of them. For 18 years.
It’s a special thing to be raised in this way. I wouldn’t trade it for anything. But to go out into the world beyond my hometown, where I was expected to pick up and make “friends” with people I’d never met? It was, to say the least, difficult for me. I didn’t think it was going to be this way. I was really good at meeting people, at introducing myself and striking up casual conversation. But I was really bad at taking a casual friendship to the next level. It felt like I couldn’t do that, like no matter how much I liked the person, they would never be a real friend. There wasn’t enough depth. These new people weren’t there when I’d been rejected by my eighth grade crush, they’d never driven with me on a sidewalk, they didn’t pick me first for their spelling baseball team in third grade. They didn’t know me; they couldn’t possibly. And I didn’t know how to let them know me.
Midway through college, I hit my stride. I had what psychologists might call a series of “corrective emotional experiences”—first I (accidentally) let a smaller group of folks know me, and I was surprised and grateful when they accepted me, even when I was real with them. And then I let a larger group of folks know me, when I joined a staff of resident assistants who I lived, worked, and played with. I came to know that friendships with people I’d just met could be just as meaningful—if not more so—as lifelong friendships, just in a different way. And, importantly, I learned that I was at least a somewhat likable person, which I hadn’t believed prior to college (yet I also hadn’t known that I didn’t believe it! See?! Knowing is half the battle.).
I still struggle. I still tend to take awhile to move things past superficiality in new friendships. In some situations, this has been a detriment to me. Yet in other ways, it has been a boon, because those friendships that I have taken the risk of moving forward with have been amazing. And because there are relatively few of them, I’ve been able to invest in them a great deal of emotional energy.
In my next posts, I plan to pay homage to both my silver and my gold friends, because they are both irreplaceable parts of my life story, and of me. So thanks, Girl Scouts…I guess you were good for something after all.
Wednesday, June 15, 2011
On being a defective woman
Okay, I need you to be honest with me here. Dig deep if you have to. Have you ever done something, said something, felt something that made you feel like you were somehow transgressing on your gender? As if somehow, whatever you did made you that you were *less* of a woman or *less* of a man?
A couple of months ago one of my male friends jokingly asked me if I’d do some ironing for him. I laughed at him, and my amusement was twofold: first of all, it’s laughable that he’d ask me to do this for him. (Guess he hadn’t seen me: sporting my awesome, bright green “Please pass the Gender Equity” t-shirt? Sitting on the UNL Chancellor’s Commission for the Status of Women for two years? Critically analyzing gender messages in every effing commercial, ever, because I can’t/won’t turn “feminist brain” off?) Second, I’m terrible at ironing. I use the “wrinkle release” setting on my clothes dryer rather than iron my stuff.
So I laugh at this friend, but what do I say to him? Well, first I chide him for asking and tell him to do his own damn ironing. I ask why he didn’t ask one of the other boys to do his bidding. The next thing out of my mouth: “Anyway, I can’t iron. I guess I’m a defective woman.” And we all laughed and it was all sunshine and rainbows over cocktails, and it was a joke, but in hindsight…was it a bonafide anxiety slipping out of my mouth, albeit couched in sarcasm?
You see, bias (which would include racism and sexism, among other things) has a funny way of being implicit, which is cognitive psychology jargon for “so deeply ingrained into our minds that we don’t even have control over it.” Explicitly, I most definitely strive for equality and attempt to battle oppression across multiple domains. However, those firmly implanted nasty little implicit prejudices come tumbling out of my psyche sometimes, unwelcome as they might be. (Think you’re above racism, sexism, religious bias? I encourage you to go to https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/demo/takeatest.html , try some of the tests, and see how they come out. Very few of us are immune to implicit -isms.)
Gender-wise, this implicit stuff really bites me in the ass sometimes. As in when I feel that the disorganization of our home reflects that I am some kind of organic snafu of a woman, some aberration of nature. (This is demoralizing to admit. I cringe as I write this.) As in when I internally feel like an utter failure when I think about all of the domestic stuff that my mom and my grandma were able to do that I really suck at. As in how awful I sometimes feel in acknowledging that I have little aspiration to be a stay-at-home mom because I love my work and enjoy having a professional identity. Explicitly, I can self-soothe by reminding myself that there’s no right or wrong way to be a woman, that I’m not defective, and that I can be whatever kind of woman that I want to be and she will be great. Implicitly…shades of self-loathing and guilt rage on. Damn you, generations of societal brainwashing.
I think I’m on the winning end of this, though. I’m well aware of some of those ugly, embarrassing implicit beliefs that run so counter to the beliefs that I explicitly hold dear, and knowing is half of the battle (thanks for the wisdom, GI Joe). And I’m not going to stand for them. I’m going to continue to stand up to them, to make conscious and concerted efforts to transcend them. So take that, brain. And by the way, screw you, social convention. This woman is too awesome to be defective.
A couple of months ago one of my male friends jokingly asked me if I’d do some ironing for him. I laughed at him, and my amusement was twofold: first of all, it’s laughable that he’d ask me to do this for him. (Guess he hadn’t seen me: sporting my awesome, bright green “Please pass the Gender Equity” t-shirt? Sitting on the UNL Chancellor’s Commission for the Status of Women for two years? Critically analyzing gender messages in every effing commercial, ever, because I can’t/won’t turn “feminist brain” off?) Second, I’m terrible at ironing. I use the “wrinkle release” setting on my clothes dryer rather than iron my stuff.
So I laugh at this friend, but what do I say to him? Well, first I chide him for asking and tell him to do his own damn ironing. I ask why he didn’t ask one of the other boys to do his bidding. The next thing out of my mouth: “Anyway, I can’t iron. I guess I’m a defective woman.” And we all laughed and it was all sunshine and rainbows over cocktails, and it was a joke, but in hindsight…was it a bonafide anxiety slipping out of my mouth, albeit couched in sarcasm?
You see, bias (which would include racism and sexism, among other things) has a funny way of being implicit, which is cognitive psychology jargon for “so deeply ingrained into our minds that we don’t even have control over it.” Explicitly, I most definitely strive for equality and attempt to battle oppression across multiple domains. However, those firmly implanted nasty little implicit prejudices come tumbling out of my psyche sometimes, unwelcome as they might be. (Think you’re above racism, sexism, religious bias? I encourage you to go to
Gender-wise, this implicit stuff really bites me in the ass sometimes. As in when I feel that the disorganization of our home reflects that I am some kind of organic snafu of a woman, some aberration of nature. (This is demoralizing to admit. I cringe as I write this.) As in when I internally feel like an utter failure when I think about all of the domestic stuff that my mom and my grandma were able to do that I really suck at. As in how awful I sometimes feel in acknowledging that I have little aspiration to be a stay-at-home mom because I love my work and enjoy having a professional identity. Explicitly, I can self-soothe by reminding myself that there’s no right or wrong way to be a woman, that I’m not defective, and that I can be whatever kind of woman that I want to be and she will be great. Implicitly…shades of self-loathing and guilt rage on. Damn you, generations of societal brainwashing.
I think I’m on the winning end of this, though. I’m well aware of some of those ugly, embarrassing implicit beliefs that run so counter to the beliefs that I explicitly hold dear, and knowing is half of the battle (thanks for the wisdom, GI Joe). And I’m not going to stand for them. I’m going to continue to stand up to them, to make conscious and concerted efforts to transcend them. So take that, brain. And by the way, screw you, social convention. This woman is too awesome to be defective.
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