Waiting

Defense Date?

~ catholicmamaphd ~ Leave a comment

It’s weird to be at this point when I’m considering being done with my PhD.  I feel like the last five years I’ve never had a hard deadline to meet.  I didn’t have x number of classes to finish or exams to complete.  I just needed to get my research to a point where I know how to think about the problem and come up with a solution (and then publish that solution, finding, etc.).

But suddenly, I have a deadline; I have a date (ish).  And it’s all very overwhelming, but exciting.  I’m both relieved and a bit sad.  Because what am I going to do now?

…

I don’t have an answer, but the ideas thrown around seem to all contain one thing in common.  Writing.  I guess I have a creative side that desires something more than just hard science.

So I’ve spent a lot of time meeting with different science writers and communicators trying to figure out what I’m passionate about.  I go to networking coffee events.  I’ve even got a science writing workshop lined up this month.

And what I’ve realized is that there is a real need for scientists to communicate with other scientists.  Science is becoming very interdisciplinary.  Often, a biologist and a physicist need to communicate, but they speak different scientific languages.  So how do they communicate?  How do they understand papers from the other field?

But even bigger than that is how do scientists communicate with the general public?  How do we turn the black box of scientific research into an accessible, tangible reality for non-scientists?  That is an important question that I’m not qualified to answer, but I’d like to look into it more.

…

So here I am (almost) at the end of one road attempting to figure out the next one to turn on.  I’ll be spending lots of time in prayer and reflection, listening and hoping for God’s voice to point me somewhere.  Until then, I could use some prayers for good data, the end of writer’s block, and confidence 🙂

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God, Graduate School, and Ultimatums

~ catholicmamaphd ~ 1 Comment

I struggle (as I expect most people do) with waiting for God’s plan. It’s very hard for me to be at peace with the way things are. I’m consistently trying to focus on the next thing, and plan for the next next thing.

So when God left me waiting, I fought back hard. I would cry, begging for something to change. I would sit in anger because I believed I knew better. I would often wonder if He was listening. I even gave ultimatums.

One such ultimatum dealt with my plans for continuing graduate school. My frustrating situation (of being an overwhelmed 4th year graduate student) coupled with my anxiety and depression has left me bewildered about God’s plan for me. Is completing this PhD really what He wants for me? So I laid down an ultimatum.

If I end up needing to teach, I’m done.

It sounds strange because I actually really enjoy teaching, but the workload would be significant. Piling teaching responsibilities on top of research on top of juggling an infant – no fun, high anxiety. The clock was ticking as my funding was limited after this upcoming fall semester. More than likely, I would need to teach in the spring. And with our lab technician leaving, I was taking on even more responsibilities.

I didn’t really think that God would answer my ultimatum. It’s petty and childish of me. I imagine He watches me in the same way I watch Lily when she’s overtired and can’t decide if she’s happy or fussy. He knows better than I do, but I still fight it.

Oddly enough, He responded in a BIG way. Because my advisor called me into his office today to tell me that the biggest grant that we had applied for had been funded. It wasn’t just a small grant to get us through a year; it was five years of funding with the ability to renew. It was a grant where the odds were not in our favor (because we’re a new lab with minimal publication record). So I know that God has a hand in this because I am still in shock.

I also know that God had a hand in it because the first words out of my advisor’s mouth were “So you don’t have to teach ever.” I was floored with those words. I could hear God’s voice, saying, “I have a plan – trust me.”

So I’m giving up the ultimatums to God because He’s been really making things happen for me this month. In really big and unexpected ways.

Waiting in the Stillness

~ catholicmamaphd ~ 2 Comments

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I’m sitting at work at 4pm, waiting to leave to go pick up my daughter.   And with how busy I am (or should be), you would think I’d be scrambling to get stuff done. And I was, up until about 5 minutes ago. Now I’m waiting, feeling anxious to leave but unable to because I would feel the guilt if I left early.

Isn’t it odd how even when we are waiting in silence we are still so restless?

Even when I don’t have a million things to do, I try to find something to busy myself. Like here at work, I have 30 minutes before I usually leave, and I’m trying to find something to occupy myself for that time. But I can’t get too invested because I’ll have to leave it unfinished until tomorrow. Still, I can’t just sit here and do nothing.

But perhaps that’s what God has been trying to teach me these past many months (and I mean, many). Maybe I should be waiting in peace rather than restlessness. Instead of finding ways to be anxious, I should be at peace when everything is taken care of. I know that I’ve always struggled with that. I always have something to worry about, and when that something is fixed, I put another worry in its place. I worried about hosting a speaker a few weeks ago. Hosting him was actually really great, and I learned a lot. Now I’m worried about the fact that I’m behind in my PhD work. At home, I’m worried about my daughter not sleeping – is it because she’s too cold? Worry after worry, I find myself drowning in this waiting for the worst thing to happen. God doesn’t ask me to do that. He asks me to wait in peace, and trust in His plan for me. That doesn’t mean I won’t suffer, but I shouldn’t suffer from my own anxiety.

Believe me, a lot of my issues stem from this anxiety. I’ve always been an anxious person, even before I had a baby. But everything is heightened now – like anxiety on steroids. And waiting is so much harder now.

Isn’t it odd how that happens? I’m always unhappy with the waiting for the next stage. I was frustrated when I had to wait to get married. I was upset when we were waiting to start our family. I was uncomfortable waiting for Lily to be born. Now I’m frustrated with waiting on results, waiting even longer for my PhD. I wish I could go back and tell myself to be happy with the waiting. To be at peace with the waiting. Because things change, but not always in the way we expect. (I mean, I used to actually get a full night of sleep and be able to focus entirely on science without being sleep-deprived.) So maybe I should have focused more on gaining the grace I needed while I was waiting, instead of being angry that things weren’t happening the way I wanted. I once heard a woman say that she wished she had spent her weekly time in adoration during her single years praying for grace in her future marriage rather than wishing she was already married. She has six children, so she needs a lot of grace. I should have listened to her.

The times of waiting are opportunities for growth. I may feel like it’s stagnant, and the day to day is unfulfilling. But God is asking me to grow somehow. I don’t really understand how, but that’s what the quiet moments are for.

Right now, no one is screaming at me. No one is stressing me out with a deadline. And the lab is oddly quiet, a strange stillness in a world that is constantly moving. I’m coming to appreciate those moments of quiet, but I really need to focus on not worrying through them. Rather, I should focus on the beauty of the slowness at the end of the day, waiting for the blessing of seeing my baby girl in a bit.