Because I'm bored, that's why

You may have noticed an increased frequency in my postings lately, and perhaps the new layout. Or maybe you've noticed that all my posts now have labels. Wanna know why?

I'm bored.

But this is the good kind of bored. Oh, you didn't know there are multiple kinds of boredom? Well, there are. Because I said so.

This kind of boredom is the kind when my ADHD brain is working overtime and I have 8 million thoughts flying through my head, but they are flying through my head slow enough that I can actually process a few of them, but there are still 7,999,997 that I can't process and those keep me from doing anything that is actually productive, but I have still have enough hyperfocus to write about the few thoughts that I can process and it just seems like I'm creative and insightful and have a lot to say.

See how rambly that sentence was? That's my ADHD brain, but multiple it by 8 million. It's understandable if you read slowly, but it really could use some punctuation to make it coherent. You know, the kind of punctuation made by pharmaceutical companies that allows me to follow the "rules of grammar."

But anyway...

I've also had a lot more to write about lately. I haven't done anything that is more housewifey than before, but I have noticed when I've done these housewifey things and made a note to write about them. That's part of the reason I started this blog in the first place - to encourage personal reflection on my new life in my new town.


Charlotte is a cool city, and I like exploring all that the area has to offer. I like having visitors because I have an excuse to visit different places in Charlotte that I would probably never go to on my own, and each time I learn more about this awesome place that I call home. And selfishly, I like to show off how cool Charlotte is so that my family and friends understand why I like Charlotte so much, and why I'm not eager to return to the Midwest to be closer to them.

You know, besides the obvious that it's the end of October and I'm still wearing shorts. And we've got 70s and 80s in the forecast for the next week.

My new role in life, however, is proving to be more challenging. For one, I am a housewife but I don't have children, and I find it hard to relate to housewives with kids. It's not that I don't empathize with those housewives, it's just not my experience. My day doesn't revolve around my children's schedules or meeting their needs or stimulating their minds. I have to fill my day with my own stuff, and that's not something that most housewives relate to. I often hear from friends that they're jealous of my life, and how much they would love to have an entire day to themselves, hanging out at the country club. I understand that. But my life as a housewife has been day after day to myself, with little interaction with others who share similar interests or experiences. It's not that I haven't met people, but the women who are home during the day generally have kids, and the women who don't have kids aren't home during the day, or they're single and looking for Mr. Right (Now). Or they have grandchildren my age (Hi friends from water aerobics!). There aren't a lot of social groups for trailing spouses without kids in their early 30s.

I sometimes wonder if I'm experiencing more of an empty-nest syndrome than a childless housewife dilemma. My life has revolved around kids for the last ten years. Granted, they weren't my kids, but I was still largely responsible for their schedules, meeting their needs, and stimulating their minds. And in turn, they dictated my schedule and stimulated my mind. I don't have them around me anymore, and I miss them terribly. I keep up with many of my former students on Facebook, but it's definitely not the same as working with them every day.

That's why things like volunteering for college fairs and issues like bullying prompt me to post. I can draw upon my personal and professional experience to hopefully write something informative or provocative that hopefully entertains my readers as much as blogging about these topics intellectually stimulates me. Blogging has provided me a forum and an outlet to connect with others and share some of my thoughts and sometimes my expertise. I know it's not modest to say, but I was a pretty darn good social worker/higher educator, and I really enjoy sharing what I know with others. Yes, I am aware that higher educator is not a real term, but higher education professional or student affairs professional is lame. We need to come up with a better name for our profession, fellow higher educators.

Yes, I know, I could get all this if I had a job. I'm trying!

Until that time comes, I have a blog to keep me entertained and keep me intellectually stimulated. I may be a housewife in Charlotte, but I'm still ME - an intelligent social worker/higher educator who is called to help at-risk students get their college degrees, who likes to cook but hates to clean, who sometimes struggles with ADHD, who misses her family and friends, but loves her husband and the life we've created very much.
And I hope this post is proof that there is a good kind of boredom - the kind when there's nothing much going on in my life, so I actually have the opportunity to just think and write and get to know myself a little better and share these things with you.

Yeah, sometimes being a real housewife isn't so bad.

Public service announcement

A few weeks ago, I represented my alma mater at a college fair. I just started doing it this year, and have only done a couple of fairs, but I really enjoy talking to students and parents about what my university has to offer, but also going through the college application process in general.

The phrase I heard most often during this college fair, aside from "Does your school offer [major - usually nursing or engineering]?" was "My son/daughter isn't going out of state."

Now, North Carolina is a big state. It's not Texas or California, but it's a good 7 hours East to West. The school at the table next to me was from the Western part of Carolina, and he said it was a four hour drive from the college fair location. However, one of the Virginia schools was only two hour drive from the college fair location. My point is that for the parents who want to keep the kids close to home, sometimes out of state is closer.

I know that distance from home wasn't the only reason I heard that parents were hoping to keep their kids in-state. No, these parents limited their kids' college choice based on two magical words: in-state tuition.

North Carolina is lucky to have many state school options, but it also has some amazing private schools as well (e.g., Duke, Wake Forest). And many of these schools have significant resources to provide scholarships and grants that make even expensive, private colleges affordable.

Parents, before you limit your children's college choices based on what you think you know about college and college costs, educate yourself. There are a lot of great resources available, but for the purposes of financial aid, I recommend FAFSA4caster. It provides an early estimate of federal financial aid eligibility and simplifies the actual application for federal aid. Most importantly, it gives you a tangible number so that you can have a real, informed discussion with your child, the admissions representative, and the financial aid office.

ADHD, medication, and motherhood

This may be one of the most personal posts I'll ever write on this blog. I've been debating about whether to write it, but I feel like it's an issue that needs to be shared, and this is a forum to do it... even though my sisters will probably be the only ones who read it :) Still, it's an important issue that needs to be discussed, particularly by women.

I have ADHD. Legitimately. I was diagnosed by a psychiatrist and everything. I was prescribed medication, which was the reason I sought an official diagnosis in the first place. I really felt like I needed the medication in order to complete my doctoral studies, and I really wanted to do this, but the one hour I was in the psychiatrist's office brought up a host of issues I never considered before.

I was diagnosed with ADHD: Combined, which is both hyperactive-impulsive and inattentive. It's the jackpot of ADHD.

Hyperactivity in adults isn't necessarily the same as in children. For me, it's a need to be busy all the time, as well as a general feeling of agitation. Other people notice that I shake my foot constantly, and it gets worse the more agitated I get (like when I'm sitting in meetings for too long). As the incomparable Allie Brosh said in her blog, Hyperbole and a Half, "Hyperactivity is like being forcibly injected with way too much crack-cocaine and then being tied down to a table and made to watch a documentary about sea snails." That pretty much sums up how I feel when I'm sitting in a meeting or in class. I feel like I'm going to explode, and yet I can't go anywhere. And so I start shaking my foot, chomping on my gum, violently biting my nails, or pulling on my hair and pretty much distracting everyone around me. Or, if the people around me are lucky, the inattentiveness kicks in and I space out.

Inattentiveness is probably what you're thinking of - the inability to pay attention, focus, and listen. If something is not interesting to me, it's difficult to learn or stay focused enough to complete a task. The flip side, however, is hyperfocus in which ADHDers can focus intently on something that does interest them. Hyperfocus is a very real part of my life, and I can become fixated, almost obsessive, over projects and topics that interest me. This has served me well in my doctoral studies because I can immerse myself in topics I find interesting. Hyperfocus often appears to be intense concentration, which is awesome when tasks need to be accomplished. However, the flip side of hyperfocus is the inattentiveness and for me, once the hyperfocus is broken, the inattentiveness takes over completely. Simple things like checking email has completely destroyed my productivity because I either become overwhelmingly distracted or I become hyperfocused on a topic in the email.

I remember trying to explain this to a professor, who was upset that I didn't respond to her email for a few days. I was experiencing some amazing hyperfocus and was cranking through my work, so I wouldn't allow myself to check email for fear of breaking this amazing productivity. I was feeling proud of myself for getting so much work done, while my professor didn't understand why I just couldn't respond to her email. I tried to explain "being in the zone" and not wanting to disrupt this productivity with other tasks. Instead of listening to what I was saying, she tried to make me promise to check my email every day which I couldn't do.

Situations like these make me angry. I tried to explain hyperfocus to this professor, and tried to explain why I couldn't always behave the way she wanted me to, but I couldn't seem to get through to her. And to be fair, it wasn't just her - it's hard to explain what it's like to live with ADHD to someone who doesn't have it. (I think a lot of this has to do with misperceptions about ADHD that focus on energetic kids - not ADHD: Hyperactive type, but kids who eat too much sugar and are forced to sit still and not talk in a classroom. But that's another rant I'll touch on sometime.) But it's incredibly frustrating to have to explain to someone why I need to do things in a certain way and for that person to reject my reasons or worse, make me feel incompetent or stupid for not being able to do things the way she prefers.

I really wanted to do well in school and I tried to do things the way that others expected me to, which is what led me to seek medication. I knew the benefits from my time as a school social worker, and I knew that I would recommend it to myself if I was my social worker, so I made the appointment and prepared for the headaches associated with obtaining ADHD medications as an adult (it's a HUGE pain, brought on college students snorting Adderrall and the fact that it's a Schedule II narcotic, in addition to the idiots who don't believe adults can have ADHD). What I hadn't considered, however, was that my psychiatrist wouldn't prescribe me my medication without some assurance that I would use birth control.

There aren't any conclusive results with respect to ADHD medications and birth defects, but research on amphetamines and research on rats has shown relationships between ADHD medications and low birth weights, impaired bone development, mental impairments, and other birth defects. So generally speaking, medication = bad for pregnancy.

Therefore, when the psychiatrist told me that I had to use birth control, I honestly panicked. One, I'm Catholic and have been taught to believe that contraceptives are bad. However, I personally believe that's a bunch of hooey created by a group of celibate men who don't truly understand or appreciate sex, women, family life, or economic stress because they don't experience it at all or experience it in the same way. Regardless, I told the psychiatrist that I am Catholic, and she essentially belittled the Catholic beliefs about contraception, which I found offensive - not as a Catholic, but as a social worker who was trained NOT to impose my beliefs on my clients. I knew in that moment that even if I did take the medication, I was not going back to that particular psychiatrist.

Catholicism aside, taking medication for my ADHD meant that I had to give up, or at least postpone, having children. That fact smacked me in the face that day, and brought my priorities to the forefront. I felt like I was being asked to choose - career or motherhood.

I left the office that day with my prescription and had to do quite a bit of thinking. The first thing I did was math - if I took the medication, just to help me get through school, it would only be for a short time, and I could still have kids if I wanted. I'd be 33 or 34 and while that was older, it wasn't unheard of for having children. But then I thought some more, and I realized that if I earned my doctorate and became a faculty member, I'd probably need to continue taking medication in order to complete my research. Suddenly I was 40, and I was childless.

On the other hand, I never really saw myself as a mom. Children seemed like a lot of work, and I didn't think I was responsible enough to have them. Plus, I had a great life and a great relationship with my husband that I was afraid would change for the worse if I had children. I also watched as friends became parents and suddenly had nothing to talk about but their children and potty training, and I feared that I would become "Mommy" and cease to be "Me." I didn't want to lose Me - I liked Me.

When I first got married, I thought we'd have kids but my husband wasn't ready. In the meantime, my career and my career ambitions developed and suddenly kids didn't really have a place in my future plans. However, the idea of not having the choice to have children made me re-evaluate my priorities. Did I really not want to have kids? Would a PhD and a PhD career be enough?

I'm reaching the point where my inattention is taking over from my hyperfocus - or maybe because Harry Potter is on tv again and my hyperfocus is shifting and I have uber hyperfocus when it comes to Harry Potter - but I'm starting to lose my way on this post. I'll pick this up another time, but leave you with these final thoughts:

I'm thankful for the women who fought against discrimination in order to allow me to have this choice. I'm lucky to have all these options available to me - to have or not have a career, to have or not have kids, to take or not take birth control. But that doesn't make it easier.

Many people don't understand how truly difficult this decision is or even recognize why it is difficult. When I broached this issue with a few of the faculty, I was told that if I couldn't do school without medication and I decided not to take medication, perhaps I didn't belong in academia. When I've requested accommodations, I've been made to feel stupid. When I've talked to female faculty about the decision to have children, they often point out the other women who have had children and still been successful in the program. Of course, those women didn't have ADHD.

My experience with ADHD, and my experience of discrimination in academia as a result of my struggles with ADHD may explain why I loved my little hockey boy, and that job, so much. Maybe it's because I felt like I could help him in a way I couldn't help myself, but I think moreso it's because I wish I had someone like me in my corner as I navigated through each challenge.

Or maybe - Haha, pincers. Oh Harry...

Hockey mom

I was a "hockey mom" before it had a political connotation. I'm not actually a mom of a hockey player, but I was once told by a college hockey player that I was like his mom so I think that's close enough.

The comment that I was like his mom wasn't because I cooked for him or did his laundry or nagged him relentlessly. Well, maybe it was because I nagged him relentlessly. I prefer to think it's because I cheered for him, cared for him, and generally supported him while he adjusted to college. I was president of his fan club, so to speak, and I believed in him when a lot of other people had given up on him. I referred to him as "my little hockey boy" even though he was anything but little. It was an affectionate term for how I felt about him. I thought of him as my little boy, my pseudo-son who I was responsible for taking care of throughout his college career.

I met my little hockey boy when I was assigned to work with him on his academics. He came to college seriously underprepared academically and had significant learning disabilities, both of which went undetected during his recruitment. Actually, his parents were very forthright that he had learning disabilities, but his transcripts and test scores didn't reveal the extent of these challenges. A month into the first semester of his freshman year of college, he was re-tested and diagnosed, and I was hired to work with him one-on-one.

I was tough on him. I pushed him to take school seriously and made him stay longer than he was required to in order to complete his work. He rewrote more papers than he probably needed to because I knew he could do better. I encouraged him to register for classes that he found interesting, even if they were going to challenge him academically more than he'd even been challenged in his school career. I made him a student-athlete.

As much as I pushed him, he also knew how much I cared for him. One of my favorite little hockey boy moments came after I had been working with him for over a year, and happened on a day when he needed both a butt kicking and a hug. I was on my way home from Milwaukee and got caught in a snowstorm. The interstate closed and I had to take an alternate route home so I was late to study table. I had a partner who supervised the other hockey guys so this normally wouldn't be a problem, but on this particular night, my little hockey boy didn't want to be there. He threatened to leave, saying that he didn't need to be there if I wasn't there. My partner and I exchanged text messages and I assured her I would be there soon, and she convinced him to stay. By the time I arrived, he was sulking and refusing to do any work.

I took him aside and said something like, "What is going on with you? You're acting like a butthead and that's not like you at all. You've never talked back to me or [my partner], you've never refused to do your work, and you've never been disrespectful to me, but this week you've done all of those things and that's not like you. What is going on with you?"

And my 6'2", 215-lb. hockey player, who was known to be an enforcer on the ice, teared up.

He shared how frustrated he was with his lack of playing time- he had essentially been benched- and how he felt like if he wasn't playing hockey, he didn't know if he should stay at this school because it was so academically difficult. I told him that I would support him in whatever he decided to do, but as far as I was concerned, he wasn't going to leave the university because he couldn't hack it academically. I also reminded him that he could talk to me whenever he needed to and that I would always be there for him.

Was I professional in how I handled the situation? Not really. I did confront the behavior, which is absolutely the right thing to do professionally, but it's also the way I would hope a parent would address a child who was acting out of character. Should I have said he was acting like a butthead? No. Would a mom tell her son he was acting like a butthead? Eh, maybe. The thing is, I never, EVER talked to him like that and so the fact that I called it like I saw it completely grabbed his attention. It's also the way I knew he had to be addressed - directly and without any bullshit - and this was because he'd always been talked to this way as hockey player. Hockey coaches don't do subtle.

Because I was not just a tutor but also a pseudo hockey mom, I grew very attached to these boys. I wanted what was best for them, and I wanted them to be successful in school, in hockey, and in life. I was just as happy when they did well in school as when they won games, but I was happier when I saw them make good decisions and act maturely, and I was happiest when I saw them achieve their goals that I knew they worked so hard to accomplish.

Last May, my little hockey boy graduated. This was a major accomplishment for him, and I couldn't be prouder of him. Because he persevered through school, he was able to keep playing hockey. And because he was able to develop as a player and a person over four years, he not only graduated in May, but also signed a professional contract to play hockey. This was his dream, and even though it was a difficult journey, he accomplished his goal.

I think back to all that was happening with my little hockey boy on that day when I confronted him, and I feel like it was a turning point for him. I don't know that I really had anything to do with turning it around both in school and in hockey, but I do know that his attitude changed after that day. I don't think I motivated him in anyway - he had to put in a lot of work on and off the ice to get back in the coaches' good graces and that was all his doing - but I think it helped him to know that he had someone in his corner.

The Charlotte Checkers schedule came out today, and I'm thrilled that they have two home games against the team that my little hockey boy will be playing for this year. I'm going to be at those games, cheering loudly, like the proud hockey mom I am.