Frogs and Ravens

Another Pre/Post-Academic Blog-Forum

If you're in graduate school and thinking about leaving, either part-time or temporarily, Phoenix Rising may be a good site for you to visit. Most appreciated is the author's Pledge, in which she refuses to take any stance that makes those who leave feel bad about their decision. For post-academics looking to make transitions out of academia, much of the site will feel like it's aiming at a different though clearly kindred audience -- BUT the links page includes several sites addressing that experience. The site as a whole seems to be a work in progress, but what's there is good -- let's hope that the Phoenix can keep rising.

{edit} Some of the links are outdated. "Escape Pod" has been retired, for example. Sellout has been recommended in my own comments and reviewed earlier by me (along with some other transition sites). Again, pre-post-academics (or whatever you want to call pre-degree departers) will probably find more here than post-degree career changers.

Carine's related site, PhinisheD, is "A discussion and support group for people who cannot seem to finish their dissertations or theses." Again, not terribly helpful for those of us who've been there, done that, but it looks promising for members of the target audience. More useful may be the "phorum" called Phinally Phinished, which is for people who have, obviously, finished. If I have time, I'll take a look and report back.

A small stylistic warning, by the way -- "ph" (as in Ph.D.) is used in place of "f" in a number of words (like "phorum," "phinally," "phinished," "phriends" and "pholk." I wearied of this cutesiness fairly quickly and found it hard to focus (and hard afterwards not to write "phound" and "phocus") on the actual information. Your mileage may vary.

"Pieces of Pastry that I'm Not Allowed to Eat"

Yami, over at green gabbro (wonderful name!), wonders if graduate school in the humanities and undergraduate science programs might have common ground in their effects on students. Given this wonderfully evocative description -- "for the past four years, I've struggled to maintain health and balance while watching bits of my intellectual self-confidence flake off like pieces of pastry that I'm not allowed to eat. Sometimes I've managed, and other times I've hidden under my pillow." -- I suspect that this may warrant further inquiry.

Life in the Blogosphere

This cheered me up -- thanks, Aaron!

Arrested Motion

Like a tennis ball
Caught suddenly in a fence --
Bird on the screen door.

Here's A Thought

Yoga Journal has published an article on yoga sequencing for depression.

I think I will have to give this a try. It certainly couldn't hurt.

Perspective

This wrenching post from Tim Burke reminds me to be happy for what I do have, and to appreciate that things could be much, much worse than being unemployed.

Functional Depression

Today Dorothea over at Caveat Lector wrote "I strongly resist the idea that depressed or angry people are completely non-functioning. For Pete�s sake, I know better! In the grip of the same paralyzing depression that left me unable to read, I taught forty-odd people Spanish, and did so pretty damned well, thank you. So I don�t believe in telling people that they can�t get anything accomplished unless and until they fix their thoughts."

This sounds terribly familiar. Appearances of this blog to the contrary, most people don't know when I'm depressed. I have the lovely ability to suddenly look happy and cheerful when someone pokes their head into my office to say hi, then go back to the doom and gloom once they've gone. I know full well when I am depressed, why I am depressed, what I need to do to mask my depression and that -- often -- there is no good reason for my depression. My reason knows this, anyway; try telling this to whatever part of my psyche is responsible for being depressed in the first place. It doesn't like to listen to reason.

It's at times like this when I begin to understand why depression, anxiety and obsessive-compulsive disorders seem to be related diseases; when I'm depressed, I know it on an intellectual level but I can't stop obsessively wallowing in it. Anxiety I seem to have a better handle on; I used to get panic attacks, not know what they were and panic some more. Now I think "Oh, it's another damn panic attack" and patiently wait it out. If only I could learn to do that with depression!

Another Obvious Step

It belatedly occurs to me that it might be productive to throw open the door to suggestions for possible work environments, since that seems to be the bone my mind keeps digging up and gnawing on.

I like Western environments, particularly deserts. I enjoy observing the animals and plants that live in such environments, though I lack the scientific training to avoid reinventing the wheel. Photographing and sketching often accompany these observations, and my skills are not bad in these areas.

My research work has been interested in questions of adaptation (of self/culture to environment and vice versa) and the social and individual representations and understandings that govern the processes of adaptation. In other words -- how people come to know the place they inhabit, and how that knowing shapes and is shaped by the experience.

I'm somewhat interested in environmental ethics and its relation to effective political action, but I'm not that interested in politics per se (nor am I good at critiquing policy, as previous efforts to do so in this blog indicate!) I'd be happy to work with activists, but I don't believe that I have the passion for any given cause to be one myself.

I like solving problems and working with my hands -- I did once contemplate a major in mechanical engineering that foundered on the higher math involved -- though that would not be enough without associated intellectual challenges. (In other words, I'm good with machines, handicrafts and pottery, but I don't want to work only with people who are good with machines and little else.)

I like writing and I'm a good editor. I like reading.

I like playing with the graphical presentation of information; I am fascinated by maps and web design (though not necessarily the coding that underlies it) and graphic layout more generally.

Activities that consistently give me joy: Making things with my hands. Watching animals. Fixing machinery. Solving problems and learning how to make things work. Learning weird science facts. Knowing obscure information others don't. Writing or presenting something and hearing people's reactions to it. Playing with old documents and artifacts. Wrestling with theories and devising my own out of them. Yoga. Reading books. Photography. Playing with maps. Teaching people how to do something. Playing with new languages, but more in terms of solving grammar puzzles than learning to speak them. Organizing data and playing with it to discover the relationships between variables.

I also prefer informal over formal working environments, casual or arty clothes over suits, workspaces filled with plants and toys and cartoons over cubicles and formal offices. I like small companies more than large; I want to know my co-workers and work for people, not faceless boards of directors. I want colleagues who see their job as a place to play and explore and make a difference, not a place to maximize profits, garner status and live by the rule book.

So... what does this add up to? What career venues might prove a satisfying home for my interests?

Working in a museum has occurred to me, but the market there is even worse than in academia.
Should I look for an environmental non-profit? If so, any in particular?
Go to work for someplace like the USGS? Other options?
Apprentice to a periodical like the UTNE Reader? Other possibilities?

Other suggestions?

Throw 'em at me; I have no plans now, so I have nothing to lose by exploring a wide range of possibilities. In fact, I will be doing this with the temp agency; it would be nice to give them a few examples of the sorts of places I'd like to be placed, if the option is available.

Blurting

Sometimes, when I re-read posts like the last three, I think that I should not be allowed near a computer while I am depressed or angry.

If I didn't, however, I'd be letting those thoughts fester in my head. Blogging, then, is rather like lancing a boil; it can be disgusting, but the alternative is worse.

This is also part of the reason why having comments enabled is so important to me. I figure things out by trial and error, including ideas and attitudes, so the comments help me figure out just what it is that I think and feel. Cheap therapy!

I am terribly grateful that my readers not only put up with these lancings, but offer graceful commentary and salve for the wound of the day. I can only hope that others are learning from my pain and benefiting from others' comfort; I don't know how to repay that support and sympathy otherwise.

Psychic Footbinding

In the previous post I tried to explain why explanations of why working outside of academe is not a waste of grad school time tend to rankle. Unfortunately, that is a small component of my overall reaction to the experience of being booted from the nest. Assertions like those strike me as annoying, or stupid, or well-meaning but not applicable to the real worries that are currently besetting me. If I get cranky about such assertions, it ultimately doesn't mean much, because whether or not those arguments prove true is a matter of opinion.

So, you may be asking, what are those "real worries"? This is a good question, because it sure isn't a worry that I can't handle a temp job that leads me to weep in the shower late at night. If I were feeling melodramatic, I would say it is because I am in fear of losing my soul.

In truth, though, I'm not that worried about my soul. I am worried about what my work does to my personality and sense of self. As I've suggested in earlier posts and comments, I have tendencies and experiences in my past that make me worry about losing myself in an effort to conform to group norms and the pain that this causes. Much of my childhood was spent being an outsider and I still carry the scars; not the big scars one gets from being a reject or an outcast, but the subtle scars that come from never quite fitting in and always having to hide or prune aspects of oneself in order to find some measure of acceptance. As a result, I'm very sensitive to social cues about acceptable behavior, beliefs, etc. and often unconsciously find myself adapting to the norms of the place I'm in and the people who surround me.

If the difference between me and the others is small, the distortion is minor and fits within the fluctuations of personality I experience on a regular basis anyway. If the difference is large, what I experience is the psychic equivalent of footbinding -- a cramming of myself into an ill-fitting space until I fit. So what, you say, everyone does this to some degree. You go home at the end of the day and stretch and return to yourself. Unfortunately, I've found, I don't. The echoes of the distortion persist, and the longer I am with a group of people the more like them I become and I begin to forget the parts of myself that don't fit into the group norm.

Again, you may say that I'm being melodramatic, but I've watched myself in action too many times to not believe that this can and will happen again. Like the frog being slowly boiled alive, I don't realize how hot the water is -- how far I have strayed from the person I am most comfortable being -- until something tips me out. I spent a month once living in a house of a British translator; by the end of the month I had developed a slight British accent and could complete her sentences. More tellingly, there was the month-long trip with people who teased me for always using "big" words (my ordinary working vocabulary); by the end of it I was no longer using those words, and no longer even having to think about it. I literally became a simpler thinker as a result; it took a return to grad school to remind myself that I did still have the capacity for more complex thought.

I think you can see where I'm going with this.

It was only in college, then grad school, and now in the presence of either family or academic friends, that I feel entirely myself. No distortions, no adaptations to the group, no foreign habits slowly adopted until they become my own -- THIS is why I am so afraid about leaving.