I've made the decision not to actually go on the field trip I'm organising, but to support from here. I'm mad at myself and at the world about this - but I'm also still having what I think are laryngeal spasms, as in, sometimes when I'm speaking (or I move somewhere causing a marked change in temperature or change my posture) my upper throat goes into spasm and I can't breath in or get words/air out. It lasts less than a second, can happen multiple times a minute or once then nothing for an hour, it's pretty darn scary, and all my GP said about it was "caused by anxiety and stress" (he didn't confirm the mechanism, just said my lungs and heart sound fine and there's no sign of a throat infection). I will also tell you, I read the packet insert on the more heavy duty anti-anxiety stuff he told me to try, and pretty much had a panic attack as it commonly causes suppressed breathing. I am a WIMP when I'm under pressure.
There's no denying that I AM very stressed. Everyone at my level in NorthernUni is very stressed. People are already looking grey and old and end of semester ish when we're just at the end of fresher's week, and there've been multiple one day sickness absences. Things are not good - and I'm a stress canary.
If I was the sort of hearty type of person that many field scientists present themselves as, I'd be all "oh going in the field will really help, time to go for a big run with my dog and instagram some alcohol in a cool location and take the students around a few mountains and This Is What I Live For!" But I'm not, I don't and it isn't. Field trips involve PEOPLE, all the time, minimal solo recharge time (and what there is is nearly all stolen from sleep) and RESPONSIBILITY, and I'm not in the right physical shape to find charging (or even wandering) around the landscape easy - that takes a lot of attention, and I'm extra self-conscious about being bad at it whilst being fat (sure, being thinner would no doubt help, but it wouldn't FIX many of the issues, it'd just make me feel less judged whilst I continued to trip, drop things, be uncoordinated and mess up, and help me do it for longer...). I'm frustrated with myself that I couldn't keep pushing through until next Friday, when we'd get back, as I then had a long weekend for recovery lined up, but realistically, it's even MORE embarrassing and inconvenient for everyone else and disruptive of the field trip if I have a longer spasm or a closed-spaced run of them and pass out or have to go to the emergency room, or just have to say "I can't do today" and hide in my room for a day at the field study centre, or do the spontaneous tears thing I'm terribly prone to this last couple of days in front of students/colleagues.
So I think it's the right decision, it's just a decision I didn't want to have to make and am mad with myself that I had to, even though I can't really point to anything specific I did short term to be mad at myself FOR (OK, I've been working long days and being stressed, but that's just the job at this time in the academic year). Long term, being a fat super-anxious medicated female person who struggles to prioritise their own needs over delivering the things their job demands of them is not a good thing, but dammit I'm doing what I can here... I do feel guilty about being stressed enough that the decision
is necessary, but the stress is partly out of my control and partly the flip side of the same level of care and attention to detail that makes me good at many parts of my job. Health is NOT guaranteed whatever you do. I could be half
my current weight and spend hours every day at the gym and eat a
"perfect, clean" diet and have immaculate sleep hygiene and a perfect
house, and still have to miss something due to laryngeal spasms or
whatever - or have injured myself at said exercise regime.* Sure, I could improve the odds of these things not happening - and I know how, and I have some idea what goes wrong, and that's why I'm in counselling, to try and turn knowing into actually doing, and I don't see what MORE I can do when I still need to earn a living etc. - I'd be differently stressed, but just as stressed, if I took a lower-paid, lower-demand job, because a) money and b) boredom (my body is not designed for running, but my brain sprints around like a healthy young spaniel, and needs at least that much exercise and stimulus or it does the equivalent of chewing up the furniture...).
A few years ago someone left a comment saying they were quitting reading the blog because it they didn't want to watch a slow-motion self-destruct going on. That didn't exactly bother me at the time (there were at the time far too many "if you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen" and "if you struggle it's because you aren't good enough" type writers in the academic blogosphere and less "not terribly successful and this is my reality" bloggers, in my view), but it sticks in my mind. I mostly write when I want to write, to tell someone outside my head something, to share a story, to verbalise an issue, to seek companionship/advice. A lot of bloggers seem to want to tell other people how to do stuff, and so can come across as "I know how to do this, here's how" - not in a bad sense! I'm not criticising! Others write more about their actual subject, or share neat quotes - I don't know why that doesn't feel like the right thing for this blog, but it doesn't. I DO read interesting stuff and learn new things and have Opinions about my subject, but they don't come out here.
I don't think I'm THAT self-destructive. I know I'm not a Pollyanna type person, I'm grumpy, I downplay successes and am self-depracating about success and yet also have a deepseated greed for praise and plaudits. But I'm still here, and although I may not have grants I'm still doing my job, and doing it adequately - publishing papers, teaching students, developing curricula, being a colleague, you know? The basics. Not the star stuff, not even bringing in much money, but I'm in the pelaton, I can be a water carrier, I'm useful - and I get to tell my story, my way.
So I'm disappointed and upset to not be going on the field trip, but I'm heartened by the excellence of the three most affected colleagues who have all 100% sincerely said "your health comes first, we will be fine" and also insisted that it's more important to them that I remain well enough to run the day to day stuff through the rest of the semester. One even said "the module cannot run without you, but the field trip can" which, well, I have REAMS of instructions and notes and so on already prepared and a 55 page instructor handbook etc., so yes, it can. I designed it to be run without relying on any one person. I should be proud of that, I guess?
*honestly, going through student files and seeing how much medical work many of these young sporty types have already had - three major knee rebuilds alone in our intake of less than 200! All from sport injuries! - makes me even more aware of how biased the "fat people cost the NHS money" attitude is - if we're going to ban stuff from coverage, I'd start with mountain bike, ski-ing, boxing and rugby injuries, not fatties - talk about self-inflicted!
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It certainly sounds like staying home is the right choice.
ReplyDeleteSomewhat related: I have so many students recently with anxiety and related problems who would probably be greatly cheered by knowing there are people with similar issues who are at least in the peloton, that they could manage to be domestiques if not stars. They're young, they're still trying to learn coping strategies. Maybe considering your situation from the POV of Younger Self could help?
Sounds like a sensible solution to me, too: you're playing to your strengths (and conserving your strength for those) and allowing your colleagues to play to theirs. It sounds like they appreciate all the organizing, curriculum-creating, and logistics-wrangling that you do, too.
ReplyDeleteI like the idea of a "stress canary." When I worked with a family therapist for a while (mostly individually, because my father was one of those people who thought therapy was a really good idea for other people, especially other people who had suddenly, inexplicably developed desires that did not dovetail perfectly with his own), the therapist suggested, in trying to explain (once again, to my father, since she didn't really think the whole thing needed anywhere near as much explanation at that point as he seemed to desire) why I was inclined to temper tantrums somewhat beyond the usual age for such things, that I may have served as a sort of "emotional barometer" for a family that was stressed over my mother's illness (the seriousness of which either my father or both she and my father -- I'll never be sure which -- was/were unwillingness to acknowledge until she actually died, at which point I started coping better, or at least differently). That made sense to me.
And yes, it seems like most of the injuries I hear of, especially but not only in younger people, are sports-related (and more than occasionally overuse-related, which says something about the inappropriate intensity of many youth sports. Of course, kids' very organized lives means that fewer seem to break arms and legs falling out of places they perhaps shouldn't have been in the first place, or playing Evel Knievel on their bikes, or whatever. . . .). And don't even get me started on the quite-wealthy couple at church who were going on and on about the excellent "free" sports-medicine care their athlete offspring was receiving at a state university, never considering that other students with no time to use the athletics facilities or go to a game were paying for said care through the mandatory-for-all athletics fee (this, of course, is one of many inequities that a single-payer system would help to alleviate, and we may, like the rest of the civilized world, get there eventually, but it's going to take a while. . .
I definitely sound as if you made the decision you needed to make. And it's great that your colleagues sincerely value your work and your health for doing that work. I hope you can focus on that value as well.
ReplyDeleteA field trip like that would be VERY hard for me because of all the peopling.
I hope you get to curl up with a book for a couple of hours (or more) this week.