Mama PhD

As the mother of a son, I have been observing what seems to be growing panic about the diminished prospects for men and boys with concern, but also with some confusion.

I learned last week that the baby Panda born in the National Zoo only recently has died, when it was...

Graduate programs rarely prepare you for the myriad skills required for being a successful (let alone happy) professor. Most of...

Last spring, in a conversation with my (former) neighbor, who also happens to be an accomplished late-career scientist with whom I work from time to time, he sympathized with the dilemma my husband and I were debating at the time: whether to move our family across the country (if you’ve read my previous posts, you’ll know we decided to move, which is why I identify my neighbor as “former”). “Big life decisions are the bane of my existence,” was the way he put it. I could have hugged him. Big decisions are difficult, draining. Having someone recognize this as I was going through it - especially someone who has done well in his own life - was a tremendous comfort.

Let me start by staying I do not aspire to perfection. (If you've ever seen my house you will know that this is a gross understatement.) So you would think I'd be in complete agreement with Barnard President Debora Spar, whose recent piece in Newsweek is titled, "Why Women Should Stop Trying to Be Perfect." Spar's piece is accessible, clear, and often grimly funny in the way people sharing parenting stories can be. She writes of delivering a lecture in a suit that smelled of baby vomit, of slipping out of meetings to attend piano recitals, of missing track meets when a deadline loomed. I get it: she's been there, she's juggled home and family, and she has the scars to prove it.

I have been following recent revelations of cheating at elite high schools and colleges with interest, in part because I attended one of the implicated high schools, and also because the psychology of cheating fascinates me, for personal reasons.

This past weekend I went to the regional tournament for the senior Olympic basketball games in Springfield, Illinois. My partner, Ted Hardin, is turning 50 this year, which makes him eligible to play. Teams from Chicago, Evanston and St. Louis showed up at a spacious Gold’s Gym to play in 3-on-3 tournaments. A fascinating group of players, including a federal judge in her mid-60s, participated.

Saturday afternoon, I took a nap. Somehow that feels like a confession, something I should feel a tiny bit guilty about. And yet it was, after all, the weekend. And my sleep had been a bit interrupted the night before -- the cat was chasing things around, or my son was up playing computer games, or something -- so it was completely understandable. But it still felt a tiny bit self-indulgent. I had a to-do list that included grading, house-cleaning, laundry, grocery shopping ... most of which went undone while I slept. I wasn't sick, I was just tired.