Mama PhD

I am writing this on a bus from Dublin to Belfast. Bill and Ben, my brother and sister-in-law, one of my nephews, and my cousin and her husband are all taking the trip.

I attended the Ann Arbor Film Festival (AAFF) this past weekend. Ken Burns, who was raised in Ann Arbor by a college professor dad, and claims to have seen his “first breasts” on the screen of the Michigan Theatre was also present. The festival is internationally known for showcasing experimental filmmakers such as Andy Warhol, Barbara Hammer and Pat O’Neill, whose work was featured this year. Historical documentaries by Burns, which cover a good swath of American history and are used in educational settings around the globe, are not typically included in the experimental or underground film categories.

As of January it had been 15 years since I last taught a class. That was back when I was a student. This winter quarter (which just ended - a fast and furious ten weeks!), I jumped at an opportunity to teach an introductory biology lab.

Last week I took part in a musical improv scene in which my friends A and L were the protagonists. The premise of the scene was that they had murdered A's husband (played by J) to clear the way so they could get married. J's body was sprawled on the floor, and it was creeping A out, so L called offstage for the butler (played by me) to "get rid of this mess, will you?" I answered, "My pleasure, sir," and went to drag J offstage.

There is a concept in math called “one to one correspondence”, in which members of one set may be matched with members of another set, so that each member of one set is matched with exactly one member from the other set. I thought of this concept lately when I found myself working one-on-one with several of my students as they struggled to master some difficult concepts from the class they were taking.

I was working on my laptop (as usual) while my children played around me. They were dressed up in play costumes, started marching and kept referring to each other as Susan and Elizabeth. When they started chanting “Women should vote,” I realized, of course, they were playing 1st wave feminist movement (don’t you love the nerdy games of professors’ children?). I’ve been reading Sheryl Sanderberg’s new book Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead and watching the COO of Facebook on television call it a “sort-of -feminist manifesto” to inspire a new women’s revolution. I began thinking how the children of the future might re-enact her movement.

During childbirth, the most painful stage of labor is known as transition. As one website puts it, “this is a physically demanding and draining time and you may feel exhausted, frustrated, impatient, and overwhelmed.” Transition comes just before the baby is born, but it can go on for a while and in the moment it often feels more painful than productive.

Jill Filipovic's recent Guardian column on the politics of changing one's name on marrying drew a strong response, both in the comments to the article and in other blog posts. Many commenters seemed to feel accused of being bad feminists if they chose to change their names, and some of the anti-change writers did sound the teensiest bit judgmental of their more traditional (in US terms) sisters.