Top 5 Ways Grad School Prepares You for Parenthood:

1) Multitasking.
Grad School forces even the most adamant one-thing-at-a-timer to learn the art of multitasking. For example, more often than not, any kind of food is eaten while reading, studying, walking to class, sitting in class, writing papers or grading papers.

For a new parent (stay-at-home moms, especially), any kind of food is eaten while feeding the baby, burping the baby, rocking the baby, entertaining the baby, or praying the baby will stay asleep for 5 more minutes.

2) Prioritizing.
The Grad Student must learn to prioritize tasks and complete them accordingly. While in many other professions this prioritization might depend on the relative importance of each task, in Grad School, it generally depends solely on the official deadline of said tasks. Consequently, tasks without official deadlines often go unaccomplished.

This is why, since Will was born, I have somehow managed to get all the necessary grading done for my Spanish classes, but I still have tons of Thank You notes to write for the many, many gifts we received celebrating his birth.

I blame this mostly on one simple point of confusion: Everyone knows that newlyweds get a full year to send Thank You notes for gifts, just as friends of newlyweds get a full year to send such gifts. But what is the official deadline for newly-parents???

As I said, tasks without official deadlines often go unaccomplished. (I am trying, though!)

3) Irregular Eating Habits.
See "Multitasking." This example assumes, of course, that you manage to eat at all.

4) Limited Time with Friends and Family.
This is related to the problem of official deadlines and prioritization. In terms of importance alone, most Grad students would easily rank friends and family far above the tedious work of Grad School. However, returning that phone call or getting together for that dinner doesn't carry an official deadline, so it often gets put off a little longer than it should. In a way, then, friends and family are being conditioned for the future parenthood of the Grad student as much as the Grad student himself (or herself).

Fortunately, though, your average friend or family member is much more likely to comprehend the demands placed on the parents of a newborn than those placed on a Grad student, unless they themselves have chosen at some point to endure the masochistic nightmare that is Grad School. It's much easier to imagine why a new parent with a screaming baby doesn't answer the phone than to imagine why the same person, staring silently at a blank computer screen, won't return your calls.

So with new parents, friends and family start to preface emails and voicemails with ever-so-kind concessions like, "I know you're really busy, so you don't have to call me back right away...." It's really quite touching.

5) Sleep.
Grad school not only adequately prepares you for the lack of sleep you'll experience as a new parent, it actually over-prepares you.

Grad school makes it possible at 5:30am, having gotten only 3 1/2 hours of sleep that night, to think, "It could be worse. I could be writing a 20-page paper in Spanish on the use of Lacanian linguistics as a basis for a Feminist reading of One Hundred Years of Solitude."

In other words, it's much easier to feed a baby on one-hour spurts of interrupted sleep than it is to write coherent strings of theoretical jargon in a foreign language.


Top 1 Way Grad School Doesn't Prepare You for Parenthood:

1) Coffee.
While doctors agree that a "moderate" amount of caffeine is harmless during the 40 weeks of pregnancy and the many months of nursing that may follow, this allowance is nowhere near the quantity necessary to support the caffeine addiction one likely will develop in Grad School. Therefore, it is recommended to put at least one full year between finishing Grad School and getting pregnant in order to sufficiently wean oneself from this oh-so-tasty drug.

Some days are easier than others...

and so far, today looks like the Second-Easy-Day-In-A-Row.

other new moms (still getting used to that title) will surely understand that this simply means that baby Will is either sleeping or calmly entertaining his awake self. for the moment, it is the former. yesterday, it was the former practically all day long.

don't get me wrong--i love when the little sweetie is awake, and i have no qualms about cuddling him just as much as he wants to be cuddled. i mean, who could resist such cuteness?



but, days like yesterday are quite needed to maintain some level of sanity. yesterday, i was able to:

-straighten the living room (burp cloths everywhere!)

-clean the kitchen (even the floor)

-take out the trash (not my favorite chore...)

-change the sheets on the bed (even to my OCD standards)

-eat a real lunch (all four food groups!)

-unload and reload the dishwasher (did that while making lunch)

-wash, dry, fold AND put away 2 loads of laundry (that never happened even before Will came along)

-vacuum the whole house (yep. with our loud-as-a-lawnmower vacuum. while Will was sleeping. because Will is awesome.)

so, now you're all thinking i'm a neat-freak (or just really weird) for being excited about doing these kinds of things all day. far from it--just ask darren. i can tolerate messiness much longer than he can.

but, honestly, it felt great to accomplish something during the day, to be able to make a list (above) of quantifiable tasks that i had completed. it's a different feeling than thinking "hmmmmm, what did i do today? oh, fed the baby, burped the baby, rocked the baby to sleep, changed the baby's diaper, fed the baby, burped the baby...."

now that i think about it, it's the same feeling i got from knitting random things while working on my thesis and while trying to survive last semester (teaching 5 classes, the play, karate, being pregnant). knitting gave me something concrete at which to look and say, "ha! i made this! i have tangible proof that i have been productive today!" so now, that tangible proof has become a clean apartment.

and on a final note, i realized in the process that i am very thankful for 2 things:


1-that our apartment is so small. sounds silly, but i never could've cleaned the whole thing in one day otherwise. and then the feeling of accomplishment would've been greatly compromised.


2-my dear husband, who noticed the clean apartment not 2 seconds after coming home last night and kept complimenting & thanking me for it. i hope Will grows up to be just like his daddy.

so far, he seems well on his way (see darren's latest post).

(by the way, sorry for long gap in posting. as i said, some days are easier than others, and it's been hard to find time to squeeze it in. and i decided to just jump right in to talking about the present day, rather than catch up on everything since my last post. if you want more on what's been going on, see darren's blog.)