The Incredible Head

"We shall save the world one low-flow showerhead at a time."
--15 Boring Minutes husband, J

Every time my husband and I move to a new place, we install a low flow showerhead. This is both idealistic and practical. Idealistic in that we really do want to save water and believe this is one cheap and easy way to do it. Practical in that it simultaneously lowers the water bill and has the perceived effect of increasing water pressure. Higher water pressure has been particularly important in some of the old homes and apartments we lived in, though the bill lowering doesn't help us now that we pay a flat fee for water.

In the past 8 years, we have lived in three apartments, two houses, one townhome, and one condo. Now that I am renting an efficiency near my school we can make that three and a half apartments (more on how efficient my efficiency is later). We replace the showerheads with the new ones and shove the old ones under the bathroom sink. The key, though, is that we always leave the low-flow head when we move. We hope the new renters or owners are happy with it and don't choose to replace it with one of those new fangled large rain forestesque showerheads.

After just one shower in my new apartment, I knew it was time for a low-flow showerhead. The water pressure was eh, but it was the hulking size of the showerhead in a little tiny shower that convinced me to quickly buy a new showerhead. The low-flow is beautiful: small and silver and simple.

This morning, J went to the hardware store to buy my new showerhead and another energy saving flourescent bulb for our kitchen. He returned sans lightbulb, but bearing a small package with the big label: THE INCREDIBLE HEAD. Here's to making more moves and leaving more incredible heads behind.

Dissertation Ideas

There are mixed messages about dissertation ideas at the beginning stages of a PhD program. On one hand, everyone tells you not to get ahead of yourself and start worrying about what your dissertation topic will be. Students tell you to worry about classes, advisors tell you to trust the process and let the professors help you decide, and your own gut tells you it's too early to worry about it. Yet, the very same people will ask about your ideas for a dissertation and when you start rambling about ten different loosely related ideas they recommend that you start focusing on one area and not allow yourself to be all over the place. And I guess the advice isn't really contradictory--I can start narrowing the topic without making a decision and without putting so much energy into it that I don't focus on classes.


There really are only a few topic areas that I have enough interest in that I would want to spend a couple years of my life researching. Barring some unusual event or opportunity, I will definitely write about child welfare, but that could mean a million things. The disproportionate representation and disparate outcomes of ethnic and racial minorities in the child welfare system has been my major area of interest and experience the last couple years. I have the right contacts and an adequate grasp of the issues and, in some ways, it would be an easy area to write about since I've already done it. I'm also starting to be known in the field for it so it seems like a natural fit.

I admit I have been myopic: I have focused on domestic issues to the exclusion of international issues but I don't want that to limit me. My main experience in international child welfare has been it's interface with the domestic system in regard to kinship care, and related to trafficking. Perhaps there is a way to look at disproportionality and disparities across countries. What does it look like in South Africa? The UK? Germany? Does it matter? How does it look for children of Arab descent post-9/11 in the U.S. compared to France? I don't know. That's not quite right but maybe it's a start?

Other areas to consider: youth in transition, poverty and child welfare (maybe the transition out of poverty? the interaction between TANF and CPS workers?), child welfare workforce recruitment and retention, ack, I have a million ideas!

30something and blogging

Three days into this project and I’m already stumped. It doesn’t quite seem like I can keep this place completely private and I don’t know that I want or need to. I’m not going to be sharing personal things or posting pictures, but I’m still not sure how to draw the line. I guess if I wasn’t 30+ I wouldn’t even think twice about this because it seems the younger generation has no second thoughts about putting it—however mundane, or age inappropriate, or witty, or sad, or smart, “it” is—all out there.

When I was in sixth grade and read The Diary of Anne Frank I started carefully constructing my diary entries. I knew some day the world would want to know what it was really like to be 12 and fabulously bored and amazingly dramatic in middle America. Now I feel just the opposite. My fabulously boring life is of no interest to anyone and I would actually feel bad if they stumbled across this. But because I am new to this whole thing, I don’t even know how or if anyone could stumble across this.

Okay, enough about how stupid I am about this whole process.

15 minutes a day

Write for 15 minutes a day.

It will become a habit.

And writing my dissertation will be a breeze.

At least, that's what I'm told. So I'll give it the old college try. It can't hurt, right?

The only thing I’m really thinking about right now is school. Well, balancing school and work and life and a marriage, but school is really the center of that and is really the reason I even have to think through this.

I really wonder if I’ll be able to do this, if I’ll be able to get used to having to work to pass my classes. I wonder if I’ll find the balance between thinking about my dissertation topic over the next two years and not worrying about the details until I have to. I wonder if I can make any real contribution to my job when school requires so much time and energy. I wonder if I will ever see my friends, especially the ones I always feel too busy for now. Will I ever see my husband between his school work and my school work and traveling and living in two cities? When I do see him will I just be naggy about what hasn’t been done around the house or will the time apart and our busy schedules force us to enjoy the time we have together?

The current cohort met with students in various stages of the program and heard lots of good advice. Some I didn’t want to hear (“quit your job”) but most very helpful (“keep every scrap of paper organized because you’ll need it to study for comps”). But this, from my student advisor, a young smart sprite, was the most helpful: “Allow yourself to say ‘I quit’ three times before you actually consider quitting.”

What allowing myself to say “I quit” means to me:

• I am not the only one feeling anxious about this.
• I will feel extreme anxiety more than once. More than twice. Maybe three times. And I will get through it.
• It is okay to really, really feel like giving up and it is okay to say it. Out loud.
  

As anxious as I am right now, I am not counting this as one of my “I quits.” I’m saving those for when I really need them—and I know I will.

Just need a place to write

I am trying to figure out how to keep this thing a secret, not because I have anything secret to say but because I am boring. Not a very exciting way to start a blog, is it? I really just want to use this as on online diary, sort of like Doogie Howser but older and and female and not as pithy and online. Ok, I'm not really like Doogie Howser.

Why do I even need this? Back in 5th grade I had a diary with a lock that could be picked with just about anything--I know this because I lost the key after about 5 days and had to pick my own diary lock to write anything down. Actual entry: "I saw Max Callahan going to the bathroom." Of course, this was in big letters and I can still see the mortification in my 5th grade handwriting. I kept a diary for many years and found it to be helpful to--ugh, ugh, ugh, big social work type statement coming up--process.

Yesterday I started a PhD program and this qualifies as a big change that will require much processing. While rambling on and on about all my anxiety to my poor husband I realized I needed a place to write it all down. Because somehow seeing it in print makes it seem real, but also manageable. And because last night I didn't sleep and had the urge to get up and start typing but it didn't really make sense. But with a blog it makes sense to get up and start typing. Make sense?

I'm not sure what I would have written at 3am last night if this blog already existed. Probably something like this: I am a fraud. I don't know how I got into this program and I know I'm not going to make it. How can I possibly balance work, and school, and a husband, and three cats? It's just not possible, right? I know others have done it but they are clearly smarter and more motivated and procrastinate less and want it more and on and on and on. To console myself, I picked out one woman of the eight of use who started yesterday and decided she probably won't make it. Mean, I know, especially for a social worker. I wonder if anyone picked me out as the one who won't be able to make it? I skated through undergrad and grad school, barely making an effort on homework but still coming out on top or at least close to it. (That is a little bit of a lie, because I do make an effort it's just on things that aren't necessarily considered important in school like keeping up with current events and research articles and things that aren't necessarily on the test. I'm not a "will this be on the test?" kind of woman. And it's a bit of an egotistical exaggeration to think I'm always at or near the top because that's not entirely true either.)

I could spend another 20 pages typing about this but I'm boring myself.