Tag: marriage

Moving

Costly Dreams

thegraduatewife1 Comment

Today’s blog post comes from Carol Stratton, author of ‘Changing Zipcodes: Finding Community Wherever You’re Transplanted.‘  Carol is a veteran mover (22 times!) and has written articles for The Grand Rapids Press, Zionsville Times Sentinel newspapers as well as Purpose, The Christian Communicator, Fandangle, In Touch, Women’s Touch, Your Church and Forsyth Woman magazines and has reviewed books for the Christian Book Previews. She won the 2005 Paper Cottage “Smart Women” Essay contest and has taught at The Write-to-Publish Conference and at the CLASS Christian Writers Conference. She has kindly agreed to share one of her stories from her new book with The Graduate Wife. You can find more information about moving tips and moving stories from her website: http://www.changingzipcodes.com.

Living in South Lake Tahoe, California seemed like a dream location for a new job. My husband and I had the Sierra Nevada Mountains in our backyard and one of the most beautiful lakes in the world only a few miles down the road. When my husband accepted a position managing a camp, I knew we’d hit pay dirt. I pictured us taking leisurely days off to hike the trails, boat the turquoise lake, and explore abandoned gold mine towns. In winter we’d ski down the powdery slopes.

Reality quickly slammed us. My husband worked almost seven days a week, on call like a country doctor. He faced strong-willed staff members, a flu epidemic that almost shut the camp down, an overturned boat (with the threat of the boater going into hypothermia), and a health department inspection…all within the first four months. Throw that together with my becoming pregnant with bad morning-sickness and my rose-colored view of his job turned gray from stress and led to exhaustion for both of us. Suddenly those snow-capped mountains didn’t matter much. I missed seeing my husband as I craved an opportunity for him to have a day off.

Sometimes our dreams collide with practical life. We were newlyweds when we took the camp job, but before we left the area for a new job, I gave birth to a 7 week early son. Our Tahoe experience taught us that we, as a couple, need to really think things through before we pull up stakes and jump into a new career. Though we both tend to come out high on the “craving adventure and change scale,” we’ve learned through hard experiences to take time to research and understand the impact a move will make on our family. Planning and analyzing is essential. Seriously scrutinizing a possible move may save us money and heartache down the road. We ended up moving to another state and couldn’t sell our home for eighteen months. That particular dream cost us a lot of dollars.

Are you considering a move state to state or even just a change of houses in your town? There is a story in the Bible that reminds us that when a man decides to build a tower he first counts the cost. How will this possible relocation affect the emotional, financial, educational, and social needs of your family? Trust me; sometimes it’s easier to ask these questions before a move, not after one.

Taken from Changing Zip Codes: Finding Community Wherever You’re Transplanted, published by Lighthouse Publishing of the Carolinas Available through Amazon.

Moving · Sacrifice

Our Little Adventure

thegraduatewife2 Comments

written by Emily, a current graduate wife

My journey begins probably much like many others who have, along with their spouses, made the decision to attend graduate school.  John and I were college sweethearts and had the wedding of our dreams soon after we graduated from Samford University.  After our honeymoon, John and I fell into a wonderful rhythm of living and working in Memphis, TN, and enjoyed a season of sweet friends and family there.  We bought a house and spent months renovating and decorating it, planning on staying there until we had a few children of our own.  Well the Lord had different plans for us and a fire was ignited in John’s heart to pursue his dream of going to graduate school to earn his MBA.  We prayed, and prayed, talked and talked, cried and cried (ok, just me), wondering if this was the right decision.  We decided to uproot our comfortable lives and move twelve hours away to North Carolina.  We left great jobs, great friends, our first home, and a wonderful church, not knowing what the future might hold.  We did know however that we were in this together.  Our little adventure, we liked to call it. Something so ‘out of the norm’ and something so challenging, exciting and new.

 

Here we are 1 1/2 years into business school, and we are very much still living in our adventure.  We have gone through the ups and downs that come with moving and going back to school.  Such as: John staying at school until 10pm every night, only to come home and do more work, adjusting to a tiny apartment where we can hear our neighbors sneeze, me finding a new job and having to work for 52 straight weekends in a row, the we’ve suffered through the stress of being apart for an entire summer as John went away for an internship.

 

Spending the summer apart might have been one of the hardest things we have done together as a couple.  Since I wasn’t able to pack up and leave my job here in NC, John had to gather up his things, his side of the sink, his pillow, and drive 10 hours north to Philadelphia…without me.  For eleven full weeks.  I still remember the day he left, not knowing how I was going to make it without him.  We had never been apart over the 7 years together (3 1/2 married).  Could we survive with just phone calls and skype dates, and only 2 visits over 2 1/2 months?  I seriously contemplated hiding in his suitcase and just quitting my job all together.  The first week was definitely the hardest.  Going to bed alone, cooking dinner alone, and seeing his face on skype brought tears to my eyes every time I saw him.  BUT, the first week came and went…and so did the next two.  each day, I felt stronger and my love for him began to grow in a new light. I could DO this! Our conversations were deeper and more meaningful.  Our skype chats were long and mushy.  My trip to visit him in the one of the following weeks was one of the sweetest times we’ve ever had together.  They say distance makes the heart grow fonder, and I am now a 100% believer in that.  Being apart made us cherish our time together so much more, and although we had to face trials and frustrations, I am so grateful for last summer.  If I had to give any advice to someone who is gearing up for time apart from their spouse (whether it’s an internship, or residency, etc.) I would say these 3 things.

 

1. Start a new “tradition” with each other for that time (whether it’s calling to say goodnight, a “good morning” text, a weekly piece of snail mail, or sharing a daily scripture verse).  Having something to look forward to each day together is fun and exciting and it will bring at least some form of consistency to your life.

 

2. Listen to each other.  Phone and email conversations are probably not what you are most used to in the daily communication with your spouse.  It’s really easy to misunderstand or mis-communicate when you are not sitting right in front of each other.  Sarcasm is sometimes very hard to interpret in a phone call.  Listen well and make it a point to let each person talk about his or her day.  Ask questions.  It’s a new and different way to communicate so treasure learning these new ways to share and grow.

 

3. Enjoy the present.  It’s very easy to just mark off the days on the calendar until you are together again, and constantly look towards the future, but try to enjoy the ‘in between’ phase.  Spend time with your girlfriends and watch “the notebook” 15 times in a row.  Light candles and eat popcorn for dinner.  Take long baths and buy yourself fresh flowers.  Sometimes it’s the little things that make you enjoy the day.  Take time and do that for yourself, trust me you’ll be glad you did.  You will be refreshed and happy when you have your phone call with your spouse later that night, instead of feeling isolated and alone.

 

Through our entire graduate journey, we have learned a lot and have grown in so many ways.  We have learned to never take a single moment together for granted.  We have learned that our cozy little apartment makes us cuddle that much more.  We have been reminded of the importance of encouragement and unconditional love in a marriage.  We have re-learned our love languages and have strived to put them into practice every day.  We have learned how necessary it is make decisions together and for us, to pray together.  We have been through weeks at a time where a quick meal at the dinner table was the only time we had together that day — and have learned to turn off our phones and tv’s during those times.  We have been shown that having friends that are in this same phase of life can make such a difference to your sanity.  And, we have learned what it means to be TOGETHER every step of the way.  Homes may change, friends may come and go, doors may close, and dreams may change, BUT, no matter what — it’s our little adventure. It’s one of support, sacrifice, and unconditional love.  And as long as we are together, there is nowhere else I’d rather be. 

Have you had to live apart from your spouse for an extended period on your graduate wife journey?  How have you handled the transition?

 

Doing it Together (both in academia)

Graduate AND Wife

thegraduatewife1 Comment

                                                                                                                                                                                

-written by Susan, a current graduate wife and student

The road to a PhD is a notoriously lonely one—after all, the whole point of your project is to accomplish something that no one else has.  So when academic couples tell you that it’s fantastic to have a spouse in the same profession, they’re totally right: it’s awesome to have someone who identifies with your academic lows (research dead-ends, arrogant colleagues, endless exam marking) and highs (publications,well-received conference papers, successful funding applications).  My husband (PhD researcher in Theoretical Particle Physics) and I (PhD researcher in History) feel fortunate to have this unique time in our lives: we travel together on conference/research trips, enjoy flexible schedules that allow us to work on the home we recently bought, and always have a partner at departmental functions who can talk to our colleagues about academia.

…Behind all of these perks, however, an uncertainty about the future lies in the back of our minds.

Being part of an academic couple is kind of a funny thing.  Because our job market is so constricted, and it’s rare that a university will look to fill posts for, say, a particle physicist and an early modern historian simultaneously, it is likely that post-PhD success will separate a couple—at least for a time.  Everybody in academia knows that the better you do at your PhD (the more results a physicist gets, the more illuminating a historian’s thesis is), the more likely it is that you’ll get a job in the academy after your viva (or defense, for those in North America) and graduation.  What everybody also knows, and tries not to talk about too much, is the far likelier option of doing a pretty good PhD and then going on to teach secondary school, work in publishing, or serve in university administrative posts because the academic job market is ridiculously tight. This means that the whole time you’re supporting your spouse and hoping they achieve their academic aspirations, you’re doing it with the knowledge that if they accomplish them, the flexibility and physical proximity you’re enjoying during the PhD stage of your careers will almost certainly be absent in the future.  It is somewhat odd, then, that I hope that my husband’s post-doctoral fellowship applications are successful next year, though this will undoubtedly take him either to continental Europe or North America, while I still have another year of research in the UK before I finish my PhD.  A further concern is that your careers will possibly never dovetail: if one partner gets a two-year post-doctoral fellowship and the other gets a three- or one-year post, there’s the chance that your professional paths will not square without sacrifice.  Of course, there are options; academic couples make it work all the time through teaching online courses, commuting over crazy distances, or the dream ticket, a spousal hire (where the university knows that the partner they really want, say, the physicist, will come to the university if they can find the money to hire the historian partner…though even this can have its own complications, as a spousal hire doesn’t always sit well with the ego).

The uncertainties surrounding physical distance and career timing unsurprisingly complicate planning a family.  Although our studies are funded, our grants cover our living costs but would not go a long way toward bringing up a child!  Also, both my husband and I feel that while we’re working toward our PhDs, our focus should be just that.  This begs the question, though, of when exactly would be a good time to start a family…after our PhDs, if we’re successful (and by some stroke of luck end up living near each other), then we will likely have fixed-term post-doctoral fellowships that will revolve around projects and getting additional publications under our belts—not the best time to be figuring out how to set up a crib or taking paternity/maternity leave.  Again, though, the same problem resurfaces if you’re successful after your fellowship and you get a permanent post: the first thing you’d like to do when you get a job is devote time to your students, develop your next research project, and get involved with your university. It is possible to do it all, though, and having a child will likely be worth the bump in your academic career, but it certainly complicates the route to your professional goals (and those
of your spouse).

The central tension here is the age-old problem of balancing a career and a family.  While we plan for the contingencies that will occur later in life, what I can say is that we are making the most of the amazing time we’re having together as PhD researchers.  We both love our jobs—getting paid to do something you enjoy that allows for flexibility and travel offers us time to grow as a couple and to learn about each other.  It is with these lessons in mind that we will march toward our future, filled with professional twists and family turns, but rooted in the foundation we built as PhD students.

If you are a graduate wife and student, how do you cope with balancing the work you’re doing, and the work your spouse is doing?


Expectations · Moving · Sacrifice

The Courage of Exploration

thegraduatewife8 Comments

                                                                                             written by Sarah – a current graduate wife

So there I was, sitting at a cheap, plywood table in Newcastle England, starting blankly into a MacBook, more than 3,000 miles away from where I wanted to be.

How did I get so far off course, you might ask? Well, pull up a chair and lend an ear. My story is one a graduate wife can appreciate.

Some of you might remember what it is like to have a great career. I can still hear the hum of the printing press and feel the thick tension in the air as I tried to get a newspaper out on deadline. As a reporter and editor for our local newspaper the days were 100 mile-per-hour marathons, both exhilarating and exhausting. Since I was a little girl I had dreamed of this career. Every extra-curricular activity, internship and my university education had been strategically designed to make me a super reporter.

In my early 20s, I had almost made it. I was an editor at the local paper. The job title, awards and offers proved that I had become a small town Lois Lane. But I was aiming higher.

Then I met my husband.

He was intelligent, ambitious, a Matt Damon look-alike, and I was in love. He was also applying for medical school.

After a year of dating and applying for schools, we were married. On our one month anniversary he was accepted to a medical program – out of the country. We would be moving once a year for the first four years of our marriage, or more if fellowships and residencies dictated.

Like a monkey wrench thrown into the cogs of a printing press, my dreams came to a grinding halt. For this next season of our lives it would either have to be his career or mine on the chopping block – we couldn’t do both. With a few tears, I carefully packed up our unopened wedding gifts, cleaned off my desk and moved to England. I doggedly looked for a job. Anything. Sadly, there were no jobs there in newsroom administration, especially for a transient who would stick around for less than a year. This foreigner couldn’t make headway in the reporting business either – I didn’t know a bobby from a bodge.

Do you ever feel resentment for the sacrifices you have been asked to make?

My bitter tears and empty days alone in a foreign country were poison to my budding marriage. I knew I needed to find an antidote.

A wise comedian, who also found himself 3,000 miles from where he wanted to be, once said, “There are few things more liberating in this life than having your worst fear realized.” Conan O’Brien might have been speaking to graduating academics at Dartmouth, but his words resonated with me. He continues:

“I went to college with many people who prided themselves on knowing exactly who they were and exactly where they were going. At Harvard, five different guys in my class told me that they would one day be President of the United States. Four of them were later killed in motel shoot-outs. The other one briefly hosted Blues Clues, before dying senselessly in yet another motel shoot-out. Your path at 22 will not necessarily be your path at 32 or 42. One’s dream is constantly evolving, rising and falling, changing course.”

As a newly-minted graduate wife, change was my only constant and adaptation my only antidote.

Somewhere in that foreign London fog of change and hopelessness, I started trying new things. I explored. I blogged. I taught myself how to design a website. I adapted.

Fredrick Nietzsche famously said “Whatever doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.” But what he failed to stress is that it almost kills you. The loneliness, the disrupted career path and the stress in my marriage almost killed me. But for those who are stuck in the middle of that mire, I promise that on the other end of your effort there is peace.

My blank stare into that MacBook on that plywood table in that cold, dreary place turned into a journey of exploration. But only because I made it so. Conan was right – there is nothing more exhilarating than having your life flipped on its head and, through your own sheer force of will, flipping it right side up again. When you finally straighten things out, your dreams might look a little different. But because you were the one to do the changing, somehow those new dreams are alright.

Sacrifice became what I made it. It was still painful, but only as painful as I would allow it to be between the bouts of blogging and exploring.

We have survived our second move now and are tripping blissfully and blindly into year three of marriage and year two of his late night, blood-shot eye studying. We have learned that those who adapt, survive. I am a survivor.

What strategies have you found successful in your transition to a graduate wife?

Doing it Together (both in academia) · Marriage

The Graduate(s) Life

thegraduatewife3 Comments

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Written by Jessie – a current graduate wife and student

Our marriage has survived a double dose of the graduate life. In our three wonderful, hectic, beautiful, crazy, blessed years together, at least one of us has been in school nearly the entire time. We were married the summer before my senior year of college, and after I graduated we decided to move away and both go to graduate school. We started grad school at the same time, in separate programs. We’ve had twice the books, twice the papers, twice the financial burden, and twice the stress. But, we’ve also had something that a lot of graduate students miss out on—a partner, a spouse, and a best friend who really understands what you’re going through: Someone who will stay up late and help you design your education module because they know tomorrow night you will quiz them on their Hebrew vocabulary until your eyelids droop; A partner in crime who will gladly ditch their paper too to go see a movie, and then pay the price with you later as you both scramble to the end of the semester.

After two of the hardest years of my life, I finished my degree in May (can I get an AMEN please?!). I often tell my husband that my degree is as much his as mine, because I don’t think I would have made it through without his constant encouragement to keep going, when all I wanted to do (and let’s be honest, even when all I did do) was sit in the floor and cry. Now, it’s my turn to do the same for him—to see him through in his last year of his Master’s program and then beyond as he seeks out further opportunities for post-graduate study. I’m actually tickled to death at the thought of being a graduate wife and not a graduate student! I know that this means we will probably move away from friends (again), put more distance between ourselves and our families (again), and live in a country where we don’t even speak the language (for the first time). I know we will likely live hand to mouth, that it will probably be hard for me to find work, and that I will miss the comforts of home terribly. But I also know that we can survive, because we are in this together.

People often ask me how we did it, as if there’s some secret formula to make your marriage and your academic pursuits work together. I never have a good answer; the truth is that we’ve struggled through it day by day, and in the end just made it work. But along the way, I have learned a lot. I’ve learned that marriage is much sweeter when you are both more concerned with what you can give instead of what you can get. I’ve learned that sometimes you just need a break. The paper will still be there in an hour or two (or the dishes, or the laundry…trust me, none of it is going anywhere), so it’s ok to take a little time and actually enjoy yourself. In five years, I don’t think I’m going to look back and remember all the A’s I got in my classes, or how good my GPA was. I do think that I will look back remembering fondly all the times I spent goofing off with my husband, escaping with him for a walk outside, or lingering and talking over dinner together. And most importantly, I’ve learned that even though I’ve doubted almost every step of the way, God has been faithful. My faith is smaller than a mustard seed, but God still moves mountains.

I constantly ebb and flow between gratitude for the opportunity to learn and pursue our dreams and despair at the sheer stress and burden of it all. I find comfort in the other women I know who share this same path, comfort in a God who hears my every cry (and whine, and pout), and comfort in a marriage that has only been made stronger by the graduate life together. The graduate journey is not an easy one, no matter which side you are on, but it is a treasured one. I know that everything I’ve learned so far is but a drop in a very large bucket, and in that way I am always a “graduate”—always learning, always failing, always trying again, constantly being refined and reshaped. This journey is not finished with me yet, and I’m thankful. Because, as it turns out, I’m not finished with it either.

In your journey through graduate school, have you been the one pursuing the degree instead of your husband?  Have both of you?  What are some tips you’ve learned along the way?

Marriage · Sharing 'Worlds'

Sharing Worlds

thegraduatewife3 Comments

I studied interior design and art in undergrad.  My husband is pursing his D.Phil. in the philosophy of physics.  I like jam…good homemade jam that my lovely friend Kat makes at the beginning of summer and then gives to me all year long.  My husband likes peanut butter.  It is his staple food and he literally eats it on toast every single morning of his life.  He communicates through writing, being incredibly friendly with bullet points and annotations.  I‘d much rather show you a painting or play you a song to communicate something and I don’t even punctuate when I write.  We are opposite.  We are incredibly opposite, yet incredibly attracted to and curious about each other.

When we were dating long distance before we got engaged, I gained a new level of appreciation for the magic of Wikipedia.  Late at night as I sat curled up on the phone chatting with him, I was frequently online trying to figure out what on earth ‘quantum mechanics’ is, but better yet, all the philosophical implications that come with it.  It was a trying time in our relationship.  Many times I confessed to him that I thought I might not be the right person for him to marry since…..well, since I couldn’t help edit his papers because there were more equations in them than words.  I worried that we were just too different.  Thankfully, by the grace of God and a wise roommate, I was able to look past these fears and insecurities and began to see the beauty that is the diversity of gifts / strengths / and interests in marriage.

We’ve come a long way.  Almost every single night over dinner I hear about Einstein and Lorentz’s theories of relativity and what the true definition of a scientific explanation is.  I listen as my husband explains the quirky guy in his physics lecture or how well done the Powerpoint presentation was (since he knows my love for good design).  Because honestly if he didn’t, we’d be on different pages.  Not just different pages, different chapters.  It’s an effort.  I lose focus and start daydreaming about another cool image design for this blog and then I have to ask him to backtrack and share again.  He gets distracted when I share about my newest passion for the arts or tell him about the lecture on architecture that I just attended.  We know we are different.  As different as peanut butter and jelly…but how great we are when we share our worlds together.  What a good combination we are when we actively pursue unity and strive to share our differing worlds with the other.  I’ve seen far too many well-respected and admired marriages fall away, because ‘worlds’ weren’t shared.  One spouse had work or a dream that took so much of them that there was little energy left to share with the other about it or invite them into it.  One spouse dedicated themselves to their kids and then when they were all grown up and gone, there was such a massive gap between relating and sharing worlds with the other that they almost didn’t make it.

We aren’t perfect at this.  Heck, we’ve only been married three years, but I’m thankful we are trying.  On this graduate wife journey you almost have to.  To actively engage and share in your spouse’s world as best as you can.  So I need to mention one more thing:  backing up to the nightly dinner conversations about my husband’s day.  Before he shares his day, his reading, his world with me…he asks about mine.  He asks about how it was today with our 16 month old.  What did she learn, what did she do, how was her nap.  He asks how my time alone was, what did I get to read (if I found time), what was going on in my head and heart, what the status of the few part-time projects are that I am working on.  After all of that, then he begins to share.

It makes all the difference to me that he consciously reminds himself every day on the way home to ask about my day first, to validate my work as a wife, mother, and artist.  He knows that deep down it’s hard for me at times to be at home while he is studying, pursing his dreams.  He knows that sometimes I get cranky and sad and have pity parties because I feel like we are doing all of this for him and that my dreams are on the back-burner.  It would be incredibly hard for me to jump into, share, or even honestly care about his ‘world’ if he didn’t equally care about mine.

I know this isn’t always the case and we, like many, have learned the hard way, through tears and confusing discussions and misinterpreted emotions. I think in the end it was actually my idea that he asks about my day first and thankfully he took it to heart. We’ve learned that although we are incredibly different people, we are so much more beautiful people when we are unified together, more beautiful than we could ever be alone.  I just want to encourage you on this journey through graduate school, however distant at times you might feel from your spouse’s work, engage them.  Share your day with them and ask for them to share with you.  It’s challenging at times, but ever so enriching and fruitful.

-M.C.

In your journey, how have you and your spouse tried to “share your worlds”?

{disclaimer: So, I know peanut butter and jelly aren’t opposites per say…but I really liked the imagery and decided to go with it.}