phd – galloblog

This girl was homeschooled for 12 years. What happened after that will have you in tears!

me_child — Where did Gallo get her swag?? Born with it.

Meet Lil Gallo, age 5ish. Her mom began homeschooling her a few months before her 6th birthday. What happened next?

As a child and pre-teen, she had tons of extra time to volunteer on political campaigns. Shook the President of the United States hand when she was 11 years old. During his gubernatorial campaign, Sonny Perdue knew her by name. Met a lot of amazing, crazy, interesting people.

As an older teen, she got a job in high school working 30ish hours a week. Worked there for 4 years, and received several promotions and raises. Made a lot of friends there, many of which she still keeps up via the book of faces.

During that time, she also started attending a state college as a full time student. Made some great friends of all kinds of races, religions, and political affiliations, some of whom she hangs out with 10 years later. Graduated summa cum laude in 4 years.

From there she became a graduate student at a private University. Received her Master’s degree in 2 years, and her PhD 4 years after that. Made some friends, dated some fellers, traveled around the country and world.

Currently does research, loves to meet new people and travel, and writes a mainly-idiotic blog for funsies.

But WAIT! Isn’t she mal-adjusted, socially inept, scared of the world, set back in life, etc.? No, you ignorant snobbo.

So– have some people had terrible experiences with homeschooling? Of course.. just like others have had terrible experiences with various public and private schools. Are some parents psychotic? Of course… as are some teachers and peers in more traditional schools.

I don’t really care if people homeschool their kids or not, but I do care that people have all sorts of super-negative ideas about it. This post was anecdotal, for sure — but there have also been a lot of academic studies on various aspects of homeschooling and how successful homeschoolers are by several different measures. Usually homeschoolers are just the same if not better on a variety of different outcomes — Check out this review by Brian Ray (2010), and some of these other individual studies: Lower drug use | Sleep quality | College performance.

Don’t be an uneducated buffoon about this education choice! It worked well for this Gallo 🙂

graduation — Purposefully blurry for anti-stalking purposes!!

— EDITORIAL NOTES —

NOTE: I don’t think you need to get a PhD to defend your family’s. Choice to homeschool. There is much more to becoming a successful adult who contributes meaningfully to society than your educational attainment. My point is that it’s unlikely to ruin a kid’s life, and just might free them to pursue different opportunities that will shape them for the better 🙂

Don’t confuse educationz with brainz

Getting a PhD has had some interesting social ramifications. Some fab, some.. drab. #myrhymesareacrime

In many ways, getting my PhD has freed me to be much less guarded in what and how I communicate – especially to snobbish strangers. When I was majoring in psychology in undergrad, it was way more likely that I would be dismissed as another vapid college student who thought that her Psyc 101 course qualified her to give sage mental health advice to friends and family. So, I tended to be the quiet one who would wait until I had a read on people before I participated in whatever convo was going on. When I did participate, it was usually some rando sarcastic comment. People usually conveyed a sense of amazement when they found out I had some brainz. Now, I am free to make an idiot of myself by loudly saying whatever makes me lolz. I know that even if I’m being a cotton-headed ninny muggin, people will think “Well, she has her PhD, so she has to be smart…” and give me the benefit of the doubt. So that in of itself has made the last 6 years worth it 😉

professor-2327957_960_720 — Don’t be fooled by this guy! He can write a book on 16th century technology but he ain’t no genius! (pixabay image)

BUT in different contexts, or at least with some people, getting my PhD has set up this expectation for me to have deep and well-developed thoughts on every aspect of the brain, anything remotely related to life-sciences, theology, politics, organic farming, and T-Swizzy’s latest attention-whoring bout of drama. People will say, “Hey, you have a PhD. What do you think?” Usually I haven’t thought about it at all, so I try to nod slowly, stare out in the distance, and say something vague, like “Well, I think both sides have merit, but I have heard some convincing criticisms of each position, too. It’s certainly a complex issue.” Then I smile winningly and change the subject.

I s’pose the point of this post is two-fold. One, although I appreciate people giving me the benefit of the doubt now, it annoys me that some of these same people would probably completely dismiss me if I had gone on to be a .. Idk, palm reader. Rando example, but my point is— it’s not really fair for people that don’t have their degree to have this undue burden to prove their intellectual worth. Just because someone is being silly at a party or dropped out of high school doesn’t mean they’re an uninformed buffoon.

Two, just because someone wrote their dissertation on the astrophysical epistemology of the Ornithorhynchus anatinus and never confuses “your” and “you’re” does not mean they have something meaningful to say about the science of climate change, or have great insight into international affairs.

KNOW WHAT I MEAN, GREEN BEAN?!

So.. yah. PhDs aren’t ignoramuses, but they’re not necessarily brilliant. They’re just people who chose to geek out on a subject for a few years. And uneducated folk may not be be brilliant, but they’re not necessarily ignoramuses. They’re just people who may not have had the opportunity or necessary masochism* to go into 20+th grades.

So.. yah yah yah — evaluate ideers for their own merit, and don’t be snobby.

— EDITORIAL NOTE —

*I mean this in the general use, DON’T BE A PERVO!

— ALSO — This post has some similar ideas to this other brilliantly written, amazing post.

Stop taking yourself so facetiously

In generations past, people were told to stop taking themselves so seriously. I think we millennials have taken the idea so seriously to not take ourselves seriously that we have driven ourselves into the other ditch – we see ourselves as jokes, and want to make sure everyone else does, too.

IMG_20170911_135411 — Okay okay, I lolzed at this. But also—- go apply for a job you lazy millenial!!

I think a lot of it may do with the kind of overwhelming crappiness of our times and growing connectivity with the rest of the world – we see ourselves as tiny little specs of dust in this huge dust storm of humanity that’s being driven by uncontrollable winds of huge corporations, insane political figures, and fidget spinners. So, we retreat, make memes, and giggle our way through every situation.

I’m kinda writing this about my not-so-distant-past self. I got pretty caught up in the “FML” culture of PhD students – a kind of ironic learned helplessness. There’s something pride-zapping about making poverty-line wages and having your research projects fall way short of your expectations that can drive even the most Pollyanna of us all into self-deprecating pessimism.

And look, I’m all for a good lolz. But they can be taken too far. Sometimes you need to take yourself seriously enough to take a shower, put on some nice clothes, and actually try, ya know?

I say all this coming out of a successful post-doc interview. I was gratified by how much they.. respected.. yes, respected!! me and my dissertation work! The whole experience made me realize that I use sarcastic, self-deprecating humor as a shield against expectations. I didn’t want to disappoint people, so I made sure they kept their expectations low so I wouldn’t have to deal with their disappointment or be assigned more responsibility. #realtalk

But yeah.. this past week has opened my eyes to my own value in my field. It’s scurry, but I actually have the potential to bring some good to the world through my research. Eeks!

So, I know most of you aren’t in PhD world, but I think this could apply in a lot of situations. Being a mom, for instance, is huge. I’m sure getting spit-up on and getting into intense arguments with 4 yr olds isn’t always validating, but you have this unbelievable influence in how a real life human being sees the world! That’s really not small. For realz.

(This is getting a little ramble-y, but I blame it on the ferocious winds of Irma whirling my brain to and fro’. #science)

My point is – don’t discount yourself, kid! Lolz it up, but don’t lolz yourself into a false sense of insignificance.

..Unless you just want to be insignificant, and then I guarantee you that you will succeed in that 😏

*Gallosmoochies*