You and Jared Kushner with your orange dots.
I imagine there's a thoughtful reason behind it.
But what? Collecting the data makes sense, but what's with the dots? Pushing awareness at the attendees? Pushing attendance at events? Do attendance levels concretely matter, career-wise?
Maybe the theory is that to make it as a URM in math you have to be better than the average middle aged white dude, so the metaphorical orange dot is actually flagging talks that will be better than most.
3: in counterterrorism this is known as the "shoot the women first" theory.
Incidentally, why was the Putnam exam segregated by sex? Were there two different prizes or something?
I think if you did well you were eligible for gender-restricted scholarships maybe?
But even still, it's so weird to advertise that in such an obvious way. Look it up afterwards, no?
And obvsly anyone who does even middling on the Putnam is astounding. Anyone who does so while fighting against a systemic disadvantage clearly deserves scholarships galore.
Before they changed her name for the movie, James Bond was romancing Scholarship Galore.
Does the Putman exam go clear up to the "11xX" times tables?
6: yes, but as 7 says, you'd think they'd deal with that after the fact rather than flagging up to the examiners "CAUTION: this envelope contains LADY ANSWERS".
Putman and Putwoman.
Ah, of course. I didn't start reading them until the reboot where they brought in Ultimate Putman.
James Bond was romancing Scholarship Galore.
"I must say you have a very impressive endowment." (raises eyebrow)
"How non-Euclidean is your geometry?"
Knowing what we know about analytic philosophers and lechery, I really don't want to think about what those orange dots stand for.
(OT: I share an office and I'm pretty sure my office mate lives here, but I don't think there's any way to ask. He's here in the mornings when I get in (9ish) and the evenings when I leave (about 6-7ish), and there's bedding under his desk and possibly a suitcase as well. There's also an ikea chair and two guitars on his side of the office. Our sizeable trash can is filled everyday with food wrappers (e.g. empty instant oatmeal packets, instant noodle packets, coffee cups)).
Ah, the shady groves of academe!
All that stuff probably belongs to the vagrant who comes in after you and your officemate leave for the day.
Don't look through the bedding. There's probably an old soda bottle or large jar he uses to piss in during the night so that he doesn't need to go clear down the hall.
Come to think of it, there are also a bunch of cardboard boxes on his bookshelf. He was like, "I'm just storing stuff for a friend." Now that I think about it, if he were doing that, he probably wouldn't feel compelled to explain that to me. Also, every time I get in he has a "reason" why he had to be in so early. That also reeks of over-explanation. (I get in a bit after 9, so not so early it's weird that he's already there.) Now I feel a bit dumb that it's been over a week and it only just occurred to me that he lives here.
Hmmm. If I were more enterprising I probably could have rented out the space under my desk for a few hundred a month to one of my MA students.
A big part of the point of the JMM is getting seen by people on hiring committees at schools that might want to interview you. I can see this being very helpful for schools that are trying to identify strong women candidates. This is especially true if they'll let you get a list of just the underrepresented speakers on the app so you can easily find such a talk to go to in the next time slot.
The Putnam case seems more problematic.
Maybe he's just trying to get to the end of the month and then will move in somewhere.
IIRC, there was an episode of Night Court where the asshole lawyer was living in his office and the janitor or somebody trying to prove it. Anyway, maybe find that episode and play it on your laptop.
The guardian has an article today on adjuncts living in their cars. Homeless academics: trending!
Maybe he found out that selling sex doesn't usually work very well for heterosexual males.
25 s/b "I'm being helpful by providing a link to the article mentioned in 24. Not at all pwned."
26,27: I didn't cover the sex work angle, so technically no pwnage occurred.
That article gave me hives. Also, no F-ing way would I be homeless to teach. If I don't get a TT or prestigious postdoc position and then TT I am selling out.
I personally think we need an across-the-board refusal to adjunct. Universities get away with exploiting skilled labor because people take the work.
A big part of the point of the JMM is getting seen by people on hiring committees at schools that might want to interview you.
This is probably right, and it gets at my discomfort, maybe: "Flag yourself, and we promise we have created a context where it's to your benefit!" Obviously flagging yourself works against you in plenty of situations, so hopefully this isn't one of those times! And if flagging yourself does happen to work against you, you were still going to be you, right? So it would have sucked anyway! See you later!
29.1: GOOD.
29.2: I have been saying for years that we need some competing scenario where you don't "leave academia" by refusing to take these humiliating positions. There needs to be some mark of scholarly legitimacy separate from your income and place of employment. This is much easier to envision in the humanities than in fields where you need to do field research or work in a lab, but still. For people who are fanatically dedicated to teaching: yeah, a strike is probably the way to go. But I also think this pattern will begin to shift as people our age start to learn the score.
What about fucking off in graduate school except for learning a few technical skills and then working in various university research offices based on those skills. Hypothetically.
There needs to be some mark of scholarly legitimacy
Orange dots, obvs.
Of the five people in my cohort, two got TT jobs (very good jobs, one after a good postdoc), two left to work in tech and are doing nicely, thank you (I am the one with the vastly less impressive resume), and I've lost track of the fifth one but I know she wasn't adjuncting or looking for TT jobs. The following year: one good TT job, one left to work in tech, one took some kind of alt-ac position. I was totally not at all setting this up to be summarizable as "TT or GTFO," but hey, déformation professionelle, what can you do?
But none of the GTFOs are still trying to publish their research, to my knowledge. Out means out.
32: I've been brooding idly along those lines. There are several projects I might want to do that in principle would be publishable, but no way am I going back to school. And being an actually independent scholar, with an independent income from a day job, sounds basically like a much better deal than being an officially employed scholar.
The homelessness article's subjects were all older women (age for one wasn't given, but she described "Millennials" as "the next generation"), ranging from 51 to 65, including a woman who has been homeless for ten years and got her B.A. late in life. I'm sure the problem is more widespread, but it's hard not to see the general quality of life for middle-aged U.S. women who aren't well-off as a potential confounding factor. Makes the purported feminism and inclusivity of universities seem pretty damn hollow, though, that is my gut reaction.
Her 18-year-old car broke down after Hurricane Irma, and she is driven to school by a former student, paying $20 a day for gas.
Is that a typo?!
This is interesting to think about.
My cohort: 22 people
2 are TT at R1 schools.
5 have postdocs.
1 has temp position at academic publishing house
1 has prestigious non-academic position that uses his training (museum curator).
2 had complete mental breakdowns and had to leave the program.
1 died.
1 is probably leaving and I have no idea what's up with her, but since she had an affair with my ex-husband I won't feel sad if she ends up living in a car.
1 finished without a job but is living with her professor husband and will probably get something academic in her home country.
1 is finishing right now, and has been a SAHD while his wife works a high-paying job and I don't know what's next (possibly work in his home country).
7 aren't finished. Of the seven, 1 has a salaried advising/teaching position in our MA program, 1 has a semi-indefinite write-up fellowship, 2 are supporting themselves through teaching and advising (piecemeal and precarious, but reasonably better paying than most adjunct work), and 3 are supported by spouses with real jobs.
36.last: Isn't this part of the wonderfulness of leaving academia? The other part being 'paid money'.
Of my MSc program, no TT within several plus/minus of my graduation. My cohort are federal or provincial/state biologists, stay at home moms, or sold out to industry as rubber stampers of e.g. gas exploration.
My PhD cohort is entirely state biologists as is totally unsurprising from a wildlife department. There are a few TT people from the biology department but at small colleges. And those of us still hanging out in post-docs.
It was nice talking to people back home in Canada who think I have a really good resume. I'm going to be so happy back with the not-so-competitive.
38
I was thinking thoughts along those lines too. Adjuncting is horribly exploitative, but the people who seem to be the most exploited seem to be those who were trying to break into academia without the right backgrounds or tacit knowledge of how to succeed, and most of them seem to be older women. I wonder how many life stories involve being left in the lurch by a husband or male partner and not knowing how to adjust?
Actually one of the people doing piecemeal teaching bought a foreclosed condo with cash, remodeled it, and pays the condo fees through Air B&Bing his place. He's broke, but he's set himself up to be in an alright position long-term.
What I mean to say and didn't in 44 is in addition to the stuff lk mentions about struggling middle-aged women, I wonder how many of these older women were left by a partner who had been the breadwinner?
On topic because math, gender, and poorly disguised anonymity:
I work as staff at a university and there are many people in the building doing similar work for other projects. The work involves applied math and there's no obvious way to learn the skills without spending a couple of years in graduate school.
Everybody but me works for a different division. I worked for Department A but all the faculty people from Department A left, leaving only people from Department B. They moved everybody at the staff level to Department B. Except me because Department B said I was paid too much. To be clear, nobody was saying "We want you to hire this guy at this wage and pay him." The Department A faculty who left said, "Please put this guy on your books and we'll pay him through our grants." I was to be paid by the former Department A people to do work that was for both them and also for the Department B people who remained.
Department B's position was that I should give up many hundreds of dollars every month so that they could continue to say, "We don't pay anybody more than X" when they hire or have somebody ask for a raise. I found this less than convincing for many reasons. I'm bad at negotiation, so I just started going out on interviews while people tried to work things about. Reader, I remained an employee of Department A and Department B pretends not to notice except for the faculty who have me do work.
To bring this back on topic, people in my line of work in Department B are, except at the faculty level, all women. This bothers me because I'm a feminist and because Department B has the market power since they have many more staff with my skill set than Department A.
The student certainly seems to have hit on a good business model.
46: The most obviously sad one was the woman who quit her tenured position (I think) to care for her elderly mother, then couldn't get back in. There are lots of ways for women's unpaid labor to get in the way of pay.
49: maybe he's an uber driver.
To be an Uber driver, you just need one publication and it doesn't matter where.
47: Wait, so Dept A has no faculty and no staff besides you? Or (presumably) do you mean all the Dept A faculty/staff who were working on your project in particular left, but Dept A still has faculty & staff working on other things?
BTW heebie, I agree with you in 30. My guess is that they may also be trying to reduce the power of assumptions and guesswork, as a way of acknowledging that there is a pro-diversity agenda and no one should be ashamed of taking part in it. On the one hand, pretty naive; on the other hand, maybe they want to improve their data if statistics showing diversity trends can get them different pots of funding for the conference itself (regardless of how it trickles down).
My goodness but I seem to be allergic to work today.
55.2
Me too! Revising a "what is my teaching philosophy" statement will do that to you. Unfortunately it needs to get done today and I've been actively procrastinating on it for 3 days already.
ME TOO! I cancelled classes today and stayed home and slept for three hours and I feel like a million bucks, but I should get stuff done.
I'm working diligently all day and not typing long biographical comments tangentially related to the topic.
50
Yeah, that stood out too. My first instinct was OH NO WHAT WERE YOU THINKING THERE'S NO WAY BACK ON, which shows how messed up academia is. It is inhumane that there is no way to take time off from the career to do (gendered) life stuff and have an expectation of ever working in the career again.
Also, it's freaking insane how little control you have over where you live. It's possible I'll have to choose between abandoning my dream career and living in Ohio Indiana for the rest of my life.
I'll have to choose between abandoning my dream career and living in Ohio Indiana for the rest of my life.
I can't speak for Indiana, but it's possible to escape from Ohio. Just don't buy a condo while you're there. You'll be stuck with it for years.
You and top-flight NASCAR mechanics face the same choice.
At least some places in Indiana are very nice places to be an academic. We could have Unfogged meetups!
Anyone have experience with the live in one place with your family on weekends, commute & stay in distant city where your job is during the week?
Does a second, secret family count?
So, I knew one professor who lived in Ohio and his wife stayed in New York. They divorced, he dated an undergraduate (possibly those two were in a different order), and many years later, he endorsed Trump.
It's not worth the risk, is what I'm saying.
I've had a couple people who I work with do it- MA/NJ in three cases. Probably a symptom of pharma industry relocation.
64
No, but I know tenured professors like that. Both of them have great jobs, and neither wants to sacrifice. A friend got tenured at a good state school in the midwest, and her husband got tenure at an Ivy League. He could have gotten a spousal hire position, but he saw it as a demotion, prestige-wise. Friend couldn't get a spousal hire going the other way. They had a kid.
This is another reason why academia is possibly not for me. I'm not really into the idea of permanent long distance. (Of course, I've done 3 years of long distance where I've only seen my partner 2x a year, which would be a dealbreaker for many).
66
OTOH, I've known professors who've dated undergrads while their wife was still living in the same city as them.
Probably a symptom of pharma industry relocation.
If you have an erection lasting two more more states, consult you doctor. This can be a symptom of a serious side effect.
67: I knew someone who worked for Nov/artis for a while. is husband was in Boston. The shitty part was that he started with Nov/artis in Boston. I think they were going to make him move for real at the end of a year. I'm pretty sure he was planning on looking for another job.
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God how I hate the kind of editor* who can't look ahead to the end of a sentence, so that if you use a term without defining it first, they will query it** even if the definition/explanation follows immediately afterwards.
eg 3 "nationalism has been a danger to Rome ever since the Reformation started;" ***
* what kind of editor? You need to explain
** How do you mean, query?
*** "not sure what you means here. nationalism in general, or Italian in particular?" THERE WASN'T ANY FUCKING ITALY IN 1517
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Insert crash on attempting to save edited document. Stomp off to catch a train instead.
64: That's basically how my marriage disintegrated (though in our case my ex only had one weekend off a month). I know people for whom it's worked well, and for the first couple of years it was fine for us too. But if something does go wrong, it's much more difficult to try and fix it.
I'd imagine there is quite a big difference between a lifestyle that includes spending every weekend with your family and a lifestyle that includes spending only one weekend in every four with your family, though.
In fact it worked out more like one in three, because I'd take the kids up to visit some weekends when he was on call and couldn't go far from the hospital, and if he didn't have to attend an emergency we'd get a bit more family time.
We did actually get more hours with him under that arrangement than we had when he was living at home, working every weekend, and contractually on-call 24/7. It was the first job he'd held since qualification in which he had an entire weekend a month off.
But yes, the moral is probably "don't marry a Japanese surgeon" rather than "don't live in separate cities."
79 sounds pretty grim.
I know people who are working more or less along the lines of 64, with a couple of days working from home and three days working in town every week, and it seems to be working out pretty well for them.
I think the obvious solution would be to marry four Japanese surgeons who all have different weekends off.
Maybe only three, to keep some time for yourself.
If they were identical triplets it would make things safer from the point of view of family photos etc. Also only one set of parents-in-law to worry about. The running joke would be Ume frantically having to change wig between visits in order to fool them into thinking she is three different daughters-in-law rather than the same one each time.
The running joke would be Ume frantically having to change wig between visits in order to fool them into thinking she is three different daughters-in-law rather than the same one each time.
Caucasians all look the same.
Point taken. If I ever go to Japan, I don't even need to bother behaving since they'll probably just blame some other white guy.
Anyway, I used to work with a Japanese surgeon (trying to get a second degree). She never seemed to relax ever.
64: Yes, this was the setup I had in 2011 and 2012. While it wasn't my favorite (I was willing to take a pay cut to end the separation), there were some compensations. My wife dusted off some hobbies--she talked about her midnight trumpet playing while I was away during the week. I was far more open to after work socialization, since the hotel room was a grim alternative. We both took on new projects, since we had time that'd normally go to the relationship freed up. (I got in better shape, walking and running with a co-worker who was doing the same long-stay commute, and explored the town I was stationed and its neighbors extensively.)
In many ways, the physical absence really focused us on the time we had together, and we'd scheme to squeeze in more time at a distance--including video gaming together, writing each other letters, etc.
After I adjusted to the new arrangement, the thing I really missed was my friendship circle. When I'd come home, my wife and I would focus intently on each other--we had an inviolable Sunday rule, where it'd be just us all day until I had to pack up and drive back after dinner. With only Saturday to maintain friendships, take on house projects, family events, etc., it felt like "real life" was on hold for duration.
Sounds like no kids in that situation though? That's actually my bigger concern- my wife and I were dating in college but an hour apart so I think we can handle it as individuals, but kids would be upset and also she might hate me if she has to deal with all the kid stuff during the week.
You should be able to deal with a little bit of hatred.
I mean, being hated is rough, but it's easier than dealing with small children.
87.1: see, "wife whose hobby is midnight trumpet playing" is the ideal situation for spending a few nights a week away from home.
88: How far apart are you talking?
91: Nonsense. You just need to have a compatible hobby. For example, "How Deep Can I get the Q-Tip" contents.
My SO and I have been doing the long distance relationship thing for so long that we worry about what might happen if we ever live together, since we're both so used to having our own space. We've joked that, in the event that we ever manage to live in the same city, we should have apartments across the street from each other.
Back when I lived in Cleveland there were mansions going for pretty cheap, so the other option was to get one of those and set up in different wings. We could meet up in central rooms and occasionally run into each other in the hallways.
Out walking here, I saw two guys, separately, practicing saxophone under an elevated highway. The fact that I saw them implies this is a regular event, but it was so surrealy awesome I'm reluctant ever to go back there.
If one of them was wearing a codpiece and had a bare, oiled chest, they're Lost Boys reënactors.
Do old people walk backwards in the park there? That's my favorite bit of surrealism.
88: No kids, which meant that catching up on the weekends could be deliberate and directed--while with kids, I don't think you'll get the same focus with your spouse, and they won't understand it as well. I wouldn't look at doing it long term, in your shoes. (My workout friend did have a daughter, and constantly lamented the events he was missing.)
88.2 is probably even worse; the care-giving without relief and total emotional labor for running the household sounds like you'd have a lot to make up for when you returned. For us, I was the cook and cleaner when at home, so my absence meant accepting the house's slide to disorder and both of us eating out a lot more. (The weekends together were too short to waste a lot of time on cleaning together.) Adding in the mess generation more than adult and a half... you're asking for a lot.
There's a buttoned-down looking guy in my office building who is a great sax player. When I drove in, he'd occasionally be doing Coleman Hawkins -esque solos in the parking garage.
Why doesn't Coleman Hawkins get more respect-- too far back?
They don't walk backwards, but often walk around loudly slapping their arms or legs. One can usually hear the echoes even at 3 or 4 a.m.
And, SP, is this stop-gap for a known length of time, or would it be the new normal?
Maybe 2, max 3 years. 6 hour drive / 1 hour flight. It sounds like a position that's a huge jump up and sets me up for much more senior positions back in town after doing it for a couple years. But it's in a lower COL city so the salary might not even be break-even between travel, having a second place to live, and additional child care. We're talking about getting an au pair if I do it, which would actually be a sweet gig for an au pair since the kids are all at school 7 hours a day.
But the whole thing is almost entirely undefined yet aside from the general role, it's more that I have to think about these questions before deciding whether I tell someone if I'm interested at all, then I would get more info.
I personally would not want to be gone that much.
Is it possible you could do every other week remotely?
Doesn't sound like it- remote work was the first thing I asked, it's a very meeting-intensive role. I'm meeting informally with someone on the planning committee next week to hear more though.
Could you try being emotionally distant with your family for a few weeks to see how they react?
Is your wife's career portable or can she work remotely? Rent your house out for a few years and all move to a new place?
Well, we sort of did that this spring, when I had to be back at work after remote setup and they stayed in foreign country for another couple months. We survived.
103: That'd be a tempting sounding setup to me, given the anticipated and maximum away lengths. The cost is high: you'll miss 2-3 years of kid events and your hometown social life will probably get frozen--if your friendships are close enough to put up with a few year's absence.
The au pair could be a decent compensation for the extra emotional load she'll be carrying, if the helper understands that cleaning and cooking are part of the arrangement.
It sounds like your partner is at least willing to work through evaluating it with you. It's costly in a lot of important ways--the big question is whether it'll change your career trajectory afterwords significantly enough to compensate for the large but potentially manageable sacrifice.
As long as we're bitching about work: I'm feeling intensely angry right now about the parallels between my career and my colleagues' career. He just got nominated for his third award, and I'm pretty sure I do a better job. He's got a nice paternity leave situation next semester, due to a recent policy change, and I had to work extra-hard to make it work during my numerous pregnancies/pumping with babies situations. Every step of the way, it's been easier for him, he's done a slightly worse job (but still totally competent), and he's gotten much more recognition. I'm just frustrated.
There is absolutely no point in complaining to my supervisor, and it doesn't seem worth going above his head, even though that person is great and grounded and would be sympathetic. There's no wrongdoing. My colleague is deserving. It's just the way the system goes.
Nevertheless, I'm having one of those moments where it boils over and you're absolutely furious.
I should say that I have zero awards and recognition, despite the fact that I do a really great job. Neither my colleague nor I hustle for awards and recognition - if anything, he does so less than me - yet they seem to come his way anyway.
And there isn't a third data point. He has the most parallel career to mine at this place, lagging behind me by 4 years.
Even though you say it isn't his fault, you probably will have less trouble acting like you thing that if you try some petty act of revenge on him. Nothing cruel. Just let all the air out of two of his tires or something.
Further to 107- she would have to get relicensed in new state which could take a year on its own. And the kids are in a sort of unique program which does exist in the district of the other place but would be hard to get them into moving from outside.
At what point am I supposed to come up with an animal metaphor for the potential job? Post-interview or post-offer?
I went to the office of an elder colleague in a nearby department and vented and it was very validating.
Tom Price failed upwards for decades, but it seems his awfulness finally caught up with him.
Could you wear a T-shirt that says, "I have to work twice as hard to get half the recognition you do" every time you have to meet with him?
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Regarding productivity upthread: I am amazed at how much this fidget spinner is helping me stay focused. The extreme nearness of hard deadlines is also helping... but also the fidget spinner. It spins and spins. And spins. And since I'm working at home by myself, I'm not even annoying the shit out of everyone around me. Spin!
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My son has one. He still fidgets a bunch. Maybe he needs cigarettes.
He can't vape because he doesn't have a beard.
I didn't actually go buy any. My son is 11. You monster.
It's probably fine if he doesn't light them.
Maybe Swisher Sweet would be better then.
I'm trying out the magic of the American psych-ward/rehab type place, which is in tuscon. so far pretty hospitaly but I haven't been released to general pop...that sounds wrong...I mean where most people are living yet. I'm not sure I'm doing the right thing here but something has to happen. I'm under constant observation now which is great because I can't hurt myself but difficult because one occasionally wants privacy. angry to have discovered narnian psych ward incompetence may have left me with permanent nerve damage in my right hand. (again, if I'm going to punch this hard nazis are clearly the way to go. or maybe make colleagues with unmerited achievements.) my hand may heal more though it's clearly not ok now. if I can't paint anymore I will put a pencil through my eye in an entirely justified way. though I grant I see a problem with this general line of thinking and its end point.
I get 2 internet looking-at sessions a day so I'll keep you updated. I'm reading joseph roth's the radetzky waltz and have zero idea why man without qualities should be so much more famous. ITS SO AMAZING. you should all go read it now, under your desks.
Alright. I'm going to the corner store. Swisher Sweets, American Spirit Blues, Doritos, and Slim Jims. Did I miss anyone?
129 before seeing 128. I hope Tuscon works out for you. I found it nice enough.
128: Glad you have internet access and can update us.
I thought Mayo was in Phoenix. How did you wind up in Tucson?
129: I could go for a butterfinger.
131: I'm at a non mayo, possibly too hippie joint supposedly run by an excellent psychiatrist
They don't have Nibs. Apparently I'm in the wrong state for that.
Very happy you are safe almeida.
I bet that coming from Narnia the ubiquitous "but it's a dry heat" of Arizona is actually comforting.
OT: I borrowed my son's fidget spinner. It's pretty nice.
The ball bearings are so smooth that if I were in Germany in 1944, I'd expect a B-17 to appear above me any second now.
Happy to hear you have arrived, al. Thank you for the update. Hopefully when you emerge on the other side of this you'll get to enjoy Tucson a bit. The Botanical Gardens are nice.
Why did nobody show me the botanical gardens in Tuscon? I never even knew they were there. I did manage to figure out what holds up those giant cacti. They have a frame of sticks inside.
Your procrastination enriches the lives of others.
Theoretically, my not-procrastination is supposed to do that also.
Jeez, al, I hope that place works out for you. It might be the same Tucson psych ward where they put me when I was 15, but maybe not. I don't think that place was very hippie. Even if it were the same place I don't think there's any advice that would be common to fifteen-year-old me and you now. The cafeteria food was no good except that the salads were okay and could be supplemented with bacon bits by salt-craving teenagers. On movie night they showed us "Look Who's Talking 3," the one where you get the inner lives of John Travolta's and Kirstie Alley's snarky dogs.
The first Look Who's Talking at least had Abe Vigoda.
This psych ward subthread is on point for me. I just checked my girlfriend into an inpatient program for paranoid schizophrenia. Had a bloody interesting week.
Sorry you need it Al, but glad it's there. Sending love and sympathy.
Yikes togolosh, hope everything works out.
Glad to hear you're in good hands al.
Best wishes for a swift improvement to everyone currently in a psychiatric ward. And to everyone else too, I suppose.
For those of us yet to enter psychiatric wards.
107: I thought she was a teacher. And they did the whole "lose money on working while paying daycare for 2 kids to retain seniority" thing.
121: lurid, how do you use the fidget spinner to improve concentration? I don't have ADHD per se, but I do find that my mind wanders quite a bit.
Very glad you're safe, Al.
This seems like the right thread for this bleg: any recommendations for gallows music?
Recent rapid and unintended weight loss has revealed an unpleasantly large lump in my abdomen. I've got my GP referral and have an initial screening appointment with a nurse at the hospital on Monday afternoon, and in the mean time am trying to stay out of catastrophizing mode as far as possible. Falling into reveries on the subject of "Why am I spending what might be my final days translating this fucking boring medical device manual?" are somewhat unproductive, as the deadline won't go away and if I'm going to have to take time off I'll need the money for future rent.
I listen to music as I work, but don't want to use my regular playlist as I don't want to ruin those songs for when - if - things turn out to be OK (for values of OK = "not immediately terminal"). So I'm looking for new stuff that's angry/defiant but undemanding, so I can let it roll over me. At the moment I have a couple of albums by Aimee Mann and Neko Case on repeat that I downloaded ages ago and hadn't listened to properly before. What would you have on your playlist under these circumstances? (Gallows humour very welcome.)
Good luck, Nell. Remember, it's usually not the worst case.
153- correct, teacher licensing and salary setting is complicated across states.
156: The stomach cancer was before my time, but I recall it mentioned.
155: Best wishes. I'm going to see Aimee Mann play a very small venue. It's not til Tuesday December though.
Oh no, Nell. And Toggie. May both resolve as easily as possible.
Good luck everyone. Johnny cash in his preaching phase?
Johnny Cash's brief murderer on Columbo phase was good.
I only found out recently that Cash's first wife was black. That was completely erased from the movie.
If a movie is about more than one thing it can't have any Oscars. It's in the rules.
I just found out Cash's first wife was black from 162.
It sort of makes the Columbo episode darker, since Cash plays a gospel star who kills his not-singer wife so he can be with another singer who he is in love with.
165: Was love implied? I thought it was primarily so he could be out from under his blackmailing wife's thumb, with perks including macking on the singer in his band and generally spending money to his preference.
What is love anyway?
But yes, you're probably right. I seem to recall a bikini pool party well before Emily Post says you should have a bikini pool party after the loss of a spouse.
128: good luck with the psych ward. Funny, I'm also reading Radetzky March, but halfway through I'm really not impressed. OTOH I never finished Man Without Qualities either.
It turns out my brother has stage IV Hodgkin's lymphoma which has spread to his bones. He starts chemo in 2 weeks. I know Hodgkin's is curable but stage IV...in the bones.
His youngest just turned 13.
So sorry, Barry. Best of luck to him.
ok hmm
alameida: best wishes convalescing in beautiful Tucson, especially best wishes with the painting and/or learning ambidexterity. I've been holding back on leaving "jeez, they really screwed up your meds" replies to the Murakami vs. Pynchon or Roth vs. Musil assessments, because I've never read any Murakami and Roth is perfectly good and I'm not a complete asshole anymore. But hey, what should people read in place of "To the Lighthouse"? I can't figure out your algorithm yet.
Nell: old blues and country records seem pretty ideal. I've recommended Rhiannon Giddens before; you might enjoy some of "Tomorrow is My Turn"? She has the bestest voice. Good luck.
togolosh: I spent the night with a friend who was having a schizophrenic breakdown, long ago, and it was incredibly alienating and awful. I'm immensely glad you've found a way to help her get treatment.
Barry: I wish your brother luck and excellent palliative care. That sounds really fucking painful.
Bostoniangirl: basically, I had a well-defined task I had to plough through, and whenever I felt the urge to avoid it, i.e. instead of looking up to browse the web every 2 minutes, I gave the spinner a spin. It seemed to give me exactly the same dopamine hit as the average web page, but I could work while enjoying the strangely delightful sensation of the spinning and the rattly bits on the outer lobes of the device. Later that evening I had an anxiety attack, so I don't think it's relaxing. But mouse orgasms: sure, plenty of those.
Everybody talks about that like they've never had trouble turning the mouse on.
Anyway, I'm making meatballs and spaghetti because I'm very susceptible to suggestion.
174: Mines turned on every time I comment here.
Barry, that's so awful. I'm so sorry.
A thing which is not at all my tragedy, but is nevertheless haunting me: my parents' lifelong friends raised three children. All have died. One died in a freak accident at age 19. The second died this past January from a freak, unexpected medical problem. And the third died this past week from a longterm medical illness. So now they are childless, in their 70s. Totally lovely people.
That's one problem teenage pregnancy can help with.
173.4: Yeah, alienating is a good word for it. At one point she was being followed by Iranian agents in cahoots with Samsung and Google and the DC council. She took apart most of my electronics looking for bugs. Fortunately she knows what she's doing technically so I managed to get most of them back together and functional.
She threw away my phone because it was spying on her, an issue complicated by the fact that it actually *was* spying on her due to a hacker having pwned my router a few weeks back. They installed spyware on both our windows laptops and our android phones, but macs seem to have been spared.
The camera would come on uncommanded on the phones, and the laptops were storing screenshots taken at random times and shipping them off to who knows where. This is more or less what precipitated the issue, due to her spending 40 hours straight trying to unfuck the router and the phones and laptops. There was an underlying psych issue and the hack popped the lid right the fuck off.
At this point she realizes I'm not the enemy and that the voices and hallucinations need to be taken with a grain of salt. The meds are starting to get that shit under control but there is still an issue with messages hidden in music. She's doing a hell of a lot better, looks like this past weekend was the bottom and it's uphill from here. She's in a crisis care facility right now and we're trying to get her into a NIMH inpatient study that's right up the street.
Complicating factors include the felony charge she picked up while batshit crazy but still able to convince officers she was sane - Gswift, if you're reading this - don't piss about with "who is president?" and that bullshit. Ask "are you on a mission?" and "are you being followed?" She unfortunately fell into the hands of some people while running away from me (I'm in cahoots with the Iranians and Baphomet) whose first reaction to seeing someone nutty as a fruitcake was to think "how do I use this person to my advantage?" and who set her up to take a fall in order to position themselves better for a plea deal in their own case. Clusterfuck does not even begin to describe my week. I am now intimately familiar with the bail system and how prisons are functioning as frontline mental health facilities.
Today was the first day in nine days that I have not had to put out some major fire in order to avoid seeing the woman I had been falling for end up on the streets with untreated paranoid schizophrenia. I'm going to consume an enormous amount of weed and pass out, I think.
Shit. It might be easier if there was a more clear line between paranoia and things people will actually do to fuck with you.
Have a Maureen Dowd hit of weed. You earned it.
A whole bunch of young, preppy people just walked into the bar. Like graduate students with new ones that still have money and a will to groom themselves.
Holy moly, Toggie. I'm so sorry, for you and her both. Was this her first episode?
Mid-season Replacement would be a good pseud.
Two people in those sweaters with the diamonds. Argyll? Is that ironic now?
180 is terribly sad.
182 is fucked up. I hope you're through the worst of it, togolosh.
The guys who do maintenance for the synagogue are drinking and complaining about the hours the past couple of weeks. And next week, as they put it, making sure the doctors don't hurt each other erecting the sudoku. I know Ithat's the wrong word. I don't care. It seems rude to ask them how to spell it.
The nice synagogue. Not the super rich one or the one with all the people who used Judaism to get out of the USSR.
The preppy people are into what I call "performative white people drunkenness." Other people don't call it that because I forgot to write the paper defining it.
182
Yikes. Do what your can to get her help but "put your own oxygen mask on first," as they say.
I hope everyone else recovers as completely as possible, without cancer or permanent nerve damage.
180
That is really sad. A relative of my grandmother's lost 2 of 4 young adult children, one to suicide after the Vietnam War and one in an industrial accident, but that's not as bad as losing them all.
Oh gosh, everyone. Best wishes all around.
Sympathy for everybody. 128, 155, 170, 182 are all awful and wrenching.
any recommendations for gallows music?
An obvious choice might be Warren Zevon's last album. "Disorder In The House" is definitely gallows humor (as a song about illness).
But, depending on your tastes I also find myself thinking about albums with strong atmosphere like Wrecking Ball by Emmylou Harris or Slide by Lisa Germano.
This is a little on the nose, but for gallows music I love Mozart's Requiem turned up to 11.
Fucking hell Togolosh. Good luck, and well done getting through it.
Also, "Who's President?" as a sanity test is clearly due for retirement for other reasons.
170: Fwiw, everyone I know who has had advanced lymphoma has (eventually, after serious treatment) done well. I think there are also a lot of charity groups/patient advocacy groups who focus specifically on blood cancers, and it might be worth helping him connect with some of them. If he's under 40, he should also look into First Descents, a group I really love.
Al, I'm glad you're somewhere that seems better able to care for you right now, and hope you keep us updated.
I just added 2 mg of Abilify to my med cocktail, and it's working really well so far. I had been worried about weight gain, but I've actually lost a few pounds.
Gallows music, I second Wrecking Ball.
Togolosh, that's a tough position to be in. Sending good thoughts (for all of you).
I have directly witnessed that problem.
I should have refreshed. 201 to 199.
Also, Barry: http://campkesem.org and see what the local Cancer Support Community/Gilda's Club has to offer.
Thanks J, Robot. He's 50 btw.
Also sympathies to Nell upthread and lw in another thread. Aren't we a bunch?
If only Nelly understood the Grateful Dead ... we have about 200 hours of jamming congealed concealed on various systems.
So far as EmmyLou Harris is concerned, Spyboy is better than Wrecking Ball for her purposes. Many of the same songs, but played faster, with more energy and less doomladen echo.
Thanks, everyone. Lurid, yes, Rhiannon Giddens is fantastic - I heard her at a festival last year and was blown away. I think I'd like to save her music so as to be able to enjoy it later. Will investigate Johnny Cash, EmmyLou Harris and Lisa Germano. HRH has already been playing me some Warren Zevon, and I'm sure he must have Disorder in the House among his vast collection. (I do like the Dead, honest; it's just too complex and interesting to use as background music.)
Togolosh, how utterly awful. I hope things carry on getting better from here.
Barry, good luck to your brother. The fear of possibly having to abandon my own teens before they're ready to take on the world for themselves is by far the most difficult aspect of this to cope with.
J, Robot, glad the new meds are working well so far!
Oh, and I also love the Mozart requiem. But because I've sung it I get caught up in singing along with the alto line, which doesn't really help with concentration.
Various sympathies to Togolosh, Al, and Barry. What a horrible collection of profoundly grim misfortunes.
Togolosh, I'm so sorry. I don't really know anything useful to say. I've been there, and I know how awful it is.
The criminal justice system piece sounds really dreadful, and I have no personal experience of that, but the possibility of getting her into a NIMH study sounds hopeful.
199: I think someone here told a story of a nurse at shift change who told the other nurse to skip that one, because it made a patient so agitated.
Thanks, all. The immediate crisis is past. Now a slow slog back to something resembling normalcy. It's her birthday today and I've gotten permission to bring her some of her favorite foods, so that will be nice. This evening we will pick some distance learning courses for her to take while she recovers.
I'm struggling a bit with the absence of crisis. There's something about knowing you have to do the next task or someone's world will end that motivates in a way that "this apartment sure could be tidier" simply does not. And now that I put it that way the path is clear: I'm taking another nap.
Toglosh - glad to hear that the crisis part is slowing down. I can empathize with the wierdness after the fact.
Sympathy all around on this thread. Damn.
Glad to hear that togolosh.
I'm struggling a bit with the absence of crisis.
Do you have a twitter?
[Really quick bleg! Catholic schools wants me to disclose my religion. My options would be to pick lutheran or 'i prefer not to disclose'. Which one will make me more likely to get the job?]
Lutheran, if the administration sees it. Otherwise, probably doesn't matter.
I don't know your actual name, but I'm guessing it will read as Olga Blondie McLutheran regardless.
216
That is pretty accurate. I checked Lutheran because if there's a .001% chance not being formally identified as a godless heathen increases my chance of getting the job I'll take it, plus I like to confirm people's preexisting stereotypes.
Yes. I'm pretty sure they've met an anthropologist before.
At the tattoo parlor, about to attempt a tattoo session. As was foretold, the artist did not in fact collaborate with me whatsoever since I put down my deposit in July. So we shall see if I actually get under a needle or not today, but that is the plan at least. Super nervous!
Well, she's 15 minutes late, so that's nice.
She's now 45 minutes late and hasn't replied to my email or text. I'm going to be super annoyed if I have to make an actual phone call.
I thought surely something would go wrong, but I hadn't thought of just being stood up.
So, while we're all waiting for the tattooist, maybe folks would like to weigh in on this.
Of course it's cultural appropriation. To redeem yourselves, you need to cut the heart from at least one prisoner of war and hurl their still-convulsing corpse down the steps of the town hall.
This will be a pretty interesting drama, I think. The event tonight is people bring home-made art honoring lost loved ones to an outdoor park; it's a rainy night. The procession, on Nov 2, is a very popular event. Maybe it'll rain then too.
My kid likes cacti and Trader Joe's had ceramic pots painted like skulls with a succulent for hair so I bought him one for $1.49 because it's his birthday, so does that make me racist?
The other two tattoo artists there were quite concerned and thought this was very out of character. They tried to reach her and couldn't, nor her spouse nor child. I was concerned but also felt relieved that I hadn't just been blown off.
I went to a nearby cat cafe to wait and see if she showed up. And then I did get a message! I did just get blown off. She's sorry! Next time.
It'll rain for definite, but only if you source a prisoner in time. I think maybe you need to do something with their skull too.
Heebie, why are you even considering letting someone this sloppy put irremovable ink into your skin? I mean, your skin, whatevs, but WTF?
229
The universe clearly doesn't want you to get a tattoo.
I knooooooooow. I've never heard of anyone having this much trouble getting themselves inked.
At least it's revealing to me that I really do want this done. I certainly would have given up otherwise already.
231: I think they may all be this flakey. Or at least the intersection of not flakey, sufficiently talented for my princess opinions, and open to working with my nontraditional ideas seems to be zero. She's the only person I could find who had the second two legs of the stool.
But you said she didn't actually collaborate with you.
If your stool has legs, among other problems, you need to chew more thoroughly.
And even if she did, who wants permanently flaky skin?
so sorry togolosh that's amazingly shitty and it sounds as if you handled it masterfully. --barry that's also just awful but I'm hopeful, as I am for our upthread music recommendation asker--I don't have time to scroll up and see properly but am sending love. lurid, it may well be the same one it's not like it's the biggest place. I'm feeling miserable and sentenced to rehab summer camp so they better get to careful, daily monitored titration among various drug plans. and I better stop feeling queasy on beautiful perfect lithium, the drug so good they put it at 3 on the atomic table. ain't no blood-brain barrier issues here! love you guys, I'll update.
Al - be good to yourself. Lithium is fickle. I'm pulling for you.
236: Well, it's all very discouraging. She has now claimed she'll email me the layout tonight.
Don't let her tattoo your eyeball. Also, don't look at the picture of the eyeball of the lady who tried that.
244
Isn't that just gouging your eye?
I just applied to 6 jobs/postdocs today. It was a hard 14 hours of work with few to no breaks in the middle. I'm a bit loopy from it all now. I could avoid misery like this by not procrastinating, but why would I want to do that?
Good luck Buttercup. I hope you get a wolf cub or whatever animal suits your fancy.
Hoo boy! Good health and luck to everyone. Togolosh and his girlfirend, al, Barry's brother and family, Nell & Charles II. And good luck to Buttercup on her job search.
Me, I''m off to a post-procedure followup appointment with a gastroenterology physician. Cardiology two weeks ago; GI this week. I look forward to these being not necessary.
Belated comment to say I hope everyone's stuff turns out well. cures for the sick! Good diagnoses for the questioning! Tattoos for heebie, and a job for Buttercup. (But really, yikes. I suppose it's entirely random, but this year seems so unbearable. The last year I remember that felt like this was 2001.)
245: According to the doctors, yes.
But really, if you're going to listen to doctors about sticking needles in your eye, you're going to follow lamestream media-science on everything. Before you know it, you'll be eating grain, avoiding medium rare chicken, and believing in global warming.
Does "Police have said they are not treating the shooting as an act of terrorism" mean anything but "It was a white guy"?
Technically it could mean there's no danger of further related attacks due to collaborators or a terror cell. But since they treat "lone wolf" acts by brown people as terrorism under the same conditions, yes, it basically means white guy.
Essentially, by the definition currently in common currency, a white person cannot be a terrorist.
White guys are like hurricanes and tornadoes.
Another belated comment wishes everyone well. It does seem this year has been particularly terrible. Maybe a general lowering of resiliency both personal and societal.
Yes, belated good wishes and swift recoveries to all.
Another one here wishing strength to everyone going through difficult times right now. Nell Gwynn - I hope I'm judging the style of lyrics/music you're looking for correctly in recommending Nick Cave's "Lay Me Low", from the album Let Love In, which made me laugh out loud when I first heard it. Barry - I hope your brother beats this thing. Likewise for your girlfriend, togolosh. Heebie - that's just too awful for words. Alameida - Just wanted to say that your writing voice is one of the jewels of Unfogged, and I am beyond impressed by your ability to remain interesting and funny under extremely sub-optimal conditions. Get well soon. I hear you about The Radetzky March. I like both Roth and Musil, but I guess the general mid-to-late-20th C take on the early 20th C Vienna modernist intellectual scene tended to buy into the idea of 'conceptual rigor' as a positive, clarifying and 'honest' value opposed to the 'obfuscation' of tradition, emotion, and muddling through (or at least saw that value as the really interesting thing about that milieu), and so tended to be less sympathetic to Roth's nostalgia than to Musil's scalpel (or at least saw it as not where the action was).
So: blood tests all normal (yay). Saw the nurse today, who booked me in for a CT scan. That will be done within 2 weeks, then the results will take 3-4 weeks to come back, then it will probably be a further 2 weeks after that before I actually get a clinic appointment. At least they've promised to call me when the results come in and tell me if it's cancerous or not. The nurse was cautiously positive - I have a benign lipoma on my back, and she said it feels like a similar sort of lump. But for the time being we just have to wait.
That's wonderful! I mean, fingers still crossed, but it sounds very promising.
Yes, glad to hear that Nell, fingers crossed.
They don't let me play with the CT machine, but why would it take 3 weeks to come back? If it's because America pays radiologists too much so that they aren't available there, I'm sorry.
Too many patients, not enough radiologists. The nurse said they've got people working extra weekend shifts but still can't keep up.
Goodish news, Nell, but be kind to yourself during the wait. (And put Charles on the job; he can manage it well.) I kept reminding myself when I needed a biopsy (that I was sure would turn out to be the nothing exciting it did, not that that stopped the stress) if they really thought it was urgent, they wouldn't make you go through the regular wait. Good blood tests seem like a VERY good sign!
Togolosh, I'm so sorry. That sounds incredibly tough to manage now and probably into the near future. I've been in the role of person on the outside as a parent rather than a partner, but please reach out if there's anything I can do to offer support or anything else. Yeesh.
I love Roth but can't be doing with Radetzkymarsch - I just find the protagonist annoying as hell, a privileged brat who won't buckle down.
Juden auf Wanderschaft is wonderful, though.
Thanks, Thorn. I knew there'd probably be a long wait because my father went through pancreatic cancer at the same hospital a few years ago, and it took him well over a month from initial ultrasound to diagnosis. (Of course they may just have shunted him to the back of the queue as old and untreatable.)
It's been ages since I read any Roth, though Radetzky is on the TBR shelf.
If there's to be any German this fall, it's likely to be Schiller, following up on my visit to his house in .. um ... spring 2016. Hm.
Belated best wishes to everyone: tattoos, positive medical outcomes, and tenure track jobs for all!
I should check out The Radetzky March, given my interest in all things Habsburg/Austria-Hungary related. The copy of Grand Hotel Abyss: The Lives of the Frankfort School that I ordered from Amazon just arrived. It's not German, but it's about a bunch of Germans, does that count?
Keep us posted, Nell. Glad to hear the tentative good signs.
269: Have you gotten around to the Otto Prohaska novels?
271: I'd never heard of them. They look like the could be fun.
Here is the picture you should not look at of somebody who got a tattoo on their eyeball.