What was said - what I heard

Note, this post was published Spring 2017 under my previous blog, "the Adventures of Pi Girl."

I used my Spring "break" to catch up on the intellectual world. It's not really a break, but I'll save that rant for another post.

Today I headed out to a couple journal discussion groups at the land grant university. While the content of those discussions is also worthy of its own post (false equivalency between invasive and non-native and between historical and non-advanced), I want to instead share a great conversation with a colleague.

I'm a verbal processor so conversation is important to insight. 

I had said that R1 didn't feel supportive as a place to learn how to teach and to decide whether those of us that like to teach fit in academia.  But now I realize some of my personal feeling of isolation was my own misunderstanding of the advice I was given and the way in which the advice was given that created that misunderstanding.

What was said (to me, to grad students, to assistant professors): You really shouldn't spend all that time on service, or on teaching, or on your students, or your family, or ___(fill in the blank)__.

What we hear: You don't value what we value. You don't fit in here. Go elsewhere else where teaching is your job, not research.

What the advisors and mentors meant to say: I know that to be successful to become a professor on this track, you need to build a solid research program. That takes a lot of hard work, but if your goal is to get through the hoops of tenure, consider re-prioritizing. We value you and see you have a lot to contribute, so we want you to be successful.  If you want to pursue a teaching track, engage in and enjoy the process of research so that it can enhance your love for the profession and enhance what you teach. If you want to engage in service because your community is something you value or do more teaching, it may take longer for you to finish your PhD or make tenure requirements, and that is okay as long as you meet graduation or tenure deadlines, but we need to talk about that.  These parts of your life can coevolve - they don't have to compete.

If your advisors had said the above, how would your perspective on your​ PhD experience or being tenure track be different?

Food for the soul

Sometimes I forget how much I love cooking. Not fancy 100 step cooking, but cooking that is part of the generation-to-generation tradition that my Nana gave to me. Making popovers, jam, pie crust, zucchini bread.

It's so soothing: the familiar motions, the soul food taste. It can cut through all the other stress and soul ache.

Academia, particularly mathematics, is full of designated identities. Rarely are these ever 100% true across the board.  For example, we are supposed to be intellectual first and foremost. Logic will always prevail over emotion. We are like Spock or Data, ever analytic, cool under pressure. But even the hardest of us have feelings. While I consider myself pretty graceful under fire, everyone has a threshold.  I just had a cousin and a coworker colleague die of cancer within a week of each other, the funerals the same day. I have another coworker colleague on leave towards retirement due to cancer. And I have a fourth who I know has been battling the beast, but I've honestly been too scared to ask him how he is doing.  Things are changing at my close-knit college community, driven by the President and board. My portfolio is in for promotion to full, but my Dean is brand new and not particularly supportive. I question everyday whether I am serving the right people - why am I not serving the public education system. I'm pretty sure its is part of the 7-year itch, aggravated by confronting my own mortality.

As I mash the blackberries, grown on the bush in my backyard, I think about how much I love being able to do this. The nature of this activity is so close to the earth. I reminisce about my grandmother, my Nana, showing me how to make jam. Years later she would discover freezer jam and excitedly she gave me the freezer jars with purple caps. I was always a bit intimidated by the canning process, but this I could do. I lived with my Nana for about three years. The first time, it was just as I was starting grad school. My grandfather, Pops as we used to call him, had just died, and my husband and I moved in with her. In those years, I became close to her. She had her faults, but she also had an amazing amount of love. Everyone that knew her asked her for a hug, "because she gives the best hugs." I once went to the nature center for an activity and had to stop at least 5 times for people to get a hug from Nana. She taught me how to make pie crust (it took me about five times before I finally figured out what a little bit of this and a little bit of that were in cups and tablespoons), how to make perfect popovers (a Maine tradition), zucchini bread, and other baked goods. Sometimes I feel guilty about taking joy in these domestic activities, because I in my work life, I live in a man's world, like a man would. Am I compromising my toughness, my feminism, by participating in domestic chores? And I always come back to WHY I'm soothed by picking berries, like I used to pick with my Nana, by the smell of pot pie in the oven, by the taste of cream beef on toast - this feeds my soul as much as it feeds my stomach.

I've always felt that my life straddles two worlds in most dimensions: logic versus emotion, domestic vs feminist, white vs brown. Mama Alicia was my Nana on my dad's side. I grew up on the other side of the country from her and most of my dad's family, who had immigrated to California. Sadly, Mama Alicia also didn't have the cooking skills of my Nana to pass along. Her version of cooking for a family gathering was calling in an order for "El Pollo Loco." Despite this, I still can feel her genes come to life in my body when I taste Peruvian food. I don't have just one set of food that speaks to my soul - I have many. I don't have just one country or culture or language that is part of me, I have many. Lately, the part of me that is Latina has felt attacked. Ironically, the more it is attacked, the more pride I feel. I post a lot about Latin@ issues. But I am not just Latina - it's just a side of me that has needed more rejuvenation and reassurance. Making jam, making zucchini bread, reconnects my aching soul to the rest of me - to my mom, my Nana, and my Pops. It completes me.