Doc McStuffins might say I have a case of the
yicky blobs. Okay, not really; the true Doc McStuffins aficionados would better recognize my symptoms as indicative of
not ready for play-itis or
lazyosis or
no vroom vroom a tosis, or
no hulatosis. Everyone else likely would say I need to step away from the Disney Junior metaphors. Please.
I think I hit the point at the end of the semester/beginning of the summer where motivation is hard to come by. It isn't for lack of work to do. It is the opposite of that in combination with impostor syndrome rearing its ugly head (prompted, in part, by an upcoming conference and taking over as DCT next month, I imagine). I like to post blog entries to update friends and family, mostly on A but also on things going on in my life or Chad's life or just random musings since we are so far away. But occasionally I am reminded that research colleagues sometimes also read it, which makes posting a little weird. I am a fairly open book but I also recognize that people typically aren't fans of oversharing. I don't like oversharing; I don't like whining; I don't like being annoying. These posts sometimes bring out all of the above, however. So this is the warning--probably only about 3 people will be genuinely interested in the content of this post. But my goal was to post at least 4 blogs each month and I didn't hit that in May so...
Anyhow. This little blip isn't anything major. In essence, I haven't been as excited about some of the projects coming out of the lab recently and it's tough to balance publishing and getting student manuscripts out with truly excellent, high quality (
read: often expensive, longitudinal, time intensive) stuff. The most recent acceptance we received was truly exciting to me because it is a project that I think is really interesting and has cool implications (and we worked really hard to get it done and published!). The next few submissions--not so much. In academia it is easy to live by "you're only as good as your last pub" and it is always easy to compare yourself to your more successful and prolific colleagues (despite the fact that
comparison is the thief of all joy). I have three things I hope to get out by mid-July that I am really proud of and want to do well (along with 2 manuscripts that I'm a little more
meh about) so that will hopefully even things out a bit. At the same time, all of these things feel like such
first world, elitist problems. Additionally, lately I have been thinking about what I really love about work and where I think I can really impact things. Some of the research that we do feels important but some of it feels easily forgotten/never read or just in response to other academics who don't happen to like what we are doing. It is easy to get caught up in those things, especially when chunks of time get eaten away by nonresearch tasks and you aren't able to keep up on the literature. But part of what I enjoy most is the graduate student training. I really love talking with students about professional development issues and weighing in on things that will make our program stronger. I love clinical supervision and seeing the growth that students have over the course of the year in their therapy skills. I love meeting with my research lab and generating new ideas and creating plans for productive summers. That makes me wonder, though, does that make me a less serious academic? The party line in academia is that those are the things that eat up time and prevent you from doing research so they should be universally maligned. Fortunately, I have some excellent models (within and outside of my department) who seem to suggest you can be a
serious academic and also care about students and their training. [
impostor syndrome alert: I can literally hear colleagues' voice and see their face thinking "no, you aren't a serious academic because xyz; it has nothing to do with caring about students. In fact, you should stick with that instead of the research thing."] I read an article this week about the frustrations of associate professors and I am starting to get it. Tenure was never the end goal so achieving it was less relieving than stressful (big surprise actually) as I now am faced with questions like who am I as a professor? Do people really think I know what I am doing now? Do these feelings ever go away? My experience is that it will come in waves, hitting hard right after the next milestone. So I just need to ride this wave a little longer.
And as a reward for those who read to the end, I give you our pirate impostor.
Floury yicky blobs that became delicious pancakes
And gratitude that our day jobs don't require art degrees
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| I promise you this photo was not staged. I just can't draw reasonable looking hands. |
