Bad News All Around
Jun. 19th, 2009 01:15 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
fersakynMy mother's brother and his wife are visiting for a month. It's been pretty good so far -- taking them around staves off my growing sense of isolation and loneliness. I'm just a big barrel of laughs.
My maternal grandmother's been in the hospital since May 2008. My uncle and aunt told my mother and me that the doctors don't think she'll last much longer. My mom was pretty angry -- at the doctors. She's a nurse, and she said that they did too many invasive procedures that weren't really necessary, and these procedures contributed to my grandmother's deteriorating health in a significant way.
Yesterday, my cousin pulled me aside, out of the hearing of my uncle, her father, to tell me that grandma had passed away. Initially, I didn't really know what to feel. I can count on two hands the number of times I've seen my grandma in my life. I have a weird family history of divorces, bitter family squabbles, the whole works. It's like a soap opera sometimes, so I never really got to know my mother's mother. I know that my mother really missed her growing up, and that she never really got over how, in the Chinese system, the father gets custody of the children in a divorce. But they didn't really have a great relationship since my grandma remarried, and her husband didn't like that his wife had children from a previous marriage.
Today, I feel it. I feel sad that she's gone. I think my mother's still kind of in denial. I haven't seen her express grief yet -- she's keeping busy with work. I think it'll really hit her when she flies out to go to the funeral next week. It's not really real for her yet. My uncle started grieving last night. He ambled in from the guestroom pretty drunk and looking for more booze to get more plastered. I felt pretty bad seeing him like that. It was also weird since for longer than my mother or her sister, he had a great deal of bitterness toward his mother about the divorce and "abandonment".
Plus, I got another rejection letter today. Wow. It just keeps coming. I thought I would at least make it to the first round of interviews since I just got my PhD, and the posting is for a community college. What use is the PhD if it has no value for even a CC??? I hope I get something by September. Otherwise, I'll really feel like the PhD is worthless, and I wasted my time and energy (and money!).
My maternal grandmother's been in the hospital since May 2008. My uncle and aunt told my mother and me that the doctors don't think she'll last much longer. My mom was pretty angry -- at the doctors. She's a nurse, and she said that they did too many invasive procedures that weren't really necessary, and these procedures contributed to my grandmother's deteriorating health in a significant way.
Yesterday, my cousin pulled me aside, out of the hearing of my uncle, her father, to tell me that grandma had passed away. Initially, I didn't really know what to feel. I can count on two hands the number of times I've seen my grandma in my life. I have a weird family history of divorces, bitter family squabbles, the whole works. It's like a soap opera sometimes, so I never really got to know my mother's mother. I know that my mother really missed her growing up, and that she never really got over how, in the Chinese system, the father gets custody of the children in a divorce. But they didn't really have a great relationship since my grandma remarried, and her husband didn't like that his wife had children from a previous marriage.
Today, I feel it. I feel sad that she's gone. I think my mother's still kind of in denial. I haven't seen her express grief yet -- she's keeping busy with work. I think it'll really hit her when she flies out to go to the funeral next week. It's not really real for her yet. My uncle started grieving last night. He ambled in from the guestroom pretty drunk and looking for more booze to get more plastered. I felt pretty bad seeing him like that. It was also weird since for longer than my mother or her sister, he had a great deal of bitterness toward his mother about the divorce and "abandonment".
Plus, I got another rejection letter today. Wow. It just keeps coming. I thought I would at least make it to the first round of interviews since I just got my PhD, and the posting is for a community college. What use is the PhD if it has no value for even a CC??? I hope I get something by September. Otherwise, I'll really feel like the PhD is worthless, and I wasted my time and energy (and money!).
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no subject
Date: 2009-06-19 09:53 am (UTC)Things apparently haven't changed that much in academia if you are getting rejections from community colleges. It may take some tense months to find a teaching job, and years to find a job in your field. Well, at least that was my experience, and I decided to leave academia because of it. (I also got hit by a car while crossing the street on the campus where I was teaching, which made my decision a lot easier!)
I found my teaching job through connections, in August before the school year started.
This email list was something I found out about since I joined LJ, and didn't really need it!
https://lists.duke.edu/sympa/info/wrk4us
But it's for people looking for non-academic jobs who have PhDs.
Do you still have gym privileges at the university as an alum? Spend a lot of time working out and using their library, if you can.
no subject
Date: 2009-06-19 10:15 pm (UTC)Wow... hit by a car! Talk about a sign! Thanks for the info on the listserv. I think I had heard about it somewhere, but I'd never gotten around to subscribing.
I think I still have privileges for a week or two, but the point is moot since the campus is 55 miles from my mom's house, where I'm living right now. Blah.