Long Posts
How Iām Getting Through a Brain Fog Day
In October, I learned that for the first time since my diagnosis in 2011, I had actually gotten my thyroid hormone levels to what I consider optimal. Exciting, right? Then I went over three months without brain fog, and it was incredible.
Sunday, my throat started to hurt a bit - a classic hypothyroidism symptom (I know itās also a COVID symptom, but this sore throat comes and goes in a matter of hours; Iāve taken care all week to be masked and outdoors whenever Iām away from home as I couldnāt book a test before my isolation period would be up anyway) - and I took my temperature to see if I had a fever and my temperature was the lowest it had been since October - I had been hovering around 98.2 which is actually warm for me, approaching a normal personās body temperature - and I was getting 97.7 (classic mediocre thyroid for me) and even 97.5 (bad sign, yāall). I was feeling a little more fatigued than before and then I realized that the weather has turned pretty cold for here, and remembered that cold weather can impact thyroid function.
Then this morning, I woke up with brain fog.
I have a dream job right now, and one of the things that makes it a dream job is that it involves reading and synthesizing a lot of information.
But these are really hard tasks with brain fog.
So I decided rather than to try to push through the brain fog, I would work with it, largely due to a timely newsletter from Katy Peplin about ādressingā for the brain weather you have.
Here are the things I did today to try and work with this brain fog:
Gave the day a soft reset. After breakfast and a cup of coffee, I went to bed and closed my eyes and listened to an episode of 30 Rock. This gave me a bit of clarity.
Blogged through it. So then I got up and to get my head in the game for work, I wrote the last blog post of my Connected Learning series. But then I was worn out.
Had a snack and read some fiction. Specifically, The Language of Thorns.
Went back to bed, again. I set an alarm to make sure I wouldnāt be down for more than 40 minutes (20 minutes to fall asleep + 20 minutes to actually sleep). This time, I got up and actually felt like I could do stuff.
Had lunch. I always am energized after a meal.
Figured out what work I could actually accomplish in this haze. At first, I thought I didnāt have anything I could get done without intense mental effort. Then I realized that in some notes I made yesterday, I had said, āWe might want to make a checklistā¦ā Making a checklist and populating it is definitely something I could do, so thatās what I focused on.
Whatās next? Well, because I didnāt want to be indoors around strangers when I had a sore throat, I rescheduled some appointments I had this week for 2 weeks from now, which means I wonāt be able to talk to my doctor about this feeling for a couple weeks. But I also donāt want to live through the next two weeks in a fog. So Iām going to up the amount of l-tyrosine Iām taking. I wouldnāt do this except that it is the thing I did most recently that got my thyroid hormone levels to that optimal place and itās easy to go back down. This is an amino acid that a person with hypothyroidism should definitely talk to their doctor about using. If I start to get palpitations, Iāll go back down. But my hope is this will clear the fog.
Future Directions for Connected Learning in Libraries
This is the fourth post in a series contextualizing my position as a researcher of connected learning.
Here are all the posts published so far:
- What Is Connected Learning?
- How Connected Learning Happens in Libraries
- Connected Learning in Libraries: Changes and Challenges
There are a number of opportunities for connected learning to grow in libraries. Here Iāll discuss some of them, beginning with the one most relevant to my current work.
Research-Practice Partnerships Research-Practice Partnerships allow library professionals to develop connected learning environments and programs in collaboration with researchers of learning and information sciences. The project Iām working on, Transforming and Scaling Teen Services for Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (TS4EDI) is one such partnership. Myself and other researchers at the Connected Learning Lab, including PI Vera Michalchik and Research Manager Amanda Wortman, are working with state librarians in Rhode Island and Washington first to identify barriers and challenges to libraries creating CL environments and programs and then to develop resources to help library professionals overcome those barriers and challenges. The state librarians will recruit local public librarians in their state to be part of this partnership, and those public librarians will recruit youth to participate, as well. Other examples include the ConnectedLib project and the Capturing Connected Learning in Libraries project.
Brokering Youth Opportunities in Libraries Connected learning research over the past 10 years has highlighted the importance of caring adults or peers as brokers or sponsors for youth as they build their networks surrounding an interest. These brokers/sponsors can connect youth with other people and resources to help them expand their network and identify opportunities for learning and achievement related to their interest. Current research literature doesnāt explicitly offer guidance on brokering as a distinct activity, investigate the extent to which librarians currently act as brokers, or illuminate how youth may serve as peer brokers in the library setting. Research-practice partnerships and library professional-led professional development could address these questions.
Bringing Connected Learning to School and Academic Libraries So far, connected learning has been documented mostly in informal settings. A few studies have looked at connected learning in formal settings, but those tend to be individual classrooms rather than school or academic libraries. One area that offers potential for CL in these settings is the connection between interests and information literacy. This was the focus of my dissertation, in which I examined the information literacy practices of cosplayers. Cosplayers engage in connected learning as they learn about their interest, build relationships with each other, and find opportunities to contribute to the cosplay community or even become professional cosplayers. Throughout these elements of connected learning, cosplayers engage in information literacy, identifying resources, evaluating them, and even creating new resources. Because school and academic libraries are the primary center for information literacy education in their institutions and because they are not tied to a specific academic discipline, they have the potential to create opportunities for connected learning as learners build their information literacy practices.
Thatās all for this series of blog posts, but I expect to write a lot more about connected learning through the course of my work at the Connected Learning Lab, so if you find this interesting, stay tuned!
Connected Learning in Libraries: Changes and Challenges
This is the third post in a series contextualizing my position as a researcher of connected learning. Here are all the posts published so far:
- What Is Connected Learning?
- How Connected Learning Happens in Libraries
- Connected Learning in Libraries: Changes and Challenges
While libraries are poised to be environments conducive to connected learning, they may need to undergo further shifts to expand their support for connected learning. This involves a number of considerations:
Resources. Library professionals must consider not only physical and digital resources, but human resources as well - using āresourceā to describe a person the same way we might use it to describe a book or a website. Library professionals can serve as a point of connection between learners, mentors, and other people in the environment beyond the specific context of the connected learning activities.
Technology and space. Current library policies may need to be updated to enable learners to engage in shared practices, socializing, collaborating, and publishing their work online.
Evaluation. Libraries have traditionally focused on quantitative measures of impact, such as how many people attended a particular program. These measures may not be sufficient to capture the impact of connected learning. Measures of connected learning need to capture the way learners move with their learning across settings beyond spaces controlled by the library; identifying specific desired outcomes can facilitate capturing evidence of and communicating the impact of a program. Qualitative data such as interviews or open-ended survey questions may capture this impact better than or alongside quantitative measures.
Role of library professionals. Library professionals must learn to consider themselves as sponsors and brokers of youth learning rather than mentors or authority figures. This means helping youth find other people and communities to support their learning and focusing on enhancing learning rather than enforcing behavior-based policies.
Program design. To create programming that fosters connected learning, library professionals may need to co-design with youth rather than deciding programming in advance and offering it to youth without their early input.
Competencies. The creators of the ConnectedLib project identified the following necessary competencies for library professionals to support youthās connected learning:
- …they must be ready and willing to transition from expert to facilitatorā¦
- ā¦[they] need to apply interdisciplinary approaches to establish equal partnership and learning opportunities that facilitate discovery and use of digital mediaā¦
- …they should be able to develop dynamic partnerships and collaborations that reach beyond the library into their communitiesā¦
- …they should be able to evaluate connected learning programs and utilize the evaluation results to strengthen learning in librariesā¦ (Hoffman et al., 2016, p. 19)
Professional development. Library professionals often will not have been trained in these competencies during their education, so they may need to continue their own learning via in-house professional development, programs provided by professional organizations, open online learning resources, and formal educational experiences. The ConnectedLib toolkit is one example of an open online learning resource directed at meeting this need, while the University of Marylandās Youth Experience In-Service Training is an example of a formal educational experience designed to build these competencies.
I identified these potential shifts to library practices in response to a number of challenges libraries face in developing and implementing connected learning programming, including:
Attracting teens to skill-building programming. For some advanced interest-based experiences, youth need a foundational set of knowledge. For example, to create a sophisticated video game, a teen would first need a foundational understanding of game design and computer programming. It is a challenge to attract novice learners to this kind of programming.
Working with technology. Library professionals may lack the digital tools they need due to library policy, may know how to design or facilitate technology-focused or -infused programming, or may not feel comfortable acting as effective digital media mentors.
Unfamiliarity with the Connected Learning model. Library professionals may struggle with integrating all the different spheres and elements of the model. They may not have the knowledge, skills, or training they need to successfully implement the model.
Culture clashes. Teen culture may sometimes clash with library culture, requiring library professionals to negotiate these conflicting cultures to create programming that has a strong impact in teensā lives.
The next and, I think, final post in this series will address future directions for connected learning in libraries.
How Connected Learning Happens in Libraries
This is the second post in a series contextualizing my position as a researcher of connected learning. Here are all the posts published so far:
- What Is Connected Learning?
- How Connected Learning Happens in Libraries
The first element of connected learning is interest. Libraries explicitly support the exploration of personal interests in both their collections and their programming. The second element is relationships. Libraries are intergenerational spaces that can be (but arenāt always) inclusive of people from nondominant groups. Libraries can serve as a bridge that connects formal and informal learning. Libraries are increasingly spaces where youth can have shared experiences creating new knowledge. They are third places, neither school nor home, where youth can gather, connect around their shared interests, and meet adult mentors and sponsors who can help them leverage a variety of resources in pursuing those interests.
A note about third places in the time of COVID-19: For many of us (the luckiest among us, I would argue), there is only one place: home, which is also work, which is sometimes also school, which is also where we do whatever social activity we do. This is certainly true for me. That said, online library programming can act as a virtual third space, a place to go for something that isnāt all about home or work responsibilities. Iāll be interested to see how scholarship around this shift evolves. A quick search for āāthird placesā COVIDā on Google Scholar demonstrates that scholars are already thinking about this, including in the specific context of public libraries. I am exercising extreme restraint to not jump down a rabbit hole of exploring that research right now.
There are some examples of connected learning happening in both public and school library spaces. If youād like to explore them, here are some links:
- YOUmedia Chicago
- Young Urban Scholars book club
- An afterschool program for inner city, middle school students to imagine STEMās relevance in their lives
- Hack the Evening
- Publications from ConnectedLib
The next post in this series will discuss some of the challenges of creating connected learning experiences in libraries and some shifts libraries may need to undergo to provide more connected learning experiences.
My time is vampire time: The critical disability studies concept of "crip time" šāæ
I’ve seen and heard a lot of people in the Micro.blog community discuss the book Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals. The hold list on this at my library is inordinately long; if I put a hold on it now I might get to read it in 3 - 5 months. So I decided to read the sample of it, to help me decide I’d like to buy it.
As I was reading the introduction, I kept thinking about how my 4000 weeks have a different shape than many other people’s 4000 weeks, different than healthy people’s 4000 weeks. I kept thinking of the concept of “crip time,” which I’d heard but didn’t really understand beyond the concept that time seems to move differently when you’re disabled. This thinking was distracting me from actually reading the book, so I turned to the web to help me get a firmer understanding of “crip time.”
It led me to Ellen Samuels’s essay, Six Ways of Looking at Crip Time, which was exactly what I needed. Samuels quotes Alison Kafer, who says
rather than bend disabled bodies and minds to meet the clock, crip time bends the clock to meet disabled bodies and minds.
I have been trying to bend my body and mind to meet the clock in preparation for starting my postdoc, but I think everyone will be happier if instead I bend the clock to me. My body sometimes needs to be awake at night and asleep during the day. Instead of lying awake in pain trying to fall back asleep while listening to an episode of Star Trek because this is the time when people sleep, I can give myself permission to rearrange my time so the parts of my work that can be done asynchronously (basically everything but meetings, I think) can be done in brief chunks of time in the middle of the night.
This is a positive effect of coming to recognize crip time. (This felt like the right time to stop using quotation marks. I don’t know why.) But Samuels points out the negative elements, which will impact more people than ever before in the wake of COVID. Samuels does this so well that I’m reluctant to attempt to summarize. If you’re interested, I highly recommend reading the essay. For now, I’ll pull out just the bit that inspired this post’s title:
…crip time is vampire time. It’s the time of late nights and unconscious days, of life schedules lived out of sync with the waking, quotidian world. It means that sometimes the body confines us like a coffin, the boundary between life and death blurred with no end in sight. Like Buffy’s Angel and True Blood’s Bill, we live out of time, watching others’ lives continue like clockwork while we lurk in the shadows. And like them, we can look deceptively, painfully young even while we age, weary to our bones.
What is Connected Learning?
I start working remotely for the Connected Learning Lab tomorrow and while a lot of people are excited for me, most of them donāt actually understand what Iām going to be doing. So Iām writing a blog series that I hope will explain that somewhat, and this is the first post. If youāve read my comps chapter on Connected Learning or seen my Connected Learning and the IndieWeb talk, some of this will be familiar.
Connected learning can be conceived of in three ways: as a type of learning experience that occurs spontaneously, as an empirically-derived framework for describing that type of experience, and as a research and design agenda aimed at expanding access to that type of learning experience. My brother-in-law, P., is actually a phenomenal example of a Connected Learner.
In high school and college, P. was interested in playing guitar. He started hanging out at a local guitar shop, connecting with a community there of peers and mentors. Through the connections he made, he was offered the opportunity to be lead guitarist for a tribute band, and that job took him all over the world. He has since embarked on a different but related career, working in media law. This area of law might not have been of interest to him if he hadnāt had experience working in the music industry.
Thatās an example of a spontaneously occurring connected learning experience. From experiences like this, scholars have created a model to describe connected learning. This model includes three elements of connected learning: interests, relationships, and opportunities. P. was interested in music, built relationships at the guitar shop, and it led him to opportunities to perform as part of a working band and become a lawyer.
Image Source: The Connected Learning Alliance
This type of experience is easier to access with more financial and temporal support; the research and design agenda surrounding connected learning is an equity agenda that aims to broaden the availability of this kind of experience, making it possible for nondominant youth who might require additional support to access connected learning. One way to do that is to bring this kind of experience into public spaces serving nondominant youth - public spaces like libraries.
The work Iām doing with the Connected Learning Lab is part of a grant funded by the Institute of Museum and Library Services examining key needs for teen services in libraries:
(1) the challenges library staff face in designing and implementing CL programming for underserved teens and the means for overcoming these challenges, (2) ways library staff can use evaluative approaches to understand youth needs in CL programming, and (3) the means of demonstrating the value of CL programs and building stakeholder support for increasing their scope and scale, particularly to serve equity goals.
The products of this research will include
training modules, guidebooks, mentoring supports, case studies, videos, practice briefs, topical papers, and blogs.
These are some of my favorite kinds of things to create, so Iām extra excited.
My next post in this series will talk about how Connected Learning is already happening in libraries, with some examples from actual libraries.
Quick Thoughts on TRULY DEVIOUS š
I don’t want to write a full review of but I want to share a couple things.
First: it goes back and forth between details of a cold case from 1936 and the present. I love the way it weaves these two related stories together.
Second: it ends on a cliffhanger, which left me wanting to scream “ARE YOU KIDDING ME?” and also simultaneously flail with delight, so well done Maureen Johnson, I guess.
Recommended if you like mysteries, especially dark academia.
The Extreme Unknown: 2021 Year-in-Review & Thoughts for 2022
Here are a couple of earlier year-in-review posts:
This one’s going to be a little different. I will write up my catalogue of great stuff that happened but I want to give some space to the hard stuff first.
My family has definitely been playing the pandemic on easy mode, as it were, but I have hit a wall of not hopelessness exactly, but grim resignation. Resignation specifically to the fact that things will keep shifting, that it will probably get worse before it gets better, that making plans based on timing of perceived lowered risk (for example, When-My-Kid-Is-Vaccinated) is more likely to lead to disappointment than not. Resignation to the extreme unknown.
Anticipating a year of shifts, the only goal I set was for the first quarter off 2021: to complete and defend my dissertation. I did it! Goal achieved! Setting such a straightforward goal means I can feel good about how I spent my time this year.
I only set a word for the first quarter, which was PLAY and I have no idea how I did with that.
I did some great stuff in addition to defending my dissertation this year:
- I made extensive use of the public library. My kid actually bumped up against the checkout limit.
- I got vaccinated and boosted.
- I got my thyroid managed and hit my target lab results for the first time in the 10 years since my Hashimoto’s diagnosis.
- I consulted for Quirkos and developed content for their blog.
- I organized a FanLIS panel for the Fan Studies Network North America conference.
- I got and swam in a mermaid tail.
- I had a pool party for my 40th birthday.
- I presented at MIRA, Micro Camp, ALISE, and World View.
- I took M to swim lessons.
- I embraced my Trekkie nature.
- I applied for, was offered, and accepted my dream postdoc.
I couldn’t have done these things without immense help:
- from my advisor & committee.
- from W’s mom, who provided me with time for both work and rest.
- from W, who provided for my basic material needs, kept the house clean, continued to be an awesome dad, and made me feel good about myself.
If there was a theme for this year, it was Star Trek. The Next Generation was a balm in the weeks after my grandmother’s death. Lower Decks, Discovery, and Prodigy revitalized my love of Trek. Discovery, in particular, helped me remain hopeful and trust in my values as a guide for living.
(My core values, by the way, are curiosity, creativity, and care.)
I’m doing a New Year New Moon retreat with Katy Peplin on January 2nd, so I will probably dig into my dreams and plans for 2022 then.
For now, I’ll say my word of the year for 2022 is MEND. My goal is to keep going.
My Reading Year 2021 š
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This was a slow reading year for me. I read a lot more fiction than last year, a little less nonfiction, many fewer comics, and no poetry.
I only read 28 full-length books for myself (as opposed to for my kid). I range widely each year, usually coming in the 30 - 50 book range, so this is a little less than even a normal slow year would be.
But of course, year 2 of a pandemic, especially when finishing a PhD, is not a normal year.
All of the fiction I read this year was good, because I don’t keep reading things that aren’t. But my favorite was Gideon the Ninth . It took me a little while to get into, but once I was into it, it blew me away. It also helped me realize, along with the Star Trek: Discovery episode “Su’Kal,” that space gothic is a subgenre I love.
I’m still into Dark Academia, which explains the presence of The Historian , If We Were Villains , Bunny , and Ace of Spades on my finished books list.
My other fiction reading decisions were driven primarily by media tie-ins. I read the Shadow and Bone trilogy and Six of Crows duology in anticipation of Shadow and Bone on Netflix, then decided to stick with Leigh Bardugo and read her Wonder Woman book . I also read The Last Wish , the first book in the Witcher series. It will probably be a while before I get around to that show but I enjoyed the book.
None of my nonfiction reading blew me away, but it was all good.
I definitely read some fanfiction, but I couldn’t tell you what. And I read a lot of articles, most of which you can find in my Links category.
I hope to read for pleasure a lot more next year.
What did you read in 2021? If you had a hard time reading, what did you do instead?
Upon the death of bell hooks šļø
Transcript:
Hello internet friends. I’m experimenting today with doing a micro cast. I have this capability on my website and I thought I would go ahead and try it.
I wasn’t sure what I wanted to talk about. But I just looked at Twitter and my timeline is full of people grieving for the loss of bell hooks. I have read a lot of a little of the work of bell hooks and I have not read as much as I would like to have read of the work of bell hooks.
The part I have probably read the most of would be - Oh, now I can’t remember the title of the book but it’s about writing - Remembered Rapture. And I started reading that because Kelly J. Baker mentioned it in an essay she wrote about writing. And I had to return it to the library before I was done with it. I haven’t picked it back up.
I am planning to purchase it from Rofhiwa Books and Cafe here in Durham, North Carolina, which is a bookstore you should check out. It is a Black-owned bookstore that focuses on the work of Black authors. It’s where I picked up my copy of Ebony Elizabeth Thomas’s book The Dark Fantastic and I will probably get Remembered Rapture and maybe Feminism Is for Everybody. And All about Love I think is the title of another one that I will - that I will probably pick up.
Anyway Remembered Rapture is the one I’ve read the most of. And not only is the language hooks uses just, you know, incredibly beautiful in it. But the way she talks about her identity as a writer and about the ways that she has integrated being different kinds of writer - being an academic writer, and being a poet, writing essays, all of the different kinds of writing she has done - and how it has been not hard for her to do but hard for other people to accept from her, especially as a Black woman, is just really moving and inspiring to me.
I apologize for any background noises you may hear. There’s always someone doing yard work by my house so I probably will never be able to record anything without that being a risk. But I wanted to go ahead and get this down now. Before I forgot.
I don’t have a lot more to say on this topic. I look forward to reading more of her work. I’m sorry that what we have now is all that we will have of her work. And I send so much love to people who are grieving her more deeply than I ever could. Thank you for listening.
My first Artist Date!
I don’t think I’m going to write up my annotations for the first chapter/week of The Artist’s Way, “Recovering a Sense of Safety,” for perosnal reasons but I thought I would share the outcome of my first artist date! I searched Google for “junk shop,” found this eBay seller, and created a Pinterest board where I stuck a bunch of items they’re selling that I thought were interesting.
It’s got some big grandma energy, doesn’t it? That’s 50% what junkshops are about and 50% where my head is at. The sweaters are more 10-year-old Kimberly energy. (It was 1991-1992, okay?)
What does this board make you think of?
The luxury of time and space to grieve (CW: Suicide)
CW: Suicide
Sherrie was my friend.
Sherrie and I never met in person. We talked on the phone once ever for a few seconds. But we interacted a lot via text - on a posting board, over LiveJournal, via email, via snail mail. I crocheted Sherrie a hat that I never got around to sending her. When I was in my first year of teaching, Sherrie sent me letters and stickers and a magnet. The stickers were glittery kittens and autumnal leaves. Sherrie loved glitter.
I was in my second year of full-time teaching when Sherrie died by suicide. I didn’t find out about it until five days after it happened. When I found out, I was devastated. My heart was broken. I knew Sherrie lived with bipolar type II. I knew she had gotten a lot of help and it had never been enough.
Sherrie wrote beautifully. Sherrie would dress up in fun ways. Sherrie was a glamazon. Sherrie made some of her friends angry. Sherrie was a lot.
Sherrie was a mom. (I can’t say more than that because this is the part that makes me cry the most.)
Two days after I found out about Sherrie, I had a meeting with an assistant principal to discuss a classroom observation she had conducted in my class a few days earlier. It was the Ides of March. As a Latin teacher, I carried on a tradition my teacher had of having “toga day” on March 15; students got extra credit for coming to school draped in a toga, and as a teacher, I participated too.
So there I was, sitting in this AP’s office, KNOWING I was about to hear about a terrible observation because the day she had observed was Not Good. The class she had observed was my most challenging class ever. While I’m pleased to report that the students who challenged me the most in that class turned into lovely adults who I sometimes ran into because one of them was in undergrad at the same university where I was working and then getting my PhD, at the time, they had their own stuff going on at home and I was Not Equipped to support them through it. The school had failed to implement a key piece of their IEPs and it left them and me high and dry and none of us had what we needed to turn that into a positive experience.
So the AP observed me teaching that class, a class I never did a good job in and where most of my students learned a lot more about Roman civilization and culture via documentary video than they ever learned about language, because it was the only way I could manage for us to all get along and we were all, together, in survival mode.
Like I said - I knew this was going to be a bad review. I hoped the AP would have some suggestions for how to handle it.
My eyes were red and puffy because I had been crying for days. She had stood me up for this same appointment earlier without warning, and we had rescheduled. The only time she had available was during my 25 minute lunch period.
I sat at her desk and opened by telling her that I had lost a friend to suicide and only learned about it a couple days earlier and was still raw from grieving, so if I was especially emotional, that was why.
I don’t remember response, but I remember it was somewhere between awkward and cold. I got the sense that grieving my friend’s suicide was a Me Problem, something I should have left at the door when I entered the building at 6:55 am that morning.
There were a lot of things about my life that were Me Problems, because teachers aren’t supposed to do anything besides be teachers, apparently. Or at least they weren’t in 2007. I don’t suppose it’s much better now.
The AP genuinely opened by just saying, “That was bad.”
I said, “I know.” I told her I was looking forward to this meeting and her feedback on how I could be better.
She told me she didn’t know.
She told me to go ask Barbara. Barbara was the head of the initially licensed teachers program. Barbara would not be available for days.
Somehow this exchange took up my whole 25 minute lunch period. I arranged for a colleague to cover my class for just a few minutes so I could tend to human needs like going to the bathroom and, you know, EATING.
But when I got to the classroom, there was the principal, waiting to conduct my third and final observation for the year.
THAT’S RIGHT: the amount of time I had to improve between “feedback” and my next observation was THE WALK BETWEEN THE AP’S OFFICE AND THE CLASSROOM. On my own. With no suggestions or advice from the AP who had just told me I had done a bad job.
That day I was giving a test, which should have made the coverage easy for my colleague, but instead, it meant I had to get these students settled and make it through the 45 minutes of observation before a colleague could bail me out so I could eat.
Grieving, with low blood sugar, having been at work since 6:55 and it now being 1 pm with me not having eaten much between those two times, probably woefully underslept due to a relapse of anxiety and depression brought on by Sherrie’s death, and immensely frustrated because of this ridiculous observation setup, I broke.
I had been too permissive during my last observation, so I swung the pendulum and I swung it hard.
My students were engaging in antics that I usually “managed” through warmth, joking, and being resigned, but this day, I snapped at them:
“THIS CLASS IS NOT A JOKE. I AM NOT A JOKE. THIS TEST IS NOT A JOKE. SIT DOWN AND GET READY TO TAKE THE TEST.”
This was very un-me, not my usual teaching style, and my students for once obeyed.
Guess what? That wasn’t a good observation either.
I was in an operetta that week. It was tech week. The night after this observation was our final dress, if I recall correctly. The director had explicitly told us in a notes email to leave our personal stuff outside the theater door. We were here to make magic and do art and focus.
Normally I love leaving my stuff at the theater door.
That day I Could Not.
I showed up wearing Rainbow Brite pajamas. I sobbed on my way into the dressing room. My mom was working on the show and I got a hug from her.
I made it through the rehearsal. After rehearsal we were discussing makeup and what some people whose makeup wasn’t strong enough could do to fix it. Somebody suggested replacing drugstore makeup with MAC.
Sherrie loved MAC.
I was done.
I made it home. I made it through the weekend of shows. We might have been doing two weekends that year. I think we probably were. I don’t remember.
I didn’t have the time or space to grieve Sherrie: not at work, not in my happy space of the theater, not in my social environment or hobbies. LiveJournal was the only grieving space I had. (Don’t ask why I didn’t try to take sick leave from work. I was teacher. Taking sick leave as a teacher is at best a hassle and at worst literally impossible because there are no subs.)
That was almost fifteen years ago.
Eleven months ago today, my grandmother died. I knew my grandmother much better than I knew Sherrie. She was my last living grandparent. I grieved her more intensely than the others, because she was the one I was closest to. Because her house was the closest thing I had to a childhood home.
And most of all, because I had a visit scheduled with her for April 2020, of which the pandemic robbed me.
Blessedly, I had plenty of time and space to grieve my grandmother.
For three weeks after she died, I did nothing besides parent, eat, sleep, crochet, and watch Star Trek: The Next Generation. It was what I needed. It was what I could handle. And I’m so grateful for that space.
In spite of it, I’m still grieving. It feels a bit like when a wound heals slowly. Or reopens and weeps a bit. Only in the past few weeks have I actually started crying about her death. I have dreams where she is sick and dying but not dead, and my dead grandfather is tasked with caring for her, and I keep protesting that someone who is already dead is not the best caretaker if we’re trying to keep someone alive because how can a dead person possibly do a good job?
I don’t have a conclusion to this. It was brought on by Kelly J. Baker’s piece for Women in Higher Education, No Space to Grieve.
Photo by Vidsplay on StockSnap
šš»šŗ Depression doesn't need a reason. (Star Trek Discovery 4x02 spoilers)
This post contains minor spoilers for Star Trek Discovery Season 4 Episode 2, “Anomaly.”
Near the end of the latest episode of Discovery, Lt. Tilly tells Dr. Culbert that something feels off about herself, and that she’d like to talk to him about it in a professional context sometime.
This feels to me like a clear indication that Tilly is dealing with depression, anxiety, or both, and I’m very interested in following where this goes, especially as I read Tilly as my own sort of Discovery-avatar.
Over at Keith R. A. DeCandido’s recap for Tor.com, a commenter says,
The best thread for later is Tilly. Does she miss her mother? Is it about all the stress and loss and responsibility theyāve had? Mental health is an all too often ignored issue, so I hope they do it justice.
I, too, hope they do it justice, but what I don’t need is for there to be something Tilly’s depression is “about.” There certainly are things that can trigger depression, but the depression itself isn’t always a response to trauma. Sometimes it just happens because your body isn’t producing the chemicals it needs to.
I would love to see Tilly work through identifying how she’s feeling, struggling to decide between treatment options (or whether to go beyond talk therapy at all), and dealing with the consequences of whatever treatment she chooses. I’d also just love to see what mental health care looks like in the 32nd century.
But I don’t need there to be a reason she’s depressed.
Because depression doesn’t require a reason to appear.
Join me for a super low-key Artistās Way Creative Cluster.
I mentioned in September that I was going through the Artistās Way. I got about three weeks in when I realized I was only doing morning pages and reading, but not doing artist dates or any of the exercises. My motivational tendency is obliger, so I thought maybe if I were doing it in community, Iād do better.
But then I thought about organizing a whole community and I got weary immediately. I looked over Julia Cameronās Guide for Starting Creative Clusters and registered a big old NOPE.
So Iām planning to do it MY way.
My life mantra is WHAT I CAN, WHEN I CAN.
Iām inviting you to participate. Hereās how itās going to work.
- Iām going to do morning pages as often as I can, but Iāll be keeping them to myself. I might occasionally blog about what Iām learning from doing them.
- Iām going to do Artist Dates as often as I can. Iāll blog about them, with what I did, and my response to it.
- I will end both morning pages and Artist Dates posts with a question about how theyāre going for you, what you did, and what youāre getting out of them. You will be able to reply in one of a few ways:
- through a Micro.blog reply
- through an IndieWeb webmention
- through Disqus comments
- through Twitter replies
- through Facebook replies (yes, Iām even going to try this on Facebook)
- Iāll essentially do the same process for exercises, writing about my response to them and maybe even my answers, then asking if you did the exercise and how it worked out for you. You can reply in the same ways mentioned above.
Iām not in a place where I feel good about confining myself to a 12-week schedule, and I know if I try to turn it into 12 months or something Iāll lose steam around the 8 month mark, so instead, Iām just going to do it WHEN I CAN. Hereās what that will look like:
- I will make a short post when I start a chapter/week.
- I will make a short post when I finish a chapter/week.
- And all the exercises and stuff above, Iāll make a note of what chapter/week itās from.
Here are the rules to participate:
- Do what you can, when you can.
- Avoid trying to fix peopleās problems or offer advice; ālistenā to understand. I encourage you to respond, but try not to have it be advice-focused.
Thatās it. I really hope youāll join me.
āPeak Performance,ā Impostor Syndrome, and PhD Life, brought to you by Star Trek: The Next Generation šŗšš»
Iāve been in the middle of a Star Trek: The Next Generation rewatch for months, maybe even more than a year. Maybe since before the pandemic started, I donāt remember. I often will fall asleep to a TNG episode. I do this with the same episode over and over until I actually watch it all the way through while Iām awake.
Back in May, just over a month out from my dissertation defense and with no plan for the future, the episode I slept through over and over again was āPeak Performance.ā Itās one of my favorite episodes, for many reasons, and one reason is a B story focusing on Data. (Surprise!)
The A story is that a strategist named Kolrami has come aboard the Enterprise to evaluate the crewās performance in a combat exercise. Kolrami is a jerk and has real problems with Commander Riker, suggesting that Riker’s jovial attitude is not compatible with strong leadership.
Kolrami is also super arrogant. He comes from a species called the Zakdorn, well known for producing the galaxyās best strategists. He prides himself on his strategy and uses it for games as well as combat exercises; he is a grandmaster of a game called Stratagema. Riker challenges Kolrami to a game of Stratagema and loses after only a few moves. Thinking that with his fancy positronic brain Data might actually be able to beat Kolrami, Dr. Pulaski eggs Data on to play and eventually misleads Kolrami into believing Data has challenged him. Data agrees to the challenge, in spite of not initiating it.
Kolrami and Data play Stratagema and it lasts longer than the game with Riker did, but Data still loses. Then this exchange happens:
Pulaski: How can you lose? Youāre supposed to be infallible.
Data: Obviously, I am not.
It seems like a simple and innocuous response, but Data goes on to remove himself from bridge duty, believing that his loss at stratagema indicates a defect in himself:
I have proven to be vulnerable. At the present time, my deduction should be treated with skepticism.
I am concerned about giving the captain unsound advice.
This has indicated that I am damaged in some fashion. I must find the malfunction.
I heard the exchange above and these lines from Data and felt a deep resonance in my heart. Isnāt this how so many people feel, all the time? Isnāt this especially how scholars feel? Especially if you are an overachiever, you may make it all the way to a PhD program and only know what it is to excel in everything, and then meet a challenge that you canāt surmount.
You might be pursuing a tenure-track job, have done all the things youāre supposed to do, and still not get hired. Maybe you have tons of publications, brilliant teaching evaluations, a robust record of service, and did important dissertation research. And it doesnāt matter.
Data explains to Picard why he has removed himself from the bridge and what prompted him to do so. Picard replies:
…it is possible to commit no mistakes and still lose. That is not a weakness. That is life.
Um, excuse me Captain, just a moment, I got something in each eye and it has caused them to water profusely and also has made sobs wrack my body, hold onā¦
In the end, Data challenges Kolrami to a rematch. We see them play, Kolrami moving more quickly and becoming more agitated by the moment, as Data plays slowly and maintains a calm expression. Kolrami suspends the game, yells āThis is not a rematch. You have made a mockery of me!ā and storms out of the room.
As Data’s colleagues come to congratulate Data on his victory, he points out that he didnāt win, though no game of Strategema has ever gone to as high a score as this one has. Data explains that Kolrami was playing for a win and assumed that was Dataās goal as well, but Data had in fact chosen his own goal: a draw. He let many opportunities that would have supported a win pass him by in order to maintain a balance that would let him challenge Kolrami indefinitely.
Is this a perspective that can be useful for anyone dealing with impostor syndrome, and especially PhDs moving away from the tenure track? I think so. The āvictory conditionā for a PhD is assumed to be a tenure track job, but I went in with the intention of learning about qualitative methods. Now, I write about qualitative research and am pursuing other writing and consulting opportunities. Itās not success by the usual metric, but itās a path with which I am happy. And itās a path where no one tells me to wait for tenure before I have a kid (whoops did it during the PhD!), do public scholarship, or have opinions. And thank goodness, because thatās a long wait for a train donāt come.
Great news, bad attitude
Hi web friends.
I’m having a weird day, with some great news but also me not feeling like doing anything, where I can swing from ecstatic about great news to extremely irritable with my kid. I’m not always the most gracious or graceful parent.
The great news is medical stuff: after only a week of modifying my diet to be more PCOS-friendly, my blood sugar has moved from high to high-normal. My liver indicators were looking rough a month ago, presumably because I was taking a LOT of Tylenol for headaches, but after a month of supplementing with milk thistle, it’s back to normal. My doctor prescribed a new migraine medication for me and if I take it REALLY at the first sign, it actually works.
This is all wonderful! Really exciting stuff!
But I also spent all day kind of blah, not really feeling like doing much. So I focused on really basic self-care: a little yoga, dental hygiene, outside time. I hope I’ll feel less Bartlebyish tomorrow.
The parenting stuff is no big deal, just being annoyed when my kid does stuff like hate every food he used to love or use my head as a footrest when I’m trying to fill his essential oil diffuser. Nornal kid stuff and of course he’s still my favorite person.
I’ve been reading the Moz Beginner’s Guide to SEO and geeking out about it. I had in my head that SEO was gross and pushy, but it’s actually about getting resources to the right people, which makes it a good skill for librarians.
Now I’m quite tired, so I’ll watch a bit of Star Trek Discovery and nod off.
šQuotes from Lorraine Boissoneault's "Drafting a Personal Essay Is Like Stumbling Through a Dance"
I really needed to read “Drafting a Personal Essay Is Like Stumbling Through a Dance” today. Here are some bits that hit me hard:
Itās not enough to see a successful dance or personal essayāyou can study all you want, but itās only in the act of doing that you learn whatās right and what isnāt.
The bad news about first drafts is that they are necessary. The good news is that theyāre only a starting point.
There are many ways to get better at writingātake classes, join critique groups, read voraciouslyābut nothing gets you around the fact that you must also write and revise.
…take comfort in the fact that your words are still on the page. Youāve done the hard part and unleashed your awkward vulnerability.
š"Nobody cares if you're a writer except you." Kate Baer on being a writer who mothers. š
I highly recommend Sara Fredman’s Write Like A Mother newsletter, in which Sara interviews writers who are also mothers. Some bits from the recent issue with Kate Baer resonated especially with me, so I thought I’d share them here.
Mothers were so punished in this pandemic.
This. I’m playing the pandemic on easy mode - working part-time from home - and I still feel this. The social costs and lack of a village are what’s hurting me most. For the first time since the start of the pandemic, I hung out for a long time with other parents while our kids were at the park and it was huge. Pre-pandemic, M & I spent every weekday morning at a co-working space with a Montessori school on-site. My co-workers were almost exclusively fellow parents of young children, mostly moms and non-binary primary caregivers, and at the time I didn’t really appreciate how special it was.
…nobody cares if you’re a writer. Nobody, nobody cares if you’re a writer, except you. If you want to be a writer, then you have to take control of the situation. You have to think of yourself as a writer, you have to treat yourself as a writer. You have to treat this like this is a job… I have to be the one who cares so much about being a writer. And so I think part of that is just filtering out that noise and just taking yourself super seriously, taking the work super seriously.
I have only recently claimed the title of writer for myself, despite having written all my life and having my first paid byline 10 years ago, and I feel this so hard. I’m still working on taking myself and the work seriously.
#FSNNA21 livetweet log:
Introducing topic. How do scholars in fan & media studies articulate their discipline? How do these disciplines interact? When don't they?
Shares current book project: discussing labor & affordances on Steam. Last Nov Steam launched Steam Playtest, a way for indie developers to test games early. How does this impact the labor market for games?
Steam Playtest has been called "Beta testing for beta testing." Steam also has Early Access, which lets indie developers charge for in-development games.
All of this involves relying on Steam users to perform labor, to do QA work for free or pay for the opportunity to participate in the development process.
These features displace pro playtesters & QA reps.
This reliance on fan affective labor isn't unique to games, but Steam playtest/Early Access provides a rich area for case study.
How do we define the type of interaction at play in licensed tabletop (esp card) games? Are the people best understood as fans or players?
Describing experience of going to tournament for the Game of Thrones Living Card Game.
Now talking about writing tournament report to post to Fantasy Flight (game publisher) forums.
Licensed games matter and in many ways. Bestor describes needing another outlet for GoT fandom beyond books & shows.
Story worlds vs/as game worlds.
Do Bestor's experiences make him a fan? A player?
Who/what counts as a gamer? A game?
How does a fan identity get drawn out differently in fan-created product places like Etsy for example, Stardew Valley blanket yes, but it's hard to find fiber crafts for FPSs like Call of Duty.
When we consider game fandom, we should "remember the cozy fandoms and that digital leisure is not one-size-fits-all."
Discussing "Netflix Anime Festival" & how Netflix often creates "anime" that doesn't even have an anime studio/creative team.
Netflix is redefining what "anime fan" means by describing anyone who has watched any "anime" on Netflix as a fan, when Vidolova sees this as a tension between defining fan & user.
Gamers come into play considering "Netflix Geeked," a subbrand that includes sci fi, fantasy, superheroes, & more (with video games & anime as part of that "more")
Generalizing what anime means - animated adaptation of video game property = "anime"
Netflix branding defines fan according to engaging with these at all rather than a coherent community.
Netflix & Crunchyroll have both created animated Youtubers do promote anime & video games.
e-girls on TikTok create a mise-en-scene of playing video games; identity of player or fan is secondary to creating aesthetic image.
Fan studies "is attuned to affective attachment to particular story worlds and relationships" while the TikTok egirls are more about putting together pieces and fragments.
Game studies looks at these kinds of "fan fragments" and how they come together in a different way than fan studies does. e.g. how do people choose an avatar?
Discussing crunch time in the game industry and the relationship players have with it. Industry pros sometimes try to rally fans around crunch practices.
Method - analyzing player reactions to articles about crunch practices; study is ongoing, but so far more fans seem to support crunch practices.
Gamer identity is forefronted both among supporters & critics.
Consumer identity and fan identity are also present. Value judgments justified by identity all around: if you're a fan, wouldn't you object to crunch time bc you care about the people making the game?
Gamer/consumer/fan identites have been examined more in fan studies than in game studies.
#FSNNA21 livetweet log:
First, the state of fan studies in Brazil: research focused on digital settings but still working on integrating digital methods with other methods. Transcultural fan studies scholarship does focus on music fandom.
8 themes identified in lit review of Brazilian fan studies research - 1) The fan condition and identities; 2) Fandom consumption practices; 3) Digital Media fan practices and dynamics; 4) Fandom as community;
5) Fan activism; 6) Politics and Fandom; 7) Nostalgia and fans; 8) Fan production and works
Currently building Brazilian fan studies digital archive at https://www.estudosdefas.com.br/ and next step is interviewing authors.
Dr. Lies Lanckman is looking at Yiddish-language Hollywood fan magazines, esp. from the 30s & analyzing fan letters in the magazines.
"Affordances & Paradigms in Platformed Fandom"
Fandom has moved from self-contained/self-managed spaces to platforms controlled by others/corporations.
Examples of commercial + cultural tension in fandom use of platforms: Tumblrās porn ban ā¢ YA NFT scandal ā¢ TikTok Omegaverse LARP ā¢ Hannibal Twitter Wars ā¢ Censorship of AO3 in China
Considerations: Algorithmic fandom, boundary-enforcing norms, encounters with the fourth wall, platform-native emergent fan practices, AO3 as anti-platform
Important to keep in mind that while platform affordances shape fan behavior, "fans find a way"
Future RQs: Where can resistance & creativity be found in platformed fan practices? How does digital literacy/understanding of the nature of a given platform affect norms and values of the fan communities that use it?
How does the āfirst fandom experiencesā of teenagers materially differ when it occurs via algorithm, and how does it continue to affect their journey through fandom?
"From tool to lens - A case study of applying digital methods in fan studies"
Research project - "Marveling at Darcy Lewis"
Scraped information & texts from AO3 and ended up with about 2,419 fics
Using a tool called tag refinery alongside the process of topic model analysis for text selection
Are we using digital methods as tools or as lenses for engaging with theoretical frameworks: queer studies, feminist studies, intersectional feminism?
"Mushroom for improvement: Theorizing a new model for the circulation of fan objects"
Mycelium model focuses on movement of fan objects, agency of fans, flexible & agile model that is based off the radiating organism of fungi with genre as scaffolding
Multimodal methodology: autoethnography, desk research using thursdaysfallenangel's survey on fanfiction consumption & sharing habits, case studies
Mad at Your Dad/Craiglist Thanksgiving trope. Based off Craigslist ad where poster offered self as deliberately bad Thanksgiving date
Used manual data collection to look at post with 562K+ notes at time of writing, and then GEPHI as network visualization tool
Alex is sharing super cool visualization with posts indicated by dots, reblogs by lines, and fandom by color of dot & line
Multifandom blogs provided most notes, then small clusters of particular fandom blogs
asks @alexanthoudakis about using a mushroom model which reflects a broader trend in cultural studies of using biological metaphors. What are the implications for theoretical considerations?
Considered metaphors for things that happened organically, references other scholars who use virality as a metaphor. Important not to forget the PEOPLE in the process.
Originally started with the idea of tentacles, but they only radiate out from one point, don't capture horizontal circulation of fan objects. Same text that suggested tentacles also discussed mushrooms, so began researching mushrooms
Found philosophy paper that used mycelium as metaphor, cemented the idea that Alex was looking for.
#FSNNA21 livetweet log:
This doesn’t include the discussion/Q&A because things started to go so fast I couldn’t keep up.
introducing other panelists in "The Money Question"
Copyright law is designed to incentivize creativity, "to reward authors for being creative."
Lawyers think about financial repercussions of creativity/copyright, but fans tend to not focus on finances as reason for engaging in fanac, esp. fic.
Copyright law suggests that people require the financial incentive to be creative, but fans demonstrate there are many other motivations.
If we know people will be creative with motivations other than financial, then what is copyright law accomplishing if the incentive assumption is flawed?
Is copyright blocking creativity because it is too restrictive?
If $ enters a space where previously it wasn't part of the motivation/incentive structure, how do copyright considerations change once $ is introduced to the space?
When fans demand compensation, it gets stickier because they are creating within the world of somebody else's creation. Fanworks, however, are protected by fair use, "a really messy doctrine," with market harm as one of the explicit factors evaluated to determine if it's fair use.
We want to protect public good with copyright, not private gain. If you're making $, you can presumably afford to license intellectual property.
Copyright exceptions for news reporting & education, for example, promote the public good.
Fair use doctrine doesn't provide ability to exploit EVERYTHING, some things are reserved for creator.
If you aren't making $, copyright holder has a harder time arguing you're affecting their market/bottom line, but if you are charging, now it looks like you're siphoning $ from copyright holder.
THIS DOES NOT MEAN EVERYTHING DONE FOR FREE IS OKAY UNDER FAIR USE DOCTRINE. Some free stuff is still copyright infringement! eg music & video piracy
But also NOT EVERYTHING DONE FOR $ IS NOT FAIR USE.
"Keeping things noncommercial is the safest way that lawyers can see for protecting fan activities." & this is why AO3 has lots of rules about noncommercial use.
$ attracts attention, so copyright holders are more likely to sue if $ is involved.
We are seeing more ways that fans monetize their creations & Stacey is curious about non-lawyers' thoughts.
[quick disclaimer, Kimberly Hirsh is not A lawyer and Stacey Lantagne is not YOUR lawyer.]
What about when copyright holders claim that they own rights to fan work? Platforms that are monetizing fan labor?
Let's talk about LARPS! Daria came from fashion & media studies & is new to fan studies in the past ~6 mos.
LARP = Live-Action Role Playing.
LARPing is an event and a game, often based on/inspired by media products, appeals to fans, utilizes physical assets like props, costumes, food, accommodation. Can't be 100% free.
Is LARP a commercial endeavor or not?
LARPs aren't always medieval/fantasy themed. Other examples: wizarding, Downton Abbey/Upstairs-Downstairs "Fairweather Manor," Star Wars, Westworld.
You can't participate in a LARP without spending $ on accommodations, tickets, costumes, props.
LARPs also have merchandise.
College of Wizardry LARP originally used Harry Potter terms, but received contact from legal (at WB? JKR estate?) & subsequently changed names.
Case study - Star Wars Saberfighting - you can pay to take lightsaber fighting classes, which resulted in a market for unlicensed light sabers.
There is a relationship between embodied fanac like LARPing & $, which creates tension btwn fan creations & licensed merch.
Studying Game of Thrones fan experiences, analyzed brand, good brand due to fan loyalty & HBO branding work, with particular visual identity & brand image.
Distinction between official merchandise, licensed (like Monopoly), and unlicensed (like fan-created). Some fan creators do it just for fan love, some for career/biz, and some creators of unlicensed merch aren't fans.
3 types of GoT on Etsy: reuse/distory/mock HBO features, inspired by GoT, GoT for SEO purposes (not actually GoT related)
Fan-made items tend to cost 2-3x less than similar official items.
While reappropriation items often are similar to official/licensed items, "inspired by" items - for example cosplay items - are filling a gap, as this kind of thing isn't usually offered through official/licensed channels.
Fans in places where official places don't ship (eg HBO doesn't ship outside of USA) must choose either to purchase resold items that will ship to them or fan-created items that will ship to them.
Surveyed fans in English, French, & Spanish. About 1/5 of fans purchase exclusively fan creation, 70-80% prefer official, 50% or so buy both.
Fan tourists & cosplayers purchase more items than other fans. Fans mention Etsy as place to purchase
Fan consumers often like to purchase fan-created artifacts in order to support other fans.
Conflict btwn fans' stated support of fan creators and actual purchasing habits which when possible they prefer to buy official products.
Response to "Whereās the āVideo Offā Button in Face-to-Face Instruction?"
Dr. Maggie Melo writes for Inside Higher Ed today about the value of video-off time in a virtual classroom and how we might learn from the ease generated by virtual time together-but-apart and apply it in a face-to-face setting.
Dr. Melo concludes:
I want us to question why we have such a persistent desire to āsee learningā in a makerspace or classroom. I want us to figuratively and literally turn off the gaze when itās not needed. As we opt for classrooms and makerspaces that are more inclusive, we should create ways for students to choose how they want to be seen in the classroom.
My son attends a preschool that uses the Reggio Emilia approach. There are a lot of different components to this approach. One of them is documentation. The teachers at his school are constantly photographing the children as they work, posting those photographs around the classroom for the children to see, and writing captions to remind the children of what they were doing. This is not exclusively for assessment purposes. It’s process-focused. The children also take photos, which the teachers share and describe.
Dr. Melo’s piece made me wonder if something like this could be applied in a higher education setting, but placing the choice of how and what is documented on the students. Could you have a shorter class meeting time, giving students the extra solo time to work and document their own process? What if you explicitly asked them to talk about the mistakes they made and what they learned from them, like I do in my blog post about sewing napkins? Does placing this documentation power in the hands of the students allow them to choose how they are seen?
I don’t know.
I just wonder.
Just a note: Dr. Melo was my assistantship supervisor for the final 2 years of my PhD.
What was going on in my life when I got sick
It’s hard to figure out exactly which of the many symptoms I have should determine when I got sick but based on the impact of treatment, I’m going to say it was the onset of anxiety and depression. These really ramped up in October 1999.
I was 18 and settling in at college. I had a roommate who was not a good fit. My anxiety and depression seemed to kick off when that roommate suggested at dinner that I had a crush on a dude in our building. I didn’t but I liked talking to him. I thought he was fun. I already had a boyfriend (spoiler alert, 10 years later I married that boyfriend) and I thought that, based on what my roommate said, thinking this kid was fun was basically cheating. (I was wrong. It’s okay to have friends.)
This one conversation launched a spiral of negative self-talk that persisted for months. It was exacerbated by my being at a big university, struggling to make friends, and feeling disconnected from my family even though I was only 12 miles from home.
At the same time, my brother was sick and in the hospital. He was only 5. I don’t remember, but I imagine I felt that going to my parents with my problems felt like adding a burden they didn’t need, in light of my brother being ill
I don’t think I got help until Spring of 2000.
In the following few years I gained a lot of weight, was so sleepy that I would fall asleep in the student union and miss class plus slept through service learning obligations, and started having irregular periods. My primary care doctor sent me to an endocrinologist who ran a lot of thyroid tests but not the one that would lead to my diagnosis 11 years later.
In time, a lot of these symptoms went away, but they recurred with a vengeance the summer after I finished library school in 3011. Again, it started with depression and anxiety - in spite of my being on an antidepressant - and by the time I did a direct-to-consumer test and took the results to my doctor, all I could do was go to work, come home, and sleep, without energy even for laundry or food prep.
Wentz conducted a survey of over 2000 of her readers to investigate what was going on when they got sick. Stress was the most frequent response. I think both of the times I’ve had big flare-ups have been in the face of the stress of a major life transition.
This connection between transitions and flares is why I’m being especially vigilant right now as I continue to live in the liminal space of post-PhD.
How Hashimoto's makes me feel
Hashimoto’s makes me feel like the opposite of myself. At various points in my life, if you asked friends about me they’d tell you that I have infectious enthusiasm, that I am an excellent writer, that I am a badass who gets shit done. (These are things friends have actually told me about myself.)
When I’m having a flare, I don’t seem to care about anything. I can’t find the right words or structure my thoughts into a logical flow. I don’t seem to be able to get anything done at all.
I’ve seen my mom go through this, too. She’s super smart, loves learning, and is amazing at making stuff. But on her worst days, it’s all she can do to get out of bed.
It’s hard for me to reconcile these two versions of myself. On bad days, I find it hard to believe I was ever enthusiastic, sharp, eloquent, or effective.
I don’t like feeling this way.
My health goals
I may receive commissions for purchases made through links in this post.
One of the things I’m focusing on right now is feeling better. Today, that means reading Izabella Wentz’s Hashimoto’s Protocol: A 90-Day Plan for Reversing Thyroid Symptoms and Getting Your Life Back. We’re coming up on the 10th anniversary of my Hashimoto’s diagnosis (driven by my own research, in partnership with a doctor I had to push to recognize it) and guess what? I still feel crappy. Not nearly as bad as 10 years ago, but still bad. And part of chronic illness is that there will be flare ups. But I know I’m capable of feeling better because I did, in the 9 months before I got pregnant. But the things that helped me then aren’t enough to help me now, it seems. So, Wentz’s book.
Wentz suggests keeping a health journal using “a method you are likely to stick to.” For me, that’s blogging. I’ll probably keep some private notes, but maybe this can even be helpful to somebody else to follow along. So to the extent I feel okay doing it, I’ll be keeping my journal here, in the Health category.
Wentz suggests beginning by identifying health goals. Here are mine:
I want to have more energy. I am tired, all the time. My kid will tell you. I’ve been the kid with the tired mom and I’d love to spare my kid that. So this is my highest priority. Right now, if I go on an outing with my kid, I have to take the rest of the day and potentially the next day to recover. So my energy goal is to be able to go on a family outing and stay in the swing of things the next day.
I want to feel better about my looks. Mostly I think I’m pretty cute, but sometimes I feel dull and puffy. I’d like to look in the mirror and be not dull and not puffy. I’m not going to worry about weight or even girth because those are tricky targets and easy to disappoint me. But I’d like to look in the mirror and see someone with normal bags under her eyes, not extreme ones, with pink and cheery skin rather than wan white skin, with more hair than I have now and with an appropriate amount of white hair for her age. (There is a clear distinction between the amount of white hair I have when I’m well and when I’m ill. I don’t want to eliminate it, just to have what seems like a reasonable amount of it. And then maybe dye it green.)
I want to have endurance when swimming. One pool length wears me out right now and I can’t at present exercise myself into improving that due to the relationship between thyroid hormone levels and respiratory function. But I want to be able to swim in a mermaid tail for long distances. My ultimate goal is 300 yards but I’ll set an intermediate one for now. By next July, I’d like to be able to do 2 full laps with only 12 breath rests.
Those seem big enough for now.