Opening up or Breaking Down
Posted 05-06-2010 at 10:01 PM by EmmyNoether
I finally broke down and mentioned to someone all the things that have been causing me strife in my life recently. It turned into a wonderful conversation. She is a post-doc in my department who got her PhD from my undergraduate institution - and she gave me the following advice: no matter what is going on in your life, your math will still be there at the end of the day, so if you need to take time away from it to just deal, then do it. She's absolutely correct. The best part of grad school is if you need to just get away from it, you can.
So, what is it that I have to get away from? Well, I have a cyst in a very unfortunate area for a female that makes it hard to sit anywhere for any period of time (not like I can mention this to my male adviser as a reason why my work has diminished this week). In addition, I'm trying to figure out what course of action to take after receiving a demand for a court appearance due to a driving infraction. It is all very stressful for me in addition to coming up with new things to prove and proving them. Plus, until today I didn't have my summer plans set down.
I guess the best part about talking to her is that she understood. There seems to be a higher percentage of autism (or autism-like mental deficiencies) among the male professors. That might be because there is a much higher percentage of male professors, but it still makes it difficult to admit any kind of outside distractions that are causing weakness. Most of them don't deal with their own lives, so they find it incredulous that you could possibly even fathom taking any time away from the sanctity of math to cope with the stuff life throws at you.
People often don't realize it is so important for women in math to have other women to whom to talk. Although not vital for me to have talked with her today, it still made me feel really comforted that someone re-affirmed what I had already figured out on my own. It is the culmination of those little comforts that make the difference in someone continuing or quitting. Without it, you can feel so lost and so alone and you need to figure out a way to develop a support structure - it really is the only way to build the right kind of defense.
So, what is it that I have to get away from? Well, I have a cyst in a very unfortunate area for a female that makes it hard to sit anywhere for any period of time (not like I can mention this to my male adviser as a reason why my work has diminished this week). In addition, I'm trying to figure out what course of action to take after receiving a demand for a court appearance due to a driving infraction. It is all very stressful for me in addition to coming up with new things to prove and proving them. Plus, until today I didn't have my summer plans set down.
I guess the best part about talking to her is that she understood. There seems to be a higher percentage of autism (or autism-like mental deficiencies) among the male professors. That might be because there is a much higher percentage of male professors, but it still makes it difficult to admit any kind of outside distractions that are causing weakness. Most of them don't deal with their own lives, so they find it incredulous that you could possibly even fathom taking any time away from the sanctity of math to cope with the stuff life throws at you.
People often don't realize it is so important for women in math to have other women to whom to talk. Although not vital for me to have talked with her today, it still made me feel really comforted that someone re-affirmed what I had already figured out on my own. It is the culmination of those little comforts that make the difference in someone continuing or quitting. Without it, you can feel so lost and so alone and you need to figure out a way to develop a support structure - it really is the only way to build the right kind of defense.
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