The best thing health-wise about this year was starting thyroid medication. Now I know where the fogginess comes from and how to make it go away! I hope with the new health insurance with the new job I can find a doc who is with it about when to up meds -- I thought my current doctor fell in that category, until she suddenly stopped. And I'd really prefer my prescription to match what I'm taking.
I couldn't talk about this year without mentioning the SNOW. It was so much snow. I would be totally happy to have a dry winter, especially since I'm no longer a fed and no longer have the excitement of OPM watch. December was extra cold, so I'm hoping the rest of the winter is mild.
My creative endeavor of the year was to make a Christmas stocking for Joe to match all the ones my mom made for us. Mine is still somewhere in Albuquerque, but Joe's is up on the fireplace!
Speaking of the fireplace, it's part of our house.
Buying a house was the surprise adult event of the year. We had been planning to wait until this year to buy. We had identified a neighborhood that we liked that had nice but not-too-expensive houses close enough in that we could still access Metro. At the end of April, we decided one Sunday to check out some open houses in the neighborhood, just for fun. I had seen some online that were interesting, and we followed signs to this one, which had not been on my list.
We liked it! It had the sort of quirks we would like but that other people might not like. It's not very trendy and pretty traditional, which we like.
While there was an appealing tax credit hanging in the balance, we decided it was too much and we weren't ready yet. We didn't even have a realtor!
Everytime we didn't have a place to put something, or the annoying dogs next door were barking, or the drug dealer people across the street were doing something sketchy, we would turn to each other and say "Janice Drive!" The house was on our mind as the weeks went by. We went to more open houses in the neighborhood to see if we hadn't just fallen in love with the first thing we saw, and we realized that while other houses were fine, we really preferred this one. It's a colonial, for one thing, in a neighborhood with lots of split levels. We also got a good realtor, with the help of Navy Federal's RealtyPlus program (which was awesome and gave us money back at the end), figuring that we'd need one eventually so we might as well be prepared. We had also gotten preapproved for a loan back in April, mostly because it was easy and we wanted to see whether we could be approved (we were actually approved for an obscene amount given our incomes -- the approved amount would eat up like 2/3 of takehome!).
Three things converged over the next month to push us toward making an offer: 1) Interest rates kept dropping; 2) The sellers dropped the price; and 3) Joey got a grant, which meant we could do a conventional fixed loan instead of FHA or an adjusted loan, both of which made us a little uncomfortable. We actually had gone to the house again for another open house on the day the sellers dropped the price. When we walked in, the listing agent (who happens to now be our next door neighbor) laughed to see us and told us the news. I think she knew all along we would end up there.
So we made an offer and got a counteroffer and then we made a best-and-final offer which the sellers accepted. Then there was the home inspection, which was mostly fine and the sellers fixed some things and rejected a few others. Then there was the appraisal which came in low and threw everything back into negotiations again. We weren't too happy with the sellers' initial solution, but they took our counter and at the end of the day, we were very close to our original offer on the place. So I sent the bank a million pdfs and we closed at the end of July!
We moved in August, and because our rental had furniture we didn't have a lot to bring. So far we've pretty much just bought couches and living room curtains and other little odds and ends (and yard tools). We wanted to re-build our emergency fund to a sufficiently conservative level, but I think in the next year we should be able to buy furniture. For now we've been eating at a card table in canvas chairs! But we love it here. It's quiet, there's a fireplace, there's room to put all our crap, and it's free of annoyances (like, for example, a kitchen floor with no insulation under it).
Our furniture buying will be somewhat deferred by the purchase of a new car, brought on by my getting a new job. The job thing is a really big shift and a surprise to a lot of people, but it's a decision I'm very happy about.
Work was going fine. At the beginning of the year, feeling physically and mentally better, I really started mapping out some research and moving things forward. I got papers out the door and back out the door again when they got rejected or needed revising. Teaching went better than ever. I was pushing some new projects forward. But I came to realize that there were some obstacles about academia and some specific to the University that made my job a poor fit.
Really it was thinking about why I loved the teaching and mentoring part of my job that motivated me to look for something else. Also hearing about Joe's experience with his job gave me insight into another kind of work that I thought might fit me (even as it may not fit him!). I am happiest when I have a useful role, when I can give advice and use what I know for a specific purpose, when I can interact with other people, when there are things that have to be done by a certain time, and when I can pursue a broad variety of interests. Teaching the core course in my field was exhausting every year because it was every day for 6 weeks, but it was also exhilarating and productive. Papers had to be graded and turned back, lectures had to be posted, students came by to chat and I could help them improve their final papers. And the topics spanned the whole field!
The rest of the year was not so much like that. Academia rewards reputation building around a carefully-focused line of inquiry. To get tenure, people have to see that you're built a reputation for being "the person who does" something label-able. I had chosen health-related stigma as my area of interest, but I found that sometimes made it hard to incorporate the other things that interested me, and even if I stuck to just that, I often felt pushed to pick a health condition. Even if that was mental health, I felt pushed to focus on PTSD or depression. It kind of sapped my interest. I'm also not at all interested in reputation building -- I'd rather my work affect something than reflect well on me.
The University also does not quite have a critical mass of social scientists, or even people who are really public health oriented. My collaborators were great, but they were also scattered and working on their own stuff. I've always learned a lot by observing others, and it was hard to do that in this setting. For me, mentorship has to be integral what I'm already doing; it can't be some occasional advisory meetings with people. So I felt socially and intellectually isolated a lot of the time. It was too easy for me to sit in my office and putter along aimlessly.
So, sometime this fall, after the class stuff had settled and I had gone through another round with my papers (two of which have now been accepted!), I started to poke around. Based on Joe's experience, I knew that the non-academic contract research world would probably be a good fit for me. You have to be versatile about the topic of research, you work in teams with people on lots of different studies, there are deadlines, and if all goes well the work has an immediate impact on policy or practice. Soon after I started searching, I got an interview with my new employer.
I made the voyage to Fairfax. I took the Metro from almost the end of the Red Line to the end of the Orange Line. It was far! I liked everyone I met, PhD social science and survey research nerds who spoke my language. A lot of their surveys focused on military health, which made it a sensible transition. I got the job offer that night, and ultimately, I decided it was going to be too stressful to make the commute every day and I should hold out for something closer to home.
A few days later they returned with an offer for me to work from home or from one of the Maryland offices twice a week, and some other sweeteners. I volleyed back with a little salary push and a start date after the holidays, so I could use my vacation days from the University. They said yes, so I said yes!
It took about a week to get the offer letter due to the Thanksgiving holidays. It was kind of nervewracking. I had to continue to interact with everyone at work as if I were staying forever. It was only a day or two of actually being at work while waiting, but it felt like decades! Once the offer letter came in, I told my boss, and she told the department chair, and then I had to tell my research associate (who fortunately has many talents and will likely find a job before her last day in February). It was sad and difficult at times, but I also know it was the right decision.
I think Joey had a hard time understanding what was happening, since he had wanted an academic job but ended up in a non-academic job. I got an academic job and ultimately rejected it! I think some folks also have a hard time understanding how I could leave a solid tenure-track job that also comes with many federal benefits, a hard salary, startup funding, etc. I think it's a great job, which is why I originally took it! But I think that fit is extremely important. I learned a lot about the skills that I do not possess! I cannot structure an amorphous blob of free time (and it's probably only because I got a job that I finished my dissertation -- it created a deadline). I cannot motivate myself. I cannot focus on a single research topic. I don't have enough experience doing research. I need direct mentorship. And I don't feel bad about any of these things. I'm hoping that this job will give me a lot of experience with way more studies than I could produce on my own and that maybe some of these deficits will be remedied. But I think that others might just be about the way I work and the way I don't work, and it's way better to recognize my skills and deficits and look for a job that matches instead of beating my head against the wall in a job that doesn't.
So that's where I am on the first of January, two days away from orientation at the new job. Life is good, and the new year promises a few more adult events that I think will make it even better.
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