" title="Notes from an Accidental Scholar"> Notes from an Accidental Scholar

Dis­claimer: Apolo­gies to those of you who are not Doc­tor Who fans. If you have love for British sci­ence fic­tion that runs the gamut of cheesy to OMG!AWESOME! you should check out the lat­est reboot(s) of Doc­tor Who. It’s on Net­flix and at your local pub­lic library.

So my increas­ingly opin­ion­ated, stub­born, and won­der­ful 2.5 year old daugh­ter is sleep­ing errat­i­cally. Some days she takes her reg­u­larly sched­uled “epic nap” of 3.5 hours, and other days she doesn’t nap at all. This, my friends, is a big prob­lem. I do ALL OF MY WORK when she sleeps. Her naps equal time. No time means no work. No work means I don’t fin­ish my dis­ser­ta­tion. Not fin­ish­ing means I wasted the past 7.5 years on a caf­feine– and whiskey-filled dante-esque descent into mad­ness with­out pay­off. So it’s time to shake up my rou­tine and squeeze more time out of my day, which is not easy when writ­ing a dis­ser­ta­tion, tak­ing care of a tod­dler, and man­ag­ing my brain so I can keep an even keel through all of it.

The only real rem­edy to this new time cri­sis — besides get­ting my own TARDIS — is to chip some time out of the rest of my day. For many of us, this can seem impos­si­ble. So I’ve devel­oped a strat­egy. I’m not sure how it’s going to pan out, but I have to do some­thing and if you have any fur­ther advice, please share.

Here’s my strat­egy so far:

1. I work one week­end day. My work­week, prior to Nap Break­down 2012, was pretty reg­u­lar. Up by 7, at the gym by 9:30, work for a few hours, then spend time with fam­ily. My evenings and week­ends were free from dis­ser­ta­tion work and I felt like I had a pretty good bal­ance. Now that my work time dur­ing the week is out of whack, I feel like I’m cheat­ing on my dis­ser­ta­tion when I’m doing other stuff. This is not good. It makes me anx­ious and irri­ta­ble when I’m not work­ing and hur­ried and dis­ap­pointed when I do finally get to work. So the week is now my col­lect­ing time for my week­end day. I write when I can, read when I can, and col­lect enough stuff so my Sat­ur­day or Sun­day has all of the ingre­di­ents for a pro­duc­tive writ­ing day.

2. YMCA Child­watch. I’ve men­tioned the YMCA before, but let me just extol it’s virtues here again. I was a mem­ber of the Brook­lyn Y and their Child­watch pro­gram was fan­tas­tic. They gave you two hours of free babysit­ting while you worked out, or, like I did some­days, read qui­etly in a cor­ner. The Down­town Berke­ley YMCA unfor­tu­nately charges for their child watch, but it’s still SO worth it! The staff are highly trained, incred­i­bly nice, and there are plenty of them. My kid has a blast every time she goes. Three days a week, I work­out, two days a week, I sit on the sofa in the lobby to work. That’s an extra four hours of work in my week, and if the kid actu­ally naps that day, I’m way ahead of the game.

3. Get­ting up ear­lier. This is the cra­zi­est habit I’m try­ing to form. Wak­ing up two hours early. That’s right, I’ve been wak­ing up at 5am all week. Now there are a few of you who do this and I used to think you had a meta­bolic imbal­ance or you were witches or some­thing. Need­less to say: I get it now. Wak­ing up before the world is the best Cheat Code out there. The only prob­lem? Actu­ally get­ting your ass out of bed. My “Just go back to sleep voice” — who I sus­pect is my lit­tle hater in dis­guise, is a per­sis­tent bas­tard. “You don’t have to do this,” it says, “You’re so tired. Just sleep a lit­tle longer.” So my con­scious voice has to scream, “SIT UP! WASH YOUR FACE! HAVE SOME COFFEE!” and it’s worked so far. I feel accom­plished before the day starts giv­ing me free­dom to not think about my dis­ser­ta­tion when doing all of life’s other stuff.

So how do you squeeze more time out of your day?

A cou­ple of months ago, I wrote a post about writ­ing a dis­ser­ta­tion as a stay-at-home mom. I get the ques­tion a lot: How do you do it? I’m not sure how to answer it, I mean, I just do it. The obvi­ous answer is the Mr.‘s sup­port. He brings home just enough salary for me to stay home and write with the kiddo. I’m incred­i­bly lucky in that I don’t have to teach and it’s a trav­esty that so many of us bur­geon­ing aca­d­e­mics are left shit out of luck when “acad­e­mia” doesn’t allow room for fam­i­lies. But that’s another post.

Any­way, I thought I’d open the door to a day in the life of a writ­ing mama. I keep a pretty reg­u­lar sched­ule which, for me, is the only way I accom­plish any­thing. This is just what I do and I would love to hear what all you dis­ser­tat­ing mamas do as well.

Daily sched­ule:

5:45–6:45AM: HELLO MOMMY! HELLO DADDY!

6:45AM: Get out of bed

7:01–8:15AM: Cof­fee, Rachel Mad­dow Show, hang out with the Mr., catch up on emails, read daily news, blogs, tweets

8:16–8:45AM: Get dressed for gym, pack snacks for Althea

8:46-11AM: Walk to the Y and drop Althea at child­care (SO AWESOME!), Kill myself on the tread­mill for 40 min­utes, then take Althea to open gym or the playground.

11:01–11:30AM: Head home and shower. Althea gets a snack and watches an episode or two of Maisy.

11:31–3:00PM (give or take 30 min­utes): Althea naps, I work.

3:01–4:00PM: snacks, sto­ry­time, draw­ing, etc. She’s start­ing to play a lot by her­self which buys me another half an hour of writ­ing time.

4:01–5:00PM: Do dishes from the day, tidy, spo­rad­i­cally check email

5:01–6:30PM: Pre­pare and eat din­ner or get take­out. The Mr. comes home.

6:31–7:30PM: Bath­time or play­time (depend­ing on night)

7:31–8:00PM: Bed­time for Althea. It takes this long for dia­per changes, find­ing favorite stuffed ani­mals, and read­ing a bed­time story.

8:01PM-10:00PM: Have a beer and flop down on sofa. This involves lots of sigh­ing. I usu­ally spend a few min­utes of this time orga­niz­ing my work sched­ule for the next day.

10:01–11:30PM: Go to bed and read aca­d­e­mic blogs or Red­dit.

I do this with­out fail Mon­day through Fri­day. It’s pretty fan­tas­tic because I get time with my kid and time with my hus­band. Work hap­pens slowly but reli­ably so I keep a really nice momen­tum. For me, the key is rou­tine rou­tine rou­tine. The much younger me would have hated this life, I thought in order to keep things inter­est­ing I had to be spon­ta­neous. But I have a 30 pound per­pet­ual motion machine of spon­tane­ity, I don’t think I need to insert any more chaos into the equation.

The big secret lies in that 3.5 hour win­dow of writ­ing time. You might think that’s not enough. You might think that the only way to plan to write is to set aside entire 8–10 hour work days. But I learned that I really only have 3–4 hours of solid crit­i­cal think­ing time in a day. Some folks have a bit more, oth­ers less, but in talk­ing with col­leagues and from my own expe­ri­ence, I don’t think any­one can sit and gen­er­ate new con­nec­tions and ideas for 8 solid hours. I work in 25 minute bursts, take 5 minute breaks, and I man­age to get remark­able amounts of work done when I focus my atten­tion that way.

Before hav­ing my kid, I never had this kind of focus. I would spend days doing other stuff and bank my time for long 10–12 hour work days. 10 hours is a lot of time in the­ory, and I had fan­tasies about all of the amaz­ing read­ing and writ­ing I could get done if I just blocked out an entire day. But they were just that, fan­tasies. I can only crit­i­cally think for up to 4 hours, the remain­ing 6–8 hours would inevitably fill with pro­cras­ti­na­tion and guilt. So I guess when peo­ple ask how I write my dis­ser­ta­tion with a kid, I should say, I don’t know how I ever wrote with­out her.

The hol­i­day break was fan­tas­tic, but it’s time to hit the books. I had a meet­ing with my dis­ser­ta­tion advi­sor yes­ter­day and it was AWESOME. She chewed up my chap­ter and spit it out and I’m psy­ched. It’s been a cou­ple weeks since I really looked at my chap­ter so before I review her edits, I’m going to review with my own edits. That way, I can have a con­ver­sa­tion with her edits rather than just fol­low­ing her instructions.

I’m a bit writ­ing rusty from the break so I’m just going to end this here. Let’s hope that is not a har­bin­ger of 2012.

Cour­tesy of Shirt.Woot

On Twit­ter the other day, some­one asked about exer­cise in grad­u­ate school. Like you, I’m busy with writ­ing and life, but I make it a point to work out 4–5 times per week. Before you think I’m one of those ultra­fit “super­moms” who throw elab­o­rate tod­dler birth­day par­ties while writ­ing my dis­ser­ta­tion with per­fect man­i­cured nails, let me just say HAHAHAHAHAAA! My house is much less Cosby Show and way more Roseanne. I go to the gym because it’s a break. My local YMCA offers free babysit­ting for up to two hours, so I have, in a word: incentive.

I used to strug­gle with get­ting to the gym. I would pay out the nose for gym mem­ber­ships only to go for a week and give up. Start­ing an exer­cise rou­tine is easy, main­tain­ing it is fuck­ing hard. But I think, no, I KNOW, that tak­ing time for yoga/jogging/meditation/Zumba is cru­cial to your intel­lec­tual main­te­nance. When you’re writ­ing a dis­ser­ta­tion, it’s the equiv­a­lent of run­ning a brain marathon and you need to keep your mind and body fit. I don’t mean any­thing dras­tic, I sim­ply mean set­ting aside time for your­self. Some peo­ple knit, oth­ers bake, I exer­cise and if you want to work­out, you can to.

Like I said before, I used to join gyms and lose momen­tum after a week. Why? Let’s blame the “excuse cen­ter” of your brain. My excuse cen­ter goes into over­drive when I have to do some­thing I don’t want to do. I am incred­i­bly stub­born and this can make me my own worst enemy. So in the inter­est of get­ting you off your butt, here are my top 5 excuses and how I deal with them and maybe they’re res­onate with you too:

1) I don’t have time! Yes you do. Work­ing out doesn’t take long, and if the thought of leav­ing your dis­ser­ta­tion for an hour freaks you the hell out, then go for 30 min­utes or do one of these 20 minute yoga ses­sions. The fact is, a good work­out boosts your energy which will give you more sta­mina to write.

2) Ugh, I just don’t feel like it today. It’s one thing if you’re sick, you should never work­out when you’re sick (duh!), it’s a com­pletely dif­fer­ent thing if you’re just unmo­ti­vated or feel­ing lazy. Rule Num­ber One in regards to phys­i­cal health and fit­ness, you have to make it a habit. This is hard because a habit, by def­i­n­i­tion, is a reg­u­lar prac­tice that you do, often with­out think­ing about it. When (re)starting an exer­cise rou­tine there’s noth­ing reg­u­lar or unthink­ing about. It can feel like you’re adding extra stress into your work rou­tine, which for con­trol freaks like me is sim­ply chaos. It takes three weeks to build a habit and make it stick, but start easy. When I first started going to the gym, my goal was to go on Tues­days and Thurs­days for three weeks. That’s 6 times total, easy. Work­out bud­dies help, so does mak­ing bets. I told myself that I only had to do it for three weeks and if I didn’t like it, I’d quit the gym–but I had to go for three weeks, no exceptions.

3) It’s raining/snowing/hurricaning out­side. Lis­ten, I live in New York, bad weather is ugly. It’s cold, wet, dirty, sloppy, basi­cally: the per­fect excuse to hide indoors. So when it’s piss­ing down rain, the thing that really gets me out the door is know­ing how awe­some I will feel for the rest of the day. Even if I have a shitty writ­ing day after the gym, I won’t feel like the day is a total loss because at least I did some­thing. How­ever, some­times it is weath­er­poca­lypse out­side and it would be point­less to wade through waist high snow for a work­out. On days like that, just stay inside. It would be good to down­load free pod­casts or invest in work­out DVDs, I like Jil­lian Michaels’ 30-Day Shred is avail­able on DVD on Ama­zon Instant.

4) I went to a con­fer­ence for a few days and blew my entire rou­tine. Tell me if this sounds famil­iar. You’ve man­aged to work­out for 5 weeks straight, it’s unheard of, you feel amaz­ing! Then you leave town for a few days and instead of using the hotel gym, you sleep in and shmooze with Duke’s his­tory depart­ment. When you come back, you feel like that 5 week stretch was for noth­ing, you have to start over, you ruined your streak. If you’ve been in this posi­tion, just remem­ber that a habit is a prac­tice. If you went a week with­out prac­tic­ing, it doesn’t mean you should give up on it alto­gether. Just pick up where you left off and keep going.

5) Exer­cise is bor­ing. Yes, it can be. I get bored doing the same thing every­day so I shake it up. I take classes, I do cir­cuit train­ing, I run. If the thought of going to the gym is too bor­ing for words, change your playlist, go for a walk in your neigh­bor­hood or the local park, or sign up for a dif­fer­ent class at your gym.

If you want to exer­cise it is within your con­trol to do so. Listed below are resources that worked for me, hope­fully they’ll help you too. Good luck!

Couch to 5k — C25K Run­ning Pro­gram — I’ve been doing this for the past 3 weeks. It has an iPhone app and the site is a great all around fit­ness resource

one hun­dred push ups, two hun­dred sit ups, seven weeks to fit­ness, etc. — I like this one because all you need is your body, also a great all around fit­ness resource

Nike Run­ning — Another iPhone app that syncs your runs on the inter-webs so you can see your progress in cool infographics

Nike Women — iPhone app of free cir­cuit train­ing work­outs that are seri­ous butt kick­ers. It’s an incen­tive app so after you work­out for a num­ber of hours, new work­outs are made avail­able to you

red­dit fit­ness resource — Red­dit is a news site with user sub­mit­ted con­tent. They have an incred­i­ble fit­ness and nutri­tion page with tons of help­ful tips. Red­dit is FULL of nerds, so most of their con­tent is aimed at the desk-sendentary like us

Exer­cise News, Videos, Reviews and Gos­sip — Lifehacker

Dis­claimer: Of course, this is not a sub­sti­tute for advice from your doc­tor. You should always con­sult with your health­care provider before start­ing any fit­ness or nutri­tion program.