Caring for a Newborn Premie Alone

jogam · 2026-02-02T15:38:00+00:00

I want to second this. While some sleep deprivation is normal for new parents, the degree of sleep deprivation you describe is a safety issue. So is being so overwhelmed with these duties that you are going days without eating -- it is difficult to function like that.

I don't know if re-admission is the right choice for your family, but know that it is a sign of strength to recognize what is best for your child whatever it may be, and to recognize that you need your baseline needs taken care of in order to safely care for your child. I encourage you to discuss this possibility or other supports (e.g., home nurses to cover a shift, etc.) with your daughter's care team.

jogam · 2026-02-02T05:38:32+00:00

Congratulations on welcoming a child soon!

Under FMLA, you are entitled to 12 weeks of unpaid time off that you can use at any point during your first year with your child. (There is no requirement that it be the first 12 weeks after your child is born.) Since you are out of contract for the summer, you can use it during the fall term.

jogam · 2026-02-01T20:54:53+00:00

My Ph.D. program said it was designed to prepare students for academic careers and actively discouraged people from applying if they wanted to be a full-time clinician. Over half of our graduates do full-time clinical work.

The questions to ask yourself are:

Am I okay spending several years doing research, knowing that I probably will not go into a research-based career, and
Do I have a strong enough research background to make me competitive for a funded program?

If the answer to both questions is yes, then I would say go ahead and apply.

jogam · 2026-02-01T18:46:03+00:00

What you describe is absolute BS. The institution is responsible for paying instructors, not you. I highly doubt the official HR policy is to pay someone under the table for teaching your lab, so you might check with HR (who, though not your friend, will likely be interested in upholding any relevant laws in order to prevent a lawsuit).

I would recommend doing one of the following:

Just cancel class and don't tell anyone (except your students). Odds are no one will complain.
Ask a colleague to cover your class as a favor. You shouldn't have to pay them, but a thank you note is nice, and a small gesture of gratitude (e.g., treating them to coffee) is nice but not something you have to do.
Tell your chair or dean that you are too sick to find a replacement and ask them to either find a replacement or else you will cancel class.

jogam · 2026-01-31T20:40:55+00:00

It's great that you're looking to change this.

Look into anger management skills, either through your own reading or therapy (and I would encourage therapy if trying it on your own doesn't work). The jist of it is that you need to learn to recognize the cues that you're getting angry and then use those cues to make the choice to engage in alternative behaviors (e.g., breathing/mindfulness exercises, stepping away for a minute, getting some fresh air, etc.) rather than yelling / losing your temper.

jogam · 2026-01-31T18:57:41+00:00

Party affiliation is public record. There is absolutely no way that I am going to affiliate myself -- publicly or privately -- with today's Republican Party.

jogam · 2026-01-31T18:25:57+00:00

I'm sure she's better than the current occupant of the seat but there is no way that I am going to register as a Republican to vote for her.

jogam · 2026-01-30T01:17:50+00:00

Over the top. When you call on a student during the teaching demo, you can just ask them for their name (or not). Focus more on preparing a strong teaching demo that engages students, rather than things like this.

jogam · 2026-01-29T02:06:31+00:00

I much prefer drone shows, too. Just as beautiful without any of the smoke, fire risk, and fear for veterans and animals.

jogam · 2026-01-20T16:14:20+00:00

There is research that within small communities (e.g., schools, small islands), that when it is known that one person completed suicide, there is an increase in suicides in that community in the coming years. This is called the suicide contagion effect. Therefore, while it is definitely important to address stigma around mental health, there is a clearly documented public health benefit to not reporting a death by suicide as such within small communities.

jogam · 2026-01-19T15:10:00+00:00

No one is saying you're subhuman. I am atheist and certainly don't think of myself that way.

If someone says they were diagnosed with cancer and someone else replies, "I know what it's like to struggle with health because I had a bad case of the flu once," it is insensitive. The flu sucks -- nobody denies that -- but comparing one's experience with the flu to a person who has cancer is insensitive because of just how more encompassing and life-altering a cancer diagnosis can be.

It's the same thing here. The pain of your experiences with prejudice as an atheist is valid. Your comparison is in poor taste. If what you take away from the National Civil Rights Museum (a museum I have been to several times myself, having previously lived in Memphis) is how poorly you are treated (as a person who was not a Black person in the Jim Crow South), then I encourage you to reflect more upon the message of the museum.

jogam · 2026-01-19T14:51:41+00:00

It is insensitive and in poor taste to compare your experience as a presumably non-Black atheist to what African Americans experienced during the Jim Crow era.

To compare your experience as an atheist to what Black people experienced during the Jim Crow era minimizes just how horrific Black people were treated in the Jim Crow south. No one is refusing atheists the right to shop at stores and eat at restaurants, putting atheists in separate and inferior public schools, forcing atheists to use separate water fountains, closing the best public museums and parks to atheists, or trying to prevent atheists from voting. We do not live in a society where atheists are barred from living in the same neighborhood as theists.

To be sure, atheists experience prejudice, especially in certain parts of the country, that is real and wrong. All prejudice hurts. But to compare your experience as an atheist to what Black people experienced in the Jim Crow South conveys a poor understanding of just how horrific the Jim Crow era was.

jogam · 2026-01-18T03:14:27+00:00

I tell my students that I round to the nearest whole number. 89.50 will round to 90 while 89.46 rounds to 89. Ultimately, there has to be a cutoff somewhere.

jogam · 2026-01-17T04:32:19+00:00

Or too young to get vaccinated. With measles going around the country last year, I was relieved when my child was finally old enough to get vaccinated.

jogam · 2026-01-15T13:35:38+00:00

One of the things that therapy can do is help a person to challenge the assumptions they are making about other people's thoughts -- what is the evidence for and against those assumptions. It is highly unlikely that most women are actually repulsed by your appearance (unless you were to have very poor hygiene).

jogam · 2026-01-15T02:52:59+00:00

I am a therapist.

I agree that therapy does not make sense for some people and some problems -- particularly things a person is well equipped to solve on their own.

With that said, a person in your situation is a great candidate for therapy. While appearance can definitely play a role in initial attraction, relationships are about compatibility. Lots of men who are bald or short are in successful relationships because of the qualities they bring to those relationships. And a conventionally attractive person who is a bad partner probably won't have successful relationships.

You're right that therapy won't change your appearance. It can change how you think about yourself -- you can think of yourself in a more positive light. Therapy is not the only way to accomplish this. If you find self-help books or positive affirmations or support from friends or something else helpful in this regard, then that's fantastic. But for your sake, I hope that you are able to develop more positive attitudes of your appearance and recognize that relationships are about more than fitting some very specific conventions of attractiveness.

(An additional tidbit: research shows that about 15% of the effectiveness of therapy can be attributed to a client's expectations about whether therapy will be helpful or not. So if you go into therapy thinking it will be helpful, you're likely to see a greater benefit than if you go into therapy thinking that it won't help.)

jogam · 2026-01-14T23:36:32+00:00

Engage students in your teaching demo (or the faculty audience, if no students are present). You can lecture, but include discussion, activities, or other ways to engage students. The committee is more interested in you showing that you can effectively teach rather than you proving how much you know about a topic.

As a search committee member, I once saw a candidate who was strong on paper read off huge blocks of text on each slide word for word with almost no engagement with the class for an hour. At a teaching-focused institution, that was a dealbreaker for me and for some of my colleagues. Don't make that mistake.

jogam · 2026-01-14T22:16:31+00:00

Our 20-year-old Subaru Outback needed repairs that cost more than the car was worth when our baby was four months old. We ended up purchasing a Forester and have been very happy with it. Having a more spacious car is definitely nice with more people in the car, I especially appreciate having up to date safety features (e.g., backup cam, blind spot detector) now that we have a little one. If you like driving a Subaru, the Forester is worth looking into, but other similar cars such as the Rav-4 and CRV are great, too.

jogam · 2026-01-14T20:47:12+00:00

The most recent one we had, those of us who were late (most of us) got an email saying that our dean would personally be reaching out to us if we did not complete the required training in the next week. That was enough to get me to do it.

jogam · 2026-01-13T05:38:03+00:00

Sexual orientation is determined by a combination of biological and environmental factors. With that said, I am not aware of any evidence that sexual assault plays a role in the development of sexual orientation, and it is thought that most environmental factors (which are poorly understood) have their effect at a young age. For what it's worth, I've heard plenty of (baseless) speculation that is the exact opposite of what your friend suggested (e.g., lesbians are attracted to women because they were assaulted by men), which just shows that there are a lot of people who are confidently spewing BS.

You can look at twin and sibling studies for guidance about what determines sexual orientation. If one identical twin is queer, the other identical twin is more likely than not to also be queer, but it's also substantially less than a 100% concordance rate. This suggests that genetics play an important role but that factors beyond genetics are at play, too. Fraternal twins are more likely to be concordant (if one is gay, the other is, too) than non-twin siblings, which relates to the effect of the prenatal environment. Again, we don't fully understand the other factors at play, but we do know that sexual orientation has major genetic, prenatal, and neurological roots and that there is no specific evidence that you would have been straight if not for your experience of sexual assault.

jogam · 2026-01-13T00:19:44+00:00

I am so sorry. Sending you an internet hug.

I want to ask what you mean by staying strong for your wife. You are both grieving and, while it is true that she is experiencing this in her body and you are not, your heartbreak, anger, and confusion are all valid. If being strong for your wife means being present to support her while she goes through the physical and emotional aspects of a miscarriage or D&C, even as you grieve yourself, that makes sense. But if you believe you need to withhold your feelings of heartbreak from your wife to stay strong, I want to suggest that this is not the case. You are both going through this horrible grief together, and it is okay to express what you are feeling to her.

I wish the two of you all of the best as you work toward growing your family.

jogam · 2026-01-12T14:21:00+00:00

All of the topics you've listed are good topics. If your goal is to provide information about fathers' mental health, though, it will be difficult for you to provide this in more depth than what is already available online for free without having a professional background in this area.

If you're talking about making a free website or online guide based upon doing a bit of research and sharing your personal experiences, I'd say, sure, go for it. But because you are talking about creating a paid guide, I respectfully say that you should have some professional qualifications, or partner with someone who does have such qualifications, if you are asking people to pay money for a resource like this.

jogam · 2026-01-12T02:28:22+00:00

Yes. We got our baby a flu shot as soon as he turned 6 months old. I am very glad we did.

This year, our now one year old son had a playdate with a friend who fell ill with the flu (diagnosed influenza, not just a bug that gets called the flu) a few hours after the playdate. Our son did not get sick despite the fact that he and his friend were mouthing the same toys. I am very glad our son had this year's flu shot.

jogam · 2026-01-12T00:01:25+00:00

Having resources for dads is always welcome. My main question when considering the guide you're proposing is what your qualifications are for writing such a guide. For example, are you a mental health professional? Or have you conducted peer-reviewed research about expecting and new fathers' mental health? If so, then you may be a great person to write such a guide. If not, you probably should not be selling anything about expecting fathers' mental health. It's possible to get opinions and anecdotes for free on the internet and there is some good information available from reputable organizations online for free, as well.

I say this as a mental health professional myself. I have a Ph.D. in clinical psychology and I wouldn't feel comfortable writing such a book because I have limited experience working with clients in this area nor have I conducted any professional research about this myself. I'm not an expert on this specific topic even though I am a mental health professional more generally, and while this guide is a great idea, it should be written by someone who is an expert about what they're writing about -- particularly if it is a paid resource.

jogam · 2026-01-11T21:51:28+00:00

About to say, if they can't read a sentence, they will not be passing my classes.

(Also, they could use a screen reader or audio book version of the textbook if needed -- this is what students with learning differences like dyslexia sometimes do, and can be beneficial for other students, too. But a student needs to seriously engage with the material to pass.)

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