Skip to main content

Juggling Lessons

It has been almost one year since I announced to the greater world that I was diving into graduate school again to pursue my Ph.D. What has changed over the last year? When I announced that I was going back to school, we weren't sure if the "on-ground" components of the class would be in-person or virtual. For Fall and Spring, we had to stay virtual. This meant that even though I was in class one weekend per month, I was able to attend from the comfort of my spare room; no need to flex my work schedule or take the train to DC. 

As classes started in September, I found a rhythm to my weekly load. Go to work (most days, 8:30-5ish), come home, get in a walk if I'm lucky, eat dinner with the family, chill for a bit. Then about 7 pm, I'd sit down at the computer to work on classwork. Some nights, it's reading (SO much reading). Other nights, it's posting to a discussion group or meeting up with colleagues for a group project, or outlining thoughts for an upcoming assignment. I try to get about 2 hours of schoolwork in. On weekends when I didn't have on-ground classes, I work another 4-5 hours per day on assignments. Altogether, I usually spend about 15-20 hours per week on schoolwork. I sleep about 6 hours a night if I'm lucky. You can do the math. It doesn't leave a lot of time for "other" stuff. 

Friday is the one day I have reserved for no schoolwork allowed. We typically order out for food, a tradition we started at the beginning of the pandemic. Then we have family time with usually a movie or even just chilling by the fire pit. 

Over the last few months, I have engaged in conversations with a few people about my Ph.D. journey. Most people want to know about my classes and what my dissertation topic might be. Mostly, though, I hear a lot that sounds like, "I don't know how you do everything you do!"

Girl. 

Me neither. 

The truth is, I just do what I can. I'm not going to sugarcoat it. Ph.D. work is hard. If you hear someone say it's easy, they're enrolled in a diploma mill. Or they're an uber genius. It's right that the work is hard. If it were easy, it would diminish the scholarship. I love this work. I love nerding out on research. I love diving deep into topics of organizational change and thinking about how it impacts my current work. I love thinking about how I can make other organizations better with everything I'm learning. I'm definitely in my happy place. It still makes me tired at the end of the day! 

When I think about how I get the work done, I love the analogy of juggling. Have you ever tried to juggle? It's hard. I've never mastered three oranges or even silk scarves. I'm fascinated by performers who can juggle many things, not to mention the ones that can juggle a bowling ball, a chainsaw, and a lit torch all at once. Life involves a lot of juggling. I think the key, however, is knowing what we can drop because it's rubber and what is so fragile that we have to keep it in the air. 

I'm not the first person to say this. Former Coca-Cola CEO Bryan Dyson said it in a famous commencement speech that has been pirated all over the Internet. In his version, work is always the rubber ball that can "fall away". Family, friends, health, and spirit are the other four balls that cannot drop because they are made of glass. 

In my version, the glass balls change at different points of our life. Sometimes it's a new baby. Sometimes it's a new job. Sometimes it's a pursuit like graduate school. The key is knowing which ball is fragile glass and which ones can bounce away. It's also knowing who can share some of the juggling duties with you. I have lobbed quite a few nightly dinner and kiddo balls to my partner. He graciously caught them. I have said no to quite a few opportunities recently because I just KNOW where my limits are. That's how I do it. I decide when to say no.  

Credit to my PhD Colleague Kasey
for creating this meme!

As this semester comes to a close, I have just a minute to catch my breath. There are no "summers off"
for Ph.D. students. Classes start again on May 10th and even between semesters, we are expected to keep working on that elusive dissertation. I'm planning to take a few days this week to breathe. Maybe I'll finish that novel I read a few pages of now and again. However, I don't plan to take a real break between semesters this time. If all goes according to plan, I will have an approved concept paper by the end of the Summer! It also looks like our on-ground classes will be live and in-person starting in the Fall. It will be time for a whole new normal again! I can't wait to meet some of my fellow students in person (finally!). 

As you juggle your life, which balls are glass and which ones are plastic? How do you keep the glass in the air? 

 


Labels:

Popular posts from this blog

The Edge of Seventeen

It's that time of year when the blog musings center on my grief journey. Every year, it seems like we are busy with end-of-the-year school activities and the start of summer, planning vacations, and then (kablam)...it's almost July 9.  Grief is funny. Grief is weird. I remember very early after Charlotte died, I watched the movie Rabbit Hole.  There's an amazingly poignant scene where Nicole Kidman's character is talking with another woman who lost a child over 10 years before (played by Dianne Wiest). She talks about grief being like a brick in your pocket. It never goes away. Sometimes you can even forget it's there. But it comes back and makes its presence known from time to time. And (she says) "it's what you have of them."    I probably did not fully realize then what a powerful and true analogy that is. As time goes on, our grief changes. Yet, it is always there on the edge of things. It sits in that pocket and sometimes makes itself known.  This
Read more

Bittersweet Sixteen

I think about Charlotte every single day. However, this time of year, I'm flooded with all kinds of memories as we commemorate the anniversary of her birth. This year feels like a bit of a milestone. Sixteen.  If cancer had not taken her life back in 2010, I have a feeling I would be planning a massive birthday celebration this year. 16 always feels like a landmark year in someone's life.  I have been thinking a great deal about the last birthday party we had for Charlotte in 2009. We didn't know it at the time, but we were halfway through her treatment journey. We had been through three major brain surgeries and a few rounds of inpatient chemotherapy. Treatments were not going well. In fact, right after her birthday, we would make the trip to Houston, Texas where we would settle in for about 10 weeks of proton beam radiation treatments and a new customized chemotherapy protocol. This was the unspoken "last chance option" to beat that aggressive brain tumor into
Read more

Tis the Season for Leaks

Now that we've had a few posts to settle in with one another, let's get personal, shall we?   It's almost an understatement to say that this has been a difficult year.  The last few weeks, especially, brought back a flood of memories.  This time last year, we were in the home stretch .   We were watching our daughter die.  I have spent the weeks since Thanksgiving thinking of our final days with her.  I miss her terribly.  I miss her laugh and her smile and her stories.  I cry a lot.   This is going to sound funny but I don't cry the way I used too.  In the past, if I got upset, you would KNOW that I was upset.  Now, it just kind of leaks out.  I'll be sitting somewhere: waiting in line at the store, working, driving in my car....and the tears just start to flow.  I don't even necessarily "break down" and sob.  I just leak.   Anything can trigger the leak.  Usually it's a memory of Charlotte.  Sometimes I'm reminded of a child or a family i
Read more