Ode to My Husband
I apologize to anyone who is not married for this incredibly sappy blog. However, I will say that my dear husband bears the brunt of all my insanity and stress and doesn’t complain much, well really not at all. So here’s to you, husband who doesn’t complain, shares the remote, and rolls over when I make him because he’s snoring.
I remember first being married, or getting ready to get married, and a dear friend of mine said, “It was hard for me to realize that my husband couldn’t be my hero every day.” I thought about that and decided it would be a good idea not to expect him to be; however, more interestingly he is. He might not make my coffee, do the laundry the way I like, or pick his underwear up off the bathroom floor but he does manage to save me from crisis EVERY SINGLE DAY. Which makes me think of a song called, coincidentally, Every Day. Here are the lyrics for those of you who won’t listen to country music (I love it!):
Every Day by Rascall FlattsYou could have bowed out, gracefully
But you didn’t
You knew enough to leave well enough alone
But you wouldn’t
I drive myself crazy trying to stay out of my own way
The messes that I make, but my secrets are so safe
The only one who gets, yeah you get me
It’s amazing to me
How every day, every day, every day you save my life
I come around all crowed out and broken down and you’re a comfort
Sometimes the place I go is so deep and dark and desperate
I don’t know, I don’t know
How every day, every day, every day you save my life
Sometimes, I swear I don’t know if I’m coming or going
But you always say something with out even knowing
And I’m hanging on your words with all of my might
And I’m alright, yeah I’m alright, for one more night
Every day…
Well, anyway you get the point of the song. (Disclaimer: I don’t really think he “saves” me the same way that Jesus saves me, but he does save me from a mental break down every day)
Now at this point you are probably wondering, what does this guy do for her?
He finds my keys, sunglasses, helps me remember my phone, gets me out of bed, and he always brings me my drink at night so I can take my birth control. He also collects the phone at the night when I’m half asleep to plug it in. Sometimes he even brings me my ID/coffee and other things when I’ve forgotten them at home and he is on his way to work. He also stops at Starbucks when I pout, even though he’s going to be late for work. So he’s pretty much amazing to me. I might be a smart cookie, but I’m a klutz and I generally can’t function in normal, everyday life.
So here’s to you, husband, hero of daily life.
Friday, June 13, 2008
Wednesday, June 11, 2008
Welcome to My Life
It has been far too long since I have blogged. I apologize for those of you, well the two of you, who actually check my blog regularly for updates. I have been so busy working on my thesis and trying to keep up with life that any sort of self reflection has been put on hold for far too long. I’ve recently decided to try to keep blogging in order to decompress at the end of a long day. And, indeed, it has been another long day. I’ve been in Brooks Hall (WVU Main Campus) for about 12.5 hours now. Nice, right. It wouldn’t be so bad if every day weren’t like this.
It is crunch time for my thesis (the body of work that defines the past two years of my life academically). My advisor is in Malawi completing research for one of his grants (less guidance than normal), and I’m always behind my master plan. Well, isn’t that the story of my life being behind the master plan. To put it into perspective I have about two and half good weeks to finish my thesis. I am 40% complete with writing. I have half of my literature review, which might take me to 50% but right now it’s kind of crap. I somehow have to get what will shortly be about 35 or 40 pages down to 25 maximum. This will require the work of several talented people, not least of which is my advisor if he does indeed return from Africa. I do think that I have a relatively solid Methods, Data Analysis, and Study Area chapters completed. We shall see what BM (Brent McCusker, aka Boss Man) thinks about the whole thing. At this point you may want to consider adding me to your daily prayer list. Seriously.
I have just spent the past 5 weeks knee deep in Marxist political economy/social theory. Yes, it is as painful as it sounds and I’m ready to rip out my hair one by one with tweezers. It’s so frustrating, intimidating, and frightening to know that the past two years of my life could mean nothing in a matter of weeks all depending on the opinion of three important people: My Committee. I will not name them though they know who they are and would discredit their influence, but really. If you examine the academic system—this is how it works!
I currently have two fortunes from fortune cookies on my board to remind me of those things important in life.
“Good luck is the result of good planning.” –let’s hope so!
“All your hard work will soon pay off.”—One can only hope!
All of this isn’t really what keeps me up at night—the problem is the never ending fear that it won’t pay off, that I haven’t planned well enough, and that I will fail in ways unknowable to me previously. Corey keeps saying, “You’ll get it done, you’ll be fine, it will be okay.” But what if it’s not, what if what I have done in these past few months isn’t up to par, what if there are huge conceptual gaps that I just don’t get. I keep telling myself that BM never would have let me get to this point if that were the case, but that is not necessarily true. He could have more faith in me than I have in myself (which is probably true). This is something I have never suffered from before, but I’m working to prepare myself for the bitter disappointment of failure at this. Why this, why now? I’m not really sure. Maybe because the deadline is so important. The rest of my life is contingent upon this, NOW. I know the graduate committee wants me to finish for my benefit and I do too, but the amount of pressure and stress is incredible. I’ve never been more miserable in school in my life. BM would say that “an unhappy graduate student is a very productive graduate student.” Well that is probably true but I really am stressed to the limit. Today I thought, as I was heading into the bathroom alone at 8:30pm in a largely deserted building, “I’d like to see someone try to attack me. I’d freaking kill them and not think twice about it. I don’t have time for some crazy person’s crap right now. “Then I formulated a plan about how I would go about killing them in the bathroom and TEACHING THEM A LESSON. We were just talking today about that grad student who went postal in Illinois and shot all of those poor kids. It was awful and may the rest in peace, but I’m beginning to feel the stress of graduate life.
NEWS FLASH TO SELF AND FRIENDS: I haven’t even started my PhD yet. I’m going to need a large amount of drugs to get through that. Does anyone have any connections?
All of this for a lousy 2008 Honda Accord in green (and an iphone but I might talk my husband into one of those as a finished master’s thesis present, which depends on me actually finishing my master’s thesis. CRAP)
So you are actually beginning to see the level of insanity that I’m currently undergoing. Good.
Did I also mention that I am working 30 hours a week at the WV GIS Technical Center? We are digitizing sewer lines for Jefferson County, WV. It’s fun—almost—not. It’s frustrating and monotonous, but it’s a job that pays well and is very flexible. For example, last week when I was about to have a mental breakdown, I said to my sort of boss, “I’m sorry but I can’t really be here anymore because my brain is momentarily worthless and I’ll see you in the morning.” This was at 3 p.m. This is what working 36 hours in two days will do to your brain.
I have about 5 other things that I want to blog about but don’t really have the time or energy. Look for more blogs as I freak out more and as DOOM’s Day arrives (somewhere between June 29 and July 25th my fate will be decided).
It is crunch time for my thesis (the body of work that defines the past two years of my life academically). My advisor is in Malawi completing research for one of his grants (less guidance than normal), and I’m always behind my master plan. Well, isn’t that the story of my life being behind the master plan. To put it into perspective I have about two and half good weeks to finish my thesis. I am 40% complete with writing. I have half of my literature review, which might take me to 50% but right now it’s kind of crap. I somehow have to get what will shortly be about 35 or 40 pages down to 25 maximum. This will require the work of several talented people, not least of which is my advisor if he does indeed return from Africa. I do think that I have a relatively solid Methods, Data Analysis, and Study Area chapters completed. We shall see what BM (Brent McCusker, aka Boss Man) thinks about the whole thing. At this point you may want to consider adding me to your daily prayer list. Seriously.
I have just spent the past 5 weeks knee deep in Marxist political economy/social theory. Yes, it is as painful as it sounds and I’m ready to rip out my hair one by one with tweezers. It’s so frustrating, intimidating, and frightening to know that the past two years of my life could mean nothing in a matter of weeks all depending on the opinion of three important people: My Committee. I will not name them though they know who they are and would discredit their influence, but really. If you examine the academic system—this is how it works!
I currently have two fortunes from fortune cookies on my board to remind me of those things important in life.
“Good luck is the result of good planning.” –let’s hope so!
“All your hard work will soon pay off.”—One can only hope!
All of this isn’t really what keeps me up at night—the problem is the never ending fear that it won’t pay off, that I haven’t planned well enough, and that I will fail in ways unknowable to me previously. Corey keeps saying, “You’ll get it done, you’ll be fine, it will be okay.” But what if it’s not, what if what I have done in these past few months isn’t up to par, what if there are huge conceptual gaps that I just don’t get. I keep telling myself that BM never would have let me get to this point if that were the case, but that is not necessarily true. He could have more faith in me than I have in myself (which is probably true). This is something I have never suffered from before, but I’m working to prepare myself for the bitter disappointment of failure at this. Why this, why now? I’m not really sure. Maybe because the deadline is so important. The rest of my life is contingent upon this, NOW. I know the graduate committee wants me to finish for my benefit and I do too, but the amount of pressure and stress is incredible. I’ve never been more miserable in school in my life. BM would say that “an unhappy graduate student is a very productive graduate student.” Well that is probably true but I really am stressed to the limit. Today I thought, as I was heading into the bathroom alone at 8:30pm in a largely deserted building, “I’d like to see someone try to attack me. I’d freaking kill them and not think twice about it. I don’t have time for some crazy person’s crap right now. “Then I formulated a plan about how I would go about killing them in the bathroom and TEACHING THEM A LESSON. We were just talking today about that grad student who went postal in Illinois and shot all of those poor kids. It was awful and may the rest in peace, but I’m beginning to feel the stress of graduate life.
NEWS FLASH TO SELF AND FRIENDS: I haven’t even started my PhD yet. I’m going to need a large amount of drugs to get through that. Does anyone have any connections?
All of this for a lousy 2008 Honda Accord in green (and an iphone but I might talk my husband into one of those as a finished master’s thesis present, which depends on me actually finishing my master’s thesis. CRAP)
So you are actually beginning to see the level of insanity that I’m currently undergoing. Good.
Did I also mention that I am working 30 hours a week at the WV GIS Technical Center? We are digitizing sewer lines for Jefferson County, WV. It’s fun—almost—not. It’s frustrating and monotonous, but it’s a job that pays well and is very flexible. For example, last week when I was about to have a mental breakdown, I said to my sort of boss, “I’m sorry but I can’t really be here anymore because my brain is momentarily worthless and I’ll see you in the morning.” This was at 3 p.m. This is what working 36 hours in two days will do to your brain.
I have about 5 other things that I want to blog about but don’t really have the time or energy. Look for more blogs as I freak out more and as DOOM’s Day arrives (somewhere between June 29 and July 25th my fate will be decided).
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