Monday, February 1, 2016

Getting Engaged and writing a Thesis

Around Christmas I made the decision to restart my thesis. I was not motivated to keep working on the project. I had gradually strayed from my original intent of doing a work of theory toward something more policy driven. It made me miserable to sit down at my desk to write.

My project is now well under way and is much more oriented toward what I see as a more important and interesting way of approaching the problem of the gender binary. The only problem is, I have to finish by the end of April, and that leaves me with three more months to write a solid 120 pages. I know it is completely doable, but boy did I back myself into a corner.


On December 30th, after VOMD and I had returned home from our Christmas holiday with our families we decided to have our own little Christmas together here. We had no tree, but we hung baubles and bead garlands over doors and hung our wreath and Christmas lights on the banister leading up the stairs to our apartment and around our windows. And we gave one another stockings. As I got to the bottom of mine and pulled out the last wrapped little package, VOMD sat down on his knees in front of where I sat on the couch, and as I opened the box he held out a ring and asked me to marry him.

We've decided to get married in August at my father's house in my home town.

And now I am struggling to focus on those 120 pages.

When I first decided to go to graduate school one of my favourite professors told me that I should wait until I finished my PhD to settle down and start a family. He wasn't trying to discourage me from living  a happy life with someone I love. He was warning me that in academics a woman will struggle more than a man when it comes to balancing home life and education. It is not because we are less capable. It is because people expect certain things of women culturally. I have not told any colleagues or even my adviser about my engagement. I have refrained from doing so because I have heard so many first hand accounts from friends and colleagues who shared this type of information and faced discrimination. If you are slow to get an assignment done, or you neglect certain aspects of university life they claim it is because you are too distracted by your wedding/marriage/pregnancy/kids etc. Men do not face this sort of discrimination in the academy. When my adviser had his child earlier this year he came to work the next day. Nobody hassled him about having a child in his first year of full time teaching at a new university. When some of my female colleagues have had children they are bombarded by questions about who was taking care of their child when they had seminars or had to teach. They were asked whether they planned to take time off. They were asked if they PUMPED!

I know I am not expecting, but I am planning a wedding, and I fear that if I share that with my colleagues I will be less respected. I am heartbroken that I can't share this exciting, beautiful thing with my work mates. The moment VOMD asked me to marry him was one of the happiest of my life.

But I am a woman. And I am an academic. And unfortunately those things sometimes have to be kept separate.

Happy Monday folks!

-J


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