Archaea

I, and most likely every other woman on the planet, am on a quest: The Quest for the Perfect Bra. I have literally one dozen bras kicking about the house of varying ages and hopefulness.

In reality, I wear only one or two consistently at a time, basic bras that get the job done, holstering the breasts out of the way with minimal fuss or pain. Occasionally, I find a bra that is both functional and pretty and it is a day of great rejoicing!

This weekend I will be disposing of a box-and entire box!-of bras from you-know-who's-secret, and with them go every instance of hope, wishful thinking, and impulse buys of the last five years. In the same way that some women keep their skinny jeans, I hoard my skinny bras. Bras that I once fit into, when I was a few pounds lighter and not retaining as much water. Eventually, I have to accept that those dusty bras will never be of use to me and that they should be banished from my home.

The thing is, I really like my breasts. They're great! They're fairly large (40DDD), but not overly enormous, pretty symmetrical, and give me some pretty impressive cleavage fairly regularly. So the thing with the bras isn't wishing that they're SMALLER, its wishing that the smaller, prettier bras could still fit my breasts. Because my breasts are great, and they deserve great bras.

The past couple of years have not been easy for me. At this time last year, all of my equilibrium was gone. I had no emotional reserves; I was living on the edge of my own mental collapse, keeping it at bay with alcahol and denial.

So, I did what I should have done much sooner; I got myself out of the situation. I moved several states away, and radically changed my life. I still do archaeology, but the dream of academic archaeology is firmly in the past. Now I'm finishing my master's and calling it done.

My new job is in North Dakota. I'm incredibly busy all of the time; the company I work for works with oil and gas clients a lot, and they are demanding, to put it lightly. I've been stressed, and busy, and tired.

The other day, someone asked me if I was happy. I had to think about it for a minute, but I can honestly say that I really am in a better place than I was a year ago. If I'm not happy, I'm closer to it than I have been in a while. And that's a good thing, to be in a better place.

The last year was rough for me; a whole lot of questioning happened, and there was so much doubt and anxiety. Along the way, somehow, things were decided. I've moved myself to North Dakota. I'm beginning a crew chief job next Monday. I've effectively abandoned a Ph.D. at this moment (Though the possibility of it in the future remains).

This is a terribly frightening endeavor; the future is not ensured in any way, and I've moved away from my comfort zone in almost all ways. My greater fear is that I'll get myself into a bad situation that I cannot get myself out of. I need to remember that I have a safety net, that I have family, that I am resourceful and capable. What I need to remember is that the future is likely to hold as many good things as bad and that the ratio of these things isn't set in stone.

I've always thought that my happiness is linked heavily to place. And I got happier and happier, I loved the places more and more, the further west I went. It is counter intuitive to me to now be going east, relative to the rest. I need to learn how to be happy here, I need to figure out how to live as a person who is not a student-up until now, STUDENT has been my occupation and my aspiration, and to a great degree, my identity.

I don't know exactly how to move beyond that. I'm terrified that I don't HAVE anything beyond that to move towards.

This has been a frustrating spring. My thesis is going more slowly than it ought; I'm looking at a summer or, worse, fall defense (depending on people's schedules). My advisor is...not as responsive as I would want about the issue.

I had thought that the upcoming conference would be a nice vacation, but I've just discovered that a couple of my classmates are presenting not one, but two papers on a group project that we all did for our lithics lab last year. I contributed half of the data for the project, and not only is my name not on the papers, but I didn't know they were doing it until this last wednesday. So, now I have to go kick up a fuss about it, because, really, that's not on AT ALL.

The thing is that half the things in my life are awesome-my living situation, my friends, etc-while the other half are not-school, mainly.

Despite that fact that I have some great friends, the fact remains that I'm just not happy here-but am often stressed and cynical and all of those states endemic to graduate school. I wish there was more to keep me here-if I had an advisor that cared much, or some new research goals, or an SO-but the fact remains that probably the best thing is to GTFO.

I could make the argument that I should regret this year: I've taken a year longer to finish my thesis than is proper, and I had a terrible summer, and all this anxiety and stress have been rather terrible.

Yet. Yet, yet, yet; I've learned a great deal about myself, the things I want,how I react to many situations, how to function in many ways. The lessons have been relatively hard (in some cases physically painful, in others mostly mentally painful). But I don't regret it.

My thesis is better because I've waited, read more, studied more. I'm more happy with it-and if it is the only thing I'm leaving behind, then I woud rather it made my glad. I don't regret that. I don't regret the classes I've taken, either. Those are, if anything, far more valuable than anything else.

The thing about this summer was that financially, personally, it was a huge disaster. I really should have gone and made money, if I was being financially smart. Personally, I spent the summer in pain and mostly alone. Not great.

Professionally, though, I learnt a great number of things. Firstly, to stand up for myself in a work situation. Secondly, how to recognize passive aggressive behavior in these same situations. Thirdly, that I shouldn't just grin and bear it if such a situation were to occur in the future. I regret that I lost a friend over it. I regret that this fact makes it nearly impossible for me to work with this particular group again (the senior student will always remain so, short of her leaving for another country or washing out).

I've gained many great friends. I'm more settled with myself. I've acknowledged that I probably have an anxiety problem, but that can be dealt with.

I don't regret it-some things may be regrettable-but I don't regret them.

So, this semester I decided not to take any courses in my major (Shock! and something of a relief-I was burning out). Instead, I am writing my thesis, defending, and taking the "Preparation for College Teaching" course, which is really a crash course in how universities work. I think. Thus far we've covered how to be a TA, Power Point, etc.

Today's class covered the job process, how to find/apply for an academic job, what to do once you get one, the tenure process, etc. Which all served basically to say that the life is good, but the odds are bad. Particularly for women, the statistics are appalling; fewer women are full professors, they are paid less, and much less likely to have a family when they do. It makes it hard to not be just a little bit depressed about the whole idea.

The selling point for an academic career is that you have a better quality of life. But how much of that is really true? I see so many bitter people, as many as there are happy ones, it seems, in academic roles. And despite all that we still have to fight tooth and claw for that quality; when does it become not worth the effort?

I was reading the BBC news page the other day when I ran across an interesting fact: apparently, the US dollar coin is still being made despite the bad reception it encountered when it was first introduced. The American people are reluctant to give up their bills.

Well, we're all creatures of habit. I can't fault that. But, it also appears that switching to coins for the lower currencies would save hundreds of billions of dollars in printing costs.

I hadn't thought of it that way; perhaps if people knew that by using a dollar coin that they were saving a dollar (or more!) in the long run, they would be more likely to use them. I know I am.

(I also like the idea of having a coin purse that doesn't just have pennies in it.)

So, anyone reading this, request dollar coins in your change!

We're finished with survey but not done in the field. We've still got a week or so where we'll be going around meeting people and sites. Which will be fun, unlike most of the rest of the last week and a half.

So, the second session of this season, I sprained my ankle, and fucked up both my feet so that walking was extremely painful (I cried). Thing is, it didn't start out as painful-it took a couple of days for the horror to set in. And by then I felt like I couldn't say anything (but hoped that someone would say "gee, you're lagging a lot behind everyone else, is something wrong?") lest it be seen as complaining/exaggerating/whatever. So I shut up and bore it, and lagged behind everyone else. And they didn't wait; I could be a mile or more behind them on the hike back, and no one said a word. I could say, " Hey I lost you guys in the trees/rocks/whatever" and all I got was a shrug.

The crew chief just go angry. I've worked with her before with no problems, but this time she was all stressed about getting a lot done. And she clearly wasn't interested in dealing with any problems that we might have had; her unwillingness to wait or even ask what was going on as evidence. But she kept getting angrier and cutting me out of the group.

Finally, my ankle got better and I was feeling fine for the last session. So she pulls me aside and rips into me for my performance-ie-that I was slow and sullen and had a bad attitude.

Really?  You don't see the problem with telling a team member that it would have literally killed you to slow down a little on survey to wait for them when they were obviously in pain? That isn't even bad leadership, its a simple lack of common decency.

When I went into all this, she accused me of being unable to open up. When could I have opened up? By the time I got back to camp, she had already retreated to her tent, where she camped out hiding from the rest of us. And when I did try to explain, she said, as above, that it would have killed her to wait for me.

And when she confronted me about it she mentioned that my advisor and boss "knew everything." I don't know if that means that she reported to him angrily, or that he'll just see who was writing site forms.

I'm too angry to talk about it unbiased way. I should probably stop.

This trip home has been extra exciting; particularly these last couple of days.

First, yesterday Mum fell and dislocated her knee. Fun time with ambulances, and of course now she's bed- and crutch-ridden for the foreseeable future. Pending surgery.

Secondly, we had to put a dog down. Mica, their two year old, had been getting more and more aggressive towards people coming in the house. So that was stressful this afternoon.

Thirdly, my phone died with eight more months left in the contract period. Which left me up a creek. They couldn't do the new phone with plan renewal thing this far out. So I ended up doing an early 'equipment' upgrade, and got a blackberry, which is way more phone than I would realistically need in the next few years, but was the best option, particularly considering that I'll be in the field in a week.

Fourth, the weather had been caving in and delayed my trip back to Washington.

You can't but throw up your hands and laugh; sometimes the universe just wins.

Finally the semester is over. This was the hardest semester I have ever had; the stress was terrible.

Oddly, the stress wasn't class-work related. It was thesis related; I was running up against the expectations (or the expectations that I thought everyone had) and not quite making it. I was also sick a lot; at the end of last semester I think I got swine flu, and it took out my immune system. So I've been sick every three weeks or so. I'm sure the stress didn't help.

But now I'm done; and I'm eager to get out and just do archaeology again. Thankfully, we're going at the end of the month for five weeks to NM. It'll be mostly survey, but I'm glad nonetheless.

It seems like after the repeated set backs of this winter, things are falling into place for the summer.