oh hells yeah!!

Dear Abandoning Eden,

It was a pleasure to meet you at ASA and I am so delighted that you will be applying for the Social Demography position. I agree that it is a great fit! Also, thank you for the manuscript. I'm looking forward to reading it and I'll keep my fingers crossed that it is accepted soon.

Finally -- I agree that I hope we keep in touch regardless of what happens with the job search!

All my best,

[Prof who interviewed me last weekend]

This in response to an email I sent her thanking her for meeting with me (and sending along a paper we had talked about during the interview that she asked for). Can I start dancing around my apartment now? I know I shouldn't be getting my hopes up so high, but it seems like this interviewer really really liked me....I also gave a ride to another prof from the department the night before my interview, and went out to dinner with another member of the search committee at a conference 3 years ago, and she knows me well enough to recognize me when we ran into each other at ASA. Also the prof who interviewed me told me to say hi to my dissertation chair as we were leaving the interview, so I'm guessing she knows my dissertation chair.

Now all that's left to do is send them a kick-ass application package I guess. Hells yeah!

Making amends 15 years later

Sage wedding dress? or wine? Not sure which I should get, and can't decided if this is more formal than I want our wedding to be...

Also:
check out this insane facebook message I got today!

Subject: a (very) late apology

Abandoning Eden,

I know this is long overdue. I just wanted to apologize for the times in elementary school when I gave you a hard time and probably hurt you.

I hope you can chalk it up to immaturity and insensitivity, and forgive me.
I'm sorry.

[girl I haven't seen in 15 years]

Honestly, I pretty much have no memory of anything that happened in elementry school, but if I had to make a list of people I'd like an email like this from, this girl would definitely not be on it. Maybe it was so traumatic I forgot it? Lol...I don't even know how to respond to this. A surprising number of my friends keep bringing up AA and the 12 steps when I tell them about this. But since this girl is married with a kid and lives in israel, I doubt it. Although who knows, really...

Anxiety dreams...

I used to get anxiety dreams around once a week, especially during my first few years of grad school. I had a few last night, and realized that I haven't really had one in at least a year. While that's pretty awesome, I'm not thrilled about the prospect of them coming back.

Last nights anxiety dreams: 1. I was all set to go to a radiohead concert (Tangent- In real life I have tickets to a Radiohead concert next week! Hells yes!), and I couldn't find the tickets, and then when I found the tickets I couldn't find B, and then when I found B we got taken hostage by terrorists or something so we had to escape to get to the concert. Then when we finally got there it was too late and the concert was over. My dad featured prominently in this dream, especially when I was trying to find B.

2. I was teaching a summer class (not true) and I got interrupted and lost my place in a book of lesson plans (I don't have a book of lesson plans, I just carry the lesson plan for that day, but whatever), and I couldn't for the life of me figure out what I was just in the middle of teaching, or find my place again. Then my students decided that since I had no idea what I was teaching, that meant they should critique me as a prof...and they kept saying things like I clearly don't know the material, I dress terribly, I'm too enthusiastic and they think that I'm insane...etc.

So back when I was having anxiety dreams like this at least once a week or more, I kept a pretty good dream journal in my other blog. And I started noticing some themes emerging, which have come out here. One theme is being prevented by outside sources from doing something I really need to do or really want to do (Ie radiohead concert). My dad usually always shows up in that dream, playing the roll of the person keeping me from doing what I want/need to do (Once I had a dream that I had to go rescue my cats from freezing to death, and my dad wouldn't give me a ride...stuff like that).

Another theme is giving a presentation of some sort and forgetting what I will say (ie dream #2). Some other stuff that has frequently shown up is my teeth falling out (classic freudian dream representing powerlessness), falling from high places, and being late to stuff (also in dream #1).

So there you have it internet, the things that give me anxiety. And anxiety dreams are always different from other types of dreams...they are always very clear and I can remember lots of details about them (unlike other dreams), they are always accompanied by a sense of anxiety, and I always have them when stressed out in a major way.

Things that are stressing me out right now:
1. Applying for professorship jobs and all the work involved with that (including writing cover letters, putting together teaching portfolios, writing up research and teaching statements, revising my CV for the upteenth time, and trying to come off in such a way that I rise above the 200 other people applying to each job I am applying to)

2. writing my dissertation- I have a year in which to write it. I have 2 months until I have to submit a fully written chapter to a conference that I have been accepted to. In those 2 months I also have to submit all my job applications, revise my syllabus for my class this semester, and I start teaching that class in less than a month (thankfully it's a class I've taught twice before though). I'm working on the data analysis part of my dissertation now, but it is slow going...and one of my advisers wants me to use this method (multi-state life tables) that I have no idea how to use, and every article I can find on it confuses the heck out of me. The other method I am using, I know a lot more about, but I want to read a book on it before starting that so that I am sure I am doing the method 100% correctly. I agreed to tutor another student on that method (event history analysis) in 2 weeks, and that is giving me motivation to learn more about it.

3. My officemate, and the stuff involved with changing offices. For the past two days we have not talked at all, just said Hi. While it is nice and peaceful, it is also tense and awkward at the same time. I haven't told her I am changing offices, and am hoping to quietly move while she is on vacation at the end of next week, so I don't have to deal with her. (Can't move till then anyways, cause the student in my new office hasn't moved out yet). But just seeing her every day, even though we are not talking (or maybe because of that) is stressed me out.

4. Wedding planning...we have booked a place, but have no plans for food or anything like that. And like a typical engaged couple, we've been fighting a bit over planning. Although the fights have been because neither of us really gives a shit about the food, and yet we feel obligated to provide it, and yet neither of us wants to plan things out, because we both don't give a shit. Last night I was basically like "Ok B if you don't plan the food stuff, then there will be no food, because I am already sick of planning stuff!" So we'll probably talk about that some more today...although compared to the last time I was engaged, when me and my ex fought pretty much every day, stuff with B is still going amazingly great...to the point where I keep waiting of the other shoe to drop, and yet it seems there is no other shoe. We have had like a total of 4 fights since he moved in almost 4 months ago. 1 fight per month is a freakin amazing average I think. Especially because at least 3 of them have been really really stupid, and once we were both less tired/stressed out about other things, we realized how stupid they were.

5. I find out whether I have the BRCA1 mutation (as my dad does) on Monday.

6. I also didn't have a weekend this weekend cause I was at that conference, so I feel like I"ve been working every day for weeks with no break.

So my solution? Well I'm going to take the morning off from work (well, maybe I'll read up on a methodology book I have at home), go see Pineapple Express at noon with B (who has the day off), and then go into work around 2ish and work until 7 or 8 tonight. That way I don't feel guilty about not moving forward on my dissertation research cause I will do it later today, and I also will avoid seeing my officemate for most of the day, since she tends to come in early and leave around 4 or 5.

Yeah, now to go make a cup of tea and sit out on my porch and read my fascinating book, "Event history analysis with STATA"

The good parts of my weekend

Well, Sunday was definitely the best day of the conference. For several reasons.

First of all, I wasn't staying at my officemate's mom's house anymore. The house I stayed was on beacon hill, which is a super rich part of Boston (where John Kerry lives). The house I was staying in was awesome- it was this big shambly 4 story mansion/townhouse. The living room had a wall full of books that all matched, and some huge portraits of people who presumably used to live in this house. The furniture was all really old and all the seat cushions had worn out spots from decades of people sitting on them. All the doors had latches instead of doorknobs. It was freakin awesome. If I ever have four million dollars, I would totally want a place just like that...lots of character, but not ostentatious.

In the morning I met up with a prof who does research similar to mine- I had met her at a previous conference and we made plans to meet up at this one, and talk about how our research projects are going. We had a whole convo about our research, and really hit it off in the process, and ended up talking about how we both suck at housework and our houses would be a mess if it weren't for our awesome partners.

I had two job interviews this weekend for professorship jobs I will be applying to. The academic job market is set up so that you have to apply to jobs a year in advance- so I will be applying now for jobs that start in September 2009. My first interview didn't go so well..the told told me about department politics and indicated that people in his department are kind of hostile towards people who do quantitative research- which I do. This department is the dream job I was talking about in some earlier blog post. I'm still going to apply, but I'm going to try to emphasize the non-quantitative research I have published.

The second interview was on Sunday, and that one went great! I got this interview through connections- A prof had sent around an email to a few profs asking if they had any students on the job market, and one of my committee members emailed her back about me, without even asking me! The school is on the east coast, in the NY tri-state area. I don't necessarily want to live there, as I would end up being within an hour or so drive from my parents house, which might be weird. I specifically was avoiding that area in my job search. But then my best friend reminded me that it wasn't the area that I hated, it was my life in that area. And that with B coming with me, and my parents not talking to me, I would have a completely different type of life there. Which is a good point.

So during the interview I first find out that the woman interviewing me had read a recent article of mine that came out in a journal, BEFORE she knew I was a job candidate for her school! Then it turns out that my masters thesis, which I'm in the process of getting published right now, is very similar to some research she is doing. So we ended up chatting about research for a while. The position sounds like a perfect fit for me (they are hiring specifically in my subfield, and want someone who can teach a class that I have previously TAed for), it's a great school, and they seem very interested in me. At the end she told me that I seemed like a good fit, and that she will be bringing up my name at application time. So that was awesome.

Then came the best part of the trip- Driving home. By myself. It was great. I stopped at a rest stop to get some gas, and found a lobster bear (it's a teddy bear in a lobster costume!), which I bought for B, because it was so ridiculous. When I was driving through jersey, I met up with one of my best friends/frequent commenter J and his friend for dinner, and ended up ranting about my officemate the whole time, which I felt kind of bad about. But it was awesome to see him, as we haven't hung out in a while. J lives about 2 blocks from my parents....I didn't call them to tell them I was 2 blocks away from them picking up J, and avoided driving past their house altogether. Apparently J's stepdad disapproves of me because he knows I am marrying someone not Jewish..as I was picking up J, his stepdad was right there and didn't even say hi, even though I haven't seen him in years and was at his house like every other weekend as a teenager. So that was lovely.

The best part of all though was getting home after 8 or 9 hours on the road and climbing into bed with an already-sleeping B, sometime around midnight. And lobster bear! Who is now the mascot of our house! :)

The secret life of jews (continued)

Over the weekend I attended the American Sociological Association conference. While there I ran into a somewhat-recent graduate of my program who now has a tenure track professorship job at Yeshiva University. She happens to be Jewish, but is clearly not religious to anyone who looks at her (For instance, she is married and wears a wedding ring, but does not cover her hair), and her name is not a very Jewish name either.

We got to catching up, I talked to her a bit about whats going on with my parents and B, etc.

And then she told me something very interesting. She said that on a somewhat frequent basis during the semester, a student will stay late after class, until all the other students have left, and start confessing things to her. Everything from being gay, to eating bacon last week and not feeling bad, to having sex with their girlfriends. As a clearly non-religious woman, and someone who teaches a pretty liberal subject, she has become the go-to person for people going off the derech. (Not that she put it in those words, since she was never 'on the derech' to begin with).

Now isn't that just fascinating?