The Infertile Academic

June is worldwide infertility month. Infertility is a topic not often discussed, and it warrants more attention and less stigma - after all, it affects approximately 1 in 10 couples attempting to procreate. A healthy slice of the pie, you might say.

If you are an academic and you are infertile, you may occasionally google “infertile academic” or “infertile professor” or “why is everything so @!*# hard”, as I have done. You may find what I have found: almost nothing. Almost no one. A pseudononymous blogger. A lot of silence.

Social media in the academic world is chalk-full of conversations on 1) the funding climate, 2) challenges facing women and underrepresented minorities, and 3) achieving work-life balance. The latter is my personal favorite (where is my sarcasm font?).

Is it possible to do it all?

The dearth of daycare at universities in America

How to have a family AND a killer scientific career in sixty-four simple steps

It’s not that these topics are not important or legitimate- they are. They affect many of us as academics and as human beings. But I suspect that I am not the only one to feel twinges of sadness (or anger, depending on the day) when such headlines fill my Twitter feed. You see, I haven’t gotten to the point where I can even consider such issues in my own life. Some of the articles that I’d write instead include:

How to do work when you’re sad

Coping with simultaneous grant rejection and IVF failure

Five responses to people who blame your infertility on your career

But today is not the day for those scintillating would-be articles. Today is simply a day for me to raise my hand in the crowd and to say to anyone else who may be looking: I am here. I have been living this reality every day for four years, and I am a real person with a real research group and a real CV. You are not alone.

I don’t have any answers. I move forward because that’s the only thing I can do. Sometimes, I don’t know how I’ll do it, but I know that I shouldn’t give up. Neither should you.

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*For more information on what to say and what not to say to your infertile friends, please visit this article. A synopsis: DO offer hugs and a listening ear. DON'T try to solve the problem or avoid the people involved.

Professors Don't Sleep

When I was a 3rd year graduate student at UC Santa Barbara, the state of California plunged into financial chaos. One of the results was that UC tuition went up as support from the state for higher education took a hit.

One Friday afternoon at our departmental happy hour, a senior professor and I were discussing the state budget cuts and the tuition hikes. He leaned in a little closer, and confided,

I stay awake all night wondering how I'll pay for my students. 

And I said, "You literally cannot sleep because of this?"

Yes.

And so I spent the rest of my days at UCSB wondering why this particular professor worried so much, and how on earth it was possible to be so upset by your work life that it actually affected your quality of sleep. 

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Looking back, I am glad there was a time in my life when my "normal" was falling asleep each night within five minutes of hitting the pillow. I'm not sure exactly when that changed, but I suspect it started around the time I was interviewing for TT jobs, and it has only become increasingly pronounced since then.

Nowadays, you can find me reading the news on Flipboard, compulsively clicking on any of the articles that pop up under the category "Sleep Self Help for Professors and Other Type A Personalities". Yes, that category actually exists. My problem is that no amount of hot frickin' chamomile tea before bed is going to quiet the approximately 942 things tumbling around in my brain.

I realize that you may have some questions regarding the Professors Don't Sleep phenomenon, as I once did.

So what does a professor think about while being unable to fall asleep at night?

1. Everything. 
2. Lack of grant money. 
3. See number 1.

What do you think are the underlying causes of your sleeplessness?

1. The stakes are higher than they ever used to be.
2. My work involves so many more people than it used to (e.g. my PI and me). Sometimes, I have to make serious decisions that affect people's lives.
3. My work involves so many more elements than it used to - instead of thinking only about the projects a single person can accomplish, I now think about all of my trainee's projects.

Can you give me an example of a time you couldn't sleep?

Yes. Two weeks ago, I was vacationing in Iceland, and the night before we left, I couldn't fall asleep. I was tossing and turning, and my husband couldn't sleep either. He asked me what was on my mind. I told him that I couldn't stop thinking about a manuscript I needed to write. This was absolutely absurd. My mind, at that moment, was obsessed with writing the manuscript, but I couldn't have written it right then, right there, even if I wanted to. After all, I was in Iceland, a foreign country, lying in bed with no computer, no data, in the middle of the night. There was absolutely no good that could come of me staying awake ruminating about this half-finished manuscript.

So what strategies do you use to fall asleep?

1. Chamomile tea
2. Counting backwards from 200 by 7
3. Focused breathing: inhale for 4s, hold for 6s, exhale for 7s
4. Barrel rolls in the sheets
5. Singing

Channeling my inner Madonna:

Papa, don't preach,
I've been losing sleep, 
Professors count sheep, 
I'm in trouble deep,
But I've made up my mind, 
I'm keeping my career. 
Oooh, I'm gonna keep my ca-reer, yeah.