Category Archives: anxiety

Change and Anxiety

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Change always comes with a heap of tasks to be accomplished. I make lists, I update lists, I mark things done, but I still don’t feel in control. I’m missing something. What is it? I won’t have time to do all of that, no matter what. So let go of the expectation and do what is most important.

Leaping into the unknown is scary too … will I be happy there? Will I make friends? How will things be? I can’t know that, and so that too, to some extent, must be let go.

Consequently anxiety creeps in around the edges. Not good, since anxiety is a productivity antidote. Manage, do what you can, take medication as needed, try not to climb walls or call someone if you are. Or medication. That’s what you have it for.

How do you eat an elephant? I know, I’ve said this before. One bite at a time. The elephant carcass is looking scavenged already, as I’ve successfully sold/gotten rid of many things from the house. Started boxing yesterday. All is good. Still need to go through and get rid of more things. Use the epsilon>0 concept — doing a little is better than doing nothing. Keep moving.

I am looking forward to being moved. I am more looking forward to feeling settled and feeling like I am making friends. I am definitely looking forward to not having this task hanging over my head anymore.

One step at a time.

Growing pains and the pain of change

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Moving is hard. I’ve talked to people lately who say that the prospect of picking up and just going somewhere new — solo — is exciting to them. I’m not sure I believe it. Maybe I’m not that kind of a person. I hope that excitement and anticipation of new things to explore will come greet me sometime before I leave, but for the moment, I am feeling a lot of grief for what I’m leaving behind.

They say that depressed people don’t see the world more negatively than others. In fact, studies have shown that depressed people see the world more clearly and realistically than others. What does that say about the world?! I’m one of those people, and I don’t want to give up seeing the world realistically, but I spend a lot of time trying to focus on happy things and things I am grateful for so that I’m not sad all the time.

Sometimes it just overtakes you, no matter how much you wish it wouldn’t.

It’s hard going through my things. Get rid of things. I haven’t looked at that in years. I haven’t worn that in years. I don’t want to let go, but keeping things to keep them doesn’t always make sense either. Let go, let go, let go, let go.

Change is inevitable. We don’t get to stay still, and I know this. We can love what we love about now or about the past. We can keep in touch with our friends when we move. We can accept that some people will drift away, but that the ones who really matter will keep in touch. Maybe not often, but they will. We will make new friends, and find new things to do.

Growing pains. We say that for a reason. Change is hard, but necessary.

I am grateful for the new opportunity.
I am even grateful to be forced to sort through my crap.
I am grateful for the support and help of many friends.
I am grateful for the boxes.
I am grateful to have lived in this beautiful house for over 10 years.
I am grateful to have been able to make so many friends here.
I am grateful to have been able to contribute to the community here for the past 12 years.
I am looking forward to making new friends and trying new things.
I am looking forward to a lighter life after I’ve gone through so many of my things!
I will be very glad when this move is over.

Death and purpose

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Last night I found a geocache in a cemetery, and this sparked a conversation about death. Or, rather, about what my friend wants to have happen to her when she dies. She’d opt for cremation, and has plans for friends to help her husband with her collectibles. Such a calm, reasoned plan in the face of the inevitable, and I envy her equanimity.

Me? I don’t even like to think about it. Thinking about death, most specifically mine, still has the power to provoke an anxiety attack. I’m not ready to face it. I believe in real death; that you disappear from this world. We will leave it and be forgotten entirely. Not immediately, but certainly by the time the sun dies its death. By that time, no living being will remember us and whatever influence we had will long have faded into nothingness.

Religious adherents may be tempted to argue with me at this point, or tell me to find God and find comfort. I’ve spent years thinking about that aspect of the situation. If that works for you, great. That line of argumentation has never worked for me nor resonated true with me. I don’t believe, and I’m not going to sacrifice a heart-felt truth for comfort. Do you prefer comfortable lies or uncomfortable truths? I prefer uncomfortable truths.

Except that, when I can, I would avoid thinking about this one.

But even believing that in the end we disappear, there is still the question of what is my purpose in this here and now. I do not choose to live a purposeless existence. Even if every act is eventually erased.

Certainly part of it is to do my best by my students. To teach them not only about math but to try to give them wisdom and strength to get through life. An idea or a thought, source forgotten, that helps them find their path and their purpose.

Another part of my purpose is to write. Here, this blog, this is practice. I don’t know what exactly it is I have to say yet, but writing here, day by day, I hone my craft and tune my voice. And wait, and watch and think. I will find my message and my way of writing it.

A last part is certainly in human connection, but this part has me lost. It is something I should write about at a future time. Suffice for now to say that I find myself in middle life, alone, but for family of choice (and some by birth that I am less close to). Not a path I chose for myself, but one that circumstances thrust upon me. It gets to me sometimes, though I have found much comfort this past year in focusing on the love I can give rather than the love I wanted to find. Focus on what you can control, and keep moving forward.

Semester Wrap-Up

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The semester comes to a close. My temper has been short lately. My patience has been short lately. It will be good to have a change and necessary to take a break.

What is it that makes this time of the semester so difficult for everyone? Part of it is, undoubtedly, sadness that we won’t much see this group of students again, since on the most part, we truly like them. Some of it is the high paperwork load that comes with wrapping up a semester. Some of it is the grade-grubbing and begging. I’d rather help students work hard and learn than give them grades that make them sad. But my job is to report what happened over the course of the semester, according to the rules laid out in the syllabus. There was the option of coming for help before the last week before the final exam.

I am also questioning myself. I made my final optional, but in order to insure that students came to class and learned the last material, I insisted on no unexcused absences for the last week and a 70% score or higher on the final homework. I think 3 failed to make the score on the final homework. One, in part, because he handed it in late. Another just did poorly. One of the two didn’t show up for the final. The second scored poorly pulling a borderline C down to a D in my class. A rule is a rule, and I know that it is part of my job to enforce rules. Though sometimes we make judgment calls on things. Let them walk away with a C and be done. The consequences of not knowing the material will catch up. Of course, sometimes that is the wrong thing, and it is better to accept responsibility for handing the consequences out rather than delaying it for some other instructor. Right. Wrong. Hard to tell. And maybe there is no right or wrong here, there just is what is.

Many students struggle with the concept that actions have consequences. Fair enough. But sometimes better to leave well enough alone. Also fair enough. Perhaps for next time, if where I am going to be teaching in the future allows optional finals, I will find a way to change how I notify or change the policy in a way that is gentler on everyone’s spirit.

Lessons

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This semester I have two students who are honors course contracting my classes. This means that they want honors credit for the class, and we create a written agreement about what they have to do to get it. In practical reality, I write the contracts with some broad leeway so that we are doing extra work but the exact details are somewhat fluid, and easily customizable to my needs or the students’ needs. Sometimes I think I should be more formal about it, but so many classes like this I don’t teach very often, and so, no, I don’t have enough mastery of the material to really know ahead of time.

One of my honors students has not been showing up to class. I get that he’s generally smart enough to learn the material on his own. And I also get that the engineering school is being a gigantic problem for him with group projects and teammates who aren’t helping. And a grandparent recently died. I can cut him some slack once for missing my class, but I think he’s missed two or three in a row. And this isn’t the first absence.

I called him in to talk to him about it the other day. “Look, I know you are under a lot of stress, but make it to class. Think of it this way, would you want a letter (of recommendation) writer to say that you were reliable except when you are stressed and busy?” I shouldn’t have said that. I’m not going to put that in a letter, even though I’m annoyed. And even though I am annoyed, this is still a student that I just plain like. I should have poked more into how he was doing first. The poor kid was like a whipped dog for the rest of the day, either from me or from exhaustion.

I felt like such a heel. On the other hand, I really think he should be coming to class.

So lesson one, write it into the honors course contract. No absences except for excused absences or with prior consent of the instructor. I have to go to extra effort for you, you show up to class.

Lesson two, listen first. I already know this one. It is the execution that’s sometimes is lacking.

Lesson three, focus on the positive. I really wish I’d said instead, “I miss you when you don’t come to class.”

Lesson four is just a question for my readers. What should I do now? If I could write a Dear Student letter, what should it say? Oh, heck, here’s a first try. What do you think?

Dear Student,

I called you out for not coming to class the other day. I think I did a bad job of that. I wish I had asked you first what was going on in your life that caused you to miss class. I wish rather than getting on your case, I had told you that I missed you when you don’t come to class. I wish I had written it into the honors course contract so that we both would have agreed to that ahead of time. You looked bad the rest of that day, and I’ve been feeling bad since. I hope you will accept my apology for handling that badly. And I hope you will come to class. I miss you when you aren’t there.

Sincerely,

Dr. Jinx

From there to here

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I was asked what journey I took to go from writing software back into a tenure-track appointment.

A short answer would be that I have been very fortunate in my misfortunes; perhaps good at making lemonade out of lemons.

Here is a longer answer, still greatly abbreviated, omitting several years of unhappiness, discouragement and failures, and the unhappiness, discouragement and failures that were interleaved with the successes. I will mention in my first 4 years of teaching, during 3 of which I was not even full-time, I taught 10 different undergraduate courses from freshman to senior level. Starting over new every semester was hell, but it certainly established that you can throw me into a class almost at random, and I will make it a success.

As I found my stride with teaching, I was lucky that one of courses here rejected by the tenure track faculty was mathematical modeling, and inevitably, I got assigned to teach it along with two other new courses that year — as if the one difficult new course wasn’t enough on its own. I took a summer’s worth of anxiety medication trying to figure out what in the hell one would do with that course — projects, obviously, but what and how and … ???? It certainly didn’t help that everyone I talked to told me that this was one of the most difficult courses if not the most difficult course they had ever taught and that they were glad I was teaching it and not them. I figured if I wanted to teach a senior level course, I better be good at this, and I better like it. No pressure! I went to the Course Design Series offered by our Center for Teaching Effectiveness which reminded me to design around what I wanted students to learn. Apparently I had some good ideas.

I also think I just kept getting lucky. I acquired a talented undergraduate and independent thinker in the first iteration of that course, who became my undergraduate research student. He’s an electrical engineer in alternative energy (solar hot water heating), with a double major in mathematics. I was the one encouraging him to continue doing what he was doing, and lo, I became his research mentor. He wrote an undergraduate thesis, won some nice scholarships and awards — we had a great three years together. I will miss him to pieces when he graduates this year.

Through the modeling class, I mentored some smaller undergraduate research projects that could go to Student Research Week, or MathFest, in our undergraduate journal, or to a Writing Center competition. Simply encouraging students to submit their work when I see them doing something interesting makes such a huge difference.

I talked two young women who did interesting projects in my class into presenting at MathFest, and that meant I had to go myself. I talked about the writing I have students do in the modeling course. The session I was in led me to an opportunity write an article on that topic. This has been accepted to the journal PRIMUS. I have plenty more ideas that can go in PRIMUS. I just have to find time to work/write them up.

I never would have guessed how much fun it is to take students to conferences; seeing things through their eyes, taking them somewhere fun for lunch, going to talks with them. Up until that point, I had sometimes hated, sometimes tolerated, but I had never enjoyed a math conference. I overheard my two talking about not understanding a talk, and rather than being intimidated like I would have been, they were peeved that the presenter didn’t define his terms. Conclusion: it was a lousy talk. Go team! I helped teach them that as we learned how to put together presentations.

Ever since going to MathFest, I’ve gotten together with those two several times a semester for lunch. They are now finishing their master’s degrees, one in the Bush School, one in Wildlife in Fisheries.

The professor in Wildlife and Fisheries Science who advises my student had earlier worked with me to design a project for my class since he does a lot of mathematical modeling. This has grown, in turn. He puts me in his grant applications for attracting female mathematically talented students, and he and I are working on a project and getting some more ideas for publications together.

That puts together a track record of successful teaching, mentoring undergraduate research, and miracle of miracles, I was even on track to cobble together a scholarship program for me.

I was also lucky that I befriended the first woman tenured in the Math Department. We started talking because she’s been teaching writing in mathematics classes for years. We have lunch together once a week. Add to that some good/bad luck in that the department has been particularly dysfunctional in my direction this year when my credentials are strong.

She has been the best mentor ever, encouraging me, always happy to look over my materials and make comments and, most importantly, tell me when they were good and that she thought I would be successful. 5 tenure track campus interviews and two offers later, and we conclude she was right about that. I think I would have found the courage to apply on tenure track without her, but her encouragement and ready assistance made certain of it. I will never be able to pay her back, but I sincerely hope I have been paying and will continue to pay it forward to my own students in the future.

What’s next?

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Drowning. I feel like I’m drowning.

A decision has been made, and I’m headed for new territory next year.

Meanwhile, the work here and now stays piled up. I need to make forward progress.

If you had to move across the country, what would you keep? What would you get rid of? What would you want to do differently?

I do want to down-size. I do not want a complicated yard to take care of. I do want to be able to hire help for housekeeping. I want to simplify. But, of course, there are also many things I probably don’t want to give up. I have to, though, and I think the advice I got from a friend to leave as much of it behind as possible is good.

A new start. So start new. Start where you want to be, if you can figure out where that is. I’m not sure yet, and I know it is a long road and a lot of work in front of me to get there. Do one thing every day to make progress, and, in theory, I will get there.

First, though, I have to manage the end of the semester. I’m behind in my class, and it is time to triage what I am going to do and what I am not going to do. I just hope that whatever I do is good enough.

And second, I’ve been under an immense amount of stress for months. This might not end today. Or soon. But it would sure be nice if I could get it under some semblance of control so I was sleeping better. Better rest = better productivity, and I need it.

Third, I have gotten to doing some calisthenics: pushups, planks, crunches, arm exercises at home. In short bursts. It’s an epsilon, but an epsilon that I need to make myself stronger. I am grateful for the start.

Fourth, I weed-and-fed the lawn today. One more small chore accomplished. The stuff didn’t say it needed to be watered in, but if I’m right, we should have rain within 48 hours. Here’s to a nicer lawn while selling my house. I am grateful for another small chore accomplished.

I need sleep. Soon. Now. No better time than the present. Good night all.

Decision Made

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It is done. A decision is made. Dr. Jinx is leaving the world of non-tenure track faculty, and entering the world of tenure-track faculty at a school that emphasizes and values teaching, but that still has a scholarship requirement and encourages scholarship. May I find my way to productivity in teaching and in scholarship while I am there.

I am happy to have this decision made; knowing an 11th hour offer from another school with some really good policies was coming maybe on time and maybe not wasn’t helping matters. Talk about being pulled in multiple directions, wondering what the right thing to do is. It was good that I’d made a rubric for evaluating schools earlier; when my mentor told me to go home and apply it, it became clear that the 11th hour offer was unlikely to be enough to overcome the other issues that school presented. And it didn’t — the salary was barely above my other offer for a city with cost of living that is about 1.5 times greater than where I am or would be moving too. Not a deal.

I am sad that they scrambled to put the offer together when I had to reject it, but I did tell them what my other offer was and that the cost of living was comparable to my current home town.

Now I just hope that I can get some sleep and get started on the next things that need to be accomplished. Hopefully my anxiety and stress will go down now that I know where I am headed. Now maybe I can do a better job of concentrating on my teaching and research and do a better job with both. Oh, and all those pesky service tasks I need to chase after (ugh).

I am happy. I am scared. I am happy. Concentrate on happy. One foot in front of the other, one day at a time.

Queasy

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More interviews. An offer that I successfully negotiated to a point where I am comfortable/happy about taking it. A major teaching award.

I should be over the moon happy, but reality is that mostly, I’ve just been queasy and anxious. That seems ungrateful, even to me, but there it is.

The teaching award really put me in a funk for about a week. I think it brought home the idea that you really can be doing outstanding work, and, if you are not a tenure-track or tenured person in our department, you are still not really valued by the department.

Looking at it from another perspective, and this is the one I would like to get fixed firmly in my head, this award represents how much I’ve meant to my students. One in particular. The students wrote letters for me. They are telling me that I made a difference, sometimes a big difference, in their lives. I am honored and grateful for the opportunity to teach them and for the trust that they put in me. I am honored and grateful to be able to make that difference. I hope they know that they, too, have made a difference in my life.

On the job offer, I negotiated the salary to the point where I thought it was advantageous enough to me financially. The department chair himself told me to negotiate as hard as I could, and I did. It appears I pushed them as hard on salary as I could, hopefully while being polite, supportive, feminine — all the things women are required to be. Shouldn’t I be proud of that? So why do I feel kind of squicky about it now? Is it just that negotiating and asking for what you want is acting out of character for women? Is it the chilling news about the negotiation at Nazareth College that resulted in a rescinded job offer? I’m certainly familiar with the literature on women and negotiating, and that literature certainly makes it clear that often you are damned if you do and damned if you don’t.

That little voice in my head asks me if I have damaged relationships with colleagues by taking the chair at his word and asking for more than was offered. That little voice in my head says I was just doing what I am supposed to do. And it also says that life is not fair. My challenge is to find some peace and some path through all the things the little voice says.

Last the interviews. It was pretty obvious that the first school I interviewed at recently wasn’t as interesting as my current offer. The other one I liked a lot, but there are both perks and red flags with the position. First, the teaching load is lower. Second, they have a nice system of course buy-outs for pre-tenure faculty, even though they are a teaching school. Third, they are a department of 5 faculty nearing retirement, all of whom are greatly motivated to mentor me towards success. On the down side: the school has had financial problems in recent years. No raises. At one point, no contributions to the retirement fund for either a semester or year. There are reasons to believe it is on a healthier track. Things to seem to be getting better. On the other hand, there are also reasons to worry.

In any case, I find it unlikely they can get an offer together before I have to respond to the one I have.

It looks like a big decision is coming on Friday or later today to move to a new school and start a new position as a tenure-track assistant professor. I wish I felt less scared about it all, but big changes, even good changes, bring up a lot of anxiety. I don’t want to leave. I don’t want to stay. The only way is forward. There will be many very difficult moments ahead, but that would be true no matter what. As Lois McMaster Bujold writes,

Tests are a gift. And great tests are a great gift. To fail the test is a misfortune. But to refuse the test is to refuse the gift, and something worse, more irrevocable, than misfortune.

Onward.

Must be making progress

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I must be making progress.

The job offer negotiation is on, and it started off from a reasonable position.

I feared getting a low offer for less money than I am making now. I know I would have dealt with that if it had come, but I also know that my spirits would have taken a hit if that had happened. Last year’s incident was more than enough of that for one life-time.

Good news. The offer is for more than I’m making now or would be next year, but not overly generous. I know where I want to be on this negotiation so I said, “I’d like to open at this higher amount.” I got some hemming and hawing and referred to talk to someone else, but it wasn’t a “no way,” and it was respectful. They have some reasons. I have some reasons. All I want to do is meet at a good spot in the middle. I think — I hope — we’ve got a good chance of making that happen.

Money can’t buy happiness, but it can make you awfully comfortable while you’re being miserable — Clare Boothe Luce

Meanwhile the sort-of-kind-of good cop/bad cop routine (in which both players at the school — dean and department chair — are playing both roles) amused me.

I have some more questions to ask about this whole deal. But that’s how this works. You ask questions, you get answers, you ask more. You negotiate. You revisit and refine for a little while.

And one more small victory.

I had a student come by today to do some linear algebra. Over spring break! This is one I sought to put the fear of god into last week on Thursday, and apparently I succeeded. A low score was obtained on an exam. A high score was obtained on a homework. Dr. Jinx wonders how this happened and called a bunch of students in to demonstrate that they do, in fact, know how to do a homework problem. Several succeeded. This one did not. Bad juju. I gave him a zero on the homework problem, and the lecture about how if you put the time into understanding the material, the exam scores would follow right along with it.

I don’t like being the bad cop, but I’m betting that at the end of the semester, having come to terms with this material, this young man is going to be happier with himself than if he scraped by or had to drop out. There is something immensely satisfying about conquering a demon that’s scaring you. I think he can do it. We worked on linear independence and linearly independent functions. He knew more when he left than when he arrived. Success.

I hope I can do what I need to do too. I can walk around the world one step at a time. Watch me.