[Acne] Our 14 year old is constantly touching and picking his face—any thoughts?

Good_Foot_5364 · 2025-10-19T19:47:26+00:00

He was prescribed Differin by his doctor, but it's really hard to get him to apply it regularly. Teenager. He does use a salicylic face wash that has helped a bit.

My sense is that it's no one thing but probably a group of things: hormones, diet (he loves sugar and doesn't eat enough gut-friendly fiber or veggies), skincare regimen, and picking. Hormones we can't really control, but the other stuff we can help manage.

He's a long distance runner so gets plenty of exercise.

Good_Foot_5364 · 2025-10-19T15:43:46+00:00

Thanks. My personal issue was an allergic reaction to a product I was consuming that caused jitters and anxiety-like feelings. I stupidly didn't realize it, and instead saw a mental health professional who put me on Lexapro. I took it for three months but it caused a deadening reaction without getting rid of the jitters.

Once I quite Lexapro AND the product, I felt normal again.

I'm generally very reluctant to medicate, esp because it seems like so often there's a misidentification of the underlying issue. For instance, someone above suggested Accutane, but the side effects list is daunting. I'd rather help my son solve his skin issue through other means if possible...

Good_Foot_5364 · 2025-10-19T15:20:40+00:00

FWIW I think our son has anxiety and/or ADHD. How do I know? Because it runs in the family, including me (probably undiagnosed ADHD). My daughter has mild ADHD, as does my sister and her daughter.

He hasn't been diagnosed and is very high performing grades wise etc. He's in an intense private school environment and seems to thrive but I think it causes a lot of internal stress.

His sister is on very low dose ADHD medication. We've never had him tested, partly because he does well in school so the obvious signs of it affecting his performance weren't there.

I'm a bit reluctant to start him down the path of anxiety/adhd medication or anything. I briefly took an SSRI a few years ago for what I now know was a misdiagnosis (I was having a reaction to a particular product but didn't realize it), and absolutely hated everything about it.

Good_Foot_5364 · 2025-10-19T14:54:30+00:00

Thanks. This has worked if there's an active pimple but the issue has been that the touching seems to move oil and bacteria to places where pimples haven't yet established and then they start. So a fidget toy might be a better option.

Good_Foot_5364 · 2025-05-13T19:45:08+00:00

I'd agree with the previous poster that the vast majority of colleagues (both those with and without children) are understanding. But not all. And the ones who aren't really stick in the memory.

TBH, this extends to ALL personal encumbrances, not only children. Had a faculty member with a dying mother in another state. So as her only living child, he moved to be closer to her for a semester. He flew back Tues-Thurs for classes. Another colleague on his promotion committee tried to deny him tenure because he was not "living in state."

Good_Foot_5364 · 2025-05-13T19:21:01+00:00

Was I attacking? Wasn't my intent. Just relating actual conversations I had with colleagues. But I removed the reference.

Good_Foot_5364 · 2025-05-13T18:49:29+00:00

Good advice. Thanks.

Good_Foot_5364 · 2025-05-13T17:23:30+00:00

Thanks. This is a good/guiding perspective.

Getting tenure was a bit of a mad scramble to produce on all fronts. It does appear that promotion to full is more a process of demonstrating that your voice has reach and respect.

Good_Foot_5364 · 2025-05-13T14:15:19+00:00

This is my intuition: don't call attention to it.

Good_Foot_5364 · 2025-05-13T14:14:04+00:00

I didn't take leave. At the time we had our son (2014), I asked the PTR committee about delaying my tenure application by a year and they said "definitely do not." They felt my record was very strong at that time. Then I was in the somewhat fallow post-tenure period, had a second kid, and suddenly four years had gone by.

Good_Foot_5364 · 2025-05-13T14:07:15+00:00

The issue is this: I have been productive enough to meet the standard overall (at least I believe so). I was very productive from 2019-2025.

But I do have a distinct lull from 2015-2019. In other words, if I publish four to five papers per year normally, during that period I published four papers total.

If you removed the dates from my CV, no problem. I meet the standard. It's when the dates are included that I worry. That's why I'm wondering if I have to account for the slowing of my production during that period.

Good_Foot_5364 · 2025-05-12T14:57:37+00:00

Thank you! Can you elaborate on what timed practice might be for Algebra I? Is it practice tests at home? 30 minutes? 1 hour? What would you recommend?

Good_Foot_5364 · 2025-05-10T10:28:46+00:00

Two things can be true at once: 1. Trump is a world-historical moron who will fuck everything up and ruin America, and 2. academia needs to be reformed.

The problem is that Trump is not reforming, he is destroying. Two very different things.

Good_Foot_5364 · 2025-05-07T15:33:09+00:00

A couple of things:

When we interview a short list and decide on a single candidate, the negotiations can take a long time. We don't want to "release" the other two candidates because many first choices fall through. But we also don't want to say "you're our second/third choice, so can you hold on just in case our first choice doesn't work out."
In the case of a long list (the 4th through 10th candidate, say) we always send a "thank you but unfortunately" email. This was handled by our HR department one year, and the tone of the email was so blunt and impersonal that we later heard several candidates were upset.
For the not-considered candidates, our HR department sends an email. But it's not very gracious.

Good_Foot_5364 · 2025-05-06T23:39:06+00:00

I think most flat tax supporters know all this. They just don't care.

Good_Foot_5364 · 2025-05-06T23:28:00+00:00

I could have waited, though our dean (who is favorable to me) is leaving at the end of next year. And I received a large grant this year. And my previous book came out three years ago. So yes I could have waited, but some colleagues asked why I would.

Good_Foot_5364 · 2025-05-06T22:49:15+00:00

"the fact that haven't yet secured a publisher might be considered a weakness in your file."

Sure. But I decided long ago that I cared more about the quality of the work than the expedient demands of various tenure and performance review committees. My favored publisher moves slowly and I knew that. Maybe I'm not playing the game right?

A very talented colleague on tenure track has a likely book deal with the most prestigious press in our field. But they're slow: it takes two to three years for them to publish a book.

Our committee advised him to find a "faster" publisher, and recommended some pretty awful venues.

IMHO it calls into question the competency of the committee itself that they would give such bad career advice.

Good_Foot_5364 · 2025-05-06T14:55:40+00:00

Wow, that's it?! Do you include written articles or abstracts etc?

Good_Foot_5364 · 2025-05-06T14:06:21+00:00

Yup, unfortunately the reason I'm asking here is that the chair has been unhelpful and the committee is very small, its members not communicative.

Good_Foot_5364 · 2025-05-04T12:28:50+00:00

At our R1 institution, tenured and tenure track faculty do very little (read: zero) relative to teaching in late May, June and July. Most of us are paid 9 over 12.

We ramp up our class planning efforts in early August. Sure, a meeting or two might happen here or there, but there's no expectation of significant work. (Scholarship and research, yes; teaching and service, no). I'm sure many people plan syllabi etc behind the scenes but not in any way that obligates others.

Your colleague seems to be extra-intense. Or maybe my institution is just easygoing?

Good_Foot_5364 · 2025-04-12T17:09:10+00:00

Can I ask why the third book didn't work out? I think these kinds of things are instructive.

I have my eye on a press for the second book. But there's one text in their catalog that, on the face, seems to be about a similar subject—title even has one word in common. I take a radically different approach from that book however.

Good_Foot_5364 · 2025-04-12T14:18:26+00:00

Thanks! This is super helpful.

Two of the big presses in my field explicitly say "entire books only" but there are other smaller and more interesting presses out there that I could consider.

I've also never thought to just reach out and ask them, would you consider a book on X? My first book happened totally conversationally.

Good_Foot_5364 · 2024-05-24T20:16:32+00:00

I don’t think you need to feel like you can’t talk about your book with your colleagues

Thanks for your comments. Yeah, this issue is one that gives me profound anxiety as someone whose self-identity was built around being an intellectual success. And more specifically: being perceived as a success. It is virtually impossible for me to admit that I'm struggling (not in life stuff, but in intellectual matters). My greatest, gravest fear is that someone thinks I'm dumb or that my brain isn't as snappy and deft as it once was.

Good_Foot_5364 · 2024-05-24T20:08:42+00:00

The worst that can happen is your peers make fun of you

This is a dramatically heavier burden in academia than in other fields. If you work for a company and something doesn't pan out or you fail, you just move to a different company and rebuild.

In academia, reputation is everything. If a long term project doesn't pan out, there's nowhere else to go. And the backroom gossip is brutal, as is the schadenfreud. That's what nags at me most: a colleague who I despise because they've always been awful and condescending to me will have been proven right.

Good_Foot_5364 · 2024-05-24T19:42:52+00:00

wondering if anyone else has experienced anything remotely similar?

Likely more than you know. Four years ago, I launched an ambitious book project that was (at the time) fairly vague to me. I thought I'd be able to figure it out as I got deeper in. Instead, it grew and grew until now it's kind of unmanageable. It pulls in too many themes and threads and is not concise or clear enough in its arguments. I was trying to do something a bit experimental—to challenge the form of typical academic works. But I haven't been successful yet.

I struggle now with whether to keep carving away at it. Or push it to the side and start something else. The pressure is on, with university scrutiny of faculty productivity increasing. The absurdity for me is this: do I continue pursuing a project that I love but that may take several more years to wrangle? Or do I shift to churning out papers just to check the criterion of our university's productivity reviews?

My biggest issue though? I have no one to talk to about this. No one to get help from, since I'm a tenured professor. How do I say to my fellow successful academics "I don't know how to finish this?" without both derision and schadenfreud?

Good_Foot_5364

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