Mama PhD

Yesterday was the kick-off for our campus celebration of Black History Month. After a wonderful introduction by the Provost, a colleague in the History department gave an impassioned, scholarly, engaging presentation that asked the question: what should Black History Month mean to us?

In a casual bedtime discussion on potential careers with my almost-13-year-old daughter, she recapitulated to me her long-standing intent to become a writer, a teacher, and a mother. But above all these aspirations, she admitted, she wants to be famous.

I had intended to write this week's post about Patrick Witt. However, as I was sitting in my office on Friday, trying, on a brief break, to reconcile the newspaper reports with the very different story in his press release, a supervisee arrived for her scheduled session, sat down and burst into tears. "I can't do this anymore," she said.

In Math, we often talk of how a function behaves as a variable approaches limits at infinity.

I was shocked this weekend after calling car insurance companies to add my 16 year-old daughter, Katie, to my plan. Nick, my 18 year-old, is already covered, but apparently — due to some fortunate confusion by an agent — I was paying the Illinois rate (the state in which I work), not the Florida rate where my second car and teenagers are located.

Although I’m the same age my mother was when she packed me off to college, I’m still a long way from knowing what it will feel like to send my own children out into the big, wide world. I appreciate the wisdom of my fellow bloggers who write about their experiences with college-aged kids. Even though my oldest is only ten, I get little hints every now and then of what it might be like to see him off on a life adventure.

When my husband was a child, he was so traumatized by the Disney movie “Snow White” that, as an adult, he informed me that no child of ours would ever be allowed to see it. Since my husband’s usually a pretty anti-censorship, pro-Freedom of Information type, this struck me as odd.

As recorded here, our beloved 17-year-old cat, Molly, died over the summer. All three of us were, and continue to be, deeply affected by her loss. But we have also really missed having a cat around. And so, over Christmas Eve dinner, we discussed the possibility of adopting a new cat, and came to the conclusion that we were ready. We decided to visit the Humane Society shelter near us at our earliest opportunity, which turned out to be last Sunday.