I called myself a PhD student to non-academicians for the first time today, specifically a bunch of Latino teens. They reminded me why I'm putting myself through this. This first month (almost) of school has been subtly but incessantly rough. The people are new, the environment is new, the competing priorities are new. I feel out of place, not because I don't think I belong (I'm comfortable enough in my academic accomplishments and capabilities to know I deserve to be here), but mostly because I don't really identify with the label of academic. I'd rather talk about the sloppy play of the Redskins' offensive line this past weekend than the latest documentary. I spend a lot of time thinking about how to convey research findings to the general public because I see it as a measure of success the same way others see p values and impact factors. I'm at an elite school. I feel an underlying tension of competition in my new cohort (to varying degrees depending on the individual) that puts me on edge, not because I can't compete but because I thought the competing was over, at least for a little while. We just got here and I'm already tired. But I digress. These teens today, who through the project are eloquently conveying things I've struggled for decades to put into words, reminded me today that it's my non-academic perspective that adds something important to discussions. They reminded me that they rarely see people who look like them in the academy. I can actually open up dialogue both with my presence and my mannerisms in a way that not many others can. I feel like I have to put in full battle armor everyday as I head to campus and yes, that's tiring. I hope that feeling starts to subside soon, but it might not. As long as I get to engage with communities in a meaningful way during my doctoral training, I think I can hang in there for a little while longer.
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We're three weeks into the semester and I'm still searching for that foothold that will help me feel like I have my bearings. Something (anything at this point) that will start to set that rhythm for the semester so I stop feeling like I'm trying to balance a bunch of spinning plates. I feel simultaneously busy and not. I only have three classes this semester, so things appear deceivingly simple. I only have 20 hours/week of assistantship to do, which also sounds completely doable. But really I also have the independent study working on a project I LOVE with my advisor. It feels like a side project, is registered as a class, and has a hold over me like a job. Oh, and there's the contracting that I'm still doing with the DC office, which is currently my biggest source of income. And publications I should be working on to position myself for whatever teaching/post-doc position I want at the end of this degree. Aside from the classes, most of my time is unstructured, which is one of the things that I appreciate about the academy - the ability to set my own hours for most things. But MAN is it harder than I thought. Meetings are scheduled when I should be working. 20 hours feels like a HUGE burden, even though I'm only in the office like three times a week. Didn't I used to work 30 hours a week on a regular basis during my master's...? I'm trying my hardest to get through the literal volumes of reading during the week in an effort to protect my weekends for rejuvenation (read: laundry, dishes, and the contracting gig). So, assuming this trend can be continued, I have my weekends free and I don't have to be on campus until late morning most days. This sounds like THE LIFE, right? Except I was so tired at the end of this week that I passed all the way out for like two hours almost immediately after getting home on Friday. Very little in my life right now is mandatory. I don't have to publish two articles my first semester as a doc student, I'm just trying to get my thesis manuscript out of my life so it's unfinishedness stops stressing me out (that's one) and get caught up in one of my favorite project teams (that's the other). I don't have to participate in any extracurricular activities, but I would like to feel connected to my campus and know it will help me professionally. I don't have to go to a single talk, but man am I super interested in this lunch thing coming up next week on methods for engaging communities. And the side gig? Definitely not required, but I've gotten it into my head to pay off all my debt now so I have less to worry about the rest of the years. Plus, its hard to let go of something that has such potential to be useful for a wide range of people and just needs people willing to execute things thoughtfully and thoroughly. Taking time to just LIVE on the weekends shouldn't stress me out, but today it has definitely been hard to make my way through Ugly Betty episodes when I keep thinking about the upcoming presentation for one class, the untouched thesis manuscript, my growing pile of laundry -- well, maybe not so much the laundry... That's what's closet doors are for, after all. But you get the idea. I want to do a lot, including be kind to myself. I think this means setting my alarm earlier on weekdays. [insert the BIGGEST of sighs] That and maybe get a better handle on my schedule in general so I feel less like time is trying to not-so-subtly power walk away from me... Luckily, my sister is almost as big a fan of quotes as I am and texted me this less than an hour ago: Rest if you must, but don't you quit. In class today, we ended up talking about communicating our research to people. One person said she wanted to learn how to talk about it in a way that other people understood and jokingly mentioned blogging. I interjected with just to actually explicitly talk about the article I read a few months before coming down here that suggested doctoral students do just that - blog as a means of not only honing their own voice/craft, but also as a means of practicing that translation. Someone else then made a counter argument that she didn't necessarily think that was something that should fall onto her to do; that she felt better suited to be that complex thinker (sic) and let the people specializing in health communications worry about translation for lay audiences. The professor then cosigned this, talking about how she's not naturally an off-the-cuff paraphraser of her research and she is definitely more comfortable in that more deliberate and methodical realm of scientist-to-scientist communication. My initial reaction was one of surprise and confusion. Why wouldn't you want to talk to broad audiences about your research? Shouldn't the public matter in public health?? Pump the brakes there, self. Your research interests lie specifically in that science-society interface. Of course you think that's important, you want to make your home there. Not everyone is focused on that. More importantly, not everyone needs to or should be Focused on that knowledge translation. For some people, that's not a strength or even a handy skill. And that's ok. There's plenty of work to go around both at that public-meets-health-researcher boundary and miles away from it in either direction for it to not be a necessary part of everyone's doctoral journey. Just like not everyone needs to learn qualitative methods and not everyone needs to learn demography, this is another thing that is specific to your biased researcher perspective. It's just not that serious. Kudos, school. I hadn't thought about the fact that translation, interpretation, and communication are not within everyone's top 10 list of things to care about. Well, I did say that I wanted to use doctoral study as a way of consciously considering my own biases when conducting research... I guess part of the question for me then is why should my research matter? Obviously, I think it does in an intuitive way, but it's...not...actually...intuitive. Hmm. To me, this kind of knowledge translation matters because it informs how we develop health education curricula, the kinds of health messages we should (and already do) put out there, the health perceptions as social norms that we as a field help to co-create. The more we know about our impacts on health beliefs, perceptions, norms, and behaviors, the better we can tailor health messages to create the kinds of outcomes we want and the better we get at minimizing the unintended consequences we don't want. Hmm. That's better than I've ever been able to articulate my research interests (and motivation behind it) I think Assumptions shattered in PhD school so far: 1. Not so bad for halfway through my second week. Orientation ended a few hours ago and the start of classes is a few hours away. I've officially begun. And I can't sleep in part because I'm still trying to process the fact that I now carry with me this PhD student label. It was present in orientation, where it colored introductions and conversations with master's level students and faculty. It was present this entire past year back around friends and family I grew up with in a world far removed from the one that I've entered into now. And I don't really know what to make of it...
I can't sleep in part because I'm trying to a) come to terms with the fact that this new label colors people's perceptions of me, b) figure out what that means for how I perceive myself, and c) think about how that all plays into how I will approach the coursework, training, and research here. During lunch at orientation, I was asked two different things that have me up with the crickets and darkness right now - how my experience at the private school differed from public institutions that I both went to and am not at, and what my research interests are. The first one should be easy to answer, right? I can easily say sexual and reproductive health or sexual health communications. But neither of those rings true. I'm currently conceptualizing it as the intersection between health communications, sexual/reproductive health, and social justice. But what does that even mean? That description feels both very niche and very nebulous. And as someone who thinks a lot about how information is conveyed, it makes me uneasy to not be able to clearly define my research interests. But I can't leave out social justice any more than I can leave out communications. Yes, I'm interested in the sexual and reproductive health of populations. But saying just that feels disingenuous. I can't even say reproductive justice because I've known people that work in RJ and they're amazing people who have a singularity of focus that just isn't what I want to spend the rest of my life researching and talking about. I'm interested in how health professionals help to co-create social norms around sexual and reproductive health - how we talk about SRP, how the biases of public health color our messaging, how we unintentionally convey judgment, blame, and disempowerment in our health promotion campaigns. So my social justice and communications sides require me to sit in the tension of not having but really wanting that tagline/proverb/slogan to answer that question - what do you want to research? Which brings me back to the other question of the day that has me wishing my dog could respond when I talk to him - how was my private school experience different? During lunch I said something about how there was less diversity, there were administrative things that were done with good intentions that I fundamentally disagreed with because I saw them as culturally incompetent. But immediately after (and probably in part during) that discussion, I couldn't help but think about how that response was colored by what I was thinking about - my current institution's intentionality about diversity and inclusion, what those differences mean, and what I'm excited about when it comes to the current endeavor. I also said in the beginning of my response that I had a great experience, in part because I had a really great cohort. I wish I had also talked about the importance of being in that privileged private school environment and how being fully present in that tension between the culture of school and my own personal world views was a vital part of my learning experience. I wish I had talked about how part of what made my cohort so great was that I was surrounded by people that also felt that tension and were willing to engage with it and one another in a way that I wouldn't change for the world. I also wish I had talked about the faculty that helped open up my ways of thinking about it and health as social justice - the ones that gave me tools and resources for engaging in that tension and its implications for scholarship in a way I never would have on my own and changed the direction of my research interests in a way that makes it hard for me to answer simple questions. Public health has become problematized in my head now, which is both great and scary because that places me as part of the problem. Soooo.... Classes start in a few days. I woke up this morning generally pretty excited about finally starting, increased interaction with other humans, and, you know, life. I even made a Target run bright and early. AND Ikea should finally be delivering some more furniture tomorrow! #winning Somewhere during the day, it occurred to me that I should read through this article for the assistantship since its supposed to form the basis of a call center performance evaluation report I'm going to have to fix. Ok, I can do this. It's a biostatistics article, so not my area of expertise per se, but I know things. I understand call centers. Some have even said evaluation is my thing. SAS and I are generally on good terms. It's cool, I got this. I had to nap about halfway through. Calculations are hard. After said nap, I woke up ready to plow through the rest of the article (and possibly take copious notes and make a list of questions). I will win, article, just watch. While I was drooling on the couch, I got an email from the advanced research methods instructor. Woo, learning!!! Or... umm... really? ALL of that for just the one class? <insert sad/worried face> The title of one of the books: Experimental and Quasi-Experimental Designs for Generalized Causal Inference. (pause for effect) Now don't get me wrong, I know what all these words mean and can even guess at the general content of the book. I've even told one to two people that I like study design. But MAN, I've been out of school more than a year at this point - don't just throw things like this at me right after a nap. I wasn't ready. My biggest concerns over the past year have been where to go for happy hour and if orange really is the new black... So I took to the texts. A fellow starting doctoral student laughed because, well, we've all been there. Granted, we should all laugh at my freak outs, but where's my positive reinforcement??? In my sister, obvi. She's kind of magical and reminded me that I told her not so long ago that fear in the beginning is a good thing - it means you're trying something a little bigger than you think you can handle, hence you're taking on just enough. Hmph. Using my own words against me... Then again, this is why I love her and the rest of my support system. Equal parts mocking and positivity, they give me just enough nudge/shove to keep me from running and hiding under the covers (that my dog has likely snuck under at this very moment). I often say I'm really just regular, which at times makes me wonder about my ability to take on new challenges since I keep expecting to reach the limit of my capacity to learn. Maybe I'll hit the ceiling one day. Maybe they'll keep nudging me through to the end of this journey. For now, there's really nowhere to go but forward. Epilogue: I stand corrected. The dog had not snuck onto the bed. This time. It simultaneously feels like I've been in my new apartment about 15 minutes and far more than the roughly 15 days that I've actually been a resident of this state. While I thought I had given myself more than enough time to get settled (and even get a little bored), the beginning of the semester is barreling toward me like a runaway train. I secured a tuition-paying assistantship (THANK YOU BABY JESUS) and am trying to get the paperwork completed and submitted before next week's tuition payment deadline. Everyone except me is handling the small time frame all nonchalantly like its no big deal. NOTE: incoming doctoral students are not the most laid back people in the world. We will repeatedly call, email, text, or otherwise borderline harass you if we don't find out information we need in a timely manner. Its just in our nature. Speaking of next week, though, orientation is about eight days away... And then it all starts to happen rather rapidly. I'll be a doctoral student. Hmm. That's a thing... After all this time wanting it, it'll actually be... real. Eventually, it might even start to feel regular. Then I'll be over it. Then I'll graduate. Nope, not scary at all. Maybe for now, I'll just let myself be excited/scared/nervous/anxious/all-the-feels about this new adventure in this new little college town where I know approximately 3.4 people so far. And work on finally making it to the farmer's market. Waiting at the DMV to take my test (eek!) for a new driver's license. My couch gets delivered tomorrow! My bookcases won't be here until next week, though... So, I'm slowly getting settled into the new digs and trying to get myself together before classes start in a few weeks. I've got to solidify the assistantship stuff so my tuition is paid and I can breathe easier, but overall, things are going pretty well according to schedule. It's definitely far more rural around these parts than I'm used to... Just past the shopping center next to my house are farms. Legit fields, livestock, and barns farms. And that's all there is surrounding this little college town... I have yet to explore the closest city, but I'm hopeful that there will be actual people there since I'm pretty sure have this town's population is at the DMV with me right now. Luckily, school will put me in regular contact with more people and my cohort should be a decent (double-digit) size. High apple pie in the sky hopes. Meanwhile, this wait is making me a little sleepy/delirious... Packing up the last few days before the big move... Its mostly exciting, mildly annoying (not bad considering how much I abhor the act of moving), and even a touch sad. I've spent the last couple of weeks trying to soak up all the family time I could before I leave the state again in anticipation of not seeing them again for a while. I can't wait to get to the new apartment, get residency stuff out of the way, and nest for a touch before classes start. This will, after all, be the longest I'm in a single place in quite some time. So much... and all of it pretty exciting. 😊 The beginning of a thing is always full of such bright and shiny possibility. Found the apartment (it was actually the first one I looked at) and even have a fully executed lease in my possession...! I'm very excited about the place that seems like I can stay for the duration of the program AND there's a dog park in the complex!! Now I'm at t-minus 2 weeks before move in and I'm a bundle of nerves and excitement. Things to do this month:
Oh, and I need to find an assistantship so that tuition is paid and that I can pay rent for the length of the lease. Details. 😉 Oh, and I think I might have work-related duties somewhere in there, too... It's pre-dawn in the college town that will be my home for the next few years and I can't sleep - in large part because I'm too excited/anxious about apartment hunting today (and also a little because we spent hours at the hotel pool yesterday and subsequently all passed out super early). I've managed to narrow it down to 5-6 places to look at and really just want them to keep unnatural hours to fit my needs (and desire for more hotel pool time). Luckily, I don't have a vested interest in any of today's World Cup games, so it seems even the soccer gods are with me. It's really real. I'm coming down here. To live. And study. And become what my sister refers to as "a degree doctor". Desired apartment: 2 bedroom, one bath (the separate office that has revolutionized my life and work the past couple years is a must) that is reasonable for a grad student budget. Aaaaahhhhh!!!! |