I remember creating a CD of superfine amped up songs to crank in my car when I submitted my dissertation (many years ago, like R. Kelly's "World's Greatest"). I danced all over my living room, much to the delight/disgust of my cats, lip-synching those tunes. When I played that music the day I turned my material in, I felt nothing.
Q: How do the rest of you handle these professional emotional roller coasters? I really want to dance around to Katy Perry's "Roar."
Well, I just got my first pub, and I went to Taco Bell and to see "Thor 2."
ReplyDeleteCongrats! :)
DeleteDrink for celebration, drink for comiseration, drink for humiliation, drink for anticipation.
ReplyDeleteDrink.
When I went into my interview for the TT job last year I made a CD of the tunes I used to psy up to in the past. I made sure I listened to Jimmy Buffet's "Fins", the same song I listened to before I defended my MA thesis all those years ago as well as before my Ph.D. comps some years later. I changed the lyrics though "You got profs to the left, profs to the right...."
ReplyDeleteI still have the CD in my office and like listening to it sometimes before class. "Kickstart My Heart" by the Crue always gets me up and going.
I usually end up doing laundry at such times, because it has become beyond urgent, and that's about all I have energy for. In fact, I wrote the conclusion to my undergraduate thesis in the laundry room (on a legal pad -- no laptops then. After I keyed it into Wordstar on my PCjr, I had to print it out to take to my advisor, and, after that, the print shop).
ReplyDeleteThen I sleep, and then I try to catch up on everything else that I've been neglecting. At least all the busyness is something of a distraction from the anxiety of waiting for results.
boringly, I run for an hour and/or try a new recipe. I run a lot, so.....
ReplyDeleteI usually review the highlights and mentally pump my fists until I think of the flaws and missteps and end up wanting to crawl under a rock.
ReplyDeleteOh, did you mean "handle" it as in "maturely face life in a balanced way"? My mistake.
I usually have something else (grading) demanding my time, so end up just moving on to the next thing on my list, but after that, I sleep a lot and download an audiobook to listen to as I do my shuffle-run in the woods out back.
ReplyDeleteDecline to get on the roller coaster. Become somewhat more Zen Buddhist in your approach to life. If you don't feel a need to "WOOHAAA!" celebrate, then you also may not feel a need to collapse in misery at the setbacks. Achieve some insight and distance on your emotional states.
ReplyDeleteDr. Pablito (or may I say "Dr. Fozzy Bear"?), of course you are right that this is a way to achieve a mature, balanced approach to life's ups and downs. But as much as I admire Buddhism and find many aspects worth practicing, the whole "distance on your emotional states" business leaves me cold. As does the Buddha's idea that since pain is caused by forming attachments, then we should avoid forming attachments in order to avoid pain.
DeleteI'll take my occasional desire to crawl under a rock, and the risk of heartbreak, if that leaves me open to "WOOHAA!" celebrations and being swept off my feet by love.
I'm in the same place, and it feels like. . . academic post-partum depression? Like, even that things look secure and stable, that depresses me? It feels like the start of stagnation? No more clearly defined obstacles/goals/milestones on the career steeplechase? Now what? (I remember feeling this way when I turned in the diss, too)
ReplyDeleteSo I'm dealing with it through binge drinking and eating delicious and terrible things.
And declining new opportunities to add to my pre-tenure-excessive-and-unbalanced committee service: you all signed the letter already and it's out the door and headed to the provost's office, so ya'll enjoy that budget meeting thing, as I have no dog in that fight, ha ha!
WTF! Are we twins?
DeleteDr. Lemurpants, you just got tenure? Congratulations!
DeleteOr, I'm mid-process. The portfolio's in, and so far the other faculty and the chair have opted not to sack me, and it's on its way up the ladder. Thanks!
DeleteFor the people interested in "Nando" the Law School graduate:
ReplyDeleteNando November 16, 2013 at 8:25 AM [Comment taken from his blog.]
http://www.guidestar.org/FinDocuments/2012/620/476/2012-620476822-096d0323-9.pdf
Head back to the 2012 Form 990 for Employer ID No. 62-0476822, i.e. Vanderbilt University. Look at lines 20-22 on the first page. As of June 30, 2012, the $chool had $7,437,841,959 in TOTAL ASSETS. The pigs also held total liabilities of $2,439,535,434 on that date. As noted on line 22, this “non-profit in$titution of higher learning” had TOTAL END OF YEAR NET ASSETS amounting to $4,998,306,525!!
Can anyone say - with a straight face - that these rodents are putting the students’ interest first?!?! The kids are just a means to an end. It is that simple.
Thanks again to the commenter from 6:01 pm, for the link to the City Paper‘s May 18, 2012 piece labeled “Councilman to Vanderbilt: 'Do the right thing' for dining workers.” The reporter was Joey Garrison. This opening truly makes one want to throw up all over the floor:
http://nashvillecitypaper.com/content/city-news/councilman-vanderbilt-do-right-thing-dining-workers-0
“A Metro Councilman has asked Vanderbilt University to sit down with the school’s dining workers to “work towards improving their quality of life” and perhaps find them employment over the summer instead of laying them off each May.
“This is an opportunity to continue to win over the hearts of Nashvillians and do the right thing here,” first-year District 7 Councilman Anthony Davis wrote to Vanderbilt Chancellor Nichloas Zeppos in a May 10 letter.
“The dining employees are simply underpaid to raise a family,” he wrote. “There should also be a grand effort to give them summer employment if at all possible.”
Notice how the pigs at all of these august in$titution$ always pay the cafeteria workers and landscapers dirt wages - and then lay them off first when times get a little “tough.” Again, this univer$ity has an endowment of just under $5 billion!
That alone tells you all you need to know about college administrators, law school officials and the cockroach-infested boards of regents and boards of trustees. These men and women have NO INTEGRITY. They merely want to keep the money flowing in - and they have not the slightest concern about the students or lower end workers. It goes without saying that they don’t even consider the taxpayers.
At this point, ANYONE defending the “higher education” $y$tem is a piece of trash. I don’t care if you are being paid to represent these demons. If you are knowingly participating in the scam, then you are a vile pig, as well.
WTF?
DeleteI'm lost. And I work here.
DeleteThere is something I'm missing.
DeleteNobody remembers Nando of "Third Tier Reality", the anti-law school blog?
DeleteI remember Nando. I just didn't get why this was here.
DeleteBecause I thought it needed to be brought up.
DeleteAnd I said
ReplyDelete"Nothing, I'm feeling nothing"
And he says
"Nothing could get a girl transferred"
They all felt something
But I felt nothing
Except the feeling
That this bullshit was absurd
A poem! Thanks!
DeleteComing to you courtesy of "A Chorus Line," which I memorized in 7th grade.
DeleteI think Barry Manilow said it best:
ReplyDeleteWe dreamers have our ways
Of facing rainy days
And somehow we survive
We keep the feelings warm
Protect them from the storm
Until our time arrives
Then one day the sun appears
And w come shining through those lonely years
I made it through the rain
I kept my world protected
I made it through the rain
I kept my point of view
I made it through the rain
And found myself respected
By the others who
Got rained on too
And made it through
Dr. Python you will make it through just fine! Good luck in the wait.
Do we have an award for "Surreal Thread of the Week"?
ReplyDeleteI'm willing to talk about foxes some more if it helps. :)
Deletek
ReplyDelete