Academics

Dear Byrd,
I was racing to finish. Racing to publish, get a job, set up a lab, and then have you. I did not feel very good about this since jobs are hard to come by, especially for two people in one geographic location. I have heard things like, "If you just work hard enough" or "you have to be willing to live separately for a period of time. It will be good because you will get a lot of work done." or, "One of you will have to take a more supportive role, only one of you can really do this." The US economy also crashed last year. I have felt a lot of graduate school in my gut, a sick feeling, like a baseball just landed in the pit of my stomach. I have lain awake at night worrying. I have run or swum or walked to try and work the sick feeling out of me. I have thought I was just not cut out for this kind of work and then thought 'maybe if I start to meditate." I hope that once I am free of graduate school everything will be different. In graduate school there are a series of people who have power over me. It can feel like I am an insect at the tip of their needle. There is little oversight or standards to how these professors treat students. It is as if one part of graduate school is proving my ability to to navigate bad personalities and terror, along with the parts of graduate school where I figure out acquiring grant funds, conducting research, and following through on projects.
When I realized how out of breath I was, really burned out, when my animal self began to snort and kick its heels, when my Dad tried to assuage my stress with the idea that 'you just have to bet on yourself', and when I realized that I was very good at what I do I decided that betting on myself allowed for making decisions that hope or assume other things will fall into place. Or that making decisions about my family life or my animal self could not all be based on my academic life. We decided to have you.
I continue to do battle with what feels like huge investment into a narrow path. I stress about interacting with the powers over me. I worry about jobs and the future. I worry about making time for you. I worry about making time for myself. I worry about giving myself opportunity to do creative work as well as pursue academic interests. I worry about being loud and aggressive. I worry that if I am not loud and aggressive I will not make it far as a woman in the sciences. I worry about getting out from the powers over me and how I will find peers to work with. I worry about how to set up and run a lab. I worry about choosing lines of inquiry that will be lucky and of interest to others. I worry about burn out. I worry about your Dad and how he will deal with all of this.
Love,
Mom