Closeted with Something to Lose

Hey folks, I read a thing on the internet and it made me have feelings.  I know the author's experiences aren't about my feelings, that I should listen/signal boost more and talk less, but I'm not sure how it does people any good to have me shut up all the time.  Is there some kind of magic ratio?  Someone who knows how this is done please clue me in? I Google stuff, but there's no comprehensive guide about how to not be a jerk. I still haven't worked out what "check your privilege" means in practice, even if I have (finally) worked out that I have a lot of it.  So go read that other piece, at least.

When I was in high school, I had very little fear.  I wore boy's jeans, fitted tops from ThinkGeek, pink fuzzy slippers, duct-taped my mouth for Day of Silence, and flirted with everyone. I'd been out since basically middle school when I'd had the least-closeted relationship possible, and my mother had told me that I could date as many girls as I liked as long as I quit lying that hickeys I came home with were mosquito bites*.  When ScanTron forms asked me for my gender, I marked "Male" half the time because "Female" wasn't right either, and when they left a blank when asking for my "sex" I wrote "YES PLEASE".  What was the worst that could happen? If people didn't like me, then I didn't like them, my grades always reflected my ADHD (the full range from F to A), and I didn't have a job to lose.

Eventually, I grew out of my adolescent belligerence, but that didn't stop me from being open about any of it, if anyone cared to ask or look up my Facebook profile.  I stayed less-belligerent-still-open as I went to two colleges, trying to figure out how to make a living in the world, working at a preschool and at a minimum-wage retail job to pay for books because my family had generously contributed most of my tuition.  What did I have to fear?

Then I got accepted at Clarkson University with a merit scholarship that covered most of what my parents couldn't, and I found out some of what I have to fear. I had signed up for on-campus housing because I didn't have the contacts or time to look for off-campus housing, and I was placed with three blonde girls, two of whom were in the Army ROTC program.

I don't know if it was because of my Facebook profile or if it was just because I wasn't their friend whose spot I'd been placed in, but they treated me like I had walked into their house with a dripping suitcase full of virulent pond scum rather than a couple sets of cheap plastic drawers for my clothes and an extra-long twin bedding set. In a thousand tiny ways, they made it clear that I wasn't welcome-- not to exist there, not even to study late in the library and come home at two in the morning to sleep before I left for a nine o'clock class.  I raised my concerns with the housing department and the RA staff, but everyone refused to help me.  "Compromise more," the people who might have helped told me.  I didn't know where else I could compromise and still maintain the GPA I needed for my scholarship.

It was three against one, and it wasn't worth taking a stand.  They drove me out of what was supposed to be my home.  I moved off-campus the next semester, living with three guys who were more than happy that I was picking up the rent their friend wasn't paying, but I remembered that when three people decided I wasn't worth respect, nothing in the world could make them treat me like a human. I had found my fear.

I felt it every time I tried to go to a hockey game and the Pep Band yelled homophobic slurs, every time I saw a women-in-engineering quote defaced in the hallway. I met people richer and more conservative than I'd ever met before, my-vacation-home-has-more-bedrooms-than-your-actual-home rich and all-poor-people-are-lazy conservative. I found out that the real reason Clarkson gets people jobs after graduating relates to its historically-wealthy alumni network, and I learned whose favor I'd need to curry if I wanted to find similar success and pay off my loans.

I have one of those alumni-network jobs now, so I spend effort to look like an ambitious, straight, white, cis, married woman.  Nothing to see here, employer, just another hard worker doing her job and trying to prove she wants a career (not just a job for maternity benefits). It's not even so far from the truth: plenty of people are happy to argue with me about whether I'm gay enough or far enough outside the gender binary to count as anything but.

I hear the comments the higher-ups in my company make, about women and about people of color and about anything that's outside of their upper-middle-class aesthetic, and mostly I put my head down. When I feel brave, I suggest we go out for Thai instead of steak and quietly explain that I was personally kind of uncomfortable when my boss's boss made that comment about how my co-worker should take her sweater off. I'm scared I'll risk my job, my paycheck, my home, the food on my table, if I say more.

I know I've sold out, but I don't know what else I could do that would be any better.  The world taught me that it expects me to behave in a certain way, present myself in a certain way, and that there will be consequences if I don't.

I behave.

_________
*Actually, I think she wanted me to stop coming home with hickeys, period. I love you, Mom.

Lining Up the Ducks

When we got engaged, K's mother was full of sage advice for us. "Only fight about the things that matter," she admonished.  When we started fighting a few months ago, one of our friends had some more prosaic advice.  "Don't break up until after New Year's," he instructed me. "There's too much going on right now for you to make big decisions with a clear head."  They were both right.

It was our first really big fight, long-distance over the course of the last two months-- related to stress of his last semester and my new job and both of us feeling like the other had excluded us from their lives (and we weren't wrong, but it wasn't related to a lack of caring about each other as much as it was related to a lack of communication and generally being overwhelmed by the major life changes).

The resolution, in short form, was simple: I graduated in May, he graduated a few weeks ago in December, we've both secured jobs (that are even less than an hour apart from one another!), and we're buying a house. We've been busy, building our life together and troubleshooting the issues.

We can do this, and when we fight, we will take the opportunity to grow.

New Jobsville: Week One

I've been in New Jobsville a week now. It's been an adventure-- last weekend I was in Boston with my fraternity, so I had a healthy dose of travel to get here at ten o'clock on the night before my job started. Compounding the nature of adventure, I'm staying with my cousin while I find a permanent place to live.

I love the job so far-- it seems like I'll be doing real, meaningful things as soon as I can wrap my head around how things work. I think I'm doing well getting up to speed, but sadly no knowledge transfer is instantaneous (yet. Someone should get on inventing that).  Even though I caught a nasty cold on Thursday that carried into Friday (and who gets sick on their first week of work?), I was able to keep (mostly) up by the end of the week.

K and I went house-hunting on Tuesday. We found a possible place-- hardwood floors and just enough space!-- and now I need to get financing out of a bank. On the one hand, I've got six years of paying all my bills on time; on the other, I haven't had too many bills to pay (credit card, semesterly rent, some utilities when I was in MO). Worst of all, I just started a new job, and I hear that banks like to see you in a job for a year before they give you a mortgage.

I really don't want to rent an apartment here for a year, not after I've seen the offerings available. All the available apartments seem to have layouts that feel more cramped than the square footage suggests, with small rooms and odd, constricted doorways and hallways. Rent often includes non-refundable deposits and exceeds mortgage payments* for a fraction of the quality of life. Even the supposedly pet-friendly complexes frown when I mention Kieron's cat.

We're house people, K and I. We like making our space our own, and we'd rather fix something ourselves than call a landlord. We want the space to entertain. So, I'm working on it-- trying to find time to get to a bank or meet with a mortgage broker.

People who have bought houses-- how do you get to places with limited hours (banks, the post office) when you're working a full-time job? What are your stories of buying your first house-- and what advice would you give to someone buying their first house?
_____________
*Based on a 30-year mortgage and the houses K and I have viewed. If (when, hopefully) K and I buy a house, we hope to have a shorter mortgage. Yes, the payments are higher in the short term, but they are still within my budget, still comparable to rent, and they produce a better financial picture in almost any scenario I have projected.

A Completely Natural Reaction to Good Things Happening

Getting a job froze me. Figuratively, of course, but I got the offer and promptly shut down.  (Well, not quite promptly. First, I negotiated salary, which was even more bogglingly terrifying, even though I succeeded from my point of view.) Instead of doing the nice, productive things I'd been doing all summer, like exercising and eating healthy food and generally doing the sorts of things that human beings do, I buried myself under a blanket and read the equivalent of 20 books in miscellaneous fiction.

I'm moving a couple hours away from my parents' house and starting a new job. This shouldn't be a big deal. I mean, I've moved twenty hours away for internships when I'd never had a "real" job before, right? It never bothered me like this.

But I went to visit apartments, and I hated all of them. Hated-- as in, I could not wait to leave. Plus, they seemed like a lot of money for not a lot of living space, and a lot of them had tons of fees and distressingly pushy landlords. (Non-refundable security deposit? I need to fill out this rental application right now, or else I'll need to get it notarized or make the hours-long drive back to the rental office and pay a $50 application fee for an apartment that may not even be available? No, thanks.)

So, I spent some quality time with rent-vs.-buy calculators like this one and discovered that renting makes absolutely no sense for us whatsoever. We can get more living space in for less money if we buy. Plus, we love the idea of owning.  Owning a house has been my dream since I was six or so.  When other girls were dreaming about their wedding, I was drawing floor plans and designing gardens. More happy for less money doesn't come up often, so we're going for it.

K and I spent last night browsing house listings online. Today, I ignored the butterflies in my stomach and called a real estate agent and a bank. Phrases like "well, this will be good when we have children" have entered my discussion on a regular basis. 

I feel like this is the stuff of fantasies.  My fantasies, even, where I have a kid and a partner and a space of my own where I can cook dinner, paint the walls, and plant day lilies. I want this: this is the reason I went to the bank on my eighteenth birthday for a credit card to begin building my credit history, this is the reason I saved ruthlessly during my internships and paid off my college debt. I should feel happy, right?

Instead, Big Life Changes mode has gone into overdrive.  Not only am I starting a new job, I'm also going to sign a mortgage, buy a house, and (eventually) get married to someone who will have to live in that house with me. It terrifies me. I'm dragging myself through every step, giving myself pep talks before every phone call.  I'm starting to bundle my belongings into suitcases, but a lot of them, I'm leaving where they are-- I'll have to stay with family while I'm house-hunting, because I had hoped to have an apartment and I don't. I can live out of a suitcase for a month-- I've done it before, when I studied abroad-- but it's still scary.

No one warned me that getting everything I've dreamed about and worked for would come with a side of nerves. Now, the best I can do is to power through it, knowing that I'll be glad I did once the massive changes are over.

Wish me luck.

Starting a Career as "We" (not "I")

If you had asked me three years ago what I considered the most important part of my life, I would have unhesitatingly told you that I cared more about establishing a career than any other life goals.  I had just graduated from community college, where few of my local friends had goals similar to mine.

K and I are getting married largely because he wants to, and I don't not want to get married enough to argue. I love him and want him to be happy, and getting married makes him happy.  That said, the institution of marriage makes me uncomfortable: it involves the community in what I consider a private relationship and opens healthy relations to public scrutiny.  Plus, it traditionally involves the commingling of assets, and I haven't successfully established myself as an individual with individual assets.*

This terrifies me.  Another smart person from the internet writes: "I often think that as a feminist, I should be self-driven, self-motivated, and self-inspired when it comes to my career." This sums up my feelings precisely: I want to establish myself individually before I commit to establishing myself as part of a marriage.  K keeps offering to give me money if I need it, but this makes me really uncomfortable. I'm supposed to have my own money: we're not technically married yet.

The problem? I want to marry K, and I want to marry him now. Yesterday, even.  Every time we see each other, we're tempted to call up our friend, who's an officiant, and just get the paperwork done.

See, we're already half-married for most practical purposes: we've already effectively made a life-long commitment to each other. Breaking our engagement now might not be as legally tricky as a divorce, but it would have a huge impact on our community. We've already integrated into each other's family. We have more friends as a couple than we have as individuals.** We'd have to figure out how to divvy up the kitchen stuff and the bedding and even a little bit of furniture.

So, I can't look for a job without considering him. I can't take just any offer that sounds like a good fit for me: I need to wonder if he'll be able to find a job, too. I need to consider if the job will force me to relocate often.  I need to figure out how far we can each commute and how long we're willing to live apart (not long: we've already done it quite a bit, and we don't like it very much).  On the flip side of this, though, he's looking for a job, too, and only one of us needs to find work before both of us can move and begin establishing our family. I need to remember that I'm not in this alone, even if it feels that way while he's finishing his last semester. It's only a few months until he graduates.

Starting a career as a "we" makes the job search harder.  Having K is worth it.

________________
*To be fair, K hasn't established himself, either.
**We do each have our own friends, and we're not isolating each other or anything creepy like that. It's just a side effect of our relationship: we meet and grow to like each other's friends.

Other People On The Internet Are Smart

I have found some posts around the internet related to the things I am trying to do. I could try to summarize and give my own take on each of these, but instead, I will round up some links.

I am not the only one trying to balance a fiancé and a job hunt. Fortunately, if it doesn't work out in either the short or long terms, I don't have to feel crushed because I'm not "successful" (thought I am terrified of being unable to contribute to the household. I always dreamed I would have a nice permanent partner interested in doing the bulk of the home stuff, and while K is game for that, he may be more employable than I am, at least over the short term, and we will have to make it work however we can).

How to build a starter wardrobe for $150. Or: it's OK that everything I own comes from the Target clearance rack (except for my bras) while I'm establishing myself professionally. I can replace things later, once I actually have money. Apparently, jackets are magical things, which is brilliant because I love the concept of easy layering.

Apparently following a Tumblr that admonishes me to make my bed every morning causes me actually make my bed every morning. I've set alarms to get myself to do things, but apparently if an actual person does the telling, it motivates me, even if the person is a random stranger from the internet. Now, I have extra magical space. Brilliant.

This is seriously creepy. I can't even fathom what the school that wants to "[reserve] the right to require any female student to take a pregnancy test to confirm whether or not the suspected student is in fact pregnant" thinks it can accomplish through this pointless invasion of privacy, and I'm pretty sure I don't want to know, either. Yuck.

EDIT TO ADD:  And this, which helps me articulate that, even though I have various behaviors that our culture has assigned a gender to, I still don't like assigning a gender to myself.

Wish List for Job Postings

Recently, I've found out that "entry level" jobs can require more than three years of relevant experience. This baffles me, so I hopped on the Internet to learn more. I follow the Ask A Manager blog in an attempt to keep a sense of perspective and learn more about professional conduct, and in this post, Ms. Green recommends a book called Why Good People Can't Get Jobs by Peter Cappelli. The Kindle version was under six dollars, so I decided to pick it up. It made me feel a great deal better about my job search and helped me articulate some things that hurt both employers and candidates.

Based on this and some of my more recent job-search failures, I have developed a wish list for employers-- stuff that would make my life easier and might help out HR at the companies to which I've applied, too.

1. If you're going to kick out my resume based on a hard-coded binary decision, do so before I spend 45 minutes filling out your application.
   
   Ms. Green suggests that Dr. Cappelli overstates how often this happens, but I know that it's happened to me at least once after filling out a particularly odious application. Most vexing, and super easy to fix.
   
   Look, you can even copy and paste the following phrase: "We will not consider applicants without ___________."  Just fill in the blank, and I will automatically think better of your company (unless the requirement is ridiculous).
2. When you post "entry level" jobs or positions "for new graduates", make sure you clarify how much experience you require.
   
   I keep running into jobs "for new graduates" that require more than three years of experience. I realize there are a few people out there who worked between high school and college in professional roles and a few more who have gone back to school to change careers, but the pool of people in this boat can't be THAT big. Still, over the past week, I have started applying to at least three different "entry-level" jobs that list minimum experience levels ranging from three to seven years before cottoning on and either (a) abandoning application (for the one that required 5-10 years) or (b) applying anyway (for the one that specified a 3-year minimum).
   
3. The more searchable you make the job listings, the better I can determine which positions fit me well.
   
   Right now, as a recent graduate, I don't really live anywhere and I'm somewhat open to relocation. While "four hours away from anywhere else" doesn't work for me*, there are a lot of places I will move to at my own expense. I'm more interested in finding a position where I can make an impact and build value-- but I can't search positions based on skills and qualifications.
4. Similarly, the more detail you include in a job listing, the more productively everyone can use time.
   
   If you're looking for a mechanical engineer whose core responsibilities will be determining price and dimensions for gas furnaces, please say so-- I won't apply, mistakenly thinking that you're looking for a mathematician with some business sense, and you won't waste your time interviewing me. Meanwhile, bonus points to employers who list core requirements and then rank nice-to-have qualifications based on how important they find them.
5. Don't store passwords in plaintext.
   
   Just don't.

If anyone has any good workarounds for any of these, I'd love to hear them.

_________

*Where will K find a job if you are the only employer in a two-hour radius? Alternately, will you pay me enough to make up for his lost income?

Can I Dress For the Job I Want?

Some links I've found while trying to figure out if my appearance is preventing me from getting a job.


This post suggests setting aside at least $1000 to build a professional wardrobe from scratch. I'm grateful that there are posts out there that give fashion-clueless folks like me hints about how to go about presenting a professional appearance.


Meanwhile, this post neatly sums up a large part of my frustration when it says, "Women routinely have to spend more money, and more time, to make ourselves visually presentable and fit society’s basic expectations of grooming… and that’s more true the higher up you get in status and income." 


I want to play by the rules, but I haven't yet worked out how I can feasibly do so. Sometimes, it seems like the prerequisite to getting a job that pays money is to already have money.

Health, Identity, and Adulthood

I find myself posting recipes for stuff I've cooked. I also post regularly about my thoughts on sleep, as I'm trying out biphasic sleep.  I do this in part because I hope it's interesting or helpful, but under that, I do these things because I'm trying to exert control over my own life.

See, I can't force employers to post job openings, interview me, or give me a job. I can't lower the cost of living so that I can support a family on less money. I can't buy much of anything, as I'm hoarding the money I have so that I can afford to move to the location of job.

However, I can still try to create value. I can cook, I can craft, I can clean, and I can write*. I can work to improve myself by exercising and eating better.  I can hack my sleep schedule so that I have time to do all of these things and still work on applying for jobs.

Perhaps it's all a carefully-constructed method of distracting myself from feeling worthless because no one has found me worth paying (yet).**  If so, it's a relatively productive one. I have plenty of unhealthy coping mechanisms for this, so encouraging the healthy ones definitely appeals to me.

I think it's also part of my attempt to build an adult identity for myself, though. Now that I have more opportunity to make my own decisions about how I will live my life as an adult, I want to put some conscious thought into what I want to do with my life, in terms of both my career and personal life.

Over the past few weeks, I've been asking myself questions like these:

• Am I willing to reduce my consumption of certain foods and increase my activity level to lose weight?
  (yes, but I'm not giving up cheese or dessert entirely, no matter what the literature says about dairy and sugar. I'd rather exercise more than feel hungry, but staying sedentary is not an option: I want children, and I need to be fit before I can have them.)
• Am I willing to relocate to get a job? How far?
  (yes, but I want to be able to get home for Christmas, and it needs to be close enough to civilization so that K can find a job, too)
• What do I like to do in my spare time?
  (it took me a while to remember that, hey, I actually really do still like crafting! because I had no free time during college: I wanted to learn as much as I could because I'd already paid outrageous sums. It feels really good to create things again.)

So, even if some of the things I do and write about don't relate to becoming an adult on the surface, I'm still in the process of building my identity, and the new activities are part of the new identity.

I'm sure it will all change again soon enough.

_______

*An aside: it's a little bit irritating how this list contains skills that can be considered "women's work" (except, possibly, for the writing). When I was young, no one taught me how to fix cars or program computers or build things with power tools. Instead, my parents shipped me off to innumerable summer camps where I did lots of crafts, most usually in a class full of girls. I had fun, but did not learn much in the way of marketable skills.

**To me, this seems like a fair metric. When something is valuable, you pay for it in one way or another. No one seems to want to pay me enough money for me to survive (yet), so I am not (yet) worth much to anyone other than my parents.

Unemployed, Two Months Out of School

Note: The dialogue in this post is not verbatim. For one thing, my memory isn't word-perfect. For another, it would delight me if people actually read this, and I like to think that my edited version of the conversation, which catches the key points, entertains better than a transcript version.


That could have gone better.

Today, I had my first interview since I graduated.  I took a few weeks off from job-hunting after graduation, as I was in the middle of travel and a move, and I had some difficulty ensuring that my body, a reliable method of real-time communication, and my computer would all be in the same place at a scheduled time. Once I finished moving and could guarantee my presence at a telephone or in-person interview, I started applying again. 


Finally, I thought, today marks the beginning of the next phase of my job search. I felt pretty optimistic right up until the phone rang.  Then, the nerves hit.

First, the interviewer expressed surprise when I clarified that my experience has been all part-time or short-term and that my title when I work at the preschool is "Teacher's Aide", not "Teacher".  I had thought that the dates on my resume made it clear that the work experience I've gained has been during periods of higher education.

"You've graduated now, right? What have you been doing since?"

"Mostly, I've been looking for a job," I said. 


"Is that it?" she asked.


"I'm also back working part-time and short-term at the preschool to keep myself busy while staying able to focus on my career development."

"How are you finding the job market?" the interviewer asked.

"It's a little bit rough," I told her, "but I was getting a pretty good response during my finals week, even though there was a lull in June."

When asked which engineering area I'd studied, I explained a little bit more about the interdisciplinary nature of my degree, which always make me feel awkward, like the employer thinks I've misrepresented myself.  I don't claim to be an engineer, I claim to have an interdisciplinary degree that includes the core engineering curriculum.

After about ten minutes on the phone, the interviewer explained that this concluded the initial phone screening, thanked me for my time, and told me I should hear about next steps in a week or so.  I smiled, said good-bye, and hung up with the distinct impression that she thought I had misrepresented myself on my resume and wondering what, other than looking for jobs, I was supposed to have been doing since my graduation (which was barely two months ago).

I have been trying very hard to do All The Right Things with my transition to a role in adult society.  (While college is part of the transition, it definitely doesn't count as part of adult society.) In this particular instance, I have spent time in crafting a resume that paints my experiences in the best possible light while still presenting a factually accurate picture of my talents. I don't think my resume overstates my accomplishments: in school, I have worked hard and achieved well; in the workplace, I have done good work and made at least some impact in at least three of the four places I've worked*.

K has pointed out that I may be reading too much into the interview because I'm nervous and because the job market is so frightening, and I hope he's right. However, his sensible response does not dispel my low-level urge to break down and beg interviewers to just tell me what more they want me to do before they hire me so that I can go out and do it.  It's hard for me to stay reasonable in an environment where I know people will consider me lazier and more inadequate the longer I am unemployed or underemployed.

Still, assuming that I do hear back when expected, I should know in about a week if my fears are unfounded.  Until then, I'm going to do my best put the worry away and keep looking.
________
*I tried to make an impact at the minimum-wage retail job, too, but my opportunities to do so there were limited.

Proof of Partner: Entering Adulthood Next to the Right Person

K and I woke up Saturday morning at 7:30, took down and packed up our tent, and were on the road by 8:00.  Nearly four hours later, we arrived at my parents' house with the goal of making ourselves presentable before we went to our friends' wedding.  We had a plan: we would spend the next two to three hours struggling into our unfamiliar formal clothes, drive the last hour, check into our hotel, and have time to take our nap early before six, when we would arrive at the wedding.

We took turns in the shower, and then we diverged. He trimmed his beard while I shaved my legs. I put on a bathrobe and glopped color onto my nails; K pulled out his netbook and his tie and spent forty-five minutes failing to tie a Windsor knot.  After waiting for what I hoped was a suitable interval, I tried to towel-dry my hair, and the towel scored deep grooves into my attempt at nail polish.  I took it off, finished drying my hair, and tried again.

From the bed, K looked up from his tie.  "Do you even like putting on nail polish?" he asked me.

"Not really," I said. "But I'm supposed to be a girl, and girls are supposed to be able to take care of their hands and do their own hair nicely and so on."

"I don't care if you can't do your nails or hair," he told me, watching the frustration bloom on my face. "I still love you."

I paused with the brush in mid-air. "I know," I told him.  "I still feel like I should be able to do these things."

I try to cultivate these skills: the ones that don't come naturally to me, but the ones that may allow me to fit in a little bit better.  Theoretically, employers evaluate your merit based solely on your work performance; in practice, I feel like I miss some interpersonal-interaction targets because I'm too different.  I use different words, think about different things, participate in different leisure time activities*.  When I'm at work, I prefer to focus on work, but the package of professionalism includes appearance and the ability to find enough non-work-related common ground with the people around you to build relationships and trust. It means cooing over baby pictures, carefully remaining neutral when the people around you discuss television shows you wouldn't watch even if you had cable, and participating in office celebrations-- all while attempting to demonstrate your value and your focus on the work at hand. I can do it, but it takes effort.

Struggling with my hair and my nails in preparation for a wedding seems like practice for a career in which I'll have to do things with my hair and my nails on a regular basis, so I didn't give up. Eventually, I managed to stuff myself into a thrifted dress and a pair of heels I can't walk in.  We cut our nap to twenty minutes and got to the wedding ten minutes before the ceremony began.

Foreground: my foot (without the heels). Background: my dress.

It's the second wedding we've attended as a couple (out of only three I've attended as an adult.. The experience still feels new and a little bit weird: at the wedding, people treat us as a unit. The invitation arrived in a single envelope with two names, and the place card at the table shared the names, too. As neither of us plan to change names when we get married, we will see our names almost exactly as we saw them this weekend for the rest of our lives (barring disaster).


Perhaps attending weddings as an adult signals impending adulthood across other areas of my life.  The feeling resembles the one I had the first time I signed a brand new rental agreement-- K and I had elected to room together as a matter of convenience, and reading through the paperwork, placing a security deposit, and signing every page of a twenty-page document seemed like an adventure. (The semester I rented space with a couple of guys, filling the vacated room of a guy who had taken off to parts unknown on a journey of self-discovery, does not count.) It feels good, like I'm stepping into something approaching a permanent place in society (carving out bits to improve the fit whenever I feel I can get away with it).

In that case, the wedding contained another signal. I love to dance. I took dance classes every year except one from the age of five until I graduated from high school. When there's socially-sanctioned dancing, I dance.** The last time K and I went to a wedding, he amiably held my bag and watched me dance with a group of friends.

This time, he beat me onto the dance floor.  Apparently, he secretly spent some quality alone time with the Kinect and our copy of Dance Central and developed some dance moves. (He convinced me to leave it with him while I interned in Florida, claiming he couldn't resist the challenge of a new video game.) Now, it appears that he took time to learn how to do something that I love to do so he could do it with me, sore leg muscles and all. He may not be a polished professional, but he's mine, and I couldn't have picked a better partner.
__________________
*I love following baseball with K in part because it lets me have acceptably neutral conversations with people.  Apparently, it's OK to publicly disagree with Yankees fans, but publicly disagreeing with people who oppose marriage equality isn't-- even though both groups of people are clearly wrong.
** I also dance in situations when it's not socially sanctioned, such as in supermarket aisles, when I think no one's watching.

Anger and the Opportunity to Earn Things

I had hesitated to post this. It's been knocking around in my drafts folder for about three weeks: I wasn't happy with it, and it hurt to edit it. Then, this popped up on Facebook.  I think it goes a bit far, but I'm angry, too. 


I love my family, and I love all the teachers and guidance counselors and miscellaneous helpful adult mentors I've been lucky to have all my life-- but they lied to me.  They didn't mean to lie, I think. They wanted to help. They might not even have known that the idea they sold, that people receive rewards commensurate with the hard work they do, is a pleasant half-truth at best. Even so, I am angry: angry that we accept a fiction as fact.  I think it's time for anger, time to recognize that sometimes things just aren't fair.  Now, I hesitate to remain silent.

Isn't it perfectly annoying when someone who is doing you a tremendous favor makes a perfectly reasonable request?

It's happened a couple of times since I've been home-- nothing unreasonable.

ME: "Hey, Mom, is it OK if I wire up my video game system?"
MOM: "As long as you move your stuff off my bed."

I hadn't realized she'd put my stuff on her bed-- I just needed it to not be in my room for a few hours while we washed the shelving so I could work on other things-- and I hadn't realized that the shelving was dry so I could put the things away.

After picking the things up, though, my dad walked into the room:

DAD: "What are you doing with the television? Are things going to change?"
ME: "No, Dad, I haven't moved anything.  The only change is that there will be one extra option for input."

Or, when I asked if I could use some fridge space:
MOM: "Well, your father has three dozen bagels and your brother has eight dozen eggs in there.  And I will never condone soda."

Simple requests, right?  Such easy things to do to keep the favor of the people who have given me food and shelter while I'm unemployed.  I'm grateful, and I can work around this, have worked around this since I moved home.  But it hurts, the reminder that I exist by the grace of my parents.


It all goes down to this tremendous fear I have: fear that I'll let my parents down.  Specifically, I'm scared I won't be able to find a job. I'm scared that I won't be able to find a job, and my parents will think that I'm lazy, that I'm a leech on society.

It seems that everyone says: "All you need to do is persevere!"  Or: "Do all the right things, and eventually something will come along!"

I've had a couple blips.  But, in general, I've checked the boxes. Degree from a decent school? Check, and in business/engineering/maths, which should be useful. Study abroad? Check. Internships? Check and check, since I did two.  I checked the boxes.

Now, I'm applying to jobs-- looking, defining goals, making plans, doing 40 hours of whatever job-search-related work I can think of, to try to prove I'm not a sloth, that I am Taking This Seriously.  (I am, but I have a sneaking suspicion there are hidden rules I've missed somewhere along the line.)  It feels like I'm not getting anywhere.

But even with all the boxes checked, the work put in, the numbers aren't pretty for new graduates*. Everyone tells me to quit reading the news articles, because they're scary, and being scared doesn't help. I can't stop reading the news articles: they're the thing I'm clinging onto, the thing that's telling me that there's not necessarily something horribly wrong with me, that things are tough and competitive out there.  They also make me angry, and I need the anger for two reasons. The lesser of these: so I stop blaming myself.  I can't control everything.  More than that, though, it's a driving force.  I'm angry because bad things have happened on a systematic level, and they're impacting my friends, my future colleagues, my generation.  No one I have known at school has escaped the impact: even the lucky ones who have jobs are often underemployed or live in constant fear of layoffs.

To me, it feels like other people already own all the things that there are to own.  I wonder: will I ever get a chance to earn a share, a living?  Will I ever succeed, or will people sneer at my failures for the rest of my life?  If I make any mistakes, will I damage my chance at success permanently (and is there any way to avoid mistakes)?

And, while I'm trying to figure all of this out-- am I allowed to be a human?  Does my desire to eat the food I like, play the games I like, spend time with the man I like enough to marry-- does that make me selfish and lazy in the interim? Can I balance any of the things I want with the things I need to do to survive, or do I need to put everything I want aside until I've paid to help fix this economic mess we're in?
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*The numbers aren't pretty for anyone, but they're proportionally less pretty for new graduates. For example: I cringe every time I read articles that suggest that unemployment or underemployment now can impact earning potential for years after the economy rights itself.

Obligatory Proposal Story

This started as a post about wedding planning, and then I realized I couldn't tell the story of my present without telling the story of how we embarked on this whole "wedding" jaunt. So, I started writing the proposal story, planning to fit thoughts about wedding planning around the edges.  They didn't fit.  Apparently, you have to start at the beginning sometimes.


K proposed to me in December 2010.  I had spent the previous six months in Missouri, and he'd flown out to visit, help me pack, and drive back to the Northeast with me.  He kept texting someone while I was driving* and, when I asked what was up, he told me he was asking his dad about the weather.  Reasonable enough-- it was December, and I hate trying to page through radio stations looking for the local forecast.


We had planned to spend a few days with my family, a few days with his, and then I'd go home in time for us to spend the holidays with our respective families.  In particular, we hoped to participate in his family's tree-trimming tradition: they make margaritas and everyone takes turns hanging ornaments.  (A brilliant tradition, in my opinion.)


Trouble struck, though: his father, who works in a different state, got held up at work and couldn't make it back as soon as he had hoped.  Meanwhile, a nasty snowstorm was brewing, and, while I love my little '97 Honda Civic, no one wanted me to test its ability to drive in a blizzard.  So, I checked the weather and made the decision to head out early, missing the tree-trimming party.  I said my good-byes and opened the door to leave.


"WAIT!" said K's mother.  One does not trifle with K's mother.  I stepped back inside, closed the door, and waited as she began to rummage in her sewing room.  She emerged, beckoning to K, with a cylinder wrapped in paper featuring brightly-colored cartoon cats.  "Here," she said, plunking it into his hands.

This isn't the same wrapping paper, but it's similar enough.

Uh-oh, I thought. The thing in K's hands was a bit larger than a baseball-- not the size of a ring box at all-- I had a bad feeling about it.  He handed it to me, and I opened it slowly, trying to delay the inevitable.


I was right. "Koala Marsupial Mammal,"** he said, using my full name, "Will you marry me?"

Speechless, I noticed that there was a piece of onion peel on the floor.  Oh no, I thought. I am going to remember this forever, and K proposed to me with a piece of onion peel on the floor. 


I think I needed some prompting. I don't quite remember, though: I was focused on the onion peel.  "Yes?" I said, trying to be happy.  The ring, according to his mother, it had belonged to her great-aunt.

Delicate; not flashy. Doesn't look out of place on my hand.

Hugs ensued all around, and the K and I went out for pizza to celebrate at a charming local shop where entertainment consisted of two gentlemen discussing the hours they could give a third gentleman while continuing to pay him under-the-table. K explained that he'd meant to give me the ring, disguised as an ornament, as part of the tree-trimming party that never happened. I tried not to wish he had waited or that he had found an excuse to keep me there, so I could have the prettier story.  After we ate, I called and told my mom, dropped him off, and ended up catching part of the blizzard on the drive home after all.

I then proceeded to tell as few people as possible. First off, I didn't want to call attention to myself-- it seemed rude to call people and talk about myself. Secondly, though, I wasn't quite ready to be engaged, thought I didn't tell K that.  I said "yes" because the answer wasn't "no" and I thought it would be "yes" if I just gave it some time (and I was right about that, too).  Then people started asking if we'd set a date for the wedding, and I really didn't want to tell anyone, because I got sick of saying "no, we don't know, sometime after we both graduate and have a little money set aside".  I had never thought about weddings before. Why was the wedding important? We had simply agreed to be a family together-- wasn't that the important part?


It turns out that that while agreeing to join together into a family unit is indeed the important part, it is not the only important part. These "wedding" things are pretty important, too: they mark a transition, and they bring the community of awesome people who are going to support you through the transition together for a celebration.

So, we've been engaged for nearly eighteen months, and I think we have a pretty decent idea of how we'd like the wedding to go.  We've mostly figured out what's important to us: avoiding debt, including our families, having a child-friendly event, taking enough time to actually see our guests, and avoiding a sit-down reception because we hate being rooted to a table.

We still haven't quite set a date.

Quick note of disclaimer for wedding-related posts: I would love to invite positively the entire world to my wedding. Sadly, we do not have infinity money, and K would probably be overwhelmed if the entire world showed up. So, if you don't make the guest list (if we even have a guest list) it is not because we don't love you. We just have a giant family, and that's going to impact how many other awesome people we can invite.
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*We are still working on getting him his license, so his job was to keep me awake and make sure I didn't do anything stupid while merging.
**Note: not actually my full name

Public and Private, Personal and Professional

I'm going to assume that everyone here knows the First Rule of Posting Stuff the Internet, which is that the last person you want to find a post will, eventually, find it. In accordance with this First Rule, I limit the topics I post about to things that I could explain to (a) my grandmother, (b) an employer, or (c) the police.

I got some criticism on Twitter about yesterday's post-- mostly questioning my understanding of the importance of first impressions, professionalism, and the public nature of the Internet.  Don't worry-- I get it!  Just to reiterate: in real life, first impressions count a lot, you must behave professionally at work, and everything on the Internet is public.  (Even that stuff you've got heavily locked down on Facebook, because all it takes is one friend.)

The reason I'm blogging is to try and sort out the bits of my life that I can't see clearly because I'm in the middle of living it.  I'm young and confused, and I want to make some sense out of what I'm experiencing.  The feedback I got yesterday helped me figure out what I was trying to pull out of the dream I had.

Here's the bit that I was trying to tease out yesterday and couldn't quite get: even if all of this information is publicly available on the Internet, I believe that there's a lot out there that employers* shouldn't use in making HR decisions.  Everything you post on the Internet is public, but much of it is personal, and even if employers can see it, it is still none of their business. Generally speaking, when we talk about personal, public things, we need to consider two continua: the public/private continuum and the personal/professional continuum.

In other words, things can be personal and public. It shouldn't impact the professional.

Specifically, my objection goes like this:

1. Employers require that employees maintain a standard of professional conduct and productivity in the workplace.  This isn't the part that bothers me.
2. Employers also require pre-employment background checks and ask questions about your hobbies. In an opaque hiring process, I don't know how much of a role my personal public life plays-- and this bothers me.

So, for me, my refusal to shave my hands represents my refusal to restrict the unprofessional activities I participate in during my own time but in a public space.  As long as I fulfill my professional responsibilities, an employer should not care whether I have six children or none at all. An employer shouldn't care whether I spend my weekends mentoring children or drinking alcohol.  An employer shouldn't care whether all my friends are industry professionals or meth dealers.**  Employers shouldn't care whether I shave my hands, as long as I do the work they pay me to do.

Some Objections (That Aren't Valid)

Some may point out that a company has a responsibility to screen employees to prevent PR liabilities, but if a person comports themselves with decorum during the interview process and during their professional career, it is my opinion that an employer should concern themselves more with whether or not an employee can add value to the company.

I also realize that employers do not have very many data points to inform their hiring process.  Adding irrelevant data points will not improve the quality of the hiring decisions.

Note: when I say "I think that X shouldn't Y", I do NOT mean "I think Y should be illegal".
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*Grandmothers can care about your personal public life because they love you and want you to be happy. The police may care about your personal public life if you commit crimes.  I can't think of a reason why employers should care about your personal public life, unless you are using it to bad-mouth them.

**Important note: None of my friends are meth dealers.

Why I Won't Shave My Hands

A while back, a friend-of-a-friend posted the following on Facebook:

"Whenever I wear a dress or wear my hair down when it's long, everybody always gives me all these compliments. But as a sociologist, it's hard to not see "You look pretty" as "Good job at the gender conformity!" "

Apparently, the comment percolated in my head: I had a nasty dream about a week ago.  In it, I was in some kind of job counseling meeting with a woman as she took notes on a partially-obscured computer screen.  I didn't think too much of it until I glanced over and noticed she was using a special program to document my appearance.  She was busy adding thick, black hairs to the back of a cartoon hand.  There was dirt under the nails, and the nails themselves had green, moldy splotches.

Like this.

"What are you doing?" I asked her.

"Documenting your appearance," she said.  "The hair on the back of your hands is really unprofessional for a woman. You need to shave them."

"What?" I said, flabbergasted. I frantically texted one of my female cousins to ask if this "shave your hands" deal was really a thing. The reply came back almost instantly. Yes, of course.  You don't shave yours?


I got a little bit upset.  Surely, I reasoned in my dream, my applications were not being turned down for such a small thing as the hair on the back of my hands.  "Could I please have a copy of that image?" I asked, hoping to learn what other rules of appearance I had unknowingly broken.

"No," said the woman.  She didn't bother to offer an apology.  "Until you shave your hands, I don't want to work with you."

The dream went on: I escalated the issue, and the woman's manager, who reminded me of Dolores Umbridge, also refused to give me the information until I suggested I could go to Twitter with my problem.  I woke up, half-wanting to go back to sleep so I could find out what exactly the dream woman thought was wrong with my dream self's appearance.


Some dreams are just dreams.  This one, however, highlights some things that I've had hovering around the back of my mind recently.

1. The interview process seems really opaque and arbitrary.
2. Appropriate work attire is gendered.  So is appropriate interview attire. I've read in a couple of places that, for interviews, women should have manicured nails.  (Men just need to trim theirs neatly.)

I really like my hands. They have long, thin fingers, and I keep my nails short. I wear an engagement ring.  I like to think my hands say something about who I am: practical, willing to work, committed, and honest.  They're useful hands.


I've gotten them manicured exactly once, for prom when I was sixteen.  I have no particular wish to change that: it costs money, and I don't have a lot of that particular commodity just at the moment. As far as I can tell, it's not relevant to my ability to do my job, so it's not something I'm going to make a habit, either.


I feel pretty much the same way about makeup and heels-- I don't do it often. So I'll wear neat hair, nice (practical) shoes, minimal makeup that I could grudgingly put on every day if I needed to.  Half of the interviews I've had have been over the 'phone; most of the rest have involved a hefty drive with nowhere to change or touch up the minor details.  


I own a pair of conservative closed-toed black shoes with a one-and-a-half inch heel.  Since they're what I can afford as a college student, they're hideously uncomfortable.  I hate them only slightly less than I love my hands.  Still, I'm willing to wear them if I need to do so to get a job.


There are a lot of masks I'm willing to slip on to please an employer.  They're not lies, just a bit of differentiation between the "me" that (for example) wakes up grouchy and the "me" that behaves pleasantly and professionally at all times. Everyone has a professional identity, and I firmly believe that an employer has no business dictating what one does in one's personal life (if it does not reduce one's ability to perform professionally). Some of the masks, however, seem to tend toward the expensive, and I still don't have that first real job yet.  Worse, I'm never sure I've understood all the rules-- how can I tailor a professional mask to suit an employer if I'm never sure what I must do to please them?

When Home Isn't Home, Even Though You Love the People

"There's a good ant.  Eat your neurotoxin."

-Dad, on pest control

As will surprise no one who knows me at all, I'm pretty territorial. I like my own space.  Visiting home hasn't been a problem over the last few years, so I figured that moving home (for the foreseeable future) wouldn't be too much different.  There's a light, after all-- K graduates in December, and, from his employment history, Lady Awesome Jobs smiles on him regularly.  We'll be out and on our own in no time.  So, I reasoned, living at home for practical purposes will suit me just fine for the next few months.  After all, multi-generational housing was common and usual for all but very recent history-- this will be fine, right?

I found this in the fridge.

Wrong.  The food in the house is not the food I normally eat*.  The kitchen has Rules, because my dad is just as territorial about Where Things Go as I am-- and I have no idea where anything goes.  I hesitate to set up my video game system: I know my parents don't approve of what they call "screen time".  I have yet to adjust to 5:30 family dinner time (as I'm used to turning to K at around seven and saying "hey, what do you want?" and figuring it out from there).

So, it's a challenge.  I'm going to have to figure out some compromises to suggest regarding kitchen space.  I'll need to go out grocery shopping, and I'll need to learn where everything goes again.  I'll to eke out some space for the food I like.  I may also find a corner of my room and set up a mini-pantry of non-perishables if I can figure out how to appropriately ant-proof it.

Part of this transition is cleaning out my former room, setting up a space I can live in.  (For the past three years, it's been a dumping ground for old class notes and miscellanea I haven't had time to sort through, shuttling back and forth between internships and school and two sets of family.)  Right now, it's a work in progress, and I am pleased to report that I have successfully passed the stage where "cleaning" has been more akin to "playing Rush Hour"**.

Sorting through the papers.

I'm getting there.  Hopefully, my room will provide a functional space for job-hunting after the rest of today's efforts.

In other news, I keep trading hard posts for easier ones. Over the next week, I should write about my frustration with "Walden" (by Henry David Thoreau) and some feelings about gender expression and professionalism.  You may prod me with a blunt instrument of your choice if you do not see these posts by Saturday.
________
*My brother read some book on primal diets and, as a result, has cut all dairy (except for butter, which he eats for inadequately explained reasons), grains, legumes, and sugars (except for minimal fruit) from his diet.  He consumes something like three pounds of vegetables a day and gets the balance of his calories from meat and, I think, oil.  This significantly impacts the balance of food in the fridge.

**Or, in the words of the fictional Sergeant Colon, "a case of no one being able to move because of everyone else." -Night Watch, pg. 364, Terry Pratchett.

Jobs, Flowers, Glasses

Had an appointment with the Career Center at my university today.  They reassured me I was hitting the major points and gave me some tips, particularly as relates to finding work the next several months until I know where K's job will land.  

We have agreed that it makes more sense for him to look seriously first for few big reasons:

1. I want to start my own business, and there are lots of different geographic locations I can accomplish this.
2. He wants to work with video game engine design, robots, or the commercial space industry. There are only a few geographic locations he can accomplish this, but apparently they're on opposite ends of the country.
3. Since he worked for four or five years straight out of high school, he's got a better chance of finding his dream job than I have of finding a dream job, and, for this and a few other reasons, his dream job will probably have better earning power, so it doesn't make sense for him to move for me.

So, we'll work it out one way or another.  Apparently, it's totally normal not to have a job for a couple months after graduation in any event, so I'm trying not to worry too much. (Not easy: I am a worrier.)

Flowers and Making Things at Home

Today, I noticed some wildflowers growing next to our driveway.  So, I picked a couple and put them in a vase.

Cost: about 15 minutes.

Not bad, I think.  When K got home, he and I attempted to make some homemade garlic mayonnaise, per here. K loved it, but the olive aftertaste seemed off to me, and I think we should probably buy better oil if we want to make a habit of homemade mayo.

I also remembered (finally!) to make sun tea.  One of my uncles keeps bees, so we have some homemade honey to put in it, and K had the brilliant idea to squeeze raspberries into it (over my skepticism).  I admit freely I was wrong; it is delicious with the raspberries.

Glasses Update


Empire Vision called yesterday about my glasses!  They were early, so I was impressed, even if they apparently have no idea how long glasses repair.  (On my initial visit, they said I'd wait an hour if I didn't leave my glasses.  When I showed up after the lens came in, they said I'd wait thirty minutes.  I actually waited for just under and hour and a half. I had my Kindle, so I didn't care too much.) I can see now, it's like magic.

It's strange how much wearing glasses becomes part of your identity. On one hand, my dependency on a piece of hardware makes me a little bit nervous, especially when I need to hire someone else to make it work properly.  On the other hand, if I got my eyes surgically fixed, I can't imagine a morning without reaching for my glasses first thing, often before I open my eyes.

Glasses and Travel

K and I have been traveling the past few days.  A lot of driving: the trip odometer read over 800 miles by the time we touched back down in our college town.  We saw both sets of family, caught a baseball game at Fenway Park, and I got in some interviews.

Outside Fenway Park, waiting for the game to begin.

I noticed during the baseball game that I was having some trouble reading smaller text across the ballpark-- text I should have been able to read.  A brief field inspection of my glasses indicated that something odd had happened to the coating on the left lens.  They're still under warranty, so I brought them in to Empire Vision, where I bought them last September.

I explained the problem.

"Your new lens will be here in a week," the nice professional in a lab coat told me.  "Would you like to leave your glasses here? Do you have a backup pair?"

I do have a backup pair which I had brought, but the thought of not having my primary pair for a week made me blanch.  I'm fairly near-sighted, and I wear my glasses all the time because I occasionally get headaches when I don't.  I can't drive without them.  A few days of backup-pair glasses is fine; a week is not, especially since the Empire Vision was late with my glasses when I first bought them.

The weird smudges don't clean off.

I hope that the lens fix will resolve the vision issue. Depending on how quickly I find a job and what my money situation is, I may replace them whether it does nor not.  I don't love these glasses.

In fact, these particular glasses have been nothing but trouble since I first put them on.  "This doesn't feel right," I told the optometrist moments after first trying them out.  "These glasses are making me feel seasick."

"Oh, don't worry", she told me.  "That's perfectly normal.  It will go away in a few days."

I gave it a few days.  It didn't. I couldn't read the board from my front-row seat in the classroom, and I would take off the glasses because it made my head hurt less.  I went in on a Saturday during their posted business hours to see if they had perhaps made a mistake with the prescription.  They were closed for the long weekend: the Monday after was a national holiday.  I went back when they re-opened on Tuesday and confirmed that they had indeed made a mistake in the prescription.  (Apparently, making a mistake on a glasses prescription is a fairly common thing.)  They fixed it, but it took time, and I wasn't pleased.


So, I'm stuck here (in this small college town where I purchased them) until the new lens comes in.  Since the original plan was to leave Wednesday after consulting the alumni services my university offers, it doesn't bother me as much as it might.  I get a few extra days with K at the expense of a few days with my mom.  I'll spend my time applying to jobs in either location.

In the meantime-- does anyone have any thoughts about laser vision surgery?

I Passed My Last Semester

Final grades are in!  I'll graduate!  I can't wait to see my parents and grandparents this weekend.

In the meantime, our entire living space looks a little bit like a tornado hit it.  We're working on it, I promise.  It's just going slowly: K's summer job has already started, and I've started my post-graduation job search in earnest. (Step One: figure out what exactly I want to do.)

I'll spare you pictures: they're not pretty.

Sleep and the End-Of-Semester Crunch

I went to sleep last night.

I feel like this shouldn't be a big deal.  In fact, the CDC recommends that we --humans-- do it every night. But I'm blogging about it, not tweeting, and blogs are not a place for quotidian updates.

So, why is sleep a big deal for me? I'm a college student.

The usual rule of thumb I see for the amount of time you should spend on a class, outside of class, is somewhere between two and four hours out of class for each hour you spend in class.  Actually, usually, people call this time "studying", which is interesting, because I never use this time to "study", I use this time to do great piles of homework, and there is rarely time to study the material after I've finished doing the homework. Using this calculation, because I am taking 17 credit hours (on paper), I should be working on school work about 70 hours a week -- somewhere between 50 and 85 hours, including class time (but excluding travel time).

This is how long you "should" spend studying, based on how many credits you're taking.

Now, sometimes the estimate figure works.  For example, one of my professors assigns a problem set weekly, unless there is an exam, and a project every two weeks.  Each problem set takes about three hours.  Each project, however, takes three hours of lab time and another nine to write up.  This works out to the nine hours of allotted work per week.  In another class, the professor assigns a one-page writing response due every day.  I spend, regularly, two hours writing each.  There are some miscellaneous other assignments 


These are the classes where the work is regular, I can apply the number-of-hour guidelines and set up a routine.  I love this kind of class, because the feedback tends to be regular, there are concrete things I can do to improve my work if things aren't working, and it isn't a disaster if I don't get one assignment done.

Then there are project-based classes.  I have a couple of these this semester.  Projects, by their nature, work better when one sits down for twelve hours to complete them.  That kind of work session is much harder to schedule.

One such class that I'm currently taking requires that I shovel manure for two hours a week.  I also write a weekly progress report.  That makes up three or so hours of regular work (excluding travel time).  We also present roughly every other week.  However, the rest of the work is hugely amorphous.  Some weeks, I've worked thirty hours on this class.  Others, I've spent my time on other projects, shoveled manure and felt guilty in class when the professor urges us to, in addition to the regular work, push to do all of these other things.  Who would like to volunteer an additional hour a week to feed the other (food) digester?  I wouldn't, but should I volunteer anyway?  Who will write the additional report for this conference?  At what point am I allowed to say "Professor, I spend twelve hours a week outside of your class working on your classwork, you need to stop assigning so much work" or "Professor, I spent thirty hours on your project last week, and I need this week off"?

Anyway, I'm doing my best to keep up with the workload.  There are things I don't get done.  And, with the project classes, I haven't received a grade since very early in the semester.  I don't know if I'm passing, and I'm scared that I won't graduate.  Worse, I don't follow the recommendations all the time. I don't work eight to twelve hours, seven days a week, on school work.  I work around eight to ten* on weekdays and get probably four hours a day of actual work done on the weekends.

This produces an end-of-semester crunch that, this semester, is compounded by interviews. I had an interview that took 14 hours of travel time alone last week.  I have a conference next week that'll take eight hours of travel time next week, and the proceedings will take about six.


So, I've slept a bit less than 4 hours a night for the last week. I had work I should have been doing last night, too, work that, if I fail to complete it, I might not graduate.  Sleep, the kind where I get all eight hours and wake refreshed, is a guilty pleasure for me.


I had some last night anyway.


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*On average.  There are days I wake up at six and work until midnight (18 hours), and there are days that I pretty much go to class (2-6 hours, depending on the day) and that's it.