Community

A Name for Pain

thegraduatewife4 Comments

neu.Draw

I once had a nice chat with an acquaintance about her opinion of The Graduate Wife.  ‘Wonderful’, ‘helpful’, and ‘necessary’ were words that she threw around. She then paused for a moment and started to scuff her feet on the ground. “Sometimes it just seems a bit heavy, actually.” “Heavy?” I slowly questioned, feeling a bit defensive.

 On the way home I reviewed the conversation in my head, ultimately deciding that some of it is heavy. People are writing and sharing from their hearts about some of the hardest things they’ve ever experienced in their lives—so of course it’s going to be heavy. Even so, I found myself wishing for a do-over of our conversation so that I could ask, “Hey, what about our categories like ‘Celebrate’, ‘Food for Thought’, ‘Shuga’ Mommas’, or ‘Beauty and the Budget’? That’s not all heavy stuff, is it?”

And then it hit me.

This blog works because it is a place where heavy things are shared. Freely and safely shared. And even more, we find ourselves being invited into the heaviness of others (many we don’t even know) as we share in their beautiful journeys. Their stories are much like our own. We cry because we feel the stings ourselves; we laugh because it’s just as ridiculous and hilarious in our own lives. (We all know we dream of Keeley’s cat ranch idea every now and again.)

I started thinking about this concept of ‘heaviness’ again last week after a friend who lost her baby during childbirth sent me a beautiful picture of her son’s gravestone, adorned with flowers. They were celebrating their son on what would have been his first birthday. I have only known this amazing woman after she experienced this great loss in her life; I have only known her with great suffering in her personal story.  Still, I find her to be one of the most beautiful people I have met. Her faith has had a huge impact on where she is now, and her story of trust, pain, heartache, grace, and love all mixed together has given me great courage.  Being able to witness her journey through this suffering has been profound. She willingly let me share in her story and welcomed me into her heaviness. Talking about stillborn babies cannot be easy, yet she did; she let me ask questions, and she let me love on her in the process. I’m thankful not to have known suffering as she has, but that doesn’t mean the same pain won’t knock on my door.  I know without a doubt that if I find myself having to experience something as painful as what she has gone through, I will have courage, hope, and ultimately a stronger faith, because she did.

 She gave me a name to put with pain: her name and her story. And this, in turn, gives me courage to face the unknown ahead of me.

I feel the same about Mandy sharing about her miscarriage, or about Katherine sharing about her stroke, or about Sarah sharing about the pain and reality of sacrificing dreams for the sake of another.  I have a name to connect to pain, and I have found strength and courage in simply knowing these names, and in knowing these stories.  It’s been a gift to be able to read the stories of those a few steps ahead of me—to know that there are awesome and awful times ahead, but that I will make it through those seasons.

I hope The Graduate Wife is a place where you are able to put names and stories to pain and suffering. And perhaps such intimacy will grant you courage for the future ahead. And if you haven’t stepped out with a story of your own, whether sorrowful or joyful, please feel free share some of your story with us. Share the heavy and the light. It’s a real gift to have this space to do so.

-M.C.

{p.s. I totally just scribbled out the names at the top of this post.  I apologize to my friends (virtual ones too!) if I listed your name and wrote it out a bit sloppy.}

Friday Funnies

Friday Funnies: What does an academic job advertisment really mean?

thegraduatewife3 Comments

The truth behind that job advertisement for a lectureship/assistant professorship

Location: Somewhere you don’t want to live
Salary: Nowhere near enough given the ridiculous number of qualifications you have
Contract type: Full-time permanent*
Interview Date: Don’t worry, you probably won’t make this stage

 *”Permanent” refers to your expected working hours on campus, NOT your job security, benefits, healthcare etc.

Background

We are seeking a candidate to replace an academic that went senile over 20 years ago, but who has only just retired.

Candidate Evaluation

The candidate must have a PhD from an institution where ivy grows up the sides of old historic buildings and 5-10 years of postdoctoral experience with all the world-experts in their chosen research area. The successful candidate will have published every experiment that they have performed in the last 10-15 years, and some that they did not (only publications in  Science or Nature will be considered valid). The candidate is expected to spend their days teaching undergraduates, and their nights working towards developing a world-class research career – it will obviously be advantageous if the candidate does not have friends, family, hobbies or eyelids. The candidate will have an enthusiasm for teaching**.

**Demonstrating this enthusiasm once you have the job will result in zero career progression and incessant mocking from colleagues.

Holidays

Hahahahahahahaha

Application Process

Enquiries should be directed to our overworked secretary, Mavis; she will probably lose it first time around, so send a second enquiry about 1 week after you submit the first one. When applying, please submit your curriculum vitae – the heavier the better; anything that can be picked up by a single person, or can be read in less than 2 weeks will not be considered.

Interviews

Five lucky candidates, who meet the ridiculous criteria stated above, will be invited to be pummeled (verbally and physically) by a pack of cantankerous academics. Candidates will then be locked in a room together with a single 2×4 coated in barbed-wire. The last one left breathing will be given the job.

Further information:

We aim to be an equal opportunities employer. However, we are not very good at this: white, socially awkward males with excessive facial hair are preferred; females will only be considered if they demonstrate absolutely no desire to start a family.

reprinted with permission from David Alridge, PhD student and Marine biologist, from his blog, Words in mOcean.

Community

Calling All Readers!

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call for readers

image source  here

The application waiting game has almost come to an end, and many of you are already looking for apartments in various cities across the world as you prepare to move for another graduate degree or post doc position.  Or, you might be on the other end of the stick: slowly, but surely working through your graduate degree but having to prepare yourself seeing treasured friends from graduate life pack up and head out.  Whew…the seasons of the graduate life!

We wanted to ask you today to think back to your earliest memories of starting on this graduate partner journey.  Think back to the countless internet searches over the new city to which you were moving, the countless searches for welcome groups, any tidbits of insight or information you could gather about the experience ahead of you. Both of us remember well what that was like!

Right now, most universities are getting ready to send loads of information to incoming students concerning their moves and the things in store for them.  Wouldn’t it be amazing to have a link to The Graduate Wife sent to those students?  We think back to our beginnings on this journey and wonder what a gift it would have been to be directed to this site to receive the wealth of encouragement and support before we even began!

This is where we ask you, our readers, to help spread the word about The Graduate Wife site by sending this letter to your current university or alma mater.  You can tailor it to your specific school, and please feel free to reword the language if you’d like.  We’ve had great feedback from people who have found the site through university postings, and we can’t help but imagine the many other wives or partners out there who could benefit from it in the future.

We realize a lot of our readers prefer to stay anonymous. In that case, if you have a contact at your university, please let us know that information and we can contact them.

We have experienced a wonderful community of friends in our current city. However, there are a lot of women who don’t have that where they live, and for those who have found this blog, the virtual community has been a lifeline of hope and support to them. For those of you have shared your stories, thank you. For those of you who read this blog, thank you. Here’s a snippet of some emails we receive on a weekly basis:

“It actually helps a lot to hear other people’s experience. I only know a couple of graduate wives, most of our colleagues are single. I had been talking to friends for the past few months, but non of them in academia. But your experience has been very encouraging for both of us, just knowing there are people like us “out there”.” – reader from North America

“I cannot tell you how much this site encourages me.” – reader from the UK

“I found your blog at the right time and really have enjoyed spending a good part of my day reading all your posts. Some have made me laugh and others cry.  I have not found anyone that I can relate to who is on this journey of grad school, however, I instantly found comfort in your words. Thank you so much.” – reader from North America

Help us reach out to others!

Your journey matters and is impacting graduate wives across the globe,

-Mandy & MC

Monday's Food for Thought

Monday’s Food for Thought: 12 Things Happy People Do Differently

thegraduatewife1 Comment

new food for thought

A friend of mine recently sent this article to me, and I enjoyed it so much I thought you might also. I wonder what life would be like for all of us if we practiced any of the happiness habits listed in the article on a regular basis? Would it change the world we live in?

Do you practice any happiness habits not listed in the article? If so, would you be willing to share them below?

-Mandy

Beauty and the Budget

Beauty & the Budget: Tips for Renters

thegraduatewife4 Comments

tips for rentersAre you moving into another graduate student housing dorm soon?  Are you packing up and moving for a graduate degree or post doc. into yet another rented space?  Or are you staying still, but just oh so ready to have a home of your own?  If you flip through some of our Beauty & the Budget files, you’ll see we have lots of tips and ideas to hopefully get you thinking about how to beautify your space, even if it is only for a few months or years.  You can even read this post on how strongly I feel about the importance and value of creating a home that really  reflects who you are, even though the space might be temporary.  As this is the season for moves and transitions, I’ve done some searching online and below are some of the best ‘tips for renters’ that I could find to pass along.

Even if you can’t paint the walls, have you thought of using tempaper (fancy pants temporary wall paper) or purchasing fun chalkboard or sticker decals, or even painting some furniture to give you some color?  Have you thought of getting new hardware for the kitchen and bathrooms to give the cabinets a facelift or even taking the cabinets off and storing them to have a fun open storage thing going on?  What about embracing bold colors in small spaces through a new rug or curtains or adding more throw pillows to the couch?  Lots of fun ideas below to bring life to a rental space. I hope some are helpful and encourage you to make your new abode your own!

-M.C.

tips for renters 1

* Apartment Therapy: 20 Tips, Tricks, & Solutions for Renters; 5 Resources for Temporary Wallpaper

* Better Homes and Gardens: 25 Ideas to Steal for your Apartment

* Canadian House & Home: Top Decorating Tips for Renters

* The Daily Buzz: Ten Decorating Tips for Renters

* Salvage Love: Decorating Tips for Renters

Do you have any tips to add?

Shuga' Mommas

Shuga’ Mommas: Thai Beef Cabbage Cups

thegraduatewife2 Comments

I was in the mood for a bit of Thai food the other night, and I ran across this recipe from Cooking Light, so decided to try it. I’m not usually that adventurous when it comes to making Asian food (anything made with fish sauce tends to throw this Midwest Missouri girl), but since I really wanted to try this recipe, I forged on.

It was a huge hit in our house. The recipe is simple, inexpensive, and the leftovers were great!

credit

Ingredients:

  • 2 1/2 teaspoons dark sesame oil, divided
  • 2 teaspoons minced peeled fresh ginger
  • 3 garlic cloves, minced
  • 1 pound ground sirloin
  • 1 tablespoon sugar
  • 2 tablespoons fresh lime juice
  • 1 1/2 tablespoons fish sauce
  • 1 tablespoon water
  • 1/4 teaspoon crushed red pepper
  • 1/2 cup vertically sliced red onion
  • 1/2 cup chopped fresh cilantro
  • 8 large green cabbage leaves
  • 2 tablespoons finely chopped unsalted, dry-roasted peanuts

Preparation

  1. Heat a large nonstick skillet over medium-high heat. Add 2 teaspoons oil to pan; swirl to coat. Add ginger and garlic; cook 1 minute, stirring constantly. Add beef; cook 5 minutes or until browned, stirring to crumble.
  2. Combine remaining 1/2 teaspoon oil, sugar, and next 4 ingredients (through pepper) in a large bowl. Add beef mixture, onion, and cilantro; toss well. Place 2 cabbage leaves on each of 4 plates; divide beef mixture evenly among leaves. Top each serving with 1 1/2 teaspoons peanuts.

A couple of notes:

  • If you don’t like cabbage leaves, you could substitute rice. I made both, and it was wonderful.
  • I sauteed the onion before mixing it with the beef.

Enjoy!

-Mandy

Monday's Food for Thought

Monday’s Food for Thought: Your Apples Are A Year Old?!

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new food for thought

Do you know the age of the apple you just purchased from the grocery store?

I recently saw this article on Food Renegade, and found it completely fascinating. Did you know the average age of a supermarket apple is 14 months old? I honestly didn’t know anything about controlled atmosphere cold storage warehouses before reading this article, but the more research I do, the more disillusioned I grow with our food industry.

What do you think? Does it make you want to buy local and eat seasonally? Do you have the option to purchase any of your produce from nearby farmers?

Something to think about this Monday morning!

-Mandy

Beauty and the Budget

Beauty & the Budget: Up-cycling Frames 101

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cicles 1

circles piece2

cicles 3

circles piece4

-M.C.

Dear Laura

Dear Laura: Baffled

thegraduatewife2 Comments

Dear Laura

Dear Laura,

What if you follow your spouse to grad school to support their dream, and after years of support through school, when they struggle to find a job they say you’re putting too much pressure on them to be the one with the career and why can’t you find something and be the breadwinner?

Sincerely,

Baffled

Dear Baffled,

It was a bright, crisp winter day and as I walked through our neighborhood, I came across a towering, solid oak bookcase – free to a good home –  which seemed like it might serve as a great central piece in our teeny (think grad student budget on a diet) apartment. I briskly padded home, begged my brawny hubby to come help me, and we wrestled the monstrous piece of furniture four blocks home and then up the steep, treacherous staircase to our flat. (Can you see where this is going?)  Need I say: it didn’t fit in our place?  But how long did it take for me to come to that realization, and how many times did I (gently?) instruct my husband to try this possibility and that, and how long until we muscled the @#$% bookcase back down those steep stairs and out to the street with a “Free” sign reluctantly stuck to its solid back?   I have no idea how much time elapsed, but I know the way the story ends: though I had said nothing about not having enough money for a nice bookcases, and though in the wrestling I never mentioned that we were grown adults living in a postage-stamp-sized apartment because my husband was a graduate student, this scene closed with him yelling out “maybe you should have married a doctor or a lawyer!!!” and stomping off.  Thus began a cold silence between us that lasted well into the next day.

I was baffled. What had happened? All I did was try to fit a bookcase into our flat, and it ended in an explosion (one that has become a great joke between us, and between friends who were privy to the story), but I could not understand how it got there, because I didn’t feel it was a commentary on my husband’s success or potential; it was just a bookcase.

What I know now is that when one is married or partnered, the graduate journey is a supreme exercise in risk and vulnerability, for both spouses.  The vulnerability flows in and out of seemingly benign conversations, it creeps into moods and thoughts, it certainly shadows daily decisions and conversations of life’s challenges.  The vulnerability is sometimes painful, sometimes debilitating, and much of the time, can be terrifying.

The graduate student him or herself has chosen to take a very public risk, to invest resources and life capital into a dream, knowing that it may amount to nothing; he or she might have to bear the shame of having risked and lost, with nowhere to hide.  The student’s spouse is asked to counterintuitively place complete trust in the other person’s dream, but with no control over the journey itself; the quality of work, the decisions made every day at the office, the job interviews which form the path for future career development are completely out of the spouse’s hands.  The sacrifices are deep, the mutual support required is intense, relational and spiritual resources are often tried by fire.

And so, to answer your question:  First, let me say that I am making two assumptions. 1) I choose to believe that you are smart enough not to have said something to your husband like, “What’s wrong with you? Why can’t you just get a job already?”, and 2) For various reasons, I am assuming that he did not literally mean what he said. Unless he did, and then that is a different discussion. (Do let me know if I’ve assumed wrongly; this requires a different response.)

That said,  I think that the comment made by your husband is likely fueled by complete terror and exhaustion over the weight of the vulnerability mentioned earlier. His success or failure is swiftly becoming public knowledge – one must report back to family and friends how one fared in recent interviews and with various job prospects – and his worst fears are starting to become a reality; he has nothing to show for his risk, and what is worse, he feels responsible for having asked you to sacrifice to the extent that you have.  So, like the insecurity expressed in the “you should have married a doctor or a lawyer” comment I heard long ago, you may have been having a benign interaction, but the vulnerability is rising to the surface and it is threatening to swallow your husband’s sense of who he is, who he will be, and whether it all was worth the cost.

Maybe he is begging for some relief from the pressure of having to make this career a success and hold up the pillars of your family. Maybe he had a bad interaction with his advisor or heard that his colleague was just hired for the most lucrative, most highly sought after job at one of the schools with the most ivy climbing the brick and mortar. Maybe you said something that made him feel you didn’t understand his efforts. Maybe he was tired. Maybe he was being whiny and immature. I don’t know; it’s all conjecture on my part. But, I can tell you that neurologically, we experience separation, rejection (including job market rejection), and exclusion in the exact same way that we experience physical pain, and that contact with a loving partner literally acts as a buffer against shock, stress, and pain. He is in pain, you are in pain.

So, hold his hand. Ask him to hold yours. Hug each other.  Hold each other. Stand together, literally and metaphorically.  It mediates distress and enlivens positive hormones, it increases one’s immune system, and cements you together.  Sit in silence or allow music to fill the background, pray if that’s a part of your lives, look each other in the eye, and prop each other up against the terror of academic uncertainty.

Then, tomorrow or next week, after you have built and re-built the foundation beneath you, then you can talk about who is going to work at Starbucks and who is going to start a pie making business. It won’t be quite so terrifying if you are facing it together; really, truly together.

Baffled, you know that the circumstances of your email and the question posted here include depth and history, to which I am not privy; do let me know if based on the limitations here you would like more discussion or if I’m way off the mark, or otherwise.  If so, maybe you should have emailed a doctor or a lawyer. :)

-Laura

Laura M. Benton, Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist and professional Graduate Wife (12 years, friends. Two MA’s and a PhD.)

To write with your own question for The Graduate Wife team, email TheGraduateWife@gmail.com or LBenton.LMFT@gmail.com

Monday's Food for Thought

Monday’s Food for Thought: What You Have To Offer

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new food for thought

On September 30th of 2011, in front of a sell-out theater at the BFI in London, Charlie Kaufman delivered the final lecture in BAFTA’s 2011 Screenwriter’s Lecture Series.

Below is a short clip from his 70 minute lecture that someone recorded and added images to.

It’s incredibly inspiring and thought provoking.  Brings up so much food for thought this Monday morning…consumer culture, entertainment, our role and responsibility in the beautiful yet tragic world around us.

Enjoy!

-M.C.