charismaticmicrofauna

I arrived in Vienna on January 2, 2020 with my 2 cats. My partner followed 1 month later with our blind poodle. One week after they arrived and we were all reunited in Vienna, I left for 2 weeks to do field research in Piran, Slovenia on the coast of the Adriatic Sea. When I returned at the end of February, the numbers of global Corona virus cases increased and social distancing measures were instated. My partner and I are relieved every day that he made it here before Austria went into lock-down and restricted American travelers.

Moving to a foreign country is not easy. Getting settled, learning customs, and returning to normalcy is more difficult than I expected. Doing these things, and starting a new career in the midst of a pandemic are expert level within the framework of the joys of living with clinical depression and post-traumatic stress disorder.

Before I left to start my post-doctoral research position my PhD advisor gave me advice. she said, “hit the ground running, publish as much as you can, and write proposals.” These were my expectations for my work when I came to the University of Vienna. To complicate the situation more, add the task of navigating academia and learning how a new laboratory operates. Herein lies the real challenge: the problems with academia.

As a graduate student you are expected to acquire many skills for which there is no formal training. None, at least that are agreed upon across academia. Among these “soft skills” are technical writing, public speaking, teaching, mentoring, networking, acquiring funding, communication, managing funds, et cetera…. there are many skills to acquire along the way and depending on the talents or emphasis of the PhD advisor one may or may not acquire such skills in a well rounded fashion. As with any job or profession, some people are good at their jobs and some people are bad at their jobs. Guess what, even the most prolific researchers can be bad mentors, and the best mentors may not publish or mentor enough to be considered prolific scientists. Academia is a mixed bag of absolute nuts.

People sometimes refer to academia as an Ivory Tower. This is a metaphorical place where people exist in a bubble for the pursuit of intellectual goals. Imagine in this Ivory tower there are auxiliary towers. In each of these auxiliary towers is a research professor with tenure who requires students and post-doctoral students to obtain funding. These ambitious early career scientists are a source in more than one way for tenured professors. They conduct research, do lab work, act as think tanks, all while attempting to better themselves for professional and personal reasons. Many also want to make the world a better place through the investigation of a scientific question.

There is a strong need to support and advocate for individuals with mental health and emotional disorders in STEM fileds. Unfortunately, academia exacerbates preexisting mental and emotional diseases that individuals with a propensity for anxiety already have. These conditions enable attention to detail, analytical thinking, and an anal retentive tendency toward tasks and procedures. Many, much like Temple Grandin, are on the high functioning side of the autism spectrum. Others, in their Ivory towers, are competitive, narcissists who use their students as “source”, a term used by clinical psychologists to describe a person utilized by a narcissist only to elevate the narcissists social standing. Some have a range of other diagnosed and undiagnosed conditions that can influence performance as a researcher, mentor, and professor. Critically, it is most important to maintain professional boundaries no matter what challenges are being suffered silently or publicly. A wise person (my PhD advisor) once told me when I was having health problems during my PhD that she hires talented HUMANS, not just talent and humans have lives that are to be respected. I hope that is a principle that I pass on to others who I will mentor.

Compared to January, the streets in March were empty and central Vienna, where I live was eerily empty. Shops and restaurants were closed and the only place to go was the supermarket. The markets soon handed out face masks to every customer. There were no public demonstrations or public physical assaults against necessary employees for enforcing mask rules. We all here in Austria and most of Europe abided by the protective measures outlined by professional doctors and medical experts without making public health a political statement.

All classes at the University of Vienna moved to an online format and all of the researchers were sent on home office. In one way, this was welcome because it gave me the opportunity to ease into my post-doctoral research. I was able to read about the new area of science that I would be participating in and think about writing new funding proposals for the future. My current contract is only 18 months long, which at the time of my graduation seemed like a decent period of time. However, now that it has been 10 months in and 7 of it has been constrained by travel restrictions, social distancing, and some quarantine periods; it is not long enough. The end of my contract is closing in and where I will go next is uncertain. Fortunately, my partner has a job at an International School so we will not have to leave Austria right away. The stress of being the primary wage earner for 7 months was too stressful and depressing for me, and I do not want to subject my husband to that either. It is now time for me to begin to seriously begin to set my mind on writing a funding proposal for my next position.

As the quarantine restrictions in Austria were loosened and commercial business began to open we turned our attention to the US. Just when I thought the international embarrassment of the United States could not get worse, George Floyd and Breonna Taylor were murdered. George Floyd allegedly tried to pass a counterfeit bill when a police officer with a history of brutality sat on his neck until he DIED. Breonna Taylor was sleeping in her home when misinformed agents raided her home in the early morning and shot her in the hallway of her home. Everybody in this world needs to take a hard long look at how they feel about others and be fucking honest about their own biases and prejudices. Skin color, sex, gender, sexual orientation, handicap: everybody has bias, but the important thing is to acknowledge it within yourself and learn what you can do to be a better human. Educate yourself, stay informed, and grow as a human being because we are all fucked up individuals who are products of our upbringing. We are all spit into the world as “grown ups” with our childhood’s most dominant character’s ideologies and for most of us those people were fucked up too. I could go on about this much more because 1) recently a grand jury failed to indict police officers who murdered Breonna Taylor and we come to find out that the State’s Attorney General did not even give the jury an option to indict those officers. 2) Reading about these murders as an American in Europe who identifies as a person of color was an experience in itself. 3) I have opinions about Europeans bringing slavery to the Americas and then fucking off right back to Europe while the Civil War and the Civil Rights movement and the continued disproportionate incarceration of black Americans and Sandra Bland, Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, Eric Garner, Tamir Rice, Christian Cooper, Philando Castile, Alton Sterling, and Ahmaud Arbery……..

Despite how fast paced this year has been, I am still trying to appreciate that I have graduated with my PhD. I have moved to a new country in a new city and managed to bring my family and pets with me. I finished school and am happy with my new career. At some point I hope I can really appreciate how far I have come in my life. My life could have turned out so many other ways. I was molested as a child, raped as a teenager, addicted to drugs by 18, and homeless at 20. My adopted family told me that I would work at a makeup counter when I grew up and that I should become a nurse so that I can marry a doctor. Well, guess what? I’m the doctor now. Where’s my nurse?!