I don't know how she does it*

*With apologies to Allison Pearson, but NOT the Hollywood version, which looks to be atrocious.

As a working mother, (doing a PhD on the side), I occasionally get that, "I don't know how you do it!" comment and I still haven't figured out how to handle it. I can't help feeling a little patronized, which puts me on guard, and I don't know what to say. Acknowledge that it's hard but that we get by somehow, and I sound arrogant, downplay it and I come off as insincere. I usually try some flip answer, like, "I don't know that I do most of the time!" which is also as close to the truth as I can articulate. The truth is, I just barely hold it all together in most instances, and then, every couple of months or so (and it is no coincidence that that timeline coincides with the academic quarter system mentioned last week), it all falls apart, and my life disintegrates spectacularly. Friday morning was such a morning.

It had already been a crazy week - finals, which included several late nights, on top of a regular workload for me, and my dear husband was busy with setting exams and grading for his classes, with lots of early meetings, and a day out of town. After all that, I was really stressed about Friday, since I was doing a presentation to our students, on behalf of our Associate Dean of Student Affairs, immediately followed by my first PhD committee meeting. The presentation was ready, but I was trying to fit about an hour's worth of information into 45 minutes, and I had to be in the auditorium at 8:30 am sharp. And that meant, to factor in rush-hour traffic, I had to leave as soon as the kids got on the school bus, or I would be late. Really, though, the real problem was that I was uptight about my committee meeting, unsure of what to expect, and anxious about what new curve balls would be thrown my way. So, of course, on some level, my poor kids picked up on my tension, and those are always the times that they start to act up the most.

To be fair, for the most part, my 11 year old has started to figure out that if Mum or Dad are stressed, and especially if we both are, then those are the times to hunker down and get things done as co-operatively as possible, although he had had an unexplained meltdown with the babysitter the previous day, which I had had to smooth over. Our 7 year old, though, seems to have a knack for picking up on the tension, and then escalating it. It's almost as if on some level he realizes that he is not the center of attention, and so feels the need to ratchet things up so that he is.

Yesterday, it all started with the weather, which was lovely and mild, and promising to improve into a nice, sunny, Spring day. So the 11 year old decided to wear shorts. So, of course, the 7 year old wanted to wear shorts. The problem being, that since the weather has been decidedly wintry until a few days ago, their idiot mother had not excavated the shorts from the depths of the closet recently. The older one figured it out, but the younger one could only find a pair of shorts that were his brother's cast-offs, and so were too big. His Dad suggested a belt, which was derided as an intolerable suggestion, so he was forced to wear a perfectly serviceable pair of jeans, which caused heartrending wails and gnashing of teeth. I started to do the math that the time it would likely take to placate him was considerably longer than we had until the bus arrived, which meant driving him to school, which would make me late. And that was one of those watershed moments when all the juggling balls of my life come crashing down, and I turned into evil bitch mother. Little one was rude to me, I yelled back, I tried to force socks onto his feet, he kicked me, and it all deteriorated from there.

Fortunately I am blessed to have a spouse who, while also extremely busy and also prone to stress-induced outbursts with the kids, seems to be able to tag-team with me, and just knows when I need him to step up the most. He sent the older one out to the bus stop, told me to leave, and promised he would deal with the little one and get him to school. So, of course, it all worked out. To an outside observer, it may even have appeared to be another day when the Allen family managed to pull it together and get done what needed to be done. And for that, I suppose, I am lucky to have such a wonderful partner. The truth is, though, I drove into work in mental and emotional turmoil, and survived my presentation, my meeting, and the rest of the day in a state of bewilderment and stress. By the time I got home, I was exhausted, and drank two glasses of wine faster than I should have. Yes, we pulled it together, but those are the days when I worry about what it is doing to the state of our mental health, and also about how little it would take for it all to fall apart. Little one had another two temper tantrums over the next 24 hours, which has left us all drained and sad. We don't have any family to fall back on, any help we have, we have to pay (and, sometimes, cajole and beg), and there are days when it is not so obvious whose deadline or meeting takes precedence, and my darling husband and I start to turn on each other.

After days like that, it seems that the question is not HOW I do it, but WHY? (The same question, incidentally, that Allison Pearson's protagonist ends up asking). Why do I put myself and my family through all of this, when, unlike many other dual income households, we are lucky enough to be able to afford to survive on my husband's income? Most, privileged, middle class mothers are delighted to be able to at stay home, and undoubtedly are much more available to their children, and so, are arguably better mothers. I worry that I am disadvantaging my kids, and creating stress and tension for my whole family. But I love my work. It provides me with a lot of personal fulfillment, and I believe that I am contributing to the world in a meaningful way. And isn't that a good model for my kids? I also doubt that many men ever stop and worry about whether their choice of careers are causing stress and tension in their households. I accept that those men are socialized to believe that this is because they need to be the primary breadwinner, but I believe that many of them would choose to work even if they didn't need to, or if their wives earned more than them. I say that not to imply that men should want to be stay-at-home parents more, but because I think it is more socially acceptable for them to actually enjoy their work, and define themselves by more than just their parental status.

Maybe that is why that opening comment makes me so uneasy, because I don't really believe that I am being complimented. At least some of the time, the comment is really a coded criticism for my choice to be a working mother, when we don't need me to work for financial reasons. Or, at least, I hear it that way. And, unfortunately, unlike Pearson's protagonist in her book, and despite wrestling with this, I still believe that I am entitled to forge my own career path, and I have not come to the conclusion that I should give it all up and become a housewife. I did, for a short time, quit my veterinary practice and stayed at home when our youngest had some health problems as a baby, and I am glad that I spent that time with him, and with our oldest for that year before he started school. But, as my husband would attest, I was a little insane that year, and missed working a great deal. I have great respect for stay-at-home mothers and the work that they do, but I am just not cut out for that lifestyle, and I don't want to model sacrificing who I am to my kids. Finally, though, I will admit to being a little resentful that I have to go through that whole justification process with myself every time we have a meltdown day. No one else is making me feel those feelings of guilt, or making me justify my decisions other than the voices in my head. Certainly not my husband, who is incredibly supportive and encouraging about my career and my studies. But society has indoctrinated me well, and I don't know how to make those voices stop - maybe drugs? Now there is a niche for the pharmaceutical industry...

The Intellectual Sandbox

Amongst the various tasks that I need to get done to close out this academic quarter (what one friend refers to as her “freedom list”), I need to write an evaluation of the class I have been taking on Digital Tools for Qualitative Research, Ed P&L 692. Fortunately, that is a relatively simple, and enjoyable task, largely because it was a really, fun, interesting class. In fact, this class was the closest I have come to “playing” since I started my doctoral program – which is high praise, indeed, from me. After all, I tell people that what I like most about working on my PhD is having the time, space, and permission to play in the intellectual sandbox of the social sciences. If that is the case, then this course gave me the bucket and spade, and some of those fun little sand molds for building sandcastles.

The course is also rare amongst graduate courses in that it really does do exactly what it sets out to do – that is, introduce you to the digital tools and software that you may need to conduct qualitative research, and provides an introduction to how to use them. We started off with the basics – blogs, wikis and citation management software, and moved on to audio and video editing and transcription software, through to the final session where we tried out some analysis software.

Although I thought that the first sessions might be a little tedious since I feel pretty familiar with those basic tools, I found new things to learn in terms of how they could be used, and the open-source software that is out there for managing them. For example, although I have been using Endnote for managing my references for a few years now, I had worried that maybe I was missing something by not using other software. This class gave me a chance to use some of those other systems, and discover that although there are always pros and cons, I am pretty content with my investment in Endnote. Similarly, I had known about Google reader, and how it could be used to provide a digest of all the blogs I follow, but, until this course, I had not got around to setting it up. I still want to figure out a better way to integrate notes, pdf’s of the references and their citations. The cute little elephant icon of Evernote is mocking me from my MacBook’s menu bar as I write this, but I have just not had the time to play with that enough to figure out how useful that will be. File that as still on my “to-do” list.

The real strength of this course, however, became apparent when we started recording, editing and transcribing audio and video, which are a critical component of most qualitative research. I have been fortunate to take this course in conjunction with EPL 966, the second course in our core Qualitative Inquiry sequence, in which we have been interviewing and transcribing interviews. So it was really great to have access to and tuition on these tools just in time to use them. I have used both TransanaExpress Scribe for transcribing, and plan to use HyperRESEARCH to play around with coding. I think that if I had been shown these tools separated from the need to use them for 966, I might not have appreciated their importance. Then, when I did need them for transcribing and coding, I would probably have forgotten a lot of the detail of how to use them. So, I think that I was lucky to have the opportunity to take both of these courses at the same time. and

In fact, I think that this course should really be the lab component of the main 966 methodology course. That would also justify expanding this course, 692, into a 2 credit component of 966, so that it could run as a weekly 2 hour lab throughout the quarter, rather than just for half the quarter for 1 credit. There is so much software out there to try, and it is only really in a lab session that you have the opportunity to try it all out. 966 would also provide the data that you need to test the software adequately. And having more time would also allow for a more in-depth discussion of the methodological implications of using digital tools in research.

Overall, though, probably most significant of all for me about this course, was being prompted to set up this very blog for myself. I have long been a rather compulsive follower of various blogs, and have always kept some kind of personal journal, so it is surprising, really, that I never got around to setting up my own blog. Part of that was due to lack of time and motivation to explore the software involved, but, probably more importantly, there was no real reason or excuse to feel like I could or should inflict my voice on the blogosphere. Now that I have done so, I find it surprisingly liberating. And my concern about whether anyone really wants to read it is, actually, irrelevant. Not that I don’t welcome readers, if you are out there, but that I am finding it interesting writing for my blog whether anyone is reading or not. In other words, in the blogosphere, even if no one sees the tree falling in the forest, it still matters, to me, at least. The question is, will I continue now that the course requirement to do so is over? It remains to be seen, but I think that I will be back. So watch this space.

End of the quarter performance

Ohio State’s academic calendar is based on the quarter system, although, as those of us in curriculum development know only too well, that is about to change in the summer of 2012 when we will switch to semesters. This means that no sooner have you started a class, than you seem to be wrapping it all up and preparing for finals. This leaves me with the paradoxical feeling of being both exhausted from all the hurrying by the last third of the quarter, and also overwhelmed by how quickly things have progressed. For those of you who are runners, the quarter system is the equivalent of the 400m – short enough that you are supposed to sprint, but long enough that your legs and lungs feel as if they are going to explode by the time you get to the third turn. Just for reference, I used to run the 400m (and even held the dubious distinction of holding my school record for a few years), but not because I was a sprinter, but because I was a middle distance runner who was willing to push my speed a bit, and, frankly, because no one else wanted to run that distance.

This quarter, in particular, seems to have both flown by, and, dragged on. That means that I am not ready for the great academic version of “show and tell” that is otherwise known as finals. I mean, I guess I am “ready” in that I have learned everything that I need to have learned, and am ready to regurgitate it back onto the page to be judged by the esoteric standards of graduate school, but, in a more fundamental sense I am not ready to be done. I was going to say, “in an emotional sense,” but we had a big debate in my Qualitative Methodology class yesterday about whether “emotions” are just a social construction used to interpret our embodied performance in the world – I know, don’t even get me started on how pretentious and out of touch with the real world THAT all sounds.

I am rambling, and that, ironically, is kind of my point. I am in a meandering, introspective state of mind. Maybe, it has something to do with the fact that we have had three birthdays in our family this quarter – including the big 4-0 for me, and my oldest son’s 11^th birthday today, which brings back memories of my own transition into motherhood. Or, maybe it is the wet and gloomy English weather that we are having in Central Ohio, or the smoky taste of the Russian Caravaner’s Tea that I have found at a great tea shop in Columbus, which reminds me of the tea I used to buy from a market stall in Cambridge as an undergraduate. I suspect, however, that while those may all be contributory conditions for this morbid introspection, they are not sufficient on their own. There is something else about my current limbic state that seems to be making me vague, and dreamy, and thoughtful. None of which is very conducive to frantic, academic performance, whilst juggling a curriculum conversion, a household which produces dirty clothes at a rate that threatens to take over our basement laundry at any moment, and organizing a pre-teen birthday sleepover.

Yet here I am, in graduate school, as a wife, mother and professional educator, trying to perform. This is where the real work of a doctoral program kicks in – can you still strap on the tap shoes and dance, when all around you is chaos and mayhem? I am increasingly convinced that if you do earn a degree at the end of all this, it is measure of survival more than brilliance. Cynical, moi?