camp DISS

Camp DISS 

definition: Camp Dissertation: an intensive couple weeks that consist of getting very familiar with the computer screen and key board, understanding the effects of not sleeping, comprehending the meaning of reading, writing, editing and re-writing, acknowledging you’re hungry but knowing that chocolate has all the nurtirance that you need and it’s easy to eat, and lastly managing the stress by giving yourself multiple large knots in your neck and back area that take weeks to go away.

Sound fun? Sign up for a PhD program and you will get to enjoy all of that. 

A couple weeks ago Bear turned in the first draft of his dissertation to his advisor. This is the last big step (beside apply to jobs) that he will take in his PhD program. The stack of paper that he printed is an accumulation of years of research and hard work. It feels slightly unreal that this entire process of being a grad students wife is winding down. But as the wife, I couldn't be more excited about what the future holds and proud of all of Bears hard work.

The Graduate Student's Wife: the beginning

This is a three part story about the feelings that I have gone through as a Grad Student's Wife.  What you read now is the beginning of the journey.

it all started when we were sitting on the corner of our bed in Gainesville, Florida.  Bear brought up the idea of going to study in China and then applying to grad school. I remember being excited for him. I also don't think that I really grasp what it all meant. After his mind was made up that he was going to china and applying to grad school, everything seemed to happen very quickly. Bear applied to a school in China where he would learn mandarin; he got excepted, he applied for a loan, a visa, got lots of shots, we moved to Utah, we got engaged, and within a couple months he left. Roughly 10,379 miles away.

Fast forward through lots of email communications between the two of us, me spending countless hours on Bear's grad school applications,  talking to Bear's past professors on the phone to get letters of recommendation, mailing numerous graduate school applications, and planning a wedding… Bear came home.

throughout the next 6 months a lot happened. Bear was rejected from a lot of the schools that he had applied to. We had no back up plan. Bear got a call from University of Virginia asking for an interview. How perfect, we thought. Bear's best friend (more like a brother) was in grad school at UVA and it would be wonderful to be in Virginia with him. We got our hopes up. The interview process was good. Everything looked and seemed like it was moving along nicely. Until the phone rang a couple weeks later. It was UVA, they were incredibly sorry but they had chosen someone else. I remember my heart sinking.

After getting over the rejection of UVA, Bear had a couple early morning phone interviews with Rutgers University. A week after his phone interview he got a letter in the mail. I was the one who found the letter in the mailbox.  Bear was working at a sandwich shop at the time and I sped over as fast as I could. He wanted me to open it. I was shaking… I saw the first word congratulations and I started hugging Bear. I gave him the letter and he said, are you ready to be an east coaster?

I graduated from college, Bear and I got married, we packed up all of our belongings and took a two week camping excursion across the U.S until we made it to our new home on the East Coast.

left to right: Putting the final touches on some of Bear's grad school applications, Bear in China, Bear celebrating because he got accepted into Rutgers, Me graduating from college.


Left to Right: Bear and I on our honeymoon, traveling across the country, the day after we arrived in New Jersey... Go Rutgers

The first day

Dear Mr.Brooks,

Today you started your first day of school. But this time it's a little different. You aren't the student. You are the one in charge. The one that stands up in front of the room full of youngins who are ready to learn. Those youngins will call you teacher, or maybe even Professor. You should not be scared or nervous, you are an amazing teacher. And I know that because you teach me everyday. I look forward to when we have kids of our own and you get to teach them. I hope they show as much appreciation of learning as you do. 

I love listening and watching you talk about a subject because your love of knowledge, learning, and passion are so apparent . And although you doubt yourself at times, your accomplishments shine through brightly. You should be proud. I am. Do you remember this day and this day. Look how far you have come! 

And yes, I realize that you think I am a big dork. I had to take your picture on your first day of school. The thing you don't realize is, it was for my benefit. Now I get to stare at your handsome face all day! 

Love you tons,

Your wife.

  

you have my heart

Dear Bear,
Thank you for you kindness, your patience, your laughter, your awesome handyman skills, and all your hardwork. I am completely smitten over you.

                                                             xoxo
                                                                  love, me

P.S Bear has a huge thing for school coming up on Wednesday. I know that he is going to do awesome, but it would make him feel extra special if any of you (family and friends) text him with some encouraging words.   Thanks :)

Let The Next Chapter Unfold

The whole grad school she-bang started back 4 years ago when the hubby (at that time fiancé) was trying to apply to grad school while in China. I (being the loving fiancé) ended up dealing with all the paper work and follow up phone calls. A couple months after the hubs returned from China he received a letter of acceptance to Rutgers University. I ordered Rutgers shirts, decorated the apartment with lots of black and red balloons, and made a celebration dinner. At that moment we had know idea what we really were getting ourselves into. A couple of months later - after our wedding, honeymoon and spending lots of time with family, we packed up our car and took one big giant leap to the East Coast. I remember being carefree and enjoying the journey. I never thought about how we were going to make it financially or when I was going to get a job. I just trusted that everything would fall into place, and it did.

One of my favorite memories that I have is when we first pulled into our parking spot in front of our house. Things started to sink in and become real at that moment. After calling our neighbor to let us in we toured the whole house. We walked into our new bedroom and I sat on the window seat and looked at Bear and started crying. He looked at me and held me tight and told me that as long as we have each other we would be okay.

And those words have never been truer. Almost three years have passed and we have experienced the ups and downs of grad school, jobs, the east coast attitude, and living away from family. We have had so many awesome adventures and have been able to visit some great places. As we close this chapter of our lives and start planning our move back to my home state, I am feeling so many mixed emotions. I am so excited what the next couple years will bring and thrilled to be back home among family. But I am a little sad about moving away from our house and the way of life here on the east (I never thought I would say that). The hubby and I don’t know where the next 5 years will take us. But as long as we have each other we will be just fine. 

Rambling

Things are good. As of right now I am sitting here drinking my pumpkin spice hot chocolate (soo good if I might add) and Bear is upstairs trying to finish up some book review for class tomorrow. I was really hoping he would get on g-chat so that I could write funny comments to him while he is trying to focus, but he is not signing on.

We have been stuck in the house for the past two days due the freezing temperature. The freezing rain is supposed to start tonight which will be followed by snow and more rain and is believed to continue throughout the day tomorrow. The newscasters have predicted it to be ‘awful’. Yes, those are the exact words that flashed on the screen when showing us the weather for tomorrow.

Bear and I ran up and down our stairs tonight to let Shento chase us. We thought it might get some of his energy out. I don’t know how well it worked. Though, I am sure our neighbor thought some type of war was going on at our house. 

I am really hoping that school gets cancelled for Bear tomorrow and we can stay in our pj’s and watch law and order SVU all day long. We got net-flicks a couple weeks ago and we are slightly addicted. I will put all the blame of our addiction to the cold terrible winter we have been having. We have a bad habit of watching 3, maybe 4 episodes of Law and Order at once. It is so addicting we can’t turn it off. I told Bear the other night that we needed some happy TV in our lives. But when it came down to it we just could not resist the temptation that Law and Order brings to us. On to feed the addiction.. Bear is patiently waiting to hit play. 

A Grad Student's Wife

Being the wife of a Grad Student is complicated. The road is long and very unpredictable.

Fellow grad students expect you, as the wife of an intelligent grad student, to care about their subject with the same amount of passion and increased use of difficult vocabulary words that they have.  I care about their topics but the increased use of large words makes it hard to fully understand what they are saying. Sometimes, due to my lack of vocabulary, I feel like they could be talking in a different language. At that point, I use the smile and nod technique. I try to stray the conversation away from academics and large words and start talking about a good recipe that I newly tried or how taking pictures is such an expression of art. I even once told a great story that I had recently read out of Glamour Magazine. Everyone seemed to do the smile and nod thing to me. I am not your typical Graduate Student’s Wife and I find most of the topics that they discuss to be rather hard to understand and quite frankly, boring.

When you are a wife of a grad student you host dinners, go to dinners, BBQ’s, and other social gatherings. You have to act really engaged when your husband starts talking about his research and you have to be ready at any moment to read, edit, and critique (fine line of criticizing his intellectual mind to analyzing a couple words) 30 pages of lots and lots of scholarly words. Why is it that when people write an intellectual scholarly paper they have to use so many big adjectives. Most academic papers are filled with a paragraph of thought mixed in with so many gigantic adjectives that you miss what the whole paper is even about.  Sometimes that is how I feel about hubby’s papers. But I realize this must mean that his paper must be extremely academically written (is that even a correct sentence?).

I admit, there are times when I daydream about what will be on Grey’s Anatomy or what I will be making for dinner at times of academic conversations between the hubby and I. However, I truly do love my hubby’s work and research. He is superb at what he does and I could not be a prouder wife. And somehow we make our differences in the intellectual area work really well.

The hubby has made it to the last semester of course work. Which means that this is the last semester that he has to take any classes. The next however many years will consist of teaching, researching, and writing his dissertation. This semester is supposed to be a little more relaxing then that past 5. And by relaxing I mean he now will have time to read lots and lots of books.  Again, I am so extremely proud of my HUBBY and all his determination and hard work. Cheers to him…

Cheers to the last semester of course work, and cheers to me and to all the wives of a graduate student - for dealing with the many up’s and down’s of higher education.

 This picture was taken when we first arrived to New Jersey 2 1/2 years ago. 

Step one.. Check

The proposal is complete... Printed, emailed, stapled, signed, stamped, and on its merry way to New York. What a relief. Yesterday morning Bear had to email it and then go print it off (7 copies) and post mark it and mail it that day. I pushed the send button on the email because he was so nervous. He drove like a crazy person to the school and was in a panic most of the morning. I tried calming his nerves but to be honest, I think I felt just as nervous. We acted like lunatics at the post office asking all types of questions that we normally would know the answers to. We checked and double checked all that needed to be complete. I silently said a little prayer as Bear handed the post-worker the package that contained so much time, effort, emotions, and hard work. What a relief... Now all we have to do it wait...

We went out to lunch, hugged each other for a long time in the middle of campus, and Bear could not wipe a smile off of his face.. I am so proud of him and all of his hard work. Bear is the most dedicated student and works extremely hard. This proposal was challenging and he faced it head on. Never giving up or getting a bad attitude. I am a very proud wife!!

I will tell you more about our evening celebration later. As of right now, I am off to sit on the couch with Bear and watch Toy Story 3.

Mr. Brooks and the lovely Proposal

I have been running around our house disinfecting everything. I have been sick and if Mr. Brooks catches this no-fun cold, we will have a problem. You see, Mr. Brooks has been so busy that I am lucky if I get 5 minutes face time with him. I have never seen him like this. He is stressed to the max and there is a constant worry in his face. I just want to hug him so tight that I pop all the stress bubbles that our floating in him. But that is a dream. Maybe on November 2nd they will start to drift away. Mr. Brooks is writing proposals. For all of you people not up-to-date with graduate school vocabulary, a proposal(s) is a applications that you turn into a committee in hopes to get grant money to do research. This application process consists of writing very specific (and long) project outlines. When I say very specific, I mean ridiculously specific. Mr. Brooks has been editing and revising this lovely (I am saying that with my most sarcastic tone) proposal since June. I feel like it has become a third wheel to our relationship. We go to the park, on a drive, or to grab something to eat, and this proposal seems to find its way into the hands of Mr. Brooks. Oh how I dream of me and him again. No third wheel to distract us and put such concern in Mr.Brooks face. I hate that third wheel, and I want to beat it with a stick. I hate that it is making my Mr. Brooks feel like this and the only thing that I can do to make him feel a little better for a short amount of time is hug him or massage his head. Mr. Brooks, I love you to death and this will all pay off in the end. For now, we have to welcome the third wheel with open arms and continue to smile because we at least know that there is an end. November 2nd!!! Yahooo

Weekend Recap

This weekend was relaxing. Bear worked on school things and I made pumpkin cookies. We soaked up the wonderful weather by going to the park. And yes, Bear worked even while we were at the park. Ugh, the joys of being married to a grad student.  

Labor Day BBQ Bash

 

Our Labor Day BBQ Bash consisted of lots of fun anthropology grad students, pretty decorations, yummy food and lots of it, dancing, laughing, playing games, and enjoying everyones company. The only problem is that I did not take any pictures besides a couple before anyone even showed up. Oh well. The BBQ went off with out any problems. I was a little worried. I had never entertained 25 plus people in my house. It was a scary thought. But thanks to Janice, who enthusiastically came up from D.C, we pulled everything together. The weather turned out great and people enjoyed themselves inside and outside. We set up tables and chairs (that i collected from varies neighbors) out in the backyard, along with horseshoes, a football, and a frisbee. Bear did a fabulous job as grill master and it was a lot of fun chit chatting with all the students. It was a a great way to kick off the school year and say goodbye to summer.  

School is back in session

Summer has come to an end. We must say goodbye and get back into the swing of things. Bear started school last week and so far has really enjoyed it. This semester will be his last semester in the classroom. Can you believe that the time has gone by so quickly?  Bear, my amazing grad student hubby will be slightly busy this semester with all of his engagements. He is not only taking his own classes, but also taking the role of a teacher and conducting classes to undergrads. Three classes to be exact and each have about 20 students. Last week he stayed up late to make sure that he had all his material ready and the lesson (outline) planned out for the first day. He even had me sit there as if I was a student and listen to what he was going to say, he did a great job. He is also one of the co-presidents for the anthropology graduate student association and is busy planning parties (we had one this weekend), speaking engagements, and a whole lot of other stuff.  So far, things seem to be running smoothly, but this is only the second week of school. I am sure life will start to become more and more chaotic as the semester continues. However, Bear is really excited about what the semester will bring and all the new experiences we will have. Here’s to a new school year!!