A Capitalist Brew

The trip away from all of this dissertation, job market, and business chaos was good.  It felt marvelous to be away from everything, not answer all of those emails, and just enjoy time with my family.  It was fun, and I felt mentally refreshed from the trip.  The problem, however, is that I seem to be physically exhausted.  We have been back for a couple of days now, and I feel like the process of getting back on track and getting caught up coupled with the exhaustion of traveling alone with two small children has me whipped.

So, last night I ignored the huge pile of ungraded exams and let myself do absolutely nothing.  I was sure this was the answer to my fatigue.  Unfortunately, I woke up feeling only a small fraction better than I did last night.  Now I will resort to massive doses of caffeine to help get me through the piles of work I must finish for Monday morning.  Mostly, I am concerned because this is not how I need to be entering the next few weeks.  I need to be rested and on top of my game completely.  Maybe it is time to pull out that spa gift certificate I got for Mother’s Day and try my massage.  Maybe I should grade papers today with my feet soaking in my wonderful foot spa I got as a birthday gift.  I am willing to try anything at this point.

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I am mostly recovered now.  I did make it into school today to accomplish two goals.  I filled out and filed my plan of study, which had to be filed before I go up for candidacy.  I also forwarded the third essay minus results to the committee and suggested that we schedule the dissertation proposal for October 5, 8, or 9.  Tomorrow morning I am headed out of here for a few days to enjoy some cooler weather, time with my family, Dunkin Donuts, and a slice of Grotto pizza.  Let’s just hope the trip with the two kids is as painless as possible.  Luke will have his own seat this time, which I am hoping makes life much easier.

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I have been sick since Monday night.  In the meantime, Brooke and Scott have also come down with the same stomach virus that I had (evidently it is going around here).  I really only had time to get past the worst of it and then had to take care of everyone else.  I think my body decided to take that as a cue to come down with every germ to which I have been exposed in the last month.  I barely got past the stomach virus and got a horrible cold.  I am so tired.  I need to work, but I can’t.  Maybe tomorrow.  I couldn’t even get to school today because there was no way I was making it a mile from the car to the office.

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Today I had to sign my name to two different pieces of corporate paperwork.  The first made me nervous and anxious.  The second made me happy and resolute about the first.  Bring on the first major change of the next twelve months.

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As a good capitalist, I tend to treat my stress and anxiety with retail therapy. I don’t even have to leave my desk, which is good, because I don’t have time for that. Besides, have you tried actually shopping for anything that requires any thought beyond looking at the size and throwing the item in the cart with two small children in tow? Impossible. But I digress. I am most excited that these shoes I drooled over are back in stock and should ship to me this week. I really, really hope they fit because I am in love with them. The shoes remind me of a pair I admired on Sarah Jessica Parker’s feet in If Lucy Fell.

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• Lots of legal and accounting business insanity going on this week.  More insanity to follow, but then we hope for peace to be on the horizon.
• Job applications are not fun.  Five weeks ago I approached the professors I wanted to write reference letters.  They confirmed.  I sent materials to them.  One said the letter would be done the following week.  Last week (a month later) I discover that the secretary never received the letter.  This person is not at my current institution, and I am unable to get a response from him despite a pile of desperate emails.  I finally give up and ask someone at my current institution, who amazingly has a letter composed the same day.  Letters went in the mail today along with a note explaining that the other person would provide a reference via phone or email, but I switched the letter to expedite completion of my application packet.  I just couldn’t wait any longer, and I hope schools understand.  I am not happy, but I am grateful to the person who saved my butt.
• Everyone here other than Brooke currently has cold symptoms.
• I need to post a pic of my new glasses.
• I finally got a new printer/scanner/copier for my desk.  The old one was starting to endlessly jam paper.  I am not yet sure how I feel about the new one, but at least it is not jamming paper.  I need to try out the scanner because I have a million things to scan and put on the kids’ web sites.
• Today I get an email from the graduate school saying that you now have to file a “plan of study” and have it approved before going up for candidacy.  This is the first I have heard about this rule, so I need to try to figure that out and get paperwork filed Monday or Tuesday.  I am going up for candidacy in less than 3 weeks.  A little more notice might have been even more helpful.  Maybe a note from the department?
• Oh yea, I am going up for candidacy in about 3 weeks.  I am pretty chill about the work I have done so far.  I am not using any crazy models or anything, but my papers are each unique and make a certain contribution to the literature.  I think I am most freaked out about what a big step this is and only freaked out about the actual defense in a secondary way.  Panic attacks ensue.
• I really don’t have that much actual work to do to finish the entire dissertation.  Once you get the data in shape, running the models goes pretty quickly in comparison.  I think this realization has me feeling a little freaked out too.  I have spent a full 10 years in college (this is my 4th degree), and the end is so clearly in sight now.  This is also a little scary.  I think this goes back to the difficulty in making a mental transition from student to professor.  My mental picture of myself is as a 20 year-old undergraduate.  I am well aware that I am not, but I am not sure how you learn to perceive of yourself in a new way.  More panic attacks.

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This morning the phone rang, and I saw it was a call from the preschool.  The first thought in my head was “oh no, who puked?”  Thankfully, the answer was nobody.  Brooke got a wart treatment yesterday and was complaining about her hands being so sore, so they wanted to know what to do for her.

This day as not as hard as it was last year, but it is still hard.  I have been running around trying to take care of a lot of things that don’t allow me to sit down and really think and re-live September 11, 2001.  I will save that for tonight when I can allow myself to re-live and remember a bit more.

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I have no good excuse for why I have not been posting lately.  I’m tired, and I think I have been closing off all my thoughts and emotions lately.  I am very good at this.  Ask my husband.  I am like a lockbox when I don’t force myself to be otherwise.  It is how I coped for so many years.  And I again find myself caught up in my own thoughts.  I think all the changes going on in my life have me freaked out.  Everything that is happening is good and as we had planned, but they are all drastic changes which feel to me like they happened so fast.  I am feeling a lot of anxiety over the job market.  I worry that I have not done enough, that I could have done more, that I am not really ready, that nobody will like me and take me seriously, etc.  I am just not quite at the place I thought I would be when I imagined this stage in my life.  I feel like overnight I went from Ph.D. student to job candidate.  A few months ago I had nothing, and now I am on the brink of my dissertation proposal.  But I am ready.  I have everything I need and am where I need to be in the process.  I keep reminding myself that I cannot change what I have done.  I am who I am and am the product of my choices.  We could always do more or do better.  I am real and am me.  I didn’t spend every single moment of my life studying.  I am a mother and a business owner.  I had a baby.  I juggled more than most people in the Ph.D. program ever do.  Yet, I survived.  And I am finishing ahead of most of my classmates.  I am a hard worker, I am focused, and I am smart.  I have the mind of a researcher and the heart of a teacher.  I might not be the perfect job candidate, but I know that I am only going to continue to improve and will make a valuable contribution to any school that hires me.  I can only hope that I am able to convey these things to those who control my fate and look at me as a few sheets of paper among hundreds.  I can’t control what they will think or what they will do.  I can only know that I did the best I could as I always do.

And then this repeats through my head about 500 times a day.

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During the summer semester I had tried to explain to the students what sub-prime lending is, why it is especially risky, and the dangers to the financial markets. Over the next couple of weeks we started to see all of that actually happen…increase in risk premiums, flight to quality in the debt markets (move from commercial paper and corporate debt to Treasuries), and then the decline in the stock market. The Fed’s action to inject liquidity by lowering the discount rate happened after the end of the class, but the point was that we could see the interconnection of the financial institutions and markets that we were discussing in the course. I thought it was a pretty powerful example, but the students seemed slow to grasp the point. One of my students from the summer emailed me last week to ask me a question related to sub-prime lending.  She said that seeing everything unfold lately made her realize she needed to understand more, and she asked me to explain it all to her again.  I gladly sent her a nice response in which I explained sub-prime lending, the mechanics of the loans, how it was no surprise that there were so many defaults, and why this is playing out in all aspects of the financial markets.  It made me happy to know that some of my students cared to learn even after the class was over and realized the value of what I had been trying to tell them during the semester.  It also made me feel good to know that when one of my students had a question about something from the course, she felt like I was the person she should come back and talk to even after final grades were long posted.  For the first time, I really felt like a professor.  For the first time, I really felt like I was getting through to my students and that what I was doing mattered.

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