Kimberly Hirsh

Household division of labor:
W - cooks, cleans, does yardwork, generates 80% of household income, parents hardcore
Me - installs software, snuggles M while watching PBS Kids shows

I’m really hung up on how nothing is neutral and every decision, intentionally or not, is value-laden and communicates values. Thanks, academia!

If you’re into it, Star Wars is pretty much the ultimate in comfort media, so I’m going to overlook all your hot takes about lines being cheesy because they’re recycled. They’re callbacks, y’all. I am delighted every time anyone says “I have a bad feeling about this.” Etc.

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I’ve spent my whole life on campus. Before I even entered elementary school, my mother was enrolled at community college working on her associate’s degree and I would sometimes go to campus with her. (This is how I had my first taste of Raisin Nut Bran: it was in an orientation package she got.)

When I was 7, my parents enrolled at Florida State University, my mom to get a BA in Religion and my dad to get his MLIS. My dad got a job at Duke Law after graduation and my mom stayed at FSU working on a Master’s in Theology and my sister and I alternated living with them; when she finished her coursework, we all moved to NC, where my mom started a Master’s in Divinity at Duke. My dad was still working at Duke when I graduated from high school and moved to college; I did a one year MAT after college and then worked as an educator for 5 years before returning to get my MSLS, then worked another year as an educator and three years in higher ed outreach before returning to get my PhD.

I have a deep working knowledge of what education is really like.

And yet I still romanticize it.

As part of my foray into the aesthetic that is dark academia (which involves many fewer contingent laborers than you might expect), I have joined a readalong taking place on Instagram and Discord. We’re on our last book now, The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova. Early in the book, a father narrates to his daughter his time as a grad student, spending hours locked in a university carrel writing about 17th century merchants in Amsterdam, sneaking in to hear the end of his advisor’s lectures to undergraduates, sitting in his advisor’s office…

And I swooned.

I wonder if it’s because only the first year of my PhD was really spent writing in carrels on campus? Because the rest of it has been in public libraries, cafes, and co-working spaces, places I could briefly slip away without a long bus ride while someone else was with my kid. (Commute to UNC: minimum 40 minutes. Commute to closest public library branch: 10 minutes. It only takes 10 minutes to drive to UNC, but it’s cost-prohibitive to park there more than once a week or so.)

I had this same wistfulness when I read A Discovery of Witches. What is it that I love so much about this life? And is it my love of this imagined academia and my understanding of how very imaginary it is part of what keeps me from pursuing the tenure track?

I wonder all of this, but really, what it comes down to, is this:

I love this imagined academia, and regardless of what academia really is, I love this imagined version anyway, and it brings me joy. So I will keep reading books and watching movies about tweed-clad scholars in their gothic architecture reading rooms, debating the finer points of Latin grammar (an activity I actually hated as an undergrad, an attitude that won me scorn from my Latin professors), spending time in cozy offices, and secretly learning that imaginary monsters are real. (The Sunnydale High School library is 100% Dark Academia; don’t @ me.)

You know when you are writing and then ideas start flowing and words come out of you expressing those ideas and it isn’t like pulling teeth or whatever? That is a great feeling.

I am so close to done with my discussion chapter with almost 3 hours of childcare left to go! Time to grab some food and then finish this chapter up.

Finished reading: Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson 📚

When you’re pretty much secular, but descended from 2 faith traditions and mostly just really like fire. And don’t have your act together enough to get greens for the advent wreath. (Don’t worry, we’ll wait for Hanukkah to light the menorah.)

I know Hanukkah is not a major religious holiday. But my connection with Jewish heritage and culture has never really been religiously driven. I am, according to the most recent AncestryDNA update, probably 43% of Ashkenazi Jewish heritage. I believe it’s been 3 generations since anyone in my family was strongly connected to this heritage, but I’ve felt Jew-ish as long as I can remember.

And I want all the foods, y’all. All the Hanukkah foods.

I looked for other people with a similar experience to mine, and found this helpful blog post called “So You’ve Just Found Out You’re Jewish. What’s Next?”. I’ve always known about my Jewish heritage, but felt a bit stymied about connecting with it, so I appreciate this especially for its links to a lot of resources.

Including and especially The Nosher.

I think there will be some russet potatoes in an upcoming grocery order for me.

Also probably the ingredients for easy sufganiyot.

The end of a PhD is a weird time, especially if you don’t have your eyes set on the tenure-track. (I recently decided that I probably won’t apply for what will likely be the only tenure-track job remotely related to my expertise for the foreseeable future, because my gut said no.)

For more than a year I’ve felt a desperate need to figure out what’s next. In January, I gave myself permission to wait until August to even think about it, but of course that’s not how brains work. In April, I realized that whatever expectations I have would likely be exploded by the pandemic. More and more, I started to feel like I wanted to set out and do my own thing, because I don’t believe that job security is a thing anymore.

So I want to do my own thing, though I’ll still look at jobs in the library and publishing fields. And research comms - both communicating to researchers and communicating about research.

When I try to figure out what my own thing is, there are many possible directions to go in, and I think I’m just going to try some of them.

In a Self-Employed PhD strategy session, one of my fellow participants asked me what I want.

I said I just want to rest.

But more and more what I want to do is read books and make stuff.

In our lab meeting today, I talked about how making stuff is a vulnerable act. I can’t remember exactly what I said. Maggie (or Dr. Melo if you don’t know her) was taking notes and I sure hope she captured some of it. But I’m going to keep thinking about that idea for a while, I think.