Shuga' Mommas

Shuga’ Mommas: Paleasagna?

thegraduatewife1 Comment

So, lately I have really gotten into the whole ‘gluten-free’ thing.  It all started with a few friends who challenged me to do a sort of ‘detox’ in my diet when I kept complaining of being exhausted all the time.  I tried it out and believe it or not, I started feeling great.  Better than I had felt in years!  Who knew that my energy levels were so closely connected to what I was eating.  And don’t get me wrong, I have always been a pretty healthy eater.  It was on a very very rare occasion that I’d ever buy a bag of chips or a soft drink.  But as I began to take a closer look at what I was eating (even though most of it was deemed ‘healthy’) I realized I could start to take control of my energy levels and start feeling really good with a few easy changes.

I also realized that this new habit of eating had started to directly influence my husband and his work as well!  The less gluten and dairy we ate, the better we slept at night, the more rested we felt during the day, and the less he felt like he was going to crash at 3pm and the more productive he became.  Perfect for our spouses that need the right fuel to keep them going all day in library!

My first thought was, “Man, this is going to be tricky, right?”  I had believed that eating gluten free and dairy free was going to be incredibly expensive and hard work.  There is definitley more ‘chopping’ involved in my meals :) but the trade off of feeling good is so worth it.  Sorry to ramble on, I just had to share the story behind my posting this recipe for today.

Today’s recipe is a pasta-free version of lasagna and it is amazing! Even if you aren’t interested in going gluten-free, the below offers a healthier option to regular lasagna and it is truly delicious.  Good for those chilly Autumn nights ahead!  Enjoy!

-M.C.

Click here for link to full recipe.

Photo Credit: http://www.whatrunslori.com

{note: the dish is called ‘paleasagna’ because the website hosts recipes for people doing the ‘paleo’ type diet.}

Monday's Food for Thought

Monday’s Food for Thought: Technology as our master?

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I read this article from the American Spectator a few months back, and although it is quite biased and provides little empirical evidence, I found myself intrigued by the author’s opinions and observations on the use of technology in the world today.

I once heard someone explain the tool of technology (specifically social media) like this: When any tool is used, the user is in return ‘shaped’ by the tool it is using.  You can’t hoe a garden for an afternoon without coming in that evening with sore arms from working the hoe into the ground.  After a few days of working in the garden, your arm muscles will start to grow and you will begin to show a physical change in appearance.  You, the master of the tool, have been shaped by it.

The article speaks similarly, “Communication is not like other human actions, something that we might feel free not to engage in. It is the essence of human life. We are social creatures, whose personalities emerge from our interactions; all that we value and all that we fear has its source in communication. Hence these gadgets, which change the form and the scope of our communications, are less our servants than our masters.”

Hmm, what are your thoughts?  Is technology a neutral tool? Can it be? Should it be?  Have you seen yourself changed by using it so much?  In a good or bad way?

-M.C.

Depression · Expectations

My parents always said, “Life’s Not Fair”

thegraduatewife1 Comment

Did you know that October is National Anti-Bullying Awareness month? In light of this, and the recent stories in the news of students who have been or are currently being bullied, we’ve asked a graduate wife to bravely share her family’s journey of bullying, and what they did to combat it. If you are being bullied or your spouse/partner is, we hope this will encourage you to seek help. You are not alone.

–Mandy and M.C.

-Written by Stephanie, a current graduate wife

Tweed jackets with elbow patches, respectful intellectual debates, advancing the field of science, grooming the next generation, and above all a just/transparent system. These are all things I had in mind when I excitedly accepted my first job at a public university. A product of public schooling myself, I arrived at my new home feeling quite content with these expectations and looking for a tweed jacket-wearing fellow to complete the new chapter of my life.

He didn’t come with elbow patches, but instead my soon to be husband turned out to be a graduate student. That was fine by me, and we enjoyed several blissful months together immediately after meeting. Unfortunately, the bliss soon began to dissipate (and not just from the end of your normal “honeymoon phase”).

It all started when a professor basically hijacked his lab project. With my husband being a foreigner, I explained to him that in my country, this is unfortunately not all that uncommon in academia. Although it shook my idea of a fair university system a bit, I brushed it aside as something necessary for my husband to advance in his field. After all, he did get a chance to contribute to the research, didn’t he?

Over a period of years we slowly started to discover that the same professor had been telling lies about my husband in public. As if this wasn’t bad enough, we later learned she had committed several other indiscretions against my husband (some of them illegal). The worst part was that we learned about most of this through third parties, or when my husband had to clear up major problems and misunderstandings as a result. It felt like we were surrounded by a fog and were being slowly smothered by it. Bullying is for third graders to deal with, right? Not for grown-up professionals?

We had to decide what to do. Would we run or fight for my husband? We decided to fight in our own way, but in hindsight my husband wishes we would have run. He compares the situation to being in a bar where you find yourself threatened by a six foot five muscle man (who can never be fired from his bouncer position) with tattoos and a gang of friends behind him. Is it smarter to pick a fight or to run? Definitely run. And after looking back, this is what he says he should have chosen today.

However, back then I was convinced we were operating within a fair system. After all, it was my taxpayer dollars at work funding the university, open records existed, and ombudsmans were in place to assist students with any problems. Surely this couldn’t be happening.

But it was.

Even after we talked to supervisors, department heads, and assistant deans, nothing was done about the situation.

Finally after years of trauma in our home, the professor was slapped on the wrist. After my husband’s graduation. I could hear my parent’s age-old cry, “life’s not fair.”

Life is definitely not fair, but thankfully we have moved on and are now at a different public institution. Even though there was hardly anything done to reprimand the bully in our situation, we hope the notation in her personnel file will equip others in the future to fight back. That fog I mentioned is slowly lifting for us and things are getting better every day, but the psychological affects of the bullying still remain. I’m not glad it happened to us, but I am glad it helped me realize some important lessons:

1. A graduate degree is not more important than the happiness and health of my husband.

2. The systems we take for granted as being just may not be just.

3. Standing up for justice may not be as easy as it is in the movies.

I wish all graduate students who are being bullied can quickly escape from their situations, and my advice to the spouses/partners who are supporting them is this:

1. Encourage your spouse to seek professional help. Most universities have a counseling center, so this may be an affordable place to start. If it’s possible, try to find a psychologist who has experience with bullying. (Additionally, if your spouse is a foreigner, try to request a counselor who is foreign as well.) And don’t be shy about making the appointment yourself or going with your spouse, if necessary.

2. Listen as much as you can, but not at the expense of your own sanity. Your partner may relive the traumatic experiences over and over. During these periods, it probably won’t help to try to reason with him/her about the illogical or paranoid thoughts he/she may be having. Sometimes it can be helpful if you listen without trying to “fix” the situation. However, this can take its toll on you; make sure to spend time away from your spouse once and a while doing things you enjoy.

3. Fill your cup first and nourish others from the overflow. Realize it’s okay if you are not in a good place to help your spouse on a particular day. If you are feeling exhausted, remember it is okay to tell your partner you cannot help them at that particular moment.

4. Encourage your spouse to widen his/her support network. No matter how strong you are, you shouldn’t allow yourself to become his/her sole emotional support. Suggest that your partner talk to close friends (outside the university) or family members. These people should be chosen carefully and trusted 100 percent. Your spouse shouldn’t have to worry about committing slander when sharing with them.

5. If your spouse decides to fight, remind him/her to:

  • Inform his/her supervisor but remember academic supervisors are usually not trained to deal with bullies;
  • Document everything (make sure to email summaries of conversations afterward);
  • Remember if he/she decides to take the case to court it can be very difficult to prove slander or libel, it will be very expensive, and even if he/she wins, it can damage his/her reputation more than it already is (even if the case is successful).

6. Get training in suicide prevention. I was certified through the QPR program for work and it came in handy a few times at home.

7. Encourage your partner to exercise in order to relieve stress.

8. Remember you are not alone. Bullying in academia is more prevalent than you think.

In your graduate wife journey, have you had to deal with bullying in academia? What have you done to combat it?

Monday's Food for Thought

Monday’s Food for Thought: Changing Education Paradigms

thegraduatewife1 Comment

I came across this video recently, and it blew my mind.

What do you think? Is our present educational system wrong for today’s learners? What would it take for us to back up and start again?

And on a more personal note, did the present educational system fail you?

-Julia

Identity · Professional Careers · Vocation/Gifts/Calling

Piecing it Together

thegraduatewife7 Comments
image found here
-written by Keeley, a current graduate wife

I wonder how many of us are in this situation: I studied something which I loved in college, and still love, but had no delusions was going to be a vocation without graduate study. When I thought about what to do after school, the most appealing options were overseas volunteer or educational internships, and I figured that was a workable-enough plan until I had something more concrete figured out. In the meantime, I met my future husband the summer before senior year in college, and knew that if there were a person on earth with whom I could imagine spending any significant amount of time – let alone the rest of my life – I had found him. I decided this relationship was something I had no desire to pass up or take for granted. Fortunately, he felt the same way and we were married soon after I graduated college.

Flash forward to my first September out of school since I was five years old. Living with my new husband in a new city 1,000 miles from my folks, paying rent for the first time, and looking for work, armed with an undergraduate degree in Music History and a bazillion extra-curricular activities which probably wouldn’t help my cause. Oh, and very minimal job experience, consisting of interning at an 18th-century backcountry farm and playing in a string quartet. I tend to forget how desperate I felt to find a job at that time, but I do recall that I canvassed the areas around our apartment, applying everywhere I could, including CVS, Pier One, a local ice cream shop, a local grocery store, and LensCrafters. “Oh, you have experience analyzing the modulations in the Third Movement of Mahler’s Seventh Symphony? That’s just the type of thing we’re looking for here at LensCrafters. Why don’t you have a seat and fill out the tax information?”

Thank God I found a job which, quite honestly, suited me to a “T” and was with a company I adore, Ten Thousand Villages (look it up. For real.) I still work for them, as they have many locations in the U.S. and I was able to transfer when we moved to where we live now. I currently work 20-24 hours a week there as well as at the Historical Society a couple hours a week, and I’ve also got eight violin students and do a little paperwork for a local nonprofit organization. None of these is a “perfect job,” but as time continues to pass, I wonder if that single job exists for me. My current conclusion is that piecing together all of these different options creates an ideal situation for my interests, abilities, and desires. The reason I share this is because, for me, it is a key to appreciating this time of life more fully.

One of my best friends and I initially bonded over a wonderful book called Refuse to Choose by Barbara Sher. In it she discusses the necessity of determining your interests, skills, and goals in choosing a profession (or two or three). If it sounds rudimentary, it is–it’s just that I had never thought of it in her terms before. I found it incredibly liberating that it was “okay” to have several different interests and desires for myself in terms of employment, both paid and unpaid. As long as we are able to pay our bills, it’s fine not to have one full-time job. Remember that company I was telling you about that I started work with after college and still adore? They offer health benefits for part-time employees. Yep, these types of situations really exist! At this time in my life, it actually does make the most sense to spend my time in all these employments, because it enables me to use and develop different parts of myself–organizing, creating, reading, teaching, learning, helping others. More specifically, it helps me to integrate interests I have without leaving any aside–music, history, world crafts and cultures, and community development (Oh, and, get paid to do it).

If I were writing this to myself right out of college, I would advise myself to take opportunities that present themselves and to not be afraid of change, to be willing to try something new even if it doesn’t seem like a perfect fit. Yes, it would have been nice to study something more likely to be directly transferable into the job market, like education or nursing. But I am grateful for the rich experiences I’ve had over the past six years, including a stint working at a bakery chain, where working the closing shift promised delicious leftover baked goods for breakfast the next three days! And if you are in this boat, I want to encourage you to realize you likely have more transferable skills than you think you do. Off the top of my head, here are some things I learned in college which have undoubtedly helped me along the way: punctuality, teamwork, delegation, time management skills, listening to instruction and following directions, respecting authority, approaching a problem with creative solutions, and most importantly being able to pursue and learn anything new that interests me.

At the end of the day, I am satisfied with the ways I spend my time and energy, and I look forward to continuing to develop skills and interests I pick up throughout my life. I may not know where we’ll be in a year’s time or what I’ll be doing, but at least this time I’ll have a little more job experience on my resume.

What are some ways you have used unexpected skills in your job/jobs? How do you integrate varying interests and abilities in your employment?  Has this been especially challenging or easy being on the graduate wife journey?

Academia Beyond Grad School · Children · Motherhood

Mama PhD

thegraduatewife2 Comments

If you are a mama and you are working on a thesis, then you must check out this great little section called Mama PhD on the blog: Inside Higher Ed.  Well, even if you aren’t the student and even if you aren’t a momma, the topics and articles covered are really insightful and interesting.  I was particularly inspired by this one describing a life full of ‘works in progress’.  I can relate with so many ‘projects’ here and there, with some in full swing and some on the back-burner, and some that might never come to fruition.

“But a project can also bring satisfaction, enjoyment, accomplishment in the process of working on it, in ways that others may not appreciate because there is no final product to show.  As long as the process is still appealing and interesting to me, these projects will stay on my list, not dismissed as failures – and I hope to return to enjoying them again (and again).  And maybe finishing some.”

Check out the full list of Mama PhD articles on the site and enjoy exploring and connecting!

Monday's Food for Thought

Monday’s Food for Thought: America’s Education Calendar

thegraduatewife1 Comment

Is America’s Education calendar outdated?

I ran across this article a couple of months ago about adopting longer school years in the States, and personally, part of me thinks it’s a great idea, especially after living abroad for the last 5 years seeing another model work.

The other part of me that thinks it’s a bad idea remembers my idyllic childhood summers of ice cream, camp, sleep overs, baseball, and trips to the pool with my cousins, and I’d love to be able to give that to my son, as well.

“The fact that our calendar has been based on the agrarian economy when almost none of our kids work in the field anymore,” said Arne Duncan, secretary of education, “doesn’t make any sense whatsoever.”

If you’re a teacher in the USA, what do you think? Do you think we should adopt a longer school year? Would you be willing to try it if they implemented a different pay structure? If you are a working parent, do you struggle with summer childcare under the current system? How do you manage?

~Mandy

Expectations · Family · Patience · Sacrifice

Another day in the library

thegraduatewife5 Comments

Let me paint you a picture:

  • Dishes piled sky high in the sink.
  • Toddler who wants your full attention all day long.
  • Lots of emails in your inbox concerning an exciting project that you are contributing to that need to be answered sooner rather than later.
  • A shiny new book that arrived two weeks ago from Amazon, and still hasn’t been cracked.
  • Laundry overflowing in the hampers, and lack of clean laundry for all.
  • Pouring, I mean pouring rain outside. Nowhere to go but inside.
  • A list of creative toddler rainy day games with every single one crossed off…at least twice.
  • Dinner to prepare…then cook.
  • A phone call or two that needs to happen.

And then … (You can’t deny that you’ve done this too) … a picture pops into your weary, discombobulated mind: A picture of your husband. Alone. At the library. The quiet library. Researching. Reading about his interests, his passions. Quietly strolling through (in our case) the ancient adorned halls of the Oxford Bodleian library. Smiling, thinking deep, intellectual, powerful thoughts…alone. And I can’t help picture a smoking pipe in there as well. Or maybe your picture involves your spouse off doing fascinating field work in some exotic place…or doing a med school residency with a new rotation full of exciting, interesting new people teaching him/her life-saving skills.

Now, while I wish I could say the idea of my husband being in such a wonderful setting just raises my spirits and encourages me to get through the day, I have to be honest: it makes me a bit jealous and indignant at times.  When that picture comes to my mind at times, my first thought sometimes is not “oh how nice”, but rather, “oh how unfair“.

Yep.

It happens to the best of us. It has happened quite a few times to me lately, and I want to share some pointers if this starts happening to you.

1) Talk about it! The second that envy and jealousy start to creep up in your heart, share it with your spouse. Do not let these things fester and do not let silly, unrealistic pictures of his academic lifestyle continue to grow in your head.

2) Don’t jump to conclusions! He is not off playing Angry Birds! (And if he is, check out ML’s amazing post from last week). He is working his booty off for a degree that half the time he can’t even remember caring this deeply about to begin with. He is not off reading Bill Bryson with a pipe and a latte. He is knee deep in research and EndNote and endless PDFs and sometimes it feels more like a prison to him than an opportunity.

3) Be realistic! They don’t say “It isn’t meant to be easy” for nothing. Graduate school is hard work. Hard, hard work. And trying to balance that work on top of family and other commitments can sometimes be a lot to manage.

In short, I just want to say that for me, I have realized that maybe one in every five days of working in the library is relaxing and exciting for my husband. I feel like the other four are more like an isolating 9-6 office job that he has to keep pushing through, all alone, in order to get closer to an exciting, but far off finish line. And when he gets home he is usually needing encouragement from me (or an honest conversation about where I am at), not a whiney and jealous spiel about how hard my day seemed.

When these thoughts come, take a deep breath. Try to be thankful for the work that both of you have been given to do during this season: playing marbles for the 30th some odd time, singing Old McDonald again, scheduling conference calls while your kids are sleeping, or researching Lorentz’s views on relativity theory.

Cut them some slack.

This is a season.

Talk about it openly.

And know you are not alone in feeling this way every now and then!

-M.C.

Wednesday's Weekly Tip

Wednesday’s Weekly Tip: Random Household Secrets II

thegraduatewife2 Comments

Today’s tips come again from the quirky little 4 Ingredients book that we have highlighted before in our Shuga’ Momma’s column.  The below tips are a bit random, but fun, thrifty and worth giving a try.  I have used vaseline to remove my eye make-up for years, but now I am definitely going to give the baby oil a go; and I’m also especially curious how the bleach in the fresh flowers turns out?!  Enjoy! -M.C.

Monday's Food for Thought

Monday’s Food for Thought: The truth of the academic job hunt – even one with a happy ending

thegraduatewife1 Comment

If your other half is working on a PhD…..then you know the dreaded job hunt is in the future. And with that, the dreaded uncertainty of not knowing from year-to-year where you could be living! (Admittedly, that is the hardest part for me).

I know that I naively underestimated this process. Luckily, we’ve seen plenty of friends walk this road, often with happy endings, so we knew it would be a process. It still doesn’t make it easy, though.

I ran across this article, and for me, it was a good hard look at the possibility of this being an extremely long process. Combined with the fact that my husband is in Humanities (where funding is rapidly disappearing), I am preparing myself that we may be in for the long haul.

One question we’ve been rolling around in recent conversations is, “How long do we hold out for an academic post?” When my husband first posed it to me, I wasn’t even willing to discuss it; why in the world would we entertain an idea like that after he just spent nearly 8 years in school? Now, I realize it’s a necessity; we need to hope and plan for the best, but prepare for the possibility that we might have to do something else.

Is this something you discuss with your own graduates?

Something to think about on this Monday!

~Mandy