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  • Drama Mama: Everything’s Under Control

    By Anjalee Deshpande Nadkarni August 22, 2008 5:03 am

    I’ve just had two weeks of faculty orientation activities and I am so tired I can’t see straight. Between the introductions and receptions and workshops on balancing scholarship and pedagogy, I have had little time to chip away at these little things known as syllabi. Classes start next week. I had a plan to get everything done. It has not been altogether successful. Don’t get me wrong, I absolutely love all the orienting I have had the luxury of enjoying lately – it’s just the balancing thing already seems to be getting the best of me. The only quiet time I find to work are these late nights after my son is asleep and all the day’s activities are at an end. But by this time I am so spent I don’t know how to muster the energy to work. Or at least work effectively (the opposite of checking email and then staring at words on a computer screen blankly for half and hour.) How have these working mothers of the past managed? Did they hire nannies through out their children’s toddler/preschool years? Did they just let some things go, like say…tenure? Did they do speed? Luckily I don’t think my colleagues have caught on to my exhausted state. “I don’t know how you manage to look so fresh with all these workshops and a little 3 year old running around at home” say these new co-workers. I look at them and smile, under a veneer of cleverly applied concealer hiding my circles. Little do they know how haphazard and chaotic my life is right now. Little do they know that my phone isn’t turned off – it’s missing in my child’s room somewhere. Little do they know that the only way I found the reception was to stalk unsuspecting faculty looking people to watch where they were headed. Little do they know that the very skirt they are complimenting me on is the same one my son peed on this morning as we fought over how big boys can pee in the potty if they just try hard enough. Oh if they could only see me debating the finer points of today’s daycare adventure with my disagreeable toddler as I stood in my underwear blow drying my just-washed-with-dish-detergent-skirt. No. Luckily they can’t see behind the curtain and thank goodness. That would wreck the whole glamour of the single mom/professor magic act. I am hoping with enough practice, I might be able to conjure a little more time during the day to get things done. Till then, what do they always say? Fake it till you make it. Everything is under control. Everything that can be controlled at any rate….

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Comments on Drama Mama: Everything’s Under Control

  • Hurrah!
  • Posted by leslie , doc. student on August 22, 2008 at 2:20pm EDT

  • How refreshing to hear from another mom who has conquered very similar battles to my own - all in just one morning!!! Best of luck...

  • Posted by Caroline , Co-editor, Mama, PhD at independent on August 22, 2008 at 3:40pm EDT

  • Oh, Anjalee, I love this post. Obviously, I do hope you manage to conjure more time for yourself (not to mention your work) and that your colleagues don't ever manage to look too closely behind the curtain, but I'm glad you pulled it back a little and let all of us see. It's so important, it helps everyone who's ever had that kind of morning (I've had my share!) to know that they're not alone.

  • Mama Drama
  • Posted by Sydney Carroll Thomas , Professor at University of Maine on August 22, 2008 at 6:10pm EDT

  • Thank you for your post on single moms who are professors. Recently, I wrote a post (a rather angry one) on the Horowitz blogs. If you haven't read that you may not know that I have had very similar experiences to yours. I want to let all of you know of a great article that should be sent to every higher ed administrator. It would save this kind of overloaded circuitry and would help administrators be better leaders and have a better and more productive workplace. The article is entitled: "OVERLOADED CIRCUITS: WHY SMART PEOPLE UNDERPERFORM" BY EDWARD HALLOWELL. It can be found by logging into www.hbr.org and then select Product 8789. It contains compelling evidence for the neurological damage done when we operate in "survival mode" and how much our work is impaired. Unfortunately, I doubt my Dean would bother to read it, but I wish she would. The descriptions of what goes on in the mind were helpful, made me feel much less inferior, and addressed the most serious consequence---fear. I have tenure, and I have been here for 16 years, and I had the worst case of what he calls (it is not a real dsm category or disease, just a useful title) attention deficit trait, but it is really not a trait. It is a response to the way higher ed is , as you say, making it impossible to finish anything, we keep getting loaded with more and more surveys, reports , accredtation etc. I am so exhausted and ill I am on medxical leave, and although I do have a real medical condition, I sincerely believe it is a result of 20 years of having to get that almighty Ph.D, get the first tenure track job I applied for (when you are a mom with a sick child wwho has 2,000 a month medical bills, you get the first job by god, kind of like the adrenaline that helps us lift cars off of our children (you must have read all those stories! and just when you think you've made it, you get you 7 years of slavery, yes to everything, and the feeling of having no control because you may work for hours and hours on articles that you and many others understand are way ahead of their tme, but journals won't publish them. Then you get tenure, and a new dean comes in, and you are micromanaged. I surely hope that not all universities are not going in the direction of my college, but the professor is now days the low person on the totem pole, and if you have children, you really need to draw a line in the sand. ONce you do that, you may be penalized, or not given the respect your deserve, but you have to forget all that, you are providing for you children, and doing well by your students, that is an honorable job, forget about all the competitive things thrown at you, unless that is your personality type. It used to be mine, but not any more. I have had enough of the politics of the academy! Good luck, find a good mentor who is also a mom, or whose children are now grown up but who had to go through what you are going through. It can help, but only if it isn't part of a systematic "mentoring" program where you are supposed to have lunch together regularly. Then it turns into one more thing you have to do!

  • Posted by anjalee on August 29, 2008 at 8:55am EDT

  • Thanks for all the great comments! So happy to have a community to whom I can confide my trials and tribulations! Please keep sharing your own stories! I love hearing about them. Thank you!

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