acknowledgements

i submitted my dissertation last week (!!!). i saved writing my acknowledgements for the very end and enjoyed that task more than i anticipated. it’s really nice to have an opportunity to stop, reflect, and thank the people who supported you along the way. i don’t know how many times in the i’ll be opening up my dissertation in the future, but i do know i’ll likely come back here when i feel like remembering. so, this is what i wrote:

Acknowledgements

First and foremost, I must thank my mentor, [redacted]. She has supported me in countless ways during my time in the [redacted] program. The first time I met [redacted], we sat down and had a three hour conversation about research, moving gracefully between and among life stages, and clothes. As we said goodbye, I had two thoughts in my mind: 1) Wow. I like her. I really really like her. and 2) I don’t really understand what she’s talking about (in terms of research, not clothes) but I understand enough to know that I love it and I want to know more. For the past seven years, these two sentiments have persisted. I most certainly continue to really really like her and I have spent my time being mentored in how she thinks, continued to love it, and continue to want to know more. [redacted], I am finding it very difficult to think of how to thank you. So, I will start with a list. Thank you for taking an incredible amount of time to teach me how to think, how to write, how to be critical, how to be persistent, and how to respect the craft. Thank you for taking my work seriously. Thank you for taking my well-being and me seriously. Thank you for welcoming me into your home, participating in my life, and being my enthusiastic cheerleader. Thank you for always believing in me. This list has the potential to be very long and my committee has a 200- page dissertation to read, so I will stop here. In short, thank you for being an example. An example of graciousness, intelligence, generosity, persistence, and resilience. You are an incredible mentor and friend and I feel beyond lucky to have you as my advisor. I am honored to be your first student and will work hard to carry the [redacted] stamp proudly forward.

Thank you to the other members of my committee, [redacted]. My dissertation proposal defense was one of the best professional experiences of my life. It demonstrated to me how much power is in having smart, interested, diverse people thinking about one topic. You have been generous with your time, your counsel, and your encouragement as I have worked towards completing this dissertation. There were tasks I thought were beyond my skillset and you made them accessible and doable with your patient mentorship. I hope that I will be able to provide the same for curious students sometime in the future. Luckily, I have excellent experiences to draw from. And [redacted], thank you for taking me on as a Research Assistant on several of your projects. You have opened my eyes to the true power of qualitative research and I have learned how to approach our work with joy, patience, meticulousness, and endless curiosity. It is occasionally easy to feel buried in data and you have taught me how to step back and think clearly. I know this skill will continue to serve me in the future.

Thank you to the rest of the [redacted] faculty. You are wonderful teachers and brilliant scholars. Thank you, in particular, for forming my cohort. [redacted], you are truly exceptional human beings. In my first year, I marveled at how different we are. Our backgrounds, perspectives, and research interests are so distinct but we are unified through our passion for wanting to better human lives in some way. My time spent with you has made me a better scholar with a more well-rounded perspective. On top of your unquestionable brilliance, you are beautiful individuals, inside and out. I cannot wait to clamor with your other fans for a second of your time at future conferences. Also, thank you to [redacted]. I came to graduate school expecting to learn and meet some interesting people. You shattered my expectations of the latter and I am so lucky to call you my friends.

A small but significant group of people made this dissertation possible through their technical expertise, teaching, and time spent sitting with me in the data cave. Thank you, [redacted] for patiently explaining so many aspects of quantitative analysis to me. You filled in gaps in my understanding and were incredibly generous with your brainpower and time. I cannot thank you enough.

One finding appeared again and again in the human development research I read during my time at [redacted] – the foundation and environment that family provides is immensely important. I was lucky enough to be born into a family and family environment that gave, and continues to give, me unconditional love and support. Omma and Oppa, you have instilled so many important lessons in your children that we will continue to learn from as we continue to grow. Three lessons in particular motivated me during my time in graduate school. First, education was both of your tickets into America. Your desire to learn earned you sponsorship when immigration laws were stringent. You have instilled a deep respect for the power of education and the doors it can open in me. I know this is a large part of why I chose this career path. Second, Oppa, you have always told me that failure is not the end. Rather, failure just takes you one step closer to success. If something does not work like you thought, your sample of what might work has decreased and you have a better idea of how to pursue the answer. Omma, you have always told me that people will want to say “no” to me for all kinds of reasons. Consequently, it is my job to make it as hard as possible for them to do so. I know you both learned these lessons repeatedly through life events and am thankful for the more fine-grained lessons of persistence, hope, and determination they have taught me. I will always work to do right by you and to conduct work that leverages the power of education for those who need and desire it. Allen, you were my first teacher and example of how to be curious about the world. Since we were small children, you have patiently explained the small and big phenomena around us, worked to make sure I understood, and provided me with tools to answer these questions on my own. I cannot express how much I appreciate the care you took with me then and currently take with Emmett around topics of learning. You are my best friend, the highest form of being (according to Emmett), and one of my very favorite people to dork out with about whatever topic comes to mind.

Thank you to my lady loves – [redacted]. I have known you through different stages and lifetimes and you have never ever failed to love, support, counsel, check, and shamelessly cheer for me every step of the way. We have celebrated so many beautiful things in life, cried together when the ugly crept in, and managed to laugh over delicious meals and countless bottles of wine through it all. Ladies, you define friendship, love, partnership, and strength and inspire me in countless ways everyday. I wish everyone could have a team like you.

Last, but certainly never least, thank you to my great loves, Matt, Emmett, and Benny. Matt, the love of my life, thank you thank you thank you. Thank you for loving me, encouraging me, supporting me, and believing in me throughout this long, occasionally arduous, process. I could not wish for a better partner for all the things life can bring. You are an amazing husband, father, and friend and the sacrifices you make for your family are not unnoticed. I absolutely adore our life together and look forward to continuing to build a home, a family, and a path together. I know that this path will be paved with humor and warmth and will, of course, be fueled with the most delicious of foods. I love you. Benny, our first furry son. Thank you for lying at my feet while I write, providing endless comedic relief, keeping us on our toes, forcing me out of the house for long quiet walks, and for patiently bearing the aggressive attention of our human son. I will always not quite finish my meal so you can have just a little bit more to lick off my plate. And to my biggest teacher of all, Emmett. I love you beyond (any qualitative or quantitative) measure. You are our biggest gift and my biggest inspiration. Thank you so very much for the joy, laughter, and unpredictability you provide in our lives. Your empathetic heart, constant humor, fearless approach, and giving nature are everyday examples of how I want to live my life. Please never lose your curiosity (“Why, Mommy? Why?”) about the world and how it works. This will serve you very well in the future. As I move forward in my career, you are a reminder of why I want to work to improve educational opportunity for American children. “Why?” should always be answered patiently, thoroughly, and in ways that makes sense to the person asking the question. So, thank you. Thank you for the clarity and conviction you provide for us. We promise to work our hardest to provide you with the tools you need to make a big, beautiful life for yourself.

I AM IN FRANTIC NEED OF YOUR HELP AND ADVICE

i have a job talk this week in new orleans which is very exciting and kind of scary for many reasons. a scary reason i do not need? a FUCKING HAUNTED HOTEL. THEY BOOKED ME IN A FUCKING HAUNTED HOTEL. the site promises that if you’re looking for a haunted experience, this hotel “will not disappoint.” paranormal investigators have deemed it a “portal to the other side” and a business traveler (ahem) was woken up by an ELDERLY WOMAN STROKING HIS FACE SAYING SHE WILL NEVER LET HIM GO.

excuse my all caps, but...WHAT THE HELL AM I SUPPOSED TO DO?? i am honestly scared of ghosts and none of this feels exciting or novel to me. not even a little bit. and i know myself and know that i’ll have trouble sleeping before a day of interviews and a presentation to a huge group anyway. throw in sleeping in what is basically hell’s gate? BAH. my heart has been racing since i looked at that hotel website.

so what do i do? do i:

1) tell them the truth and ask them to rebook me. (this feels a little high-maintenance.)

2) make up some lie about why i can’t stay there (ex. i need a mini fridge for some reason) which feels kind of weird and might fall through and i’ll be stuck in the haunted hotel anyway.

3) book a nice newly built hilton or holiday inn or WHATEVER (chain hotels feel less haunted to me for some reason), eat the cost, sleep there, and meet them in the haunted lobby of the haunted hotel the morning of my interviews and pretend i slept there. this feels like the best choice but i still feel weird lying.

I NEED YOUR HELP. PLEASE HELP. HELP???

wow.

i just submitted some materials for a dissertation prize and accidentally submitted them...TO THE WHOLE STUDENT LISTSERV ACROSS SEVEN DEPARTMENTS AT MY UNIVERSITY.

i’m guessing i’m automatically disqualified from this competition since evidently i don’t know how to read.

i’ve been meaning to come to this space for a long time to write. write about the ins and outs of our daily lives, capture the moments that i seem to easily forget, create a record of these days that fly by so quickly. i feel like i say some version of that a lot, but anyway. i’ve felt the impulse to write for a few days now, so here i am.

note: i’m about to write a sad pregnancy story. if you are someone who does not want to read about such things right now, it might be a good idea to scroll past. sorry, i have no idea how to do that “read more” thing.

on february 29, i found out that i was pregnant. i had taken our car in to get fixed and walked over to target with emmett to pick up a few random things, a pregnancy test included. i was feeling impatient so i dragged him into the bathroom, peed on that stick, saw two lines pop up, and started grinning like an absolute idiot. i grabbed emmett’s hand, squeezed him hard, and we walked out hand in hand as i was completely overwhelmed with feelings of love, positivity, excitement, hope. i called matt and then, weirdly, spent the rest of the day feeling sad for emmett. sad that we have this good little thing going, the three of us, and one day he’d have to share it.

for the next few weeks, i alternated between joy and worry. worry about finding a job post-phd where i’d have to start maternity leave almost immediately, worry about what a new baby might mean for our family, worry about how i would fare as a mother of two, worry worry worry. you know what i barely ever worried about? losing the baby.

on april 7, ten weeks pregnant, i went in for my first ob appointment. my ob and i became quite friendly during my pregnancy with emmett and we squealed and hugged and laughed and caught up excitedly as we started the appointment. she started the ultrasound and spotted the fetus. it was measuring at nine weeks and looking good. i even caught a glimpse of it on the screen. then, she started to get quiet. at one point, she knocked the screen a bit towards her so i couldn’t see it. she focused and concentrated and furrowed her brow. she told me she wasn’t seeing a heartbeat and left to bring in another set of eyes. together, they squinted and searched and i could see the hope on her face - hope that she’d find what she was looking for. finally, they looked at each other, the other woman gave a little head shake, my doctor turned to me, and just shook her head. it was such an insane u-turn of emotion - there was so much excitement and, when i spotted that image in the screen, such a feeling of calm joy that i felt. and then a very big rug was yanked very quickly out from under me.

i don’t even know what i did for those next few minutes. i know i cried. i cried so much. i know i panicked. i know i tried so hard to wish those past few minutes away. then i went into her office, called matt in hysterics, stared at the wall, cried and cried and cried. she came in and told me i had a missed miscarriage, which is a miscarriage with no physical sign. the baby had likely died 1-3 days before our appointment. she asked me what i wanted to do - wait 7-10 days to see if my body would start getting rid of the fetus on its own? take a medication to make it happen sooner (she advised against that one)? get a d and c (basically the exact same process as an abortion where they scrape and suck the fetus out of you)? i immediately opted for #3 and did it the next day. there’s a lot to say about those two days - april 7 and april 8 - but i just don’t feel like that right now. they were absolutely awful. awful on so many levels and in so many ways.

now that some time has passed between those days and wherever i’m at now, i’ve had a lot of time to agonize, grieve, feel guilty, ruminate, obsess, and spend unhealthy amounts of time on the internet looking at the most unhelpful of websites. and i’m left with a whole lot of wishes.

there are many more things on that list, but writing it is making me sad so i’ll stop there.

anyway, i’m not even sure why i’m writing this. perhaps i just want to be sure to record it somewhere, somehow. it was crazy, after the d and c, how quickly my body returned to normal. i was looking visibly, recognizably pregnant before. and, within less than 24 hours after the d and c, could wear my jeans again. my body has returned back to normal, my energy is back, and i could almost pretend the whole thing hadn’t happened except for this pain i feel deep inside my heart, so far back that it kind of aches behind it. it’s unsettling how quickly a pregnancy is undone. and it’s feeling further and further away (it’s been two weeks, but somehow it feels like many months). and it feels disrespectful or something how quickly times marches on and life snaps back to some version of normalcy. i guess that’s why i’m writing this.

i wrote this post awhile back when i was feeling especially exhausted and run down. the friend i mentioned in the post has published that paper and it’s so exciting to see it gaining visibility (well, part of that might be due to the kind of lame clickbait title but that’s a very different discussion about the often opaque relationship between journalism and research).

home sweet chicago

we got back into town last night, after 2.5 weeks in california. a very very sweet 2.5 weeks in california that included plenty of quality time with my family, plenty of quality time with friends, plenty of delicious delicious DELICIOUS food, a round of the stomach flu (thank you, emmett), my childhood best friend’s incredible wedding at frank sinatra’s old estate in palm springs, and not enough time spent working on my dissertation.

if anyone out there is keeping track, that means we’ve spent over a month visiting family in the past 1.5 months and...that we’ve spent a grand total of three weeks in our home that we moved to in november. i swear, when we were picking up dinner on the way from the airport last night, i momentarily forgot that we lived at our new address. stuff is still in boxes, we still have furniture to order, we need to figure out where things go since we just randomly stuffed stuff in places before heading out (i found a tennis racket in our pantry this morning), etc. etc. etc.

i absolutely adore spending time with family. and seeing them enjoy spending time with emmett is priceless to me. to them, too, i’m sure. but, i have to admit, i am glad to be home. being in locales like kentucky and california where there is no shortage of amazing food to eat, grandparents to watch emmett, and friends to visit, i am easily thrown off my routine. i am easily distractable as it is and wow did i let myself get distracted.

and that, coupled with a home that is all over the place, has had me feeling rather unsettled for the past month or so.

so, for the foreseeable future, i’m putting myself on dissertation lockdown. i plan to finish sometime this summer which means i just need to put my head down and get to serious work. i also want to get back into my routine of steady daycare for emmett, regular exercise, homecooked meals, and a cozy home to relax in. this is what i plan to do about that:

i want to be pretty single-minded (double-minded?) for the next half a year. i have two very big things in front of me - one that shapes my career and one that, to a decent extent, shapes or at least contains my life.

so let’s do it! i’m really eager to get settled into a routine that clicks along and provides all the things i need to get through the next chunk of time with a relative amount of ease.

we recently returned from a two week visit to kentucky for the holidays. this is the third year in a row we’ve done this and, i must say, was the most fun one yet. for the first visit, emmett was a newborn and i was in a weird haze of no-more-than-1.5 hour stretches of sleep, EVER (how did i do that?? i have no idea) and all the confusion and instability that comes with having a new born. for the second visit, emmett was just starting to walk and be more entertaining. but wow. for this third visit, he is really starting to engage with the world on a whole new level and it’s pretty easy to blow his mind with all the things out there in this big bad world. and he had his mind blown plenty of times on this trip.

a non-exhaustive list of all the things we did:

or, in sum, had a really lovely few weeks full of family, friends, food, with a bit of work sprinkled in.

settling in

we moved into our new home a few weeks ago and are slowly starting to settle in. well, that might be a generous way of describing it since a lot of our things are still packed in boxes (we are waiting to first find, then order, then be here to receive* furniture to put them in) and we have quite a lot of work left to do. but, as we get to know our home and its quirks, i’d like to start a list of things i like about our home.

*we are in and out of town quite a lot in december and january and have figured out that we can’t actually start to receive things until late january. which means we’d have technically lived in this house for three months before we can even start digging into those boxes. bah.

current song obsession (and the video is adorable)

phew! it has been a hell of a last couple weeks. here’s the breakdown:

and now, i’m finally back on campus, locked up in my secret data lab working on some analyses. i am so behind on work (not too shocking, really) and am enjoying getting settled back into a routine. how are all of you doing?

hey! guess what? we bought a house. wow. that felt really weird to type out. but yup. we sure did. we closed on a house on thursday and moved in yesterday. i’m sitting at our kitchen island, amongst a sea of boxes, looking at half-painted walls, exhausted but happy.

awhile back, matt and i talked at length about what to do about the short- to long-term future. for the short-term, we are pretty certain (well now quite certain) that we will be in chicago for at least the next three years. and we figured that if that’s the case, we’d need to move from our apartment (emmett does not shrink as time goes by. in fact, he does quite the opposite). and then we did the math and figured out that it just made more sense for us to buy rather than rent. so we went on the hunt, finally decided on a place after months of looking, and here we are!

my posts on this space have become pretty few and far between. but, i’m thinking that as we settle into our new place and make changes to better suit our taste, i’ll record some of those here. i’m sure that as the years pass, it will be a lot of fun to come here and see what we did, what we were thinking, and how we carved out a little home for the four of us (benny included). i love to feel at home in my home and don’t mind agonizing over the details. it’s always worth it to me in the end. 

so, in that spirit, i keep returning to this thinking as we slowly get settled. matt and i have been doing quite a lot of brainstorming about what we want to see happen here. so stay tuned!

pictures:

1) our lawyer, me, our new keys, matt, and our totally amazing real estate broker (as opposed to our totally not amazing loan guy who i want to poke in the eyes with a leaky pen).

2) the downstairs, pre-move in. the space is nice and open with beautiful details. it was painted shades of green and yellow that we are not too fond of. we are in the process of re-painting now.

3) emmett doing a thorough walk through of the house.

They have the Golden Arches. Mine is the golden arc.

i’m headed to nashville tomorrow morning and it looks like i’ll have a few free hours on saturday afternoon before i fly back to chicago. any thoughts/recommendations on how to fill those hours?

over the weekend, despite deadlines and too-many-things-up-in-the-air, matt and i packed our bags and headed to new orleans to celebrate his sister’s birthday. a-game and her husband did us the biggest favor of all time and watched emmett all weekend long (seriously. can you believe that?).

and thank god they did because we spent the weekend wandering the streets of new orleans, eating, drinking, hanging out at our beautiful hotel, watching some of the best live music ever unfold in front of us, celebrating, and doing it all again. i don’t know what it is about new orleans but man oh man is it charming and moody and beautiful as all hell. (and if you’re going to new orleans anytime soon, i’d highly recommend staying here and spending at least a few hours here).

and now we’re back. well, i’m back. we got back last night and matt is on a plane right now for california for work. and i’ve got a pile of work to get through (before a trip to nashville at 7am bright and early friday morning for work), life-related details to wrap up, a dog to walk, and an active toddler to entertain between now and thursday night.

so i’ve done something i’ve never done before.

1) i’ve mapped out what work to do, by the hour throughout the whole week. like spend am hours on this task for this project, spend pm hours on this reading for this paper, spent post-emmett going to sleep time on this data for this analysis. etc. etc. etc.

2) i’ve meal planned every single meal (making big batches of smitten kitchen’s mushroom bourguinon and mapo tofu - basically, things that will keep and reheat nicely) that i’ll have either while studying or hanging out with emmett.

3) scheduled in workouts as though they are meetings because i’m realizing more and more that i need to exercise to keep my head on straight, especially when stuff gets crazy.

i initially recoiled at the lack of spontaneity such a detailed schedule entails. but, as i feel my stress increasing when i think about what needs to happen, it’s really nice to take a look at my color-coded schedule for the week and feel some hope that it will happen.

taking stock - 09/16/15

life has been so busy these days between all the usual suspects - family, friends, dissertation, research assistantship, all the things in between. i keep meaning to come here and record some of what's been going on but then the intent never becomes the reality. so anyway, how about we do this instead...

making / edits to a paper. we are thisclose to finally submitting this paper that we have been working on for...no joke, four years. it's had a lot of starts and stops but i feel like we'll be submitting it within a few weeks. thank god.

cooking / tonight? green chile chicken enchiladas. hell yes.

drinking / tons of water. i had a cupping session done yesterday and my back is all kinds of colors and i have strict instructions to drink a ton of water so that's exactly what i'm doing.

reading / aside from the usual school stuff? the martian. i lie with emmett every night while he goes to sleep. as he's drifting off to sleep, i read on my phone. i feel like the book got a kind of slow start but is starting to get really juicy. looking forward to putting emmett down tonight.

wanting / a good night's sleep. i have been suffering from some serious insomnia these days. i think i'm so busy these days that my brain doesn't have time to process all the little big and things it might normally do during the day. stuff like - cleaning up my office, where should i hang this piece of art, what's for dinner tomorrow to thinking about family and work and all that crap. i'm so tired.

enjoying / these last few warm days before fall settles in. the chill in the air is there but the days are warm enough for shorts. gah i love shorts and fall sweaters together.

listening / to the "pajamas to dance party" playlist on songza. amazing.

liking / my sweet new home office setup. i got a big external monitor and keyboard and mouse and it's made my data coding one million times easier on my body. why i didn't do this years ago, i have no idea.

loving / emmett's hijinks these days. he's just a funny kid. one morning, he was in his highchair and kept asking insistently for his milk. i looked all over for it - under the table, in the living room, etc. as he kept asking for it. then i noticed he was sitting kind of funny. he had hidden his milk behind his back!! what a little trickster. he thought it was so funny when i figured it out.

bookmarking / all kinds of images on pinterest. i'm itching to do something new to the house.

watching / occasional animal planet shows with emmett. he loses his mind for animal shows.

needing / a good night's sleep (see above)

smelling / the tobacco flower candle i have burning.

wearing / shorts and a soft gray tee shirt. i love soft gray tee shirts.

thinking / i should get back to work.

feeling / excited for the fall. much like the rest of the world who lives in a place with seasons, i think fall is the absolute best.

The closest thing we've had to a family photo in a long time. 👪 (at The Giant Bean Chicago)

(emmett, say cheeeese!!!)

all of emmett’s life (granted, he is 21 months, so it’s not been that incredibly long, but still), matt and i have talked about how we dread two-year-old-emmett. i’m pretty sure we are here. right now. in the thick of the crazy storm of tantrums, demands, fits, sweet hugs, remorse, extra cuddles (somehow, emmett has decided to be cuddly in his older age), so many needs, and utter and complete obsession with water. or, in emmett’s words, wah wah. i mean. i busted him sleep talking once and what was he saying? wah wah, of course.

these last two weeks have been...difficult. and i find myself doing things that i would have totally scoffed at pre-baby. for example:

1) hiding in the bathroom to pound water. yup. that’s right. the second emmett sees me drinking wah wah from a glass, slowly, in the open, like a normal person, he immediately hounds me for “wah wah.” it has to be in exactly the same kind of glass that i have (he’s broken two now), filled up to a certain height, and as spillable as possible. that way, he can spit in it, swirl his dirty little hands in it, pour it on the couch, and pour it on benny. and then we go through this whole routine of having him clean it up (which makes him mad), having him say sorry (oh my god that makes him mad), having him throw a fit (which makes us mad), having him go in time out (which can last anywhere from 5-35 minutes) until he calms down. then, once he’s calm, having him clean up and say sorry. all because i wanted to drink water. so what do i do? i hide in the bathroom and pound water. pre-emmett, i would have thought it was ridiculous to bend your behavior in such a way to a willful toddler. but you know what? i also believe it’s important to be vigilant in these types of situations. and sometimes, i don’t have 30-45 minutes to devote to this scene. and i’m thirsty. and i like to stay hydrated. so. i hide in the bathroom and pound water.

2) looking for a way to create a highly secure cage for my child. emmett hates hates hates his naps. we have basically been doing “cry it out” all his life at naptime. today, he finally escaped his crib. so now i’m debating between different solutions i’ve found online. a) sew his pajama pants legs together, essentially hobbling him (amazing, by the way); b) basically put a mesh lid on his crib so he can still breathe but can’t escape. if someone had ever told me that i’ve be searching for the most secure way to cage my baby into something, i’d have thought he/she was nuts. but i am definitely scouring reviews, looking for the most effective crib cage technique.

SO. when mung bean texted me yesterday that she had last minute tickets to go see amy schumer at some teeny tiny dinky theater and would i like to go? i said hell yes. i want to go. i want to laugh until i almost pee my pants, drink large plastic cups of bourbon, leave the house without a range of snacks packed in my large tote, and drink water at a leisurely pace. and, as amy schumer tried out a bunch of new material that she had scribbled on a paper napkin, that is exactly what i did.