Grad school.
Let me set the stage for you: It's the first day of my second week, and I'm already crying in the car on the way home. This is going to be so much fun.
Here's the conversation I heard that caused me to have an emotional breakdown:
postdoc: Hey what time are you going to be here until?
undergrad: Probably 7:30.
**a side note, this is somewhat exaggerated for comic relief, because I did not actually have an emotional breakdown in lab, and I'm not this emotionally unstable most of the time, but here you have it.
me on the other side of the lab bench: ...
There were about 800 thoughts running through my head after this. Because *I* can't stay until 7:30. I have no idea what you would do in lab at 7:30. I assume the same things you do from the hours of 9 to 5? Is there something special that happens after 5 in lab? Do elves come out and whisper sweet nothings at the PCR machines? Do the techs turn into pumpkins? Whatever happens...I will never know.
And here comes this recurring theme that apparently is the story of my life: giving myself a hard time for things beyond my control. Do they have graduate program for that because if they do I would totally win.
As much as I would love to put my head down, do my work, be so secure with myself that I don't give a shit what anyone says/thinks about me...the reality is that's not me. And that's also something I need to stop fighting. I can't give myself a hard time for giving myself a hard time. I can't beat myself up for caring what other people think about me. The only think I can do is to try to remind myself that it doesn't matter as much as I think it does.
I started out not knowing whether or not to bring up that I have a kid. It didn't come up in interviews, because in the question of "why do you want to go to graduate school" the fact that I have a kid has absolutely zero relevance. But who I am as a person, and who I am as a scientist? Having a kid has 100 percent abso-fucking-lutely relevance on who I am. Why do I keep fighting that? I'm going to stop fighting that. So much so that I am going to start walking around with a sign on my head that says 'emotionally unstable single parent' because that's who I am, dammit, and it might help people deal with me.
It leads me to this funny thing that I never imagined I'd have to deal with, which is 'coming out' as a single parent. When you meet a twenty-five year old that's still wearing a uniform of chacos, skirts with elastic waists and t-shirts, your first thought is not immediately, "this person had a child". and then upon finding out that said person does have a child, your subsequent thought is not "this person is a single parent." Our society is many things, hetero-normative, democratic, fairly misogynistic, to say a few, and in academia, if you are a woman who has a kid, you are over 30 and married. (If this is not the majority, feel free to correct me. I just took an informal tally in my head to get those demographics.) I'm not out to "subvert the dominant paradigm" or anything, much to the chagrin of my high school self, but here I am. (Also high school self would never have picked this particular dominant paradigm to subvert.)
You know what I do between the hours of 5 and 7:30? I drive home, I pick up Lena, I talk to her teachers, and I talk to other parents. I make dinner, I do the dishes, I get Lena in the bath, I wash Lena, I tell Lena to floss her teeth, I help Lena brush her teeth because mommy-cannot-afford-any-more-cavities, I get Lena into bed, and I read to her for about twenty minutes before it's time for bed. Here's the million dollar question. Why do I not count this as doing something productive? Why do I not give myself credit for this? Why can I not cut myself one iota of slack, because this is work too? This is not trivial. This deserves just as much credit as setting up a PCR reaction at seven in the evening.
I'm reading this book, sort of, it's called The Price of Motherhood: Why the most important job in the world is still the least valued, and I sit there and nod my head and hmm and haww at the world and how society devalues mothers/parenting, and this is bad that other people do this how can we change that, and then I realize that I am doing this to myself. I am devaluing arguably the most important part of my life---for what, one more experiment squeezed into the day?
REVELATION.
I emailed my dad right after the 7:30 conversation was overheard, saying, holyshit I'm out of my league I should have gone to a 'soft' school like UNC ha! I can't be here until 7:30 omgi'mgoingtodie. (I think I literally ended this email with the really mature phrase of 'not ok. i'm not ok.') and my dad emails back this, because he figured all this out a while ago, that it's really all about doing the best with what you have, and the things that you tend to think are important aren't necessarily the things that are most important in the long run:
I hate to break the news, but News Flash, you will get a Ph.D. and it's pretty unlikely it will be nobel laureate work. I'm not knocking you, I'm just looking at the statistics. So work hard, focus on the science, because it is cool, and try to remember that you and Lena trump the world because you're two of the three most awesome girls I know.
Pops
omg my dad doesn't think I can win the Nobel Prize. What's up with that?? Supportive parents. I can't imagine what it's like to have some of those.
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