Unravel Me

My Year of the Sheep So Far

2015-02-21
And so I return to this abandoned corner that only so many know now still exists. Come next month, I will have been living here in Maryland (just outside of DC) for six months. And to think that exactly two years ago from this past Thursday, I had come up to (current workplace) for my 2nd interview. My first interview for this position had been June 2012, as I was wrapping up my post-doc and knew I wanted out of (old workplace) because of the glass ceiling and no potential for growth or promotion.

Where to begin? I think the last time I wrote, I was getting ready to finish work and do an exit interview and then move up here. How much change one year brings! A year ago this time, I was leaving work early on Friday afternoons, getting in my car to make the hourlong drive over to my parent's house (my childhood home) to help them pack up and get ready to move. I was rolling back into town on Mondays and rolling into work in the afternoon. Thankfully I had a boss who "got" it because she had had elderly parents and (until her parents passed), she was making weekly trips to Tennessee through much of 2012.

Not only was I rolling out of town every weekend. It was overwhelming and probably aged me and exhausted me emotionally and physically. Each trip meant bringing back a carload of boxes from my bedroom at my childhood home, dropping them off at my house, going to work and then wash-rinse-repeat each weekend. In fact, many boxes I never touched before my own move from Charlottesville to where I now am. I don't think anyone can really prepare you for it.

Now a former colleague and old friend from my old job is going through something similar. Except her parents are Malaysian/Australian, and they downsized drastically, sold her childhood home, and then shipped everything to her in Virgina. The shipment arrived early, and she has no idea how to absorb the stuff and has a bed in the dining room, and boxes everywhere. When she texted me about it, she said it was surprisingly more emotional and was caught off guard.

I told her if she ever wanted to talk I was there, but that I totally got it, and that even a year later, it's all still so raw....just the transition itself, my parents moving away from me (but luckily to my sister), my childhood home no longer being ours, how quickly everything could be dismantled. It's still emotional and I'm thinking about it a lot now that we're coming up on a year since they left Virginia. I miss them, even though we talk every day and I've been out there.

I miss having them nearby, and as much as it was also nice to have my parents nearby b/c your mom and dad are "Mom and Dad" even when you're grown up, I'm also at once freed up from "caregiving" since my sister has taken over that role by her physical proximity to them, and simultaneously, part of my identity is gone and needs to be recreated/evolved. Because taking care of/looking in my elderly parents took a lot of my emotional investment and certainly time and a big heart. My parents are in good health but age is age, and I held their hands through various times when they needed me. Being 40, it's interesting to have older parents, 80 and 83. I feel like, with the exception of my friends who are the youngest of many siblings with large age gaps between, most can't quite relate yet. Most people who are blessed to have parents in their 80's tend to be about 10 or 15 years older than I am, putting them in their 50's typically. So I think I have a very different and unique lens into my relationship with my parents, compared to many of my same-age friends, whose parents are either still working, or just starting to retire and venture into their 70's.

I think what was also overwhelming last spring was that at the same time I was helping mom and dad move, I was also on the job market and in limbo because I didn't know which job would come through and when it would. I was also a finalist for a similar faculty job to what I have, but in Chicago, at Northwestern University. I did a phone interview with them last December (2013), they invited me out for an on-campus interview in February and then they couldn't decide between the finalists, so asked us (2-3) to come out again in April for a 2nd on-campus interview, essentially a tie-breaker. Around the same time, the job I currently have (here in DC/Maryland) came through after a long hiring freeze, and I had to think hard about it, and then things all worked out in a way that these things tend to, for a reason. My decision was made, and after a lot of waiting, it was all finally official in the summer.

While I was eager to move on to this new opportunity much earlier than happened, professionally speaking, the timing could not have been better in terms of happening after I moved my parents to Colorado. Had I had to move before they did, I'm not sure that I'd have been able to help as much as I did. I would have been further away (3 hours instead of 1 by car), and I would not have enough leave days or flexibility to do the weekly trips, at least not without running myself into the ground. So I think things were just all in a holding pattern, and then one by one, in rapid succession, change happened.

So now I'm here. I've onboarded to the new job, and it promises to stretch me and challenge me in good ways. I will grow, and it's a great opportunity! Of course, I hope this is a long-term/permanent thing if i continue to like it (which I do). But even if it ends up being another stepping stone and not and end in itself, taking my job here is definitely the right move.

It's such an interesting perspective, too, being both on a faculty-track with a home department and research/teaching/service expectations, upon which any possible promotion (or tenure if it doesn't disappear) rests. But it is also interesting because my position is a split position in that I'm also a dean. (Not THE Dean, but one of the assistant deans at this school). I won't go into detail, but, it's a very interesting perspective. I never imagined I'd be a dean anywhere at age 40, and I certainly would never have become one at my old workplace, not because I wasn't qualified to be one, but because the structure was not there. It was entrenched and very much an old-boy network, and as an Asian-American female, and one who by some accounts, looks younger than I am, I was told (by my former mentor, and another retired faculty member there who had mentored that mentor), "This is a very conservative place, you've gotta get out of here". I think that because I had started working there at the old place as a graduate assistant and then done my post-doc there, those who were more senior and in administration there perceived me as this perennial student, as wrong as that is. So in essence, I don't think I was set up to be taken very seriously and would never have been considered potential "dean material".

Anyway, I am now navigating those waters, and learning the culture of the new workplace. I've never been an administrator before, so the dean role is one I'm having to learn and take the cues and skillfully warm into the role and do my job well. I enjoy what I do. There will be times I'm sure when the work is crazy but that's the case anywhere. I'm learning a new culture, essentially, b/c each school has a unique culture. But it's also a federal job, so it's interesting never having been a federal employee. My previous jobs, at the old state university, were state employee jobs. So that is interesting, and it is also interesting because the school I am at, is on a well known military base BUT one that employs many civilians (as well as contractors). So that is another cultural bridge I'm navigating.

I like the DC area. A lot. I grew up familiar with it because my parents lived here before I was born. I used to visit the area a lot when I was little. My parents would come visit their friends who still lived here. Or we would shop for back to school clothing at the great malls around here. Or my parents would come get Asian groceries here at some great ethnic markets, which we certainly didn't have in town growing up. Or we spent a day at the Smithsonian or other national monuments. Or Dad would go do research at the Library of Congress. So I knew the area, generally and so in a way, broadly, the DC area is "home". I've always felt it flying in from elsewhere. I love the West and the North and all places I've visited but as my plane descends into Dulles International Airport, and (in summer), I step off and feel the blast of East Coast humidity, and see the lush green Blue Ridge Mountains shortly before the descent to the runway, I know that signals that I'm "home".

The area has obviously changed tremendously. The population has exploded and is much more dense than ever. Traffic is a bear. It's much more diverse than ever before, which means many more great ethnic foods and great shopping of all kinds. There are new buildings everywhere, which is great,for what it brings, but also in some ways, overdeveloped. But it is still an area that I know, so I think I'm happier here than I would have been moving to Chicago where I don't really know anyone. (Though that is a great city to VISIT--I spent a week there last November for a meeting and loved my time there because I had time to get deep dish pizza w/ colleagues and it was still warm enough to walk down Michigan avenue to the Art Institute, and do a little retail therapy. But I think the DC area is right for me, at least for now. The only drawback is the exorbitant cost of living. My income has almost doubled, but it is largely cancelled out by the corresponding jump in basic cost of living. And that's frustrating. To buy a small condo or townhouse would cost the same as to buy a quite decent upper-middle class single-family home in many cities. So the "American Dream" probably doesn't exist, at least in that way. I'm middle class but unless I marry someone with means, or earn wealth on my own in some way, I'm not sure I can ever buy a home that isn't in an area that significantly lengthens my commute to work!

But they are high class problems, I suppose. Right now, I'm just trying to settle in, as I'm recognizing that settling in to a new area happens on many levels and takes time. I'm still orienting myself in many ways, to work, and while I've reconnected with a few old friends who live here, I don't have the same "social circle" I did before, here. And it's hard to create that at my age, and being single, I suppose. But that may be another story. Still, I'm pretty happy, and hope to stay that way. I really hope that in the long run, this works out and continues to be something good.

OK. That was a news-y update, but I owe it to this little corner of online. It's like standing in the corner of a room facing the wall and whispering into it. Nonetheless, I owed one after leaving of just before tying up loose ends in my former location. Happy New Year--or I guess, more appropriately now, Happy Chinese New Year. 2015 holds promise and I hope only good things. xoxo

5:36 p.m. ::
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