Goodbye 2018, Hello 2019...Change Is Coming.
Oh. My. Goodness. I haven't posted on this blog since August. For months I've meant to start writing on here and I've missed it. There are going to be some changes happening this year, both in my life and on this blog, and I'll get to those in a moment. But first, let's recap 2018, because when I look back to where my life was at last January, I'm kind of astounded.
Frantically writing the last few chapters of my dissertation. I think I still had my final case study (on Michelle Obama), my conclusion and my introduction chapters to write at the start of January. Knowing that the various deadlines to defend and graduate by the spring were rapidly approaching lit a fire under me and I wrote three chapters in less than the amount of time it took me to write my first chapter the previous summer. Even my committee members were responding to my emails with the drafts with comments like "Wow! That was fast!" since I'd sent them another chapter one a couple weeks before. But I was terrified of not graduating on time. I was teaching a condensed session in the spring that started after spring break, so from January through early March I wasn't teaching, I was just writing. And slowly the terror was replaced by determination. I had been in the death zone for months but finally I could see the top of the mountain. I still had a ways to go, but the end was in sight. At this point I had also started applying for jobs. That feels like a whole separate blog post but it was a daunting experience to go through on top of the dissertation.
On April 4th I defended my dissertation and became Dr. Severson. I was nervous but also excited. I knew I had prepared as much as I could and thankfully a friend had come over the night before to hang out and keep me calm. The morning of the 4th I got ready, my parents came to pick me up and drive me to campus. I got everything ready and once my committee arrived it was time to present. The presentation went smoothly and the following Q&A went great. The questions were tough but fair and all that I was able to answer. Throughout my PhD process I was constantly grateful for my amazing chair and committee. They pushed me hard but they were always on my side and wanted me to succeed. I ended up enjoying the questions from my committee and there were a couple that I had hoped I'd be asked so that was exciting. If you want to see my defense, I filmed it for my YouTube channel.
The rest of April was spent making the minimal revisions requested by my chair and submitting my final draft for approval by the grad college. Dotting all the i's and crossing all the t's. I was also teaching at this point and my students were amazing. When I came back to class after passing the defense my students gave me a round of applause and congratulated me, they were so sweet. By the end of April I was done with the diss and done with teaching. What a semester it had been! And yep, more job applications were submitted in April as well lol.
May was a crazy month, particularly the first couple weeks. After the semester had ended I slept. A lot. The time from April 29th (the end of the semester) and May 7th (graduation day) was just a blur. Finally graduation day arrived. It was a crazy experience and a long day. The ceremony was great and it was such a nice moment being hooded by my chair. After the ceremony my family and I had a quick lunch and then went home for a while before meeting up again at Capital Grille for a celebration dinner. It was such a lovely evening and a day I will remember forever. I was glad to have filmed a lot of it, because the day really was a blur and I am happy to have those memories captured to look back on.
The day after graduation I got a phone call from my department, it was the first time I heard someone use my new title seriously when the person on the other end of the call asked if "Dr. Severson" was available. Not going to lie, it was a cool moment. The call was in regards to a job application I had submitted for an instructor position in the program I was already teaching in as a TA. They wanted me to come in for an interview. I went in a couple days later, so graduation was on Monday and my interview was on Thursday. The interview went well. As I left I replayed all the questions and all my answers and while I didn't know how it went, I knew there wasn't anything I would change about my answers. I had planned on driving to my parents house to visit with my mom who was home sick that day and by the time I had driven across town to the house and sat down to fill my mom in on how the interview went, my phone rang. It was a campus number. I was sure it was my boss calling to ask me something that had been forgotten during the interview or follow up on some other detail. Instead, she was offering me the job. Less than 2 hours after leaving the interview! I couldn't believe the timing and was so relieved and happy to accept the position. I had truly loved my 5 years as a TA in the program. I love the program and the students we teach and I hadn't really felt like my work there was done. It's hard teaching while doing a PhD. It could never be my full priority, it always took second place to my research. But now I could really focus on teaching and on my students and that was exciting.
The rest of the month was spent relaxing. I honestly can't remember what I did.
I'm not one for resolutions. I believe every day is a chance to start over if you want to. But it definitely has been a time for me to think about changes I want to make going forward into the new year. Throughout my PhD I gave in to Imposter Syndrome far too often and it kept me paralyzed for too long. I was constantly working from a place of fear and worry and anxiety. My PhD skewed my priorities as the main thing I was concerned about was graduating, so a million other things slipped by the wayside or weren't being done the way I would have liked. I felt like I was constantly seconds away from being sucked under water and drowning. My mental health was slipping. I had got through my PhD by the skin of my teeth but the summer hadn't been long enough to fully recover, physically, mentally, or emotionally. So by the time the fall semester started it didn't take long before the drowning feeling crept back in and I was having panic attacks on a weekly basis, sometimes as many as 4 times a week. I hadn't struggled like that in over a year. It didn't help that with the change in my insurance plan I had to stop seeing my previous therapist and then wasn't able to get in to see a new one right away. By the end of December, I knew enough was enough. Time for some changes.
Again, these are not resolutions, these are changes I'm going to make to get my life back on track and start making some forward progress.
1. Get my health in order. It's time to find a new therapist and also work with my new doctor and continue working with my physical therapist to bet my fibromyalgia and IBS more under control and my mental health in a better place.
2. Stop overanalyzing my teaching. I'm a good teacher. I'm not screwing up. My evals from my students in the fall proved that. It's time to trust my training and experience and stop listening to Imposter Syndrome.
3. I need to stop treading water/drowning and start swimming. For years I told myself that things would be better/easier once I finished my PhD. I created this idea that "life would start" after my PhD. But that's not the case. One of my favorite quotes says, "Life isn't about finding yourself, it's about creating yourself." This year is when I'm going to stop making excuses and start doing the things I've been wanting to do. I'll expand on more of those things in future blog posts, but they all have to do with the answer to the question of "if I'm not a PhD student, who/what am I?"
These three changes are all the result of what I discovered as I worked through my Year Compass after Christmas. I highly recommend checking it out and doing it yourself, it's not too late, it's a free download and worth the time to fill it out. This is the year of "make it happen" and I'm a bit excited and cautiously optimistic. These aren't passive resolutions that I'll give up mid January when I get bored. These are changes that I honestly need to make because I can't keep going the way I've been going this past year.
Another change I want to make is with this blog. This blog has gone through a few changes over the years that I've had it. As I've changed the blog has changed slightly too. I've had other periods of inactivity and something always calls me back, because I love this little space of the internet. YouTube and Instagram have their places in my life and I love them, but I love my blog too. I love writing. So even though this blog doesn't always get the same numbers/stats/engagement as my videos do, I continue to post on here.
But about a year ago I made the last change to the blog, I started posting more regularly, which felt great. And frequent posts meant more hits and more retweets and shares of links to the posts, which also felt great. Over time however, things started to feel redundant (to me at least). All the articles I read about writing a successful blog suggested following (what seemed to me) a very formulaic structure and pattern to posts. "How to do X", "5 Tips for Successfully doing Y" and so on. I followed that advice and did get a lot of page hits and some of my most popular posts. But my most popular posts tended to stray outside of that advice, and those were my favorites to write. They also took the most time to write and the pressure of posting something every Sunday kept me from working on the blog ideas I was really passionate about but constantly churning out tips and tricks blog posts got, well, boring. So I stopped writing. I honestly don't think anyone really noticed, but I did. So that made me think.
If no one is anxiously waiting for new content on here, why not take my time, post less frequently, but post stuff I actually care about?
So, what can you expect going forward? Hopefully nothing too radically different. You can still expect tips and advice posts about navigating grad school and life post-PhD. I plan on continuing my "Things I Wish I Knew When I Started My PhD" series as well as other advice posts, especially when I get a request for a certain topic. But I also want to start doing more posts related to my research, particularly on the style and public identity of Royal women and Stateswomen. And while I am hoping to post as regularly and consistently as possible, I'm not committing to one a week. Posts will go up as and when I'm able to write them. As I'm figuring out who I am post-PhD this blog will be going through a similar identity shift. I hope you all will continue to follow along.
Happy New Year everyone! It's going to be a good one.
January and February
March
By March, I had all my chapters written and was revising them. There were so many emails between me and my chair and my committee. March was a blur of writing, revising, and emailing. But somewhere in the middle of it I was given permission to schedule my defense. What a moment! I could hardly believe it. I had some issues and confusion with grad college deadlines, but thanks to some angels in my department I got it all sorted out and got the date set. Once that date was set I threw myself into finishing up the revisions and preparing for the defense. Oh, and applying to more jobs.April
The rest of April was spent making the minimal revisions requested by my chair and submitting my final draft for approval by the grad college. Dotting all the i's and crossing all the t's. I was also teaching at this point and my students were amazing. When I came back to class after passing the defense my students gave me a round of applause and congratulated me, they were so sweet. By the end of April I was done with the diss and done with teaching. What a semester it had been! And yep, more job applications were submitted in April as well lol.
May
The day after graduation I got a phone call from my department, it was the first time I heard someone use my new title seriously when the person on the other end of the call asked if "Dr. Severson" was available. Not going to lie, it was a cool moment. The call was in regards to a job application I had submitted for an instructor position in the program I was already teaching in as a TA. They wanted me to come in for an interview. I went in a couple days later, so graduation was on Monday and my interview was on Thursday. The interview went well. As I left I replayed all the questions and all my answers and while I didn't know how it went, I knew there wasn't anything I would change about my answers. I had planned on driving to my parents house to visit with my mom who was home sick that day and by the time I had driven across town to the house and sat down to fill my mom in on how the interview went, my phone rang. It was a campus number. I was sure it was my boss calling to ask me something that had been forgotten during the interview or follow up on some other detail. Instead, she was offering me the job. Less than 2 hours after leaving the interview! I couldn't believe the timing and was so relieved and happy to accept the position. I had truly loved my 5 years as a TA in the program. I love the program and the students we teach and I hadn't really felt like my work there was done. It's hard teaching while doing a PhD. It could never be my full priority, it always took second place to my research. But now I could really focus on teaching and on my students and that was exciting.
The rest of the month was spent relaxing. I honestly can't remember what I did.
June
June also went by in a blur. I remember doing a lot of research on becoming a freelance writer, because I wanted to start doing that on the side and I started making my own website for my business. I also spent the month cleaning and preparing for my friend Tamzin to visit.July
Tamzin arrived! She came to visit from Sheffield, England and stayed with me for the first half of July. We went to Sedona, Montezuma Castle, Sierra Vista, Tombstone, Bisbee, and did lots of shopping and relaxing at home in Scottsdale or at my parent's place. The 4th of July was an amazing day spent at my parents, lounging by the pool. Her trip was such a fun time and was definitely a highlight of my year. We both vlogged the whole trip so check out her channel and mine to see what we got up to.August, September, October, November
August was time for final class prep and starting the fall semester. The next few months flew by in a blur of teaching and grading. Teaching 5 classes and having 120 students was a wild experience. I thought I knew what to expect, I thought I was prepared. I was wrong. I felt like almost every day I was messaging other instructor friends of mine, who'd been instructors in the program for several years, asking a million questions and seeking validation that I wasn't completely screwing up. This past semester has definitely been a learning experience.
December
Finally by December 1st the semester was over. I slept. A lot. And I threw myself into preparing for Christmas. December is my favorite time of year and Christmas is my favorite holiday. I vlogged the Christmas period on my YouTube channel for Vlogmas and had a blast. It was the perfect end to a very wild year. And throughout the month I did a lot of thinking about all that had happened in 2018 and what I wanted to happen in 2019.January 2019
So that brings us up to today, as I'm writing this it's New Years Day, I'm sitting on the couch at my parents house. There's a turkey roasting in the oven and I've got a Prosecco cocktail within reach. Tomorrow I will have to get back to work. I have deadlines approaching on the 7th and the 9th for work related stuff, and classes start on the 7th, so my break is done. Time to get back into work mode.
Again, these are not resolutions, these are changes I'm going to make to get my life back on track and start making some forward progress.
1. Get my health in order. It's time to find a new therapist and also work with my new doctor and continue working with my physical therapist to bet my fibromyalgia and IBS more under control and my mental health in a better place.
2. Stop overanalyzing my teaching. I'm a good teacher. I'm not screwing up. My evals from my students in the fall proved that. It's time to trust my training and experience and stop listening to Imposter Syndrome.
3. I need to stop treading water/drowning and start swimming. For years I told myself that things would be better/easier once I finished my PhD. I created this idea that "life would start" after my PhD. But that's not the case. One of my favorite quotes says, "Life isn't about finding yourself, it's about creating yourself." This year is when I'm going to stop making excuses and start doing the things I've been wanting to do. I'll expand on more of those things in future blog posts, but they all have to do with the answer to the question of "if I'm not a PhD student, who/what am I?"
These three changes are all the result of what I discovered as I worked through my Year Compass after Christmas. I highly recommend checking it out and doing it yourself, it's not too late, it's a free download and worth the time to fill it out. This is the year of "make it happen" and I'm a bit excited and cautiously optimistic. These aren't passive resolutions that I'll give up mid January when I get bored. These are changes that I honestly need to make because I can't keep going the way I've been going this past year.
Another change I want to make is with this blog. This blog has gone through a few changes over the years that I've had it. As I've changed the blog has changed slightly too. I've had other periods of inactivity and something always calls me back, because I love this little space of the internet. YouTube and Instagram have their places in my life and I love them, but I love my blog too. I love writing. So even though this blog doesn't always get the same numbers/stats/engagement as my videos do, I continue to post on here.
But about a year ago I made the last change to the blog, I started posting more regularly, which felt great. And frequent posts meant more hits and more retweets and shares of links to the posts, which also felt great. Over time however, things started to feel redundant (to me at least). All the articles I read about writing a successful blog suggested following (what seemed to me) a very formulaic structure and pattern to posts. "How to do X", "5 Tips for Successfully doing Y" and so on. I followed that advice and did get a lot of page hits and some of my most popular posts. But my most popular posts tended to stray outside of that advice, and those were my favorites to write. They also took the most time to write and the pressure of posting something every Sunday kept me from working on the blog ideas I was really passionate about but constantly churning out tips and tricks blog posts got, well, boring. So I stopped writing. I honestly don't think anyone really noticed, but I did. So that made me think.
If no one is anxiously waiting for new content on here, why not take my time, post less frequently, but post stuff I actually care about?
Happy New Year everyone! It's going to be a good one.
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