stereotype threat

A fter this post I'll go back to writing the paper that I am supposed to workshop at Yale in an alarmingly short time.

A difficulty arises in that I desire so much NOT to do what folks would expect that I do on the basis on my occupational and educational history, working class background, and family status and gender. At the very same time, however, EVERYTHING I do and aspire to reflects exactly those things.

Being a mother is the most important, rewarding, and challenging thing that I will ever have the opportunity to do. Ideally, I would be a part-time academic until I sent my youngest off to kindergarten.

I am an academic. Don't get me wrong. I enjoy teaching but I want to engage ideas, articulate approaches, and offer friendly criticism.

I was a first generation college student from a working-class family. I want my work to directly confront material issues. I want my family to understand that the work I do relates to their lives.

Finally, I really am a writer. I am so enjoying working on my dissertation (OK, not so much this chapter which is an add-on resulting from the clear demand for a focus on the "other" or "exotic" elements of the field). However, my drive to write fails when I imagine this project, so much about living breathing people and real hurts and needs being subjugated to the requirements of cultural form, ultimately languishing as a bound and rote academic piece on the dissertation shelf in the basement of the library. Or, if I'm lucky, getting published as a jargon-laden monograph by a third rate academic press so all 150 copies can collect dust in various university libraries.

So, what this adds up to is that I am, perhaps, happy to be a failed academic despite the fact that my ego is bruised and I feel that I am doing women, generally, and mothers, especially, a disservice. Although family finances (loan payments) require that I have some income upon completion of the doctorate (or just leaving), wouldn't I rather be free to revise my book for the general public instead of trying to break into the circle of elites discussing the topic in the academy? Instead of following this line of research until tenure, wouldn't I prefer to move on immediately to the next topic: the culture of mothering? Writing, once again, for change and the public?

precipe? crossroads? the dead marshes?

1. My self-esteem is too fragile for the academic job market.
2. When you are passed over by programs that met with you at the big gig in August, it's hard not to take it personally.
3. This tortuous process leads to soul searching.
a. Why did I pursue the Ph.D. in Sociology in the first place? Answer: wanted to make the world a better place. peace corps didn't meet my expectations. social work program was too clinical in its approach (the social system is the problem). so off to sociology.
b. Am I barking up the wrong tree? Am I lacking sociological potential? Will I be most happy/effective as an academic or outside of the academy?
c. Let's say that I will not be successful on the market this year. What do I do? Throw in the towel and look for regular job? Raise my children and try my hand at freelancing? Push back completion for another year to get more publications and drum up interest in my work? Take a dead end teaching gig that is outside of the norm for folks coming out of my program and that will not provide me research support (moral or otherwise)?

That my days as a student are coming to an end is all that I know with certainty.