spoke too soon

I made the mistake of checking my work email before leaving for the office and instantly started feeling overwhelmed.  Had forgotten that I have to do a presentation via teleconference today at 3.30, and had also been invited to review an article for Developmental Psychology. This will be my 2nd review for them this month.

I think we need to look into leasing a 2nd car so I can sleep normally on Jan’s airport days. I’m totally knackered AND was ready to eat lunch at 10.30.

busy weekend: meds, cats, suitcases and entertainment

We had a busy but still mostly restful weekend.

I picked up Jan at the airport at 2 a.m. on Friday. He was supposed to land at 11.30 Thursday night, but naturally was delayed flying through O’Hare. As a consequence of not going to bed until 3 am, I slept until 11 in the morning. I woke up with a major headache, presumably from Strattera withdrawal. I took major advil and later, a smaller than normal dose of Strattera. It took a while but it made the headache eventually go away. So I’ll be stepping down, instead of stopping abrubtly…

Later in the afternoon, we took the cats to the vet for a checkup. We thought Scary had ear mites, but it turns out he just has waxy ears. Spooky misbehaved terribly. She hid under the table and roared like an angry little lion when the vet tried to touch her. It took two vets, a vet tech, and a couple of towels to keep her from hurting somebody during her booster shot. Our little Poogy is a little bit overweight (12.5 pounds!) and Scarykins is just right for his size (10.5 pounds). Our new vet thinks Scary is part Siamese, on the basis of the shape of his head and the fact that he’s a chatty little cat.

On Saturday, we hiked out to the South Hills Mall in order to try to return Jan’s work suitcase, which is falling apart after a bare seven weeks of light use. The wheels are already off-track to the point that Jan has trouble dragging it around the airport. The annoying manager at Specialty Luggage claimed the damage was due to airline handling, which is total crap because Jan carries on for all his flights. Jan either wanted a new bag or to trade it in and upgrade to a Tumi, but the manager was only willing to give him 10% off another purchase. As we will never give Roger at Specialty Luggage another commission, we took the suitcase back and thanked him for his time.

Saturday night we went to play the Settlers of Catan with our friends Chris and Emily. We only played to 10 points instead of 13 (all were tired after several glasses of some strong sangria), and Chris won!

Sunday it was a mad dash to get all our work done before the weekend was over. Jan did all his laundry and I pre-cleaned the kitchen in preparation for the cleaners’ visit on Monday. Jan also completed several modules for his job’s required educational certifications, while I wrote shower thank-you notes and ordered wedding-related stuff (guest book frames, the flower girl’s pomander, and my jewelry, pictured elsewhere in my blog). Still need to schedule engagement photos and our dance lessons… our next few Saturdays are going to be quite full!

This morning Jan was back at the airport well before 6 a.m. for his flight to Toronto. We were 5 minutes down the road when Jan realized he’d forgotten his cell phone at home (he’d changed pants at the last minute and had left his phone in the other pair!). So we raced back to the house, left the car with the hazards blinking in the middle of the street, and raced back to the highway. We made record time to the airport. What usually takes me 40+ minutes in rush-hour traffic took him 20 minutes in early morning (light) traffic. I made it back to our house by 6.30, and only then realized that he’d stolen my phone’s stylus! (What a brat!)

On the medication front, I am totally without Strattera today. In fact, I’m totally without ADD meds today, and for the first time I’ve gone without meds since diagnosis, I don’t feel entirely overwhelmed by all the small details of life. This is somewhat interesting to me, as it’s the first time I’ve been off ADD meds while taking Lexapro. My optomistic side makes me think “Hm…. maybe I don’t have ADD… maybe I was just depressed for a long time without feeling sad, and that’s what’s kept me from concentrating at work and from being able to get stuff done at home.” I saw my med doc this morning for 5 minutes in order to get a prescription for Concerta (keep your fingers crossed that it doesn’t make me anxious like Adderall does), but I will plan to talk about this with her at our next scheduled med appointment. I might also have to bring it up with talky-shrink, too.

Friday’s crushing by postdoc supervisor

I really wish I’d written about this conversation on Friday. Unfortunately, I left my office to pick up my hubby shortly thereafter. This is my best recollection of the experience, two days later…

I had my usual bi-weekly meeting with my postdoc supervisor on Friday afternoon. Unfortunately, it turned out to be a not-entirely-usual meeting. Keep in mind that we just had an article rejected earlier this week. It’s now been sent to two different top-tier journals, neither of which were interested in publishing it. The first set of reviews from Child Development were bizarre (one raving with excitement, the other entirely unenthusiastic), and the second set of reviews from Parenting Science & Practice were more thorough (didn’t like the measurement, didn’t get the analyses, didn’t see anything novel about it).

So after the usual chitchat about recent developments in our ongoing projects, we transitioned to talking about the new set of reviews. This is where the conversation became rather strange. My postdoc supervisor said something to the effect of “Based on these current reviews, my confidence about mentoring you is entirely gone. I clearly don’t know the research area well enough to adequately guide you throughout this process. I’ve been in contact with [4th author on paper], and [hu] was surprised as me about these reviews and the lack of novelty in the study.”

I replied by suggesting that we’d been shooting too high with this article, and that we might do better at an adolescence journal or at least a 2nd or 3rd tier journal…generally conveying that it’s worth it to give it another go somewhere else. I’ve been rejected so many times that submitting an article to 3 or 4 different journals is really not unusual or particularly discouraging.

Hu’s response was that we’ve now written two articles that hu implied were “going nowhere.” Hu expressed optimism that the 2-3 more recent articles we’re working on will “go somewhere” (2 of these have just been initiated, and 1 will be submitted before I leave for Copenhagen). But hu is generally concerned with “where I want to go” in life/work, and how to best mentor me for the remainder of my postdoc.

[This is the point in the conversation where I started to feel like tears may be imminent, and had to start distracting myself from how I felt in order to get through the conversation.]

Hu continued: “Where do you want to go with your career? Do you want to be somewhere like [our university], or do you want to teach?”

I hate this question. It really is the million-dollar question. The odd coincidence is that I discussed this same topic earlier in the day with talky-shrink (more about this later in this entry). To my supervisor, I said that I had only really decided that I didn’t want to be at a big reseach-oriented university — that I want to be somewhere in-between.

Postdoc supervisor continued “I clearly see that you’re interested in the statistics, but I don’t see an interest in the theory. In your paper on X, writing the methods section was a breeze. I had three comments on the entire section. Writing the introduction has been a different story. Do you enjoy writing introductions?”

[Writing this paper's introduction has been like pulling teeth. This paper is outside my area, and I started working on it purely because I was into the statistical side. But the writing has largely been completed between January and April. Anyone who has read my blog in those months knows what was going on for me during that time. My supervisor knows nothing about this. I've chosen to keep it to myself at the office on the recommendation of others who have said that hu hasn't always been understanding in the past when other staff members have had problems. So, hu doesn't know that I wrote this introduction while hanging on by my fingernails. This alone made the writing a nightmare, on top of which I had to do a substantial body of extra reading for it. The stack of articles is over 6" tall. I have not enjoyed writing this introduction, but I really don't enjoy writing any introductions.]

I shook my head no to my advisor.

“Same with the results. I don’t usually have major comments about your results sections, which are clear and complete. Discussions are…[a pause]…okay. You’ve been an exceptional data manager for the project. But overall, I don’t get the driving sense of passion in you to discover the answer to your burning research question.”

[I don't have a burning desire to answer research questions that are addressable with hu's data. I still feel that I was lured into this position based on false pretenses that hu had data with which I could address my research interests.]

I didn’t say anything in return. I think I just looked at my hands. It felt like I had been judged, and now would be given my sentence.

Hu continued, with hu’s tone rising: “So I’m trying to figure out how to best mentor you so that neither of us are wasting our time. It’s your decision, and depends upon how you view your future. You said that you see yourself somewhere in-between a big university and a small teaching college. Do you see yourself primarily as a lead author who initiates and directs a program of research, or somebody who is mainly a statistical person, like a statistical consultant?”

I replied to the effect of “I’m not sure. Can I have some time to think about it?” and paused.

“I think part of what has driven me to this point was a desire to master the statistical tools. This desire has propelled some of the research questions I’ve posed. But I realize that now that I’ve reached this point, there isn’t a great deal out there left to master. So I’m not sure where to go from here. But I’ll let you know once I’ve thought about it some more in the next week or so.”

I also very sweetly mentioned that I wasn’t too beaten up by this paper’s reviews, as another paper had just been R&R’ed by a better journal.

Regardless, I left this meeting feeling like I’d been slapped, and just concentrated on getting through the rest of the afternoon without breaking down in the lab.

I talked about it a little bit with my hubby on the way home in the car. True to form, he skipped over the judgemental undertones of the conversation, and focused on the practical aspects. “But aren’t you going to be happy in just about any job you find next year, as long as you don’t have to write grants?”

Yes, I think so. I’ve known all along my slow publishing progress has limited my post-postdoc prospects. But, I didn’t expect it to be thrown in my face like this. It’s just another hurt, another stressor, at a time when I’m already so overwhelmed that I only open the mail every two weeks.

I give him credit for trying to deal with my shortcoming in a semi-sensitive way… but it still feels like I’m getting dumped in a way…

Another postdoc who left the lab about a year ago went into a teaching position at a state-funded liberal arts university in the northeast. After hu accepted this position, my postdoc supervisor virtually dropped hu from hu’s schedule. It has to do with the value of the time investment. I’m very concerned that the same will happen to me in a very short period of time. The timing of this couldn’t be worse, as I will be back on the market in just a couple short months. I need to know that my letter of rec from hu is strong, and I need to have work from my time in hu’s lab in order to be a candidate anywhere. I doubt I will have either, if I am dropped off the radar by no choice of my own.

I’m starting to think that I just should have focused on teaching while I was in grad school. Now I just hope that I won’t be completely dismissed by teaching-oriented institutions purely on the basis of having completed a postdoc, with so few publications to show for it.

My talky-shrink clearly thinks that this is the wrong career for me… or at least, the wrong phase of what could be turned into the right career for me. I hope that she’s right, and that there will be something right for me when I start applying for jobs again. In my session on Friday morning, she and I talked about teaching, and how one of the aspects I like is that it has a definite beginning and end. It’s a lot of work, but it also changes a lot more than research. So, maybe this will be a better fit for somebody like me, who experiences “research ADD” in addition to “life ADD.”

All in all, nothing at [big university] has been like I thought it would be, and this whole phase of my career is now starting to seem like a nightmare. Despite Friday’s little talk, I’m trying to keep focused that everything WILL work out okay. I’ll apply broadly, and I have social skills. Somebody will want me at their university/college, and this doesn’t mean that the last 8 years have been all for naught.

sadness fixed by claritin-D

Who would have thunk it?

Of all things, taking claritin-d for 24 hours has resolved my sad feelings. Being able to breathe properly = feeling better in the head.  How is this possible?!?

I think the revise & resubmit also has something to do with it.

Regardless, I’m just going to be grateful and go with it.

haywire meds, a.k.a. “ADD is in the air”

I’ve taken lexapro continuously for the last 3 weeks. Up until Sunday, I felt great. If anybody had asked me about it, I would have expressed a desire to take it forever. Last Wednesday, my med-dispensing shrink upped my strattera dosage to 60mg. Since this increase should have started to take effect, I’ve felt like complete crap.

My concentration in nil. I have no motivation to do anything at work or at home. I’m utterly exhausted but can’t sleep once I go to bed, and then have trouble getting up in the morning. I feel as if I’ve slipped back down into a hole and can’t claw my way back out of it. I’m definitely trying, but nothing’s working.

I left a message for my med-dispensing shrink yesterday but haven’t heard back from her yet.

<later>

I just spoke with my next-door office neighbor about some statistical analyses, and learned that I am not the only one feeling crappy or scattered in 10000 different directions this week.  Her allergies are also nightmarish, and taking allergy medication has made her sleepy and distractible. I offered my claritin-D, and she told me that it makes her hyper, whereas it makes me just a little bit more alert than usual.

My allergies have definitely been bad lately. Yet surprisingly, the weather channel’s allergy forecast indicates tree pollen is low today, and will be just moderate tomorrow.

So maybe it’s just pollen, and not my current meds. <sigh>

article rejected again

I had an article rejected for the 2nd time in a row yesterday, and am now very glad that I didn’t bother to check my work email from home last night. It might just be the residual tiredness talking, but I am simultaneously discouraged and apathetic. It sucks that it was rejected (again), but at the same time, I don’t really care, even though getting it published before I look for another job would be a very good thing. At this point, I don’t even know how much I care about finding an academic job after my postdoc. It just seems pointless, because this is all there is. Publish or perish, and there’s some teaching and service on the side. There’s little challenge (except to get published in decent journals, which I’m not convinced has much to do with skill), and no creative outlet. I clearly suck at it, because it’s been such a struggle to get anything published. I’m really bored, and just don’t care too much anymore.  Trying to think when in this state is like thinking through sludge, or like trying to wade through a tub of jello… just slow-going and non-productive.

One of my original therapeutic goals was to get through an article rejection without being sent into an emotional tailspin. I’m not in tears over it like I was last autumn, but I no longer care enough to keep trying at this level. I *clearly* have not yet met this goal. I’m not crying, but I’m ready to do something else with my life, despite my time investment and grad-school debt!

More globally, I can’t tell which influence is motivating the apathy. It could be any number of things: medication (strattera increase last week, or insufficient lexapro), the aforementioned residual tiredness from the weekend, just being burned out in general (too much to do but can’t make myself do any of it), the stress of planning the wedding from afar, getting through the shower in one piece, etc. Alternately, this could be all part and parcel of having ADD and depression (I’m discouraged and bored, and this leaves me doubting my career choice).