a tempting opportunity

A colleague recently alerted me to a job posting in my field at Ideal Home State University.  I can’t decide if I should apply or not.

On one hand, I should apply because:

1. I’d like to be housed in a department of my actual academic discipline (instead of a sub-area, as I am now, meaning that I’d have colleagues who understand and appreciate my research).
2. I’d be housed in an academic unit that has support for the type of grantwriting I do. I would most likely have greater support for grantwriting endeavors, and wouldn’t have to answer truly dumb questions about the NIH grant application process.
3. It would be a step up in the academic hierarchy, but a reasonable step up for someone with my academic pedigree. This is a place where I’d want to get tenure, but gaining tenure should also be attainable.
4. I’d be in my home state and would be surrounded by people who understand my regional accent and idioms.
5. After a long period during which nearly all of my friends moved out of state, a few of them are starting to trickle back. We’d have friends again, and we’d get to see them more than once a year!
6. My family would be about an hour’s drive away instead of a day’s drive away, making holidays and family emergencies a bit easier on the stress level. We’d also save megabucks on travel.
7. We’d be within 1.5 hours of a major international airport.

On the other hand, I shouldn’t apply because:

1. Having just one more task on my plate right now might seriously put me over the edge…
2. If I was invited to interview for the position, I’d have to do so while 6+ months pregnant.
3. If I was successful, I’d be ditching my current department after being here for less than two years, and this makes me look like a skipper.
4. If I was successful, we’d have to move with a small infant in tow, and would have to deal with the current local housing market.
5. The job market in Home State is really, really bad, so it might be hard for Hubby to find a job there (that being said, it might actually end up being easier because it’s a more metropolitan area than our current location).

I think I’ll go ahead and apply regardless, because opportunities like this don’t come along very often, and the potential benefits definitely outweigh the potential drawbacks.

Academic readers, what else do I need to consider at this point?

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!