This week, however, I got some perspective.  In order to enhance my qualifications for the classes I’m already teaching, I signed up for an online class on cognitive psychology this semester.  I’m dropping it.  There are three reasons:

1. The instructor is not instructing.  She assigned the readings (a chapter and 2-4 research papers per week, often the ones that are the root of major theoretical models), assigned us to write a summary of each research paper (a couple of paragraphs) and a 5 question multiple choice quiz on the textbook each week, and that’s it.  No feedback, no discussion, no additional perspective on how to integrate the materials.  If we didn’t figure it out ourselves, we were out of luck.
2. She then proceeded to base the mid-term on the type of integration questions that you would expect to have come up in the course of a classroom or message board discussion.  Since we have neither, the class is pretty much on our own to do it.  I put in 8 hours on it yesterday and would have had to put in all day today to do an adequate job.  Of course, I don’t HAVE all day today, as I also have to grade labs, post the next tests for both classes, write up a study guide for one of the tests and review my lectures for the week.  Oh, and work on the major group project she assigned as due on thursday.  I calculate that I would have needed close to 20 hours today to get that done.
3. Of course, it isn’t all her fault; I also overestimated my ability to get everything done and stay sane at the same time.  I leave at 7am and come home at 9pm four nights a week, leaving essentially no time to work on weeknights.  Until now I’ve been able to squeeze it all in on the weekend, but there was no chance of that this weekend.  Worse, I’ve been running myself ragged to keep up, something that is not good in the long run.

So I’m dropping.  I’m OK with that – I overestimated my capacity given that this is the first semester teaching one of these classes, and I’ll revisit in the future when teaching the new class becomes less week-to-week preparation effort.

Overscheduling myself, however, wasn’t the only piece of my life I got perspective on this weekend.  Prior to this weekend I had gotten bored with my dissertation topic, bored with working on my lit review, and uninterested in the entire thing.  Then I got a look at this midterm, which includes 4 questions along the lines of this example:

Peruse the results sections of your articles from the first half of the semester, looking for a set of results from a multi-experiment paper that you were particularly impressed with.  Describe how the statistical tests were performed, and how they supported the hypotheses.  Explain why you were impressed with this set of results.  Now, look for a set of results that produces the opposite effect on you, meaning, you are not at all impressed or convinced by them.  Explain your reasoning.  Finally, how might the experiment be altered such that it could produce impressive results, that you feel are worthy of publication in a major psychology journal?

I read that and caught myself thinking longingly of my lit review and getting back to work on my dissertation.  I actually told husband that if I wanted to work that hard I would just write the damned dissertation.  After all, isn’t that what the work of reading a paper for a lit review is all about?  How are the results, are they convincing, what would have to change to make them convincing?

So with that jolt of perspective, I am letting go of my key overcommitment, refocusing on the core things I have to do (work, teaching), and putting any remaining time into my re-energized interested in my dissertation.  That effect alone may be worth the (thankfully low) tuition cost.

Ah, the good old days as an undergrad when you got your summers off.  I wish.  Summer for a graduate student is often as hectic as the rest of the year, and if some things (teaching) are reduced that merely means that other things (research) are expected to step in and make up the difference.

These melancholy thoughts are due to the fact that today is August 1st.  Classes begin again on August 24th.  Almost every grad student I know is having that “OMG I GOT NO RESEARCH DONE ALL SUMMER” panic attack at this point.  And maybe that is true.

But here is a piece of advice that I wish someone had told me my first summer:

This is a marathon, not a sprint, and that means you need to take rest breaks from time to time.

It is really easy to think in terms of graduation as a specific goal, and that you’ll “rest” after you graduate.  What you quickly learn is that you can’t rest then, because you have to find/start a new job, prepare to teach classes you may never have taught before (not insignificant as you will see below) and start to build up publications toward tenure review.  So really, it’s more like you can “rest” after you get tenure.  That’s a minimum of 10 years from the start of grad school.  Do you REALLY think you can run flat out for 10 years?

More importantly, this is your career; your life; the pattern you will be in for many many years.  The semester schedule is, to some extent, an artificial layer on TOP of your life and work.  It’s important to get OUT of the habit of letting it determine your goals. There will always be projects, and there will always be the temptation to think about summer as down-time since there is less teaching and advising to be done.  But perhaps that down-time is better used as down-time; time to recharge the batteries so that you can come back to your research fresh.

My goals for this summer reflect this type of new attitude:  I wanted to work on my literature review and to prepare for the new course I will be teaching this fall.  This 2nd item is more work than it sounds.  No amount of expertise in a subject gets you out of:

• reading through the textbooks the students will have to read
• writing up lecture notes/slides that add something to the material
• devising exercises/assignments that encourage them to learn rather than regurgitate
• organizing any supplemental materials you will need (videos, equipment, etc)
• setting  up said class on whatever course management software the school uses (blackboard, webct, etc)

For me, I am finding that it takes 8-10 hours for each week of class (2 classes per week, 1 chapter per week) to adequately prepare the material, plus another 2-3 hours to chose questions from the test bank for the exams (about every 3 chapters).  (If you have to WRITE those questions from scratch it can be much more time consuming.)  Now imagine starting at a new school and having to prep 2-4 classes for your first semester.  Summer will be busy.

Would I have liked to get more done on my lit review this summer?  Maybe.  But more important was recharging my batteries and being properly prepared.  I will have my notes all complete prior to the start of the semester so that each weekend I can review them to refresh the material in my mind, add any new references I may have found and go into a new chapter with the relaxed confidence that comes from knowing my material AND knowing how to deliver it.

In between I’ve spent a couple of weekends out of town with my husband, the occasional day shopping instead of working, and baking some amazing stuff, all things that relax me.  Not what an undergrad would consider a break, but all in all a productive time.

I cried a bunch before bed last night.  Jon finally brought me half an ambien so that I would sleep. 

My career success has been a BIG part of my self-image for a long time.  And I know full well that my skills, intelligence and competence aren’t going away.  But somehow it all feels like a big hit.

 I don’t yet have either a job (external  validation) or a self-concept (internal) as a scholar/academic.  So it feels very much like I am going from being something to being nothing specific.  How am I supposed to think of myself as a scholar if I don’t have the chance to live the life of a scholar?

Couple that with money fears and the whole thing gets ugly and makes me cry.  I had it under control for much of the evening, but it all came out around bedtime.

My major internal client at my day job is now freaking out about losing me.  But his solution is “take 6 months off from school, do this full time, then revisit”.  I don’t really want to.  The fact is that the parts of this job that don’t bore me to tears annoy the crap out of me.  I don’t like it or want to be here.  The people are bland or annoying, the work is dull or annoying, and as my husband said last night, I’ll just come home cranky every night.

But if money is going to be the driving force of our life then, realistically, I should quit the PhD program and go back to making money.  Part of why I wanted to get a PhD is the lifestyle, but money is part of lifestyle too…. I have the skills, education, and qualifications to make quite a LOT of money. 

I guess the biggest part of the problem here is that we weren’t done preparing monetarily for this time and the part of my self-image that comes from my work is in limbo.  Combine that with a high level of risk aversion and it starts to make staying and slowing/stalling school sound like a good plan.  But then what have I been working toward?