5 more apps

5 more applications went out the door moments ago. 12 more need to be submitted on/around October 1.  It’s getting easier and going faster, but I’m not sure that’s necessarily a good thing.

I have to check in with my letter writers, as I suspect that one of them has only written the letters I’d earmarked as particularly urgent.  Hu was late with my letters the first time I did this, so I don’t expect anything different this time around!  Hu is perpetually overcommitted and rather disorganized (sound familiar, anyone?). It takes a lot of pressure and potential for high payout in order to spur Hu on.

Like my letter writer, I can be a teeny bit better organized when the pressure is on. It’s helping me feel *sane* going through this process (at least I know which of Hu’s letters are probably missing!), but it’s also draining. I hope I get to take a little break once the apps are all submitted, which will happen sometime in the next 3 weeks. I badly need one.

first phone interview; seventh application

My seventh application went out in the mail today, and my first phone interview will occur in a few hours. It’s the result of the first application I sent 1-2 weeks ago. I’m not all that interested in the job, and am treating the phone interview as “practice.” Hopefully it will be a good warm-up for phone interviews for jobs I care about much more!

Naturally the midnight oil I’ve been burning these last few weeks has now caught up to me. I’ve felt a cold coming on for the last 3 days. Hubby is home this week and has also been complaining about a scratchy throat. He’s blamed it on sleeping with the windows open. I tried to tell myself it was allergies, but I can’t delude myself in that respect any longer. I even worked at home yesterday so I could try to flush out the germs with herbal tea (and admittedly, a 6-hour workday). No luck. I’m now sniffling regularly and am starting to cough.

Once I am home for the night, I will start my regular cold-treatment protocol, which involves large vats of chicken and ginger noodle soup, fresh fruit, lots of herbal tea, and a nightly hot toddy or hot toddy-type drink. I can’t do anything in time for the phone interview, and have resigned myself to politely apologizing for my sniffling at the beginning of the conversation.

In truth, I was expecting to get a cold at some point in September:

1. I almost always get one shortly after the new school year commences. If I were a person who gambled, I would have to put money on it, because it’s happened 9 out of the last 10 years.
2. I ride the bus most days, and my stop is “Children’s Hospital.” My city’s busses are generally packed to bursting at the times I commute, sometimes with children who probably shouldn’t be on the bus. Regularly the busses are so packed that strangers get to know each other in ways they’d usually prefer to avoid. I wash my hands regularly and often, but my daily hour of breathing shared air has to expose me to new germs.
3. It’s not unusual to get sick after episodes of major stress. I think the last month’s fun activities count as “major stressors.”

I wonder, however, if ADDers end up getting more stress-related bugs than neurotypical normals. As a group of people, we have a lot of stress. Some of this we make for ourselves through impulsive decisions, and some of this pressure we place on ourselves in order to help spur productivity (I know I do, anyway!). My question is, does all this extra stress harm us in the long run? Do we get sick more often because our lives are rather stressful?

trying out blogrush…

I’m trying out blogrush. We’ll see if this works.

peer review

 

I love icanhascheezburger.

 

I wish my peer reviewers were cats.

a week for acceptance

A few days ago I posted my job diary submission to the Chronicle for Higher Education on this blog. The column was about my experience as an academic with ADD (duh), particularly as I prepare for the academic job market. It’s now been removed…because they’ve accepted it for publication! The Editor thought the topic would be good one for the site, and  invited me to submit a follow-up column next spring on the outcome of my job search.

It’s going to be published as a regular “first person” column, not as a “job diary.” This is fine with me, as the point of the column doesn’t change regardless of the “place” it’s published in the Chronicle. I still get to reach a lot more people than I could possibly reach with just my blog, and get paid $500 to boot. It’s going to be published under a pseudonym, of course… a different one than I use here!

I also had an article accepted yesterday… an article that’s been under review for 2 years. I don’t get paid for this one, alas, but it’s a publication all the same!

being “outed”

Disclaimer: I am not one of those psychologists who buys into dream analysis. My professional opinion is that dreams are the product of neurons firing semi-randomly while we sleep (I say “semi-randomly” because it usually is random, but may be less random when we’re stressed or thinking about certain things more than others. During those times, the “stress” pathways are more likely to be activated than others). The brain superimposes a “story” on the randomness to create order in the jumble.

When I’m stressed, historically it comes out in my dreams. A few days ago, I had a very vivid dream about testing some new lab equipment at work. This isn’t unusual in reality; whenever we get new software, tests, etc. that will be used in research, somebody has to be the “guinea pig” and get tested so others can learn how to use it. In this dream, I was helping with a purported test of executive function (EF). The way EF was assessed was through eye movement. I volunteered to be a “training subject,” and completed the procedure in front of my full lab (25+ people, counting the boss, the other postdocs, permanent staff members, grad and undergrad research assistants). We had a staff meeting after the training session was completed, during which my boss announced “All of your results were in the range of normal, except for one person’s, which was consistent with adult ADD/ADHD. Addled, do you have something you’d like to tell us?”

At that point I naturally forced myself to wake up. Being “outed” at work does not make for a good dream!

The threat of being outed is scary, regardless of one’s chosen vocation. Like others, I am very scared of being “outed” in the academy. Admitting that I have a slightly different brain is particularly threatening in an environment that’s all about what’s going on in one’s head, and consequently, the scholarly product that comes from said mental activity. Although it is always at the back of my mind, I haven’t recently been worried about being “outed” at the office. I “pass” for neurotypically normal most of the time. Just like everything else, “passing” is harder at times of intense stress. The only way people will really know for certain is if I tell them.  I know that I am fortunate in this regard, and that not everybody is.

Recently, I have been feeling badly about outing somebody else who couldn’t “pass,” and I think this is the source of the dream. I’m not sure why I’m still beating myself up about it, because it was 10 years ago, this person and I stopped talking a few weeks afterwards, and most likely neither of us are still in contact with the people who witnessed the “outing incident.” This person had major hyperactivity and impulsivity symptoms, which (in retrospect!) can be quite overstimulating to an inattentive like me. Regardless, it doesn’t make it right that I did it. I still wish I could apologize, even though it would only help alleviate my (overly-) guilty conscience.

Have you been outed, in an academic or non-academic context? If so, what happened, and what were the consequences?