Day 119 My corner of the living room has been my home office
Since March 13th, I’ve been working primarily from home. Other than not having a separate office from my living room, my daily responsibilities haven’t changed much. In the timeline of my career (3 months into being a professor), this is a convenient time to sequester into my home to write papers and proposals (I didn’t end up doing that though! Ha!). So what have I been up to? The changes or consequences for me have been primarily in my routine, short-term career, fitness, and psyche.
Routine
I used to wake up at 7 AM, bike into the office by 8, work in my office with random people popping in, walk around campus to get food or make meetings, and bike home at 5 pm. Now, I wake up around 6 AM and immediately check my email, brew a cup of coffee, produce my most intensive writing from 7 AM until lunch, take my afternoon Zoom meetings, then turn my computer speakers off at 4 PM (unless it’s Wednesday because my students are only free in the evenings).
I’m not socializing during the workday or meeting new people at work anymore. I miss the random bump-ins in the hallways, the quick tips that would generally give me more focus and direction in my day, the spontaneous breaks to prevent burnout. I gain energy from people so I think my general mood has degraded as I’m not smiling as much. I’m also not exercising as much as I’m not commuting on my bike every day.
For Thanksgiving this year, I hate making turkey but we made the most moist turkey I have ever eaten. We made a wet brine and soaked the turkey overnight. The sides are mostly all homemade: maple-roasted brussels with bacon, dripping-roasted potatoes, tropical cranberry sauce, gravy, and dinner rolls! The only thing that was store-bought was the stuffing. Cranberry recipe from the lovely Eve Vavagiakis and extensive help/rolls from your boy, Kyle D Murray.
I am cooking and watching a lot more TV. I’ve made some of the best-homecooked meals of my life. Cooking meals at home are an event now. The hole that used to be going to restaurants/bars is filled with extravagant meals. Speaking of bars, I’ve definitely been drinking way more to numb the absence of evening plans. I’ve also discovered that I cope with the minimal variety in social novelty by watching bad reality TV shows, like the Bachelorette, Are You the One?, and Survivor (arguably good). Oh, and I have doubled down on podcasts to replace music so I have human voices in my ear all day.
Short-Term Career
The University of Hawai’i was kind enough to extend my tenure clock by a year so I feel like I can use this year to not pursue tenure two times as much as I already was. Kinda kidding. I’m still of the mentality that I shouldn’t dictate my job by tenure criteria and I shouldn’t wait to do jobs I care about until after tenure. So here’s what I did this year with my “extra” time:
I fulfilled parts of my NASA Artemis grant’s deliverables but progress is slow because
I really thought the infrastructure to complete parts of the project were there but they were not,
buying materials in a university environment is hard (even harder with COVID and being on an island), and
my students were falling apart. This kills me the most. Everyone is struggling right now and I hate to be the boss that pressures their students to get their boss’ project while sacrificing their mental health. I spent a lot of time this year therapizing, supporting as many students financially as I could, and gauging which students could actually handle their workload.
I wrote the first revision of my spacecraft design textbook. Albeit, the first revision is going to be mediocre, won’t include expert blindspots, and is undergoing formatting issues. My mentors have told me not to do this until after tenure but you know what, this textbook would be great for the community and great to use for the students I’m teaching next semester. I may even get an ISBN number on this textbook and count it on my tenure dossier.
The first thing you see when you open my online textbook. That mission patch signifies the Artemis CubeSat Kit project with a lot of cool symbolism.
I’m excited to teach spacecraft design next semester so I’ve been working on course pedagogy. Creating new courses always take more time than inheriting a course but I love that this course is not only mine, but it will be a part of the new aerospace engineering program I’m starting to create with other engineering colleagues. Teaching is part of my job obligations so this counts towards tenure.
Another thing you should not do: develop the Aerospace Engineering Program, which I also did because I want to create infrastructure to train students that can do my research. I want to create a pipeline and train a workforce that can design, build, fly satellites, especially to bring more technical jobs and build an aerospace hub in Hawai’i.
Finally, I leaned into diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) activities. I think the restlessness of COVID has inspired a lot of people to do the same. All this angst, right?
Within my immediate community of the Hawai’i Space Flight Laboratory, I’ve led discussions about sexism in the academy, navigating the academy as a first-generation Native Hawaiian student, and racism.
A group of graduate students and progressive early-career faculty in Earth Sciences invited me to weekly discussions. Since then, we’ve conducted a survey to renovate our building’s binary gendered restrooms into all-gender restrooms, brought in speakers for our seminar series that focus on DEI issues, and promoted discussions about black, indigenous, people of color (BIPOC) scientists. We are also forming the foundations of a formal standing DEI committee. We call ourselves Huliāmahi (Huliāmahi reminds us of the importance of connecting to the land and sea by forming intimate relationships with places, whether that is through growing food for ourselves and our families, or by visiting wahi pana (storied places) throughout our lifetimes).
I’ve started writing a DEI grant, specifically the NSF Catalyst grant, to investigate and articulate what the systemic issues are in gender equity at the faculty level at UH. This investigative process reminds me of journalism and you bet I’m going to publish the preliminary findings once we have a solid story.
Fitness
Pedometer steps tracked over the months of 2020. I got my bike mid-February and I stopped going to work mid-April. My lowest point correlates with the minimum amount of steps I’ve taken. I’ve steady-stated to maybe half of the activity pre-COVID.
I used to hike long distances and climb at Mokuleia every weekend. I used to walk or bike as my commute. Once the lockdown started, I was too scared to do any of these activities because I didn’t know the state of the disease. I was spending every weekend at home, cooped up and on screens, and short yoga sessions (with Breathe and Flow). Little did I know how important exercise and time outdoors affected my mental health.
By mid-April, I was spontaneously crying and feeling so trapped inside my apartment. What was so unlike me was to accept that I was locked in my apartment and to sulk around. I’m usually the person to aggressively try all the possible solutions to fix the problem with all the urgency in the world. I didn’t feel like myself. April 22nd, I registered for TalkSpace to find a therapist. I found my lovely therapist Faith and my insurance covered the majority of the hour-long sessions on a weekly basis. This action was a GREAT first step and if there’s anything I can take away from Faith, it’s this: “anyone who needs counseling should feel justified in talking to a counselor. You’re not wasting my time.” <3
Paddling with Dr. Alison Nugent, one of my lady adventure buddies
Within a month, I felt enough like myself to buy a paddleboard and venture out into the disease-ridden world. Buying a paddleboard was such a game-changer for me. The state government of Hawai’i closed restaurants, parks, beaches, but never closed access to the ocean. Having a sport on the water was not only new for me but offered stability in getting outside. I started going to paddling spots with lady buddies of mine, which let me socialize one-on-one (my preference), proved to me that the outside world is still open to me, and reserved time for me to Zen out with nature again.
During this time, I also got a FitBit Charge 4 just to try it out and have a little robot buddy motivate me to get up. It actually helped! I’ve exercised five days a week and gotten my heart rate up for 150 “Zone” minutes most weeks. I started running!, which is quite unusual for me. But also, going from minimal low impact knee exercises to high impact runs every other day created joint damage. This last month, I’ve had to stop running and walk longer distances to physical-therapize my knee. Last thing about fitness watches, I have been tracking my sleep cycles and I am a STELLAR sleeper. I average 8 hours and 51 minutes of sleep every night, which means I’m spending at least 9 hours in bed sometimes 10 and shows I’m trying to hibernate this COVID away.
There was a wildfire in September 2020 in Manoa valley. A good analogy for this year and so close to my home :(. The internet at my house went out because of this fire’s damage. Smelled like smoke at my house and I could see the fire front from my house as the helicopters dumped water on the active fire.
Psyche: My Emotional and Mental State
Everyone has been struggling. My students were struggling. You already know I was struggling as I led on in the fitness section. Right, so I experienced acute despair in mid-April, which mostly patched up with fitness and buying a paddleboard. Something much more pernicious and persistent has stuck around.
My self-esteem and motivation have been chipping away steadily with no one to talk me out of the nasty things that I say to myself. I felt like when I started my job earlier this year, I had a chip on my shoulder to prove I could make it as a professor. Now, I don’t feel like I know anything anymore; I’m uncertain about everything. “I used to know things.” I don’t have an anchor for anything anymore; a colleague of mine said it real well that “we’re all just floating'“.
Another good analogy of how I feel:
Isn't that hummingbird feeder just gorgeous?
It's the most beautiful reminder of how much of a dumbie I can be. Did you know there are no hummingbirds in Hawai'i and they are banned from being introduced here? I just keep reminding myself how dumb I am.
This situation has been incredibly bad for my self-esteem. I don’t think I’m good at anything because there’s no reference for me to compare my skills. I feel like there's not a point to strive for things and I'm not the one to do it. My inner voice reminds me that I'm no good by conjuring up cringe-worthy memories to say “why try?” and “do you even want that?”. This is a low point for my career ambition because I feel like I'm supposed to be an expert at something. My peer asked me if it'd be cool to launch something to the moon two weeks ago and I paused to reply: “I don’t know. I don't really feel anything special towards that. I'm not feeling a spark toward any work thing.” It's not a sharp feeling; it's a general malaise. It doesn't get in the way of me just chugging along and existing until maybe I feel something again.
I have imposter syndrome as many people do. I don’t want to make any permanent decision in this state so I will let external references let me know when I’m not welcome anymore. I need to resist the urge to act on the belief that others deserve this more than me and just keep doing the things I believe I can do to help my community. There’s not a nice conclusion to this part of the story but maybe people who see me as functional through COVID and take solace in knowing that I feel far from functional. If you think I’m functional and feel the same way I feel, maybe you’re doing alright too and you need me to tell you I think you’re doing alright.
Hey. Happy New Year’s and here’s hoping to getting past this together.