I assume you all know about the passing of Steve Jobs. Since his death earlier this month, his face has appeared on every magazine in the country, it seems. In the tech world, he has long had a very nuanced and mixed reputation -- smart, impulsive, controlling, brilliant, obnoxious, insufferable. The news reports this month seem to be focusing exclusively on the positive, heralding him as the Thomas Edison of our time. Like him or hate him, he had an undeniably huge impact on the technological world. It was a sad loss for my field.
Within days of Jobs' passing, the tech world lost another icon, a man named Dennis Ritchie. If you don't work in technology, you likely don't know Ritchie. He wasn't flashy like Jobs was. He didn't lead a company or have much of a reputation outside of technology circles, but he had an enormous impact on the technology that allowed someone like Jobs to create the products that we all take for granted today. Ritchie was instrumental in creating the C programming language, which provides the basis for much of the software in use today, including much of the work done at Apple. Ritchie also helped to create the Unix operating system, the concepts for which provide the underpinnings of both Linux and MacOSX. If you study computer systems, you start with the work of Dennis Ritchie.
Me, I'm not a computer systems person. My field is artificial intelligence. And I just got news that the father of artificial intelligence, John McCarthy, passed away this morning. (As of me writing this, it doesn't even seem to have hit major news organizations yet, but it will.) You're even less likely to know John McCarthy's name than Dennis Ritchie, yet he is a giant in the field. McCarthy literally created the field of artificial intelligence, even coining the name at a conference he helped to organize to bring together people who had started to think about the field, some 50 years ago. And he created the Lisp programming language, a language that many people in computer science still view as the purest, most beautiful programming language ever created. I learned C before learning Lisp, but Lisp was the first language that really spoke to me and made me realize the potential of computer science. Have you been hearing about how Jobs was a genius for adding Siri to the iPhone? Siri is only possible because of McCarthy. I have probably read more work by McCarthy than any other computer scientist. I heard him speak numerous times. I had lunch with him a few times. I consulted with him about my dissertation. He was huge in the field, and huge for me personally.
A very sad day, capping a very sad month. RIP John.
Showing posts with label CS. Show all posts
Showing posts with label CS. Show all posts
Monday, October 24, 2011
Wednesday, June 24, 2009
Advisor A, continued
Continuing the story from here.
So, funding for the Fall and beyond was looking iffy, but AdvisorA was in town for a conference, so we agreed that we would talk about it in person. I hadn't been planning to attend the conference, but I arranged to drive to the conference, meet with AdvisorA between her sessions, and have S pick LL up at daycare, all so that I would have a block of time to talk with AdvisorA in person, for the first time in five months. When I got to the conference, I looked around for AdvisorA and couldn't find her. I finally found one of our colleagues, who informed me that AdvisorA had left the conference to do some personal errands, and wouldn't be back until the end of the day, in time to give a talk and then leave again. And no, she didn't bother to let me know, even though she knew that I was making a special trip just to talk with her.
So, I wasted a day sitting around waiting for her, because I wasn't allowed to attend the conference (mainly because AdvisorA didn't want to pay the registration fee for me) but I needed to be able to corner her in person and find another time to talk, whenever she managed to get there. At the very end of the day, I managed to get ~15 minutes with her. And that's when things fell apart.
The conversation had two parts. One part was about my progress, and one part was about money. On the "progress" side, she told me that she has been disappointed that I haven't been making more progress the past few months. And yes, I acknowledged to her that my progress has, indeed, been much slower than it used to be. (In the past, AdvisorA has mentioned on numerous occasions that I'm generally more productive than any student she'd ever worked with, and I'd already accomplished more by my third year than most PhD students accomplish by the time they graduate -- typically six years.) She tried to frame this as an argument that, as my advisor, she should only have to fund me for a fixed period of time, and if I'm too slow to graduate during that time, then it's my problem.
I reminded her that I'm still going to graduate in six calendar years, which is exactly average for someone who works straight through my program, but I'm actually faster (and cheaper!) than most because she has never before paid for my summers and she didn't have to pay for my maternity leave of absence. Basically, instead of working at 100% pace for six years, I worked at 130% pace for four years, took less than half a year off, worked at 50% pace for another half year, then plan on doing 100% for the last one. I understand that it sucks to be going through that 50%-output period right now, but I'm doing my best. And I would have thought that four years of 130% pace would have bought me a bit of good will.
She told me that she expected me to be back up to 130% as soon as I returned from maternity leave. And she expected me to have gotten some work done during the maternity leave as well. (??? No idea why should would have thought this. Especially since we discussed it at length several times during my pregnancy, because I wanted to be absolutely sure that there would be no misunderstandings on this point.) And then she commented that she discussed this with BossLady when they ran into each other a few weeks ago, and she implied that the two of them (and by extension, lots of other people) are disappointed with me right now. (I'm going to jump right by the fact that AdvisorA ran into BossLady, and the first thing she did was say, "Don't you think that Nicky is being really lazy recently?") I asked what BossLady said, because I couldn't believe that BossLady would have agreed with that sentiment, and AdvisorA admitted that BossLady had actually gently corrected her. (Apparently, BossLady laughed, shook her head, told AdvisorA that she's a moron for thinking that a woman with an infant would be back up to complete output anytime in the first year, and then spent some additional time praising me and telling AdvisorA how lucky she is to have me for a student. I'm not sure whether it helped or hurt, but it's nice to know that BossLady has my back.) So, given that AdvisorB is also extremely understanding about the situation, it's really only AdvisorA who has a problem with what's going on right now.
At one point, AdvisorA went on a rant about how silly it is that she should be inconvenienced because of my personal choices. As if everyone's personal choices don't inconvenience other people all the time. And as if having children was an odd, screwball thing that hardly anybody does. (And, what I definitely did not say out loud: as if her moving cross country didn't inconvenience me, too, but I just sucked it up and congratulated her and wrote her a recommendation to help her get the job anyway, because I believe that people need to do what's right for them with their personal lives. But whatever.)
And you know, I get that the world doesn't revolve around me, and having a baby is a choice that I made and I can't expect everyone to make lots of allowances just for me. But at the same time, I also believe that having a baby is a normal part of life, that it's the price you pay for employing human beings. And I'm also angry, because in my particular field, students take leaves of absence ALL THE TIME for other personal purposes, like starting a company or working somewhere for a year or traveling the world, and nobody blinks when they interrupt things to leave for several months and then come back and spend two months talking about it, before finally getting back to work. My leaving to have a baby isn't all that different, except that yes, I continue to take care of the baby even after I returned to work. But AdvisorA never had children, and just kept making side remarks about women and choices and careers and being taken seriously. And it pisses me off.
At this point, AdvisorA shifted the conversation to be purely about money. Ignoring all of the you're-not-productive-enough excuses that she'd just laid out, she now explained that she'd love to fund me, but she doesn't have money. "But I heard that you have money from X, Y, and Z?" Oh. Um. Correction. She has money, but she can't transfer it to my university. "But you've transferred it in the past, what's changed?" Oh. Um. Correction. She can transfer the money, but she loses a lot in the transfer, so she doesn't want to do it that way. "But I thought that you worked all of that out with AdvisorB last year, to make the transfer easier?" Oh. Um. Maybe. Then she changed arguments again, and started saying bland, generic things about the bad economy. And she said something about maybe I can just spend next year being a TA, or maybe I can find a rich friend to give me a grant (!). And then she had to leave.
So, right now, nothing is resolved. I have funding through September, but I have no idea what's going to happen after that. The backup backup plan is that I have to TA. The problem is that being a TA is a huge time suck. PhD students in my department are advised to get all of their TA responsibilities finished in the first few years, because they know that it is nearly impossible to make progress on a thesis while being a TA, so they don't want students having to teach during their final year or two. So, while being a TA for a semester would solve the funding problem for a semester, it doesn't actually solve anything long-term, because it would probably also push out my graduation date by a semester. TA or not, I will need one full year of non-teaching-contingent funding.
The backup backup backup plan would be that I officially take a leave of absence from school, so that nobody has to pay anything for me, but I actually keep working on my thesis during that time, and then I enroll for just one semester so that I can submit and defend the thesis. But this would mean not getting paid for a year, while still paying for childcare.
As for other suggestions: No, talking to my department chair or dean won't do any good, because AdvisorA doesn't work here anymore. She has lots of moral obligations to me, given our history and verbal agreements, but no real ones. She has every right in the world to stop working with me and focus on students at her own school. And no, transferring is not an option, either. I'm currently in (arguably) the best department in the country for my particular field, and I've spent five years working my butt off to get a PhD from here. There's nothing to gain from transferring this late in the process.
In a collision of bad timing, AdvisorB is on vacation right now, so I can't discuss all of this with him. For now, I'm hoping like hell that either AdvisorA will come to her senses and snap out of whatever shitty mood made her want to screw me over like this, or that AdvisorB will find a way to step in and resolve things. I've also started going through our personal finances very very carefully with S, to see exactly how horrible it would be for me to stop bringing home any income for a year while I finish. There are definitely some places where we could trim expenses, and between that and dipping into our savings, we could probably make it work for a limited amount of time. But I'm unbelievably bitter that we might have to do it that way.
In the middle of all of this, LL turned 9 months old, visited with his out-of-town cousins, went to the beach for the first time, ate his first cheerios, and sprouted three teeth. So a much happier post is on its way later in the week.
So, funding for the Fall and beyond was looking iffy, but AdvisorA was in town for a conference, so we agreed that we would talk about it in person. I hadn't been planning to attend the conference, but I arranged to drive to the conference, meet with AdvisorA between her sessions, and have S pick LL up at daycare, all so that I would have a block of time to talk with AdvisorA in person, for the first time in five months. When I got to the conference, I looked around for AdvisorA and couldn't find her. I finally found one of our colleagues, who informed me that AdvisorA had left the conference to do some personal errands, and wouldn't be back until the end of the day, in time to give a talk and then leave again. And no, she didn't bother to let me know, even though she knew that I was making a special trip just to talk with her.
So, I wasted a day sitting around waiting for her, because I wasn't allowed to attend the conference (mainly because AdvisorA didn't want to pay the registration fee for me) but I needed to be able to corner her in person and find another time to talk, whenever she managed to get there. At the very end of the day, I managed to get ~15 minutes with her. And that's when things fell apart.
The conversation had two parts. One part was about my progress, and one part was about money. On the "progress" side, she told me that she has been disappointed that I haven't been making more progress the past few months. And yes, I acknowledged to her that my progress has, indeed, been much slower than it used to be. (In the past, AdvisorA has mentioned on numerous occasions that I'm generally more productive than any student she'd ever worked with, and I'd already accomplished more by my third year than most PhD students accomplish by the time they graduate -- typically six years.) She tried to frame this as an argument that, as my advisor, she should only have to fund me for a fixed period of time, and if I'm too slow to graduate during that time, then it's my problem.
I reminded her that I'm still going to graduate in six calendar years, which is exactly average for someone who works straight through my program, but I'm actually faster (and cheaper!) than most because she has never before paid for my summers and she didn't have to pay for my maternity leave of absence. Basically, instead of working at 100% pace for six years, I worked at 130% pace for four years, took less than half a year off, worked at 50% pace for another half year, then plan on doing 100% for the last one. I understand that it sucks to be going through that 50%-output period right now, but I'm doing my best. And I would have thought that four years of 130% pace would have bought me a bit of good will.
She told me that she expected me to be back up to 130% as soon as I returned from maternity leave. And she expected me to have gotten some work done during the maternity leave as well. (??? No idea why should would have thought this. Especially since we discussed it at length several times during my pregnancy, because I wanted to be absolutely sure that there would be no misunderstandings on this point.) And then she commented that she discussed this with BossLady when they ran into each other a few weeks ago, and she implied that the two of them (and by extension, lots of other people) are disappointed with me right now. (I'm going to jump right by the fact that AdvisorA ran into BossLady, and the first thing she did was say, "Don't you think that Nicky is being really lazy recently?") I asked what BossLady said, because I couldn't believe that BossLady would have agreed with that sentiment, and AdvisorA admitted that BossLady had actually gently corrected her. (Apparently, BossLady laughed, shook her head, told AdvisorA that she's a moron for thinking that a woman with an infant would be back up to complete output anytime in the first year, and then spent some additional time praising me and telling AdvisorA how lucky she is to have me for a student. I'm not sure whether it helped or hurt, but it's nice to know that BossLady has my back.) So, given that AdvisorB is also extremely understanding about the situation, it's really only AdvisorA who has a problem with what's going on right now.
At one point, AdvisorA went on a rant about how silly it is that she should be inconvenienced because of my personal choices. As if everyone's personal choices don't inconvenience other people all the time. And as if having children was an odd, screwball thing that hardly anybody does. (And, what I definitely did not say out loud: as if her moving cross country didn't inconvenience me, too, but I just sucked it up and congratulated her and wrote her a recommendation to help her get the job anyway, because I believe that people need to do what's right for them with their personal lives. But whatever.)
And you know, I get that the world doesn't revolve around me, and having a baby is a choice that I made and I can't expect everyone to make lots of allowances just for me. But at the same time, I also believe that having a baby is a normal part of life, that it's the price you pay for employing human beings. And I'm also angry, because in my particular field, students take leaves of absence ALL THE TIME for other personal purposes, like starting a company or working somewhere for a year or traveling the world, and nobody blinks when they interrupt things to leave for several months and then come back and spend two months talking about it, before finally getting back to work. My leaving to have a baby isn't all that different, except that yes, I continue to take care of the baby even after I returned to work. But AdvisorA never had children, and just kept making side remarks about women and choices and careers and being taken seriously. And it pisses me off.
At this point, AdvisorA shifted the conversation to be purely about money. Ignoring all of the you're-not-productive-enough excuses that she'd just laid out, she now explained that she'd love to fund me, but she doesn't have money. "But I heard that you have money from X, Y, and Z?" Oh. Um. Correction. She has money, but she can't transfer it to my university. "But you've transferred it in the past, what's changed?" Oh. Um. Correction. She can transfer the money, but she loses a lot in the transfer, so she doesn't want to do it that way. "But I thought that you worked all of that out with AdvisorB last year, to make the transfer easier?" Oh. Um. Maybe. Then she changed arguments again, and started saying bland, generic things about the bad economy. And she said something about maybe I can just spend next year being a TA, or maybe I can find a rich friend to give me a grant (!). And then she had to leave.
So, right now, nothing is resolved. I have funding through September, but I have no idea what's going to happen after that. The backup backup plan is that I have to TA. The problem is that being a TA is a huge time suck. PhD students in my department are advised to get all of their TA responsibilities finished in the first few years, because they know that it is nearly impossible to make progress on a thesis while being a TA, so they don't want students having to teach during their final year or two. So, while being a TA for a semester would solve the funding problem for a semester, it doesn't actually solve anything long-term, because it would probably also push out my graduation date by a semester. TA or not, I will need one full year of non-teaching-contingent funding.
The backup backup backup plan would be that I officially take a leave of absence from school, so that nobody has to pay anything for me, but I actually keep working on my thesis during that time, and then I enroll for just one semester so that I can submit and defend the thesis. But this would mean not getting paid for a year, while still paying for childcare.
As for other suggestions: No, talking to my department chair or dean won't do any good, because AdvisorA doesn't work here anymore. She has lots of moral obligations to me, given our history and verbal agreements, but no real ones. She has every right in the world to stop working with me and focus on students at her own school. And no, transferring is not an option, either. I'm currently in (arguably) the best department in the country for my particular field, and I've spent five years working my butt off to get a PhD from here. There's nothing to gain from transferring this late in the process.
In a collision of bad timing, AdvisorB is on vacation right now, so I can't discuss all of this with him. For now, I'm hoping like hell that either AdvisorA will come to her senses and snap out of whatever shitty mood made her want to screw me over like this, or that AdvisorB will find a way to step in and resolve things. I've also started going through our personal finances very very carefully with S, to see exactly how horrible it would be for me to stop bringing home any income for a year while I finish. There are definitely some places where we could trim expenses, and between that and dipping into our savings, we could probably make it work for a limited amount of time. But I'm unbelievably bitter that we might have to do it that way.
In the middle of all of this, LL turned 9 months old, visited with his out-of-town cousins, went to the beach for the first time, ate his first cheerios, and sprouted three teeth. So a much happier post is on its way later in the week.
Wednesday, June 17, 2009
Follow-Up
I am extremely short on time, and while I have several long-ish things that I want to say, I wouldn't do them service if I were to try now. My brother, sister-in-law, neices, and nephew are all coming to visit (and stay with us!) later this afternoon, through Sunday. Yes, for five days, we're going to have four adults and four children all living in our little three bedroom house. It's going to be hectic. But sometime next week, after they're gone, I should really write an update on the shitty state of my graduate career, and my advisor's helpful suggestion that even though my department guarantees funding for all PhD students, all the way until they graduate, she believes that having a child should negate that guarantee, thereby forcing all PhD students who become mothers to drop out of the program. Um, yeah. And people wonder why there aren't more women in academia.
Anyway, my real topic for today is not my frakking advisor who has been lying to me for the past year and is suddenly threatening to make it difficult for S and me to pay our mortgage, for no good reason other than the fact that she never had children and therefore believes that nobody else should, either. No, my real topic is a follow up on this topic from last July. I wrote about my friends, T and H, who I heard, through a long and convoluted grapevine, were having fertility problems. They had never said anything to us, but starting when we announced that we were expecting, they had been avoiding us. Well, avoiding us, along with all of our pregnant or child-enabled friends, which is almost everyone they're friends with. I was trying to decide whether I should say something to H about infertility, offer sympathy, etc., but ultimately decided that I didn't know enough about their situation to bring it up.
Anyway, I know more now, so here's the happy conclusion to that story. Yes, T and H were having fertility problems. They are the only people we know who faced this particular problem other than us. In July, as I was trying to figure out whether to offer support of some kind, they were actually going through their first round of IVF. Happily, it was successful, and they are now the proud parents of a 2-month-old baby girl. After they announced their pregnancy, I had a very brief conversation with H about how infertility really really sucks, but she was much more interested in interrogating me about cloth diapers and car seats, which makes for a much happier conversation.
Yay! Sometimes the world is wonderful, eh?
More later about how I might be forced to drop out of school because my advisor has decided that she shouldn't have to fund students who are going to use their stipend, in part, to pay for daycare.
Anyway, my real topic for today is not my frakking advisor who has been lying to me for the past year and is suddenly threatening to make it difficult for S and me to pay our mortgage, for no good reason other than the fact that she never had children and therefore believes that nobody else should, either. No, my real topic is a follow up on this topic from last July. I wrote about my friends, T and H, who I heard, through a long and convoluted grapevine, were having fertility problems. They had never said anything to us, but starting when we announced that we were expecting, they had been avoiding us. Well, avoiding us, along with all of our pregnant or child-enabled friends, which is almost everyone they're friends with. I was trying to decide whether I should say something to H about infertility, offer sympathy, etc., but ultimately decided that I didn't know enough about their situation to bring it up.
Anyway, I know more now, so here's the happy conclusion to that story. Yes, T and H were having fertility problems. They are the only people we know who faced this particular problem other than us. In July, as I was trying to figure out whether to offer support of some kind, they were actually going through their first round of IVF. Happily, it was successful, and they are now the proud parents of a 2-month-old baby girl. After they announced their pregnancy, I had a very brief conversation with H about how infertility really really sucks, but she was much more interested in interrogating me about cloth diapers and car seats, which makes for a much happier conversation.
Yay! Sometimes the world is wonderful, eh?
More later about how I might be forced to drop out of school because my advisor has decided that she shouldn't have to fund students who are going to use their stipend, in part, to pay for daycare.
Wednesday, May 13, 2009
Two Years!
Last summer, when I was six months pregnant, I ran into M, a former coworker who is now a respected professor at an excellent university. When he saw that I was pregnant, he told me that his first child was born while he was still in grad school finishing his PhD, and he didn't get any research done at all for two full years after the baby was born. The only way he managed to graduate was that his wife eventually quit her job to stay home full-time, thus allowing M to ignore his family for a while and really focus on finishing his dissertation.
M is a really nice guy. He's friendly and sociable and I've never heard him be mean to anyone. He's normally a super supportive kind of guy. So it really took me by surprise when he assured me, several times, that if my husband was going to keep his job, he was fairly certain that I would never graduate. Ever. And as we talked further, he kept shaking his head and calling me naive. (He didn't use the word "naive." Like I said, he's not mean. But that was the basic attitude.)
At the time, I was very much taken aback. And not a little pissed off. But you know what? I haven't really made any progress on my research in the past nine months. The last two months of my pregnancy, I was uncomfortable and distracted and suffering from pregnancy-induced RSI, which made it very hard to accomplish research that is almost entirely done in front of a computer. Then I was on maternity leave for four months, which kind of turned into five months because of childcare problems. But I've been back at work full-time for two months now, and I've still gotten nothing done. And I feel horrible about it. And my advisors are, um, noticing. (Yeah, they didn't notice until recently. Which actually isn't too weird, because that's sort of a result of where I am in the PhD process right now.)
When S and I were trying to get pregnant, and even during my pregnancy, I had this plan for what it would be like to be in grad school while taking care of a baby. My mom was a working mom, I saw how she balanced things for my entire life, and grad school is basically a job (though a bit more intense and all-consuming than your average job). Also, despite M's attitude, I can now say with a fair amount of certainty that I wasn't naive about how much work it would be taking care of a baby. I was a little naive about the long-term effects of sleep deprivation, and I'll admit that I really thought that LL would be sleeping through the night by now, but other than that, I wasn't too far off the mark in my expectations.
But I now think that I was wrong about one major thing. I was convinced that succeeding simultaneously at school and motherhood was going to be all about multitasking and being organized. And those things are definitely important. But there's a third piece that is at least as important as those, and it's something that I didn't take into account, and I'm discovering that it's something that I suck at: compartmentalization. I desperately need to learn to compartmentalize. A lot of why I haven't been getting any research done, despite being hyper-organized, is that I simply cannot focus on work when I'm at work. I get to my office, and my mind is flooded with all things LL.
When I'm home with LL, I am very focused on him. What I'm not able to do when I'm with him are tasks related to him that require some brain activity and focus. Things like reading about naps and sleep habits and getting infants to sleep through the night. Reading about upcoming developmental milestones. Figuring out if he's eating enough milk, and how much solids he's supposed to be eating at this age. Planning for upcoming travel with LL. Making plans for everything that we'll need to do (very soon!) to baby proof our house. Making lots and lots and lots of to-do lists. Etc. Etc. Etc.
Compounding the problem is where I am in my graduate career. Most of my research is done, but the bits that haven't been finished yet are those random nebulous ones that are a bit hard to define and require more brain power than anything concrete. The main project that was funding the first several years of my research is over, and I'm being supported mainly on overhead funds meant for end-stage PhD students, which means that nobody is really counting on my results right now except me. And "results" is a strong word, since the stuff that I'm trying to finish right now is fairly theoretical, so it would be hard to measure progress anyway. It's all fairly squishy as far as evidence-of-work-or-progress is concerned. From talking to friends who have finished their PhDs, I understand that it's fairly common for students to stall a bit at this point in their grad school careers. The big things are done, the hard-core writing isn't happening yet, but the tying-things-together-and-finishing is so abstract, and progress so hard to measure, that it's normal to spin your wheels for a bit. (For example, check out this graph. That global minimum in the fifth year? When your advisor loses funding and you haven't defended yet? That's me.)
But for me, the combination of baby distractions and thesis wheel-spinning seems deadly. And it's all compounded exponentially by the months of sleep deprivation, which have left my brain in a pervasive fog that I cannot seem to lift. A perfect storm of non-accomplishment.
I've tried all the normal things to get myself focused. Setting near-term deadlines. Breaking up tasks into small, bite-sized tasks. Making daily schedules. But then I sit down to work, and my mind gets irretrievably distracted. And then I feel terrible about myself for wasting time and not getting anything productive done. Again. Which doesn't help. I just feel like I'm continually treading water at work, but not going anywhere.
Oddly, the only thing that makes me feel at all better about the situation is my friend M. His comment about his research stalling for two years, which pissed me off last summer, now makes me feel comforted. He didn't make any progress for two years, yet he still graduated (eventually), and is having a very successful research career. So maybe I just need to let myself wait out the suckiness that is my work life right now, and trust that I'll still graduate some day.
M is a really nice guy. He's friendly and sociable and I've never heard him be mean to anyone. He's normally a super supportive kind of guy. So it really took me by surprise when he assured me, several times, that if my husband was going to keep his job, he was fairly certain that I would never graduate. Ever. And as we talked further, he kept shaking his head and calling me naive. (He didn't use the word "naive." Like I said, he's not mean. But that was the basic attitude.)
At the time, I was very much taken aback. And not a little pissed off. But you know what? I haven't really made any progress on my research in the past nine months. The last two months of my pregnancy, I was uncomfortable and distracted and suffering from pregnancy-induced RSI, which made it very hard to accomplish research that is almost entirely done in front of a computer. Then I was on maternity leave for four months, which kind of turned into five months because of childcare problems. But I've been back at work full-time for two months now, and I've still gotten nothing done. And I feel horrible about it. And my advisors are, um, noticing. (Yeah, they didn't notice until recently. Which actually isn't too weird, because that's sort of a result of where I am in the PhD process right now.)
When S and I were trying to get pregnant, and even during my pregnancy, I had this plan for what it would be like to be in grad school while taking care of a baby. My mom was a working mom, I saw how she balanced things for my entire life, and grad school is basically a job (though a bit more intense and all-consuming than your average job). Also, despite M's attitude, I can now say with a fair amount of certainty that I wasn't naive about how much work it would be taking care of a baby. I was a little naive about the long-term effects of sleep deprivation, and I'll admit that I really thought that LL would be sleeping through the night by now, but other than that, I wasn't too far off the mark in my expectations.
But I now think that I was wrong about one major thing. I was convinced that succeeding simultaneously at school and motherhood was going to be all about multitasking and being organized. And those things are definitely important. But there's a third piece that is at least as important as those, and it's something that I didn't take into account, and I'm discovering that it's something that I suck at: compartmentalization. I desperately need to learn to compartmentalize. A lot of why I haven't been getting any research done, despite being hyper-organized, is that I simply cannot focus on work when I'm at work. I get to my office, and my mind is flooded with all things LL.
When I'm home with LL, I am very focused on him. What I'm not able to do when I'm with him are tasks related to him that require some brain activity and focus. Things like reading about naps and sleep habits and getting infants to sleep through the night. Reading about upcoming developmental milestones. Figuring out if he's eating enough milk, and how much solids he's supposed to be eating at this age. Planning for upcoming travel with LL. Making plans for everything that we'll need to do (very soon!) to baby proof our house. Making lots and lots and lots of to-do lists. Etc. Etc. Etc.
Compounding the problem is where I am in my graduate career. Most of my research is done, but the bits that haven't been finished yet are those random nebulous ones that are a bit hard to define and require more brain power than anything concrete. The main project that was funding the first several years of my research is over, and I'm being supported mainly on overhead funds meant for end-stage PhD students, which means that nobody is really counting on my results right now except me. And "results" is a strong word, since the stuff that I'm trying to finish right now is fairly theoretical, so it would be hard to measure progress anyway. It's all fairly squishy as far as evidence-of-work-or-progress is concerned. From talking to friends who have finished their PhDs, I understand that it's fairly common for students to stall a bit at this point in their grad school careers. The big things are done, the hard-core writing isn't happening yet, but the tying-things-together-and-finishing is so abstract, and progress so hard to measure, that it's normal to spin your wheels for a bit. (For example, check out this graph. That global minimum in the fifth year? When your advisor loses funding and you haven't defended yet? That's me.)
But for me, the combination of baby distractions and thesis wheel-spinning seems deadly. And it's all compounded exponentially by the months of sleep deprivation, which have left my brain in a pervasive fog that I cannot seem to lift. A perfect storm of non-accomplishment.
I've tried all the normal things to get myself focused. Setting near-term deadlines. Breaking up tasks into small, bite-sized tasks. Making daily schedules. But then I sit down to work, and my mind gets irretrievably distracted. And then I feel terrible about myself for wasting time and not getting anything productive done. Again. Which doesn't help. I just feel like I'm continually treading water at work, but not going anywhere.
Oddly, the only thing that makes me feel at all better about the situation is my friend M. His comment about his research stalling for two years, which pissed me off last summer, now makes me feel comforted. He didn't make any progress for two years, yet he still graduated (eventually), and is having a very successful research career. So maybe I just need to let myself wait out the suckiness that is my work life right now, and trust that I'll still graduate some day.
Thursday, April 2, 2009
Cylons Need Not Apply
I'm fine, I'm fine, I'm fine. I have a vampire for a son, but other than that, I'm fine. To quote my doctor today: my breast isn't diseased, it's just experiencing mechanical problems. In other words: there's nothing wrong with my breast that wouldn't go away if LL were a little more gentle and a little less bloodthirsty. Both the medical assistant (once) and the doctor (twice) looked at my breast, cringed a little, and then asked me how long I was planning on breastfeeding. Which makes me laugh a little, since I'm not sure that it's totally up to me, given my strong-willed baby. But the medical opinion from my doctor is that I should, um, proceed with caution. And not let LL anywhere near my right breast for the time being, at least until it heals a bit. Which might be the final straw in our breastfeeding journey, since he prefers the right to the left. So we'll see.
Moving on... I've had way too many angsty breast feeding posts lately, which doesn't do justice to the fact that I'm having so much fun with LL these days. Time for a new topic!
A while back, I agreed to take part in a short robotics study. As it turned out, though, I needed to do the study on a day when I didn't have any childcare. The woman running the study (a friend of mine) told me to just bring LL along, and they'd help to watch him while I did the study. (They were a bit desperate because they were short on female computer scientist study participants -- go figure!) So I went in, handed LL off to some friends, and started the study.
While LL got a guided tour of the robotics lab, shook hands with one of the robots, and played with some (relatively safe) spare robot parts in someone's office, I did the study. (They didn't let him chew on lasers or anything, but movable non-pinching robot joints are fun for babies, apparently.) There were several parts to the study, but the last part was a written questionnaire testing for attitudes and biases towards robots. It's a standard survey in the robotics field, and there are a lot of oddities that should really be fixed but haven't been, so it was amusing to read through. But I laughed out loud when I got to this question:
"To what extent do you agree or disagree with this statement: 'I am concerned that robots would be a bad influence on children.'"
Heh. Yes, clearly I'm concerned. That's why I didn't even know at that moment exactly which robot was essentially baby-sitting my six-month-old.
I've heard about people not wanting children to watch television, or surf the web, or, I don't know, hang out in bars or something. But are robots really high on the list of bad influences? And what exactly are these people concerned that the robots are going to influence their children to do?
Moving on... I've had way too many angsty breast feeding posts lately, which doesn't do justice to the fact that I'm having so much fun with LL these days. Time for a new topic!
A while back, I agreed to take part in a short robotics study. As it turned out, though, I needed to do the study on a day when I didn't have any childcare. The woman running the study (a friend of mine) told me to just bring LL along, and they'd help to watch him while I did the study. (They were a bit desperate because they were short on female computer scientist study participants -- go figure!) So I went in, handed LL off to some friends, and started the study.
While LL got a guided tour of the robotics lab, shook hands with one of the robots, and played with some (relatively safe) spare robot parts in someone's office, I did the study. (They didn't let him chew on lasers or anything, but movable non-pinching robot joints are fun for babies, apparently.) There were several parts to the study, but the last part was a written questionnaire testing for attitudes and biases towards robots. It's a standard survey in the robotics field, and there are a lot of oddities that should really be fixed but haven't been, so it was amusing to read through. But I laughed out loud when I got to this question:
"To what extent do you agree or disagree with this statement: 'I am concerned that robots would be a bad influence on children.'"
Heh. Yes, clearly I'm concerned. That's why I didn't even know at that moment exactly which robot was essentially baby-sitting my six-month-old.
I've heard about people not wanting children to watch television, or surf the web, or, I don't know, hang out in bars or something. But are robots really high on the list of bad influences? And what exactly are these people concerned that the robots are going to influence their children to do?
Monday, March 9, 2009
Thank You, Pump-In-Style, For Being So Discreet
Know how to freak out a young male computer scientist?
Say it's the middle of the morning, and you're walking out of your office carrying your Pump-In-Style, in its stylish black shoulder bag, cleverly disguising the pump, cones, milk cooler, etc., hidden inside. A colleague spots you exiting your office, and hurries to catch up with you. He says that he has a question that he really needs your help with, and is it okay if he walks with you so that he can tell you about it? Then he spots the black bag. It's too small to be a laptop... it's too big to be a purse..... He grows uncertain. He asks, "Where are you off to, anyway?"
Answer him honestly: "I was on my way to pump some breast milk!"
Then enjoy the awkward silence as he tries to decide whether you're still eligible to help him with his question. Observe with amusement how he suddenly can't quite figure out where to focus his eyes, and finally shifts his gaze to stare intently at a doorknob. (Read his really obvious thoughts as his brain chants over and over, "Don't look at her breasts! Don't look at her breasts! Don't look at her breasts!") Throw him a bone by suggesting that you talk to him later, then wait patiently while he desperately searches for an appropriate farewell. ("Okay, have fun! Umm.... I mean...... see you later, I guess.......")
So, next time... less honesty?
Say it's the middle of the morning, and you're walking out of your office carrying your Pump-In-Style, in its stylish black shoulder bag, cleverly disguising the pump, cones, milk cooler, etc., hidden inside. A colleague spots you exiting your office, and hurries to catch up with you. He says that he has a question that he really needs your help with, and is it okay if he walks with you so that he can tell you about it? Then he spots the black bag. It's too small to be a laptop... it's too big to be a purse..... He grows uncertain. He asks, "Where are you off to, anyway?"
Answer him honestly: "I was on my way to pump some breast milk!"
Then enjoy the awkward silence as he tries to decide whether you're still eligible to help him with his question. Observe with amusement how he suddenly can't quite figure out where to focus his eyes, and finally shifts his gaze to stare intently at a doorknob. (Read his really obvious thoughts as his brain chants over and over, "Don't look at her breasts! Don't look at her breasts! Don't look at her breasts!") Throw him a bone by suggesting that you talk to him later, then wait patiently while he desperately searches for an appropriate farewell. ("Okay, have fun! Umm.... I mean...... see you later, I guess.......")
So, next time... less honesty?
Wednesday, March 4, 2009
New Bit
Apologies if this seems like nonsensical gibberish to some of you, but I'm going to be geeky for a moment. Today is my birthday. It's not a particularly significant birthday, except to us computer sciencey folks: I got a new bit today! (My sixth one.) I'm 100000 years old. I'm likely to only get one more bit in my lifetime, and I've got to wait a long time for that one, so I'm trying to enjoy receiving this one. S pointed out to me that we didn't even know each other when I got my last one. My little LL has, um, zero or one, depending on how you want to look at it, but he'll get a bunch in fairly quick succession very soon, which is kind of amazing. (Yes, I'm still able to be amazed by exponents. Sue me.)
S got me a birthday card from him and LL. It says, "One of us remembered your birthday! The other one of us just kind of lives in the house and is totally unaware of everything." It's not clear that the card was supposed to be from a father and baby combo, but I'm not sure who the intended card-buyer is. Partner and pet? Roommate and ... bad roommate? Wife and clueless husband?
For my birthday, LL woke up at 5:00am, refused to eat, refused to go back to sleep, and just whined and cried for two hours. Have I mentioned that teething sucks? I finally just handed him to S and told him that all I wanted for my birthday was another hour of sleep, followed by a shower. Good times.
S got me a birthday card from him and LL. It says, "One of us remembered your birthday! The other one of us just kind of lives in the house and is totally unaware of everything." It's not clear that the card was supposed to be from a father and baby combo, but I'm not sure who the intended card-buyer is. Partner and pet? Roommate and ... bad roommate? Wife and clueless husband?
For my birthday, LL woke up at 5:00am, refused to eat, refused to go back to sleep, and just whined and cried for two hours. Have I mentioned that teething sucks? I finally just handed him to S and told him that all I wanted for my birthday was another hour of sleep, followed by a shower. Good times.
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