the reason for my long silence

At long last, I can break my silence and explain why I’ve been away from this blog for so long. It’s because I was afraid I would spill the beans before the time was right.

I am pleased to announce that Hubby and I are expecting, and I’m due at the end of April. The ultrasound pic at the right was taken about 6 weeks ago, during my 1st appointment at the High Risk OB (consultation regarding my ADD medication).

So far, things are going well for both me and the little one. Our offspring has a good strong heartbeat, and it danced around a ton during the ultrasound! We have our real ultrasound next month, and will have more information then about its development thus far. The pregnancy has been quite easy for me overall. I had very little morning sickness, other than some food aversions and mild nausea at odd times of the day. It only lasted for about 3 weeks, and the worst of it went away when I stopped taking the fish oil supplement (prenatal vitamin adjunct).

A note about fish oil that’s relevant for ADDers, pregnant or not: This might sound stupid, but do not try taking it at night. For a month, I took it with my regular prenatal vitamin at dinner, and I had insomnia for that entire month. It was miserable. The insomnia decreased when I switched to taking it in the morning, and it helped a little bit with concentration. Notwithstanding, a single capsule was murder on my stomach. Maybe it wouldn’t have been so awful if I hadn’t been in the middle of morning sickness, but I’m also not convinced that it wasn’t the cause of the morning sickness itself.

Medication has been a bit tricky, at least at first. I was switched to a new pdoc around the same time I had the positive pregnancy test. Amazingly, my new pdoc has ADD, and she’s been amazingly helpful and supportive with troubleshooting my medication. We tried various options: I dropped back to 10mg of ritalin 3x/day, then 5 mg 3x/day, on the way to the goal of 0 mg of ritalin 0x/day. I was frustrated and miserable at 5mg, and barely functional at 10mg, but I stuck with that dose for a month before going to the aforementioned high risk OB consultation. The three high risk OBs I’ve now worked with in that office have actually been the most supportive of my medication. One of them even said to me, “If you need this medication to function, you need it to function. Period.” Their acceptance was amazingly refreshing. Of course, the reality is that we won’t know for some time if my medication has done any harm… keep your fingers crossed for us, please!

Work issues have been resolving themselves. I met with my department chair today to let him know about our upcoming addition, and he was very supportive. It looks like we will be able to put some plans into place in advance to handle my inevitable absence at the end of the spring semester, and I have some decisions to make about using my summer funding, stopping the tenure clock for next year, etc. I have time to make these decisions, fortunately. This was a big relief, but it’s really the small things at work that have made it more stressful for me this semester. For example, I outgrew most of my work pants around 6-8 weeks of pregnancy, and now I’m starting to outgrow my work shirts. I don’t look particularly pregnant, just  a bit pot-bellied… The second “minor” issue is H1N1 flu. It’s going around on my campus, and I’ve had at least a dozen students out sick with it. I was able to get the H1N1 vaccine over a week ago, but still have a few days until I will have full immunity against all the nasty germs my students are sneezing and coughing all over the place. Yuck!

All in all, everything’s going far better than we’d anticipated, and I can only hope that things continue to go this smoothly between now and the end of April!

ah, summer (part 3)

About 2 months ago I posted about my experiences teaching over the summer. I had a student with severe ADHD in my small class, and it made the class a unique challenge.

This morning I received my course evals in that class.

Three students accused me of unfair treatment and favoritism because I was “too nice” to my student with ADHD.

Yes, they actually used these words in my evaluations.

I know for a fact that 2 of these 3 were students I’d had to threaten to physically separate the day before because they wouldn’t shut up for the 80 minute lecture (the “eye rollers” mentioned in the post from 2 months ago; these two students plan to be psychologists after completing their undergraduate degrees. HA!). The third student was one of their friends.

Apparently I was supposed to kick the ADHD student out of my class when they asked repeated tangential questions instead of dealing with them and moving on. Apparently it’s also unfair that I gave copies of my lecture notes to the student with ADHD.

Never mind that that this student was also paying for the course and actually displayed interest in the material, and that the student with ADHD had accommodations that guaranteed them access to my lecture notes as well as other types of support in the course.

I am livid and disgusted. Apparently as a professor I’m responsible for controlling everybody’s annoying behavior in the classroom, but I’m still unreasonable to expect neurotypical normals to shut up and leave their cell phones alone.

another year…

Sorry to  be away… things are going on, so I am too busy to post! (Not a bad thing, right?)

I am mega-annoyed right now because it is the 2nd week of our term, and I’ve been getting messages from students every day this week about adding one or the other of my classes. This is definitely unusual. For pete’s sake… we’ve had 3 sessions already (of about 30 classes total)… why on earth would anybody think they could add after they’ve missed 10% of the course?

ah, summer (part 2)

Summer goes on, and I’m still inside, working on grant reviews. I’m about halfway through my stack, and have discovered a couple of tricks to help speed up the review process. It’s still taking me about 5 hours per application, which is really slow. I haven’t yet figured out if I’m being compulsive or inefficient. I suspect it’s both together :-S. I’m getting about 1.5 applications done per day, and am well-situated to be done with the reviews well in advance of the deadline. At any rate, as I’m now too brain-dead to work on reviews any longer, I’ll follow through on last week’s promise that I’d recount an ADD-related experience I had in my summer class.

It seems that each semester I have at least one student who has moderate to severe ADHD. My summer course was no exception; I had a student with ADHD that was sufficiently severe to require fairly intensive accommodations, which I was happy to provide in order to help them be successful in my course.

Outside of those accommodations, this student clearly had trouble in all the usual ways. They couldn’t sit still in class, had trouble coming to class on time, had trouble turning in work by deadlines, wouldn’t raise their hand before speaking, dominated the class discussion, went off on tangents, etc….. but really cared about the class and was clearly trying their darndest to do well.

My heart always goes out to these students, because they inevitably share stories of disappointments in classes and having to work so hard with professors who are less willing to follow their lists of accommodations (something I don’t understand, since these should be guaranteed to them by law).

I worked hard with this student, and was very proud of her performance by the end of the summer course. I observed a noticible improvement and substantial grasp of the course material, and saw how proud they were about their performance and enjoyment of the course. At the end of the term, my ADHD student thanked me profusely, saying that they’d planned to buy me a gift card for the local coffee shop in thanks for all my effort (of course I declined; no bribe needed, but the thoughtful gesture was definitely appreciated).

Unfortunately, on the last day of lecture, when my student went off on a tangent that took up quite a bit of course time. I did my best to divert them to get the class back on topic, and did fairly well…. but out of the corner of my eye, caught one of my neurotypically-normal students rolling their eyes and elbowing their friend in a clearly nasty way.

I almost lost it, not because of the nastiness, but because of the *nerve* it took to be nasty when this student has been nothing but open with their classmates about their disability, and asked for their patience with their quirks (something they didn’t need to do by any means). This same neurotypically-normal student had sent me an entitled message the night before challenging my grade on their paper, as well as my comments about their sloppy writing. When I replied that I stood by my comments, they indicated that I’d hurt their feelings and stomped on their pride.

It just goes to show that it’s not one’s strengths or weaknesses that determine their worth as a person. This “typical” student had the gall to be mean to somebody who has been nothing but kind and hardworking, as well as the guts to demand that I don’t “stomp on their pride” by giving valid criticism on their writing. All my student wtih ADHD wanted was to have adequate support to accommodate her learning needs, and was grateful to get it in a respectful fashion.

Now if only the rest of the world could understand this basic lesson…

ah, summer….

I haven’t blogged in over two months, and of course the reason is that I’ve been busy. It’s a common misperception that academics “take the summer off.” I can assure you that this is definitely *not* the case.  I’ve been in this line of work for a decade, and even my mom still thinks this a little bit (i.e., she’s bugging me about coming for a visit, but I don’t know how I’m going to make it fit in my schedule without having to pull all-nighters. This would be very, very bad…).

How I spent my summer “vacation”: I taught a summer class in May and June (and will post about an experience in this class soon), dealt with 3-4 Masters theses, took a few days’ off last week before the 4th of July, and have spent this week working on a paper and doing grant reviews. I’ll do the same tasks next week, and then will spend a few days in DC finishing the grant reviews. The week after that, Hubby and I go to Hubby’s home country for a week-long holiday (badly needed!). Once we return, there’s only a couple of weeks until the new semester begins. I’ve taught my two fall semester classes before, but one requires a bit of reprep, an assignment requires fairly substantial revision, etc. All of this work takes time.

It feels like summer is over before it’s really even begun. I’m trying not to think about this too much because it makes me feel sad and burned out. It also makes me feel like I haven’t accomplished anything (totally untrue, but still…). For example, I’d planned to get at least 2 papers out this summer, but now I think I’m going to have to forego at least one because I’m doing these grant reviews.

At least the weather is nice, and I get to enjoy it because I’m doing most of my work from home! If only the weather and summer could last just a couple weeks’ longer…

self-destructive students

There are certain aspects of the undergrad mentality that I just don’t understand. Some of these were certainly also true when I was an undergrad over a decade ago, but I didn’t understand typical undergrad quirks then, either. I mean things like:

• Doing one’s hair and makeup, then donning sweats for class
• Viewing class as an annoying interruption of one’s social life, and thus attending as few sessions as possible
• Starting papers the night before the due date, then expecting to earn an A
• Expecting professors to respond positively to greetingless, rambling email messages
• Expecting professors to like being called by their first names, even when they’ve introduced themselves as “Doctor” or “Professor,” and so forth.

This list was topped this week. I had an unprecedented interaction with an undergrad student who clearly just doesn’t get it.

I’d already had run-ins with this student (who will hereafter be referred to as “Super-Student” or SS), who has struggled in class but rarely attends. A couple of weeks ago, when I met with SS privately for a make-up exam (which SS demanded, not requested, an hour before the exam was scheduled to occur), SS told me to my face “I don’t see the point of the latter 3/4 of your class, as it’s not relevant to my major.” SS then continued on to say “The fact that your class is at 5 p.m. makes it so hard for me to concentrate on the material… It’s just hard for me to stay awake and make myself come to lectures because it’s Thursday night and it already feels like the weekend.” I responded with something along the lines of  “This is no longer the case once you leave college and are functioning in the adult world.”

SS’s response: “What, Wednesday already feels like the weekend?”

My response: Stunned silence. Uh, grown-ups typically work on Friday!!!

Earlier this week my students completed course evals at the start of class. Per the standard operating procedure at my university, my grad assistant adminstered them and I waited outside in the hallway until she was finished. About 10 minutes after the start of class, a thin trickle of students starts filing out of the lecture hall, and I heard my grad assistant announce “You’re still having class once we’re done with evals.” A minute or so later, SS left the room with a friend, and I caught just the tail end of hu’s sentence. SS said “… and those in-class activities are just so stupid!”

SS obviously hadn’t seen me standing in the hallway, and this was just too good of an opportunity to pass up. I had to call hu on it, and replied “So, they are stupid, huh?”

Look of panic crosses SS’s face. A few seconds later, hu and friend had reached me in the hallway and SS started back-pedaling. “Well, I mean, just your homework assignments are stupid. I don’t mean you’re stupid. You’re kind of cool. But it’s dumb that we have to be in class to get the points for the assignments.”

I repeated the same line I’ve always used for these assignments, which is “In-class assignments are included in the grade because I’m rewarding good behavior. Requiring students to be in class in order to get or do the assignment encourages students to be responsible by rewarding them for regular attendance.I don’t allow make-ups because they’re a pain and having a make-up option allows students to be irresponsible.”

SS didn’t respond to this, although hu did look a bit sheepish. All hu said next was “Can I take our final early? It’s a total pain for me that it’s scheduled for Saturday of exams week. I know you didn’t pick the time, but I really need to be gone by then because my family is leaving for our spring vacation that day.”

I kid you not. Apparently somebody didn’t bother to check the exam schedule before the family booked their plane tickets. How irresponsible can one person be, even at age 19?

I didn’t say this, but could only think “Thank you for making final grade calculations just a little bit easier. I am now certain that if your points are on the borderline between letter grades, I won’t even need to consider rounding up.”

I’m letting SS take the exam 4 days early, mostly because I want to wash my hands of this situation. My only consolation is that I just posted the study guide yesterday, so SS will have far less time to prep for the exam than my more responsible students.

Thank goodness summer is coming! I need a break from so many irresponsible children!

an ADD-friendly adaption of the 10-10-10 plan decision making

This morning I was watching the Today show as I prepared for work. I usually have it on while I get ready, as it’s a great way to keep on schedule in the morning. The segments are short, and they regularly announce the time, so it’s a lot harder to procrastinate with constant, cheery reminders. Today Suzy Welch was on the show promoting her new book 10-10-10: A Life-Transforming Idea.

Granted, this is an oversimplification, but the gist of the 10-10-10 plan is that whenever somebody needs to make a decision, they should stop and ask themselves about the consequences of that decision/action in the next 10 minutes, the next 10 months, and the next 10 years. The best/right decision is the one that leads people to  where they want to be 10 minutes, 10 months, or 10 years later.

I was intrigued by this simple plan both as an ADDer and an academic who professionally studies issues related to this, but also because I’d intuitively come up with a way to do this on my own, and have been using a modified version of this strategy for at least the last two years.  I can see how this would be particularly challenging for ADDers, who might end up feeling overwhelmed by the 10-10-10 plan.  I know that this strategy could be difficult to employ in the heat of the moment, but I think it’s worth it to give it a try, with or without an ADD-friendly modification.

Part 1: Set aside a few free moments and figure out where you want to be in 10 months and in 10 years. If this seems too distant, think in the increments that work best for you. I tend to think about where I want to be 6 months, 1 year, and 5 years from now. I write these down in one of my notebooks, and keep notes on the steps to reach these goals (i.e., what I’ve accomplished, what I still need to do, back-up plans in case things go wrong along the way). Revisit this plan on a regular basis as suits you, and make changes as your life and goals change. Knowing what you want out of life makes it easier to do the second part, which is the ADD-friendly modification.

Part 2: A short-term modification of this strategy is key for staying on track in day-to-day life, particularly for getting through those “off-track” moments. I suggest a 1-1-1 approach. Whenever I catch myself doing something counterproductive (e.g., procrastinating on Facebook, not doing whatever is on my daily list, etc.), I take about 30 seconds and ask myself “How is this getting me where I need to be in in one minute? In one hour? In one day?” If I’m having a really bad procrastination day, I ask myself “What am I doing in this one moment that is going to keep me from meeting the day’s goals? How else will I go off track for the rest of the week and month if I don’t keep on track right now?” (Disclaimer: As beating yourself up can be counterproductive for ADDers, I don’t recommend bringing out this second set of cognitions unless your motivation is at major lows).

As all the ADD books say, it’s all about small steps and keeping yourself motivated. Knowing where you want to go is a big part of this, and structuring your life so you can get there is another important piece.

contemplating a change of direction

A couple of realizations and events have started me thinking about a possible change of life direction. It’s not a huge shift… really just a subtle shift that I’ve wanted to try for a while.

Ever since I can remember, I’ve always loved to read and write. In junior and senior high school, I was always the student winning the writing prizes at my school and in my local area. I had short stories published in student literary newspapers, and even read one of them on our local NPR station. In college I was drawn to a career in academia because of writing (specifically the challenge of academic writing), and I currently spend most of my time at work writing or reviewing others’ written work. I blog when I have the free time (obviously!). In sum, I’ve always loved to write, and I’ve been reasonably good at it for quite some time.

I still love to write, but my enthusiasm for academic writing has slowly waned over the years, starting in grad school. As a grad student, it depressed and bothered me that I could feel a little bit of creativity disappear for every professional writing skill I mastered. But, one of the major points of graduate training is to learn the formula for one’s chosen discipline, and once a student masters that particular recipe for writing, they are able to produce bland academic texts. Academic writing is formulaic (i.e., every article follows the same general format, and I even use the same phrases over and over again in all of my publications). I mastered my two grad advisors’ shared recipe so well that when the three of us write together, we can no longer tell who produced any particular passages of text.  There’s very little room for true creativity; peer reviewers will justifiably reject articles that deviate from the accepted writing formula. I’ve done this myself as a reviewer on multiple occasions.  Overall, as I’ve become more competent with accumulated experience, academic writing has become less challenging. I enjoy it less because I’m able to do it better, but doing academic writing well means having zero imagination. This kills me.

For years I’ve wanted to write a novel. I jotted down lots of ideas for storylines during my grad school days, and have kept notes on others that have come to mind since then. I just have never had the time to follow through on any of my ideas. All of my time has always been dedicated to getting ahead at work, which has meant grinding out publications as quickly as possible, but I’ve never really felt like I was truly on the right path. It’s almost like I’ve been living in a room painted beige, and even pretending to like it, when I knew I wanted the walls to be bright red.

I’m thrilled that I now feel situated to paint at least half of the room red. In fact, I think the best, healthiest thing for me it to start doing this as soon as possible.

Here’s why: A couple of months ago I turned in my first semester binder for evaluation. This binder included a written report of my progress in teaching, research and scholarship, as well as my teaching evaluations, published articles, documentation of service, and so forth. This is how the department chair and various committees and “higher ups” make determinations about tenure, promotions, raises, and firings. I’ve now received my feedback on my first semester’s progress at my new institution, and it was unanimously excellent. I am exactly where I should be for teaching and service at this point, and I’m performing far above where I  need to be for research productivity (in fact, I produced about 50% more in one semester than most of my colleagues produced during a full academic year). After 10+ years running full-speed like a hamster in a wheel, I can finally relax a little bit. Quite simply, I don’t have to keep working as hard as I’ve been working in order to do well enough at my institution. I can scale back my research, do more of my teaching & service during the normal school day (time I usually spend on research), and thus have my evenings and weekends free for doing things I really want to do.

What I really want to do is write something fun. I’m good at it and enjoy it. I deserve it. Even if it doesn’t ‘go anywhere,’ it will be worth it to me to feel like my creative self again.

These last few months I’ve been drained, and it’s been making me miserable. I’ve been on spring break this past week and have been too tired to even put away the clean laundry that’s been piling up for over 2 months. I’m just too dead. The highlight of my week was reading the entire Twilight series from start to finish (my new favorite; Melissa, thanks for recommending it to me!). But, reading Stephenie Meyer’s emotionally-charged writing and feeling so excited about it has motivated me to start thinking toward my other goals, which really *are* compatible with my professional direction. I hope that this will have a carry-over effect: If I’m happier in my free time, then maybe the beige walls of academia will be even more tolerable.

A part of me is terrified… so many worries.  What if this is just an “ADD moment” of impulsive decision-making? Can I really balance it all without going crazy? Am I just trying to escape a slightly imperfect career fit?  What if I’m truly unable to be creative now that my I’m such a practiced academic writer? What if I end up being the cliched academic who tries to turn novelist and fails enormously? What if I start working on this story idea and then it all falls apart? What if I only have the one story in me?

Perhaps worst of all, what if I never try and always regret it?

I think it’s finally time to take the plunge. As I stand at the end of the springboard and stare down into the pool below, I couldn’t be happier that I’m about to jump…

zombie students!

I don’t buy in to Freudian-like dream analysis at all. I’ve always subscribed to the theory that dreaming is the product of random neuron firings during our sleep, and that this is one of the ways our brains make memories. Every so often, I have a dream that seems to have symbolic value, and I have to eat my words on this theoretical issue. Early this morning I had one of those dreams.

I dreamed that Hubby and I were back living in Grad School City, and that I was starting seeds for the garden (something I will actually do later this week once my seeds arrive in the mail). Our house was packed with people: my younger brother, a bunch of his friends, long-time family friends, random strangers, etc. I was happily starting nasturium seeds when the dream changed into a zombie dream. One of my students was the zombie who ambled into our house through an window to the back yard, moaning and groaning as they struggled along. Luckily one of my brother’s friends had a baseball bat on hand and took care of it immediately (a la Shawn of the Dead). Most of the rest of the dream was a struggle to fortify the house’s weak points (a la I am Legend), keep the healthy people indoors (I recall going to the park to buy sandwiches at a food stand), and avoid the zombies on the ground (a la Dawn of the Dead). I recall quite a few other students mixed in amongst the zombies on the ground, including the ones I had to avoid while running through the park. As if a sandwich stand would be open during a zombie attack!

I usually *hate* having zombie dreams because they’re typically the scary variety (i.e., the kind where I can get to the phone but can’t make my fingers push the buttons properly). I woke up laughing after this one because I knew its source. No, I don’t actually have undead students who try to eat my brain, and most of them speak instead of moaning and groaning.

It’s not that they’re literally eating my brain, but they are definitely figuritively eating it.  I just hadn’t made the connection until I woke up early this morning after this weird, funny dream. Last night after class I had a queue of over a dozen students who needed to ask me questions. Most of these questions were of the mundane variety, issues that they could have figured out independently if they’d taken the time to look at the syllabus and other course materials.  I didn’t get to leave the classroom until 15 minutes after class officially ended, and then with post-class paperwork, I didn’t get to leave campus until around the time I usually arrive at home. Over the course of the day, I received at least a half-dozen other emails with similar inquiries. I felt so brain-dead by the time I arrived home that I just had to go for a walk instead of doing other work or home-management tasks.

Clearly I really need spring break. Good thing it’s coming soon! I can spend this time fortifying our house and building a panic room in our attic…

new rules for my blog

Part of the reason for my long absence was that I was contemplating ending this blog. On one hand, it started to feel like a personal liability, and on the other, I didn’t feel like I was meeting my goals for starting the blog. For the time being, I’ve decided to keep it going, but there are going to be some new rules.

Regarding it feeling like a liability… Non-academics might think academics are paranoid about protecting their “private selves” from the public at large (e.g., students and their parents), but let me assure you that there’s good cause for our paranoia. For example, my students regularly try to “Friend” me on facebook so they can see my profile and photos. Also, when candidates are on the job market, it’s not unusual for search chairs to “google” them to see what else is on the web in their name. Consequently, I have to be vigilant about the information that is publicly available. In sum, I blog anonymously for a reason. I ask that you please respect me on this matter, even if you know me in the real world.  I’ve opted to change my policy on comments so I may have better oversight. From this point forward, all comments will be moderated and will not appear on posts until I’ve approved them.  Don’t let this hold you back from commenting… just respect my privacy and your comments will show up as promptly as possible.

The reason I blog anonymously is because much of what I’ve written here details my personal journey with the mental health system in addition to my experiences as an ADDer in the academy. I do this both for my own benefit and for others out there like me.  I started this blog was to find other academics stuggling with the same types of issues, but unfortunately, there aren’t very many out there or my little blog hasn’t reached them.  I hope that this situation continues to improve, and that we can build a network of addled professionals together.