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theajournal · 3 years

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How 2021 is Going So Far For Me

On January 15th, 2021, I found out that I am pregnant.

I’m 21 years old and in my last semester of university. Coming from a strict Punjabi family, I feel conflicted and confused with my pregnancy. Preferably, most women would share this amazing news with their mothers; however, in my situation, sharing this with my mom would kinda result in my death (maybe). So, as of right now, no one knows about my situation - just the two closest people in my life.

My head feels heavy and my chest feels like it is going to explode. The emotions I feel are too hard for me to say out loud. It’s too hard for me to even process them. At times, I also feel like I’m a burden to my friends. Constantly ranting about the same damn thing. I hate talking about the same thing but I feel like this situation has taken over me. Talking about this situation makes me feel a lot better but I don’t want to always unleash my problems to my friends. Even though I realize I may be overthinking how my friends truly feel about me, but I’m scared that sooner or later, they will get sick of hearing the same problem over and over again.

I always wondered what was going inside someone's head when they found out they were pregnant - especially if they were in a similar situation like mine. Now I know. Now that I am in this situation, I know what might’ve been going inside their head. Even though I have a great support system, I still feel like I am alone in this. I feel like no one truly understands how I feel and never will.

For the past month, I’ve been spotting. Everyday. The spotting started a couple of days after my last period, so I found that odd. My paranoia got the best of me and I figured I should do a pregnancy test - to clear any doubts I had. But any sane person would look at my situation and be like, “but wait, you already got your period, you can’t be pregnant!” I thought that too. I did the first pregnancy test, and it came out positive. It was a faint positive, but nonetheless, still a positive. I started to panic so I quickly did another one - it came out negative. I was confused, sad, shocked. I couldn't comprehend how I had a positive pregnancy test when I just finished my period couple days ago. From that day on, I was experiencing spotting. At first, it was just brown discharge, sometimes mixed with blood. But recently, the bleeding started to get worse and heavier.

Especially during lockdown, there wasn't much I could do. My dad is very strict with the whole lockdown protocols. To an extent, I understand his paranoia. He wants us to be safe. The last thing he wants is keeping his family safe for months to only get the virus after all. So now, I’m stuck at home, bleeding, and pregnant. As you can assume, my stress levels were high, and I was emotionally exhausted. My appetite started to get worse for the next few weeks. Even if I wanted an abortion, I couldn’t leave my house without a valid excuse - I HAD no valid excuse. I was stuck at home. Stuck in my room. With absolutely no solution or plan.

Now, it’s January. Winter semester has started and it’s time for me to put all my attention into school - that's if I want to get into grad school. The government also just announced that he will extend lockdown. Until February 10. ‘Great,’ I thought to myself, ‘if I’m really pregnant, I can’t do shit about it for another four weeks.’

Around this time, I was supposed to begin my period. I honestly hoped I would magically get my period. And honestly, at one point I thought I did begin my period. January 11th, 2021 was when my light bleeding began to become heavier. The flow was so heavy, it was bleed through my underwear. I started to wear pads - happy because I finally got my period and I was just the lucky ones who got a false positive. But when I went to go change my pad, there was absolutely no blood on the pad. None. Disappointed, I took off the pad and didn’t wear a new one. Why waste pads when I know I won't get my period? Then, it happened again the next day. And the next day. There was blood on underwear, blood in my piss, so I wore a pad. Now, there is blood on my pad, but not enough to conclude I got my period. I believe this because I haven't got any PMS symptoms - besides from light cramping I’ve been getting when I spotting. I wasn’t also getting clots in my period. My period is pretty regular - I get PMS symptoms only one the first two heaviest days of my period and the flow becomes pretty light after that. So, I started to worry. ‘What if I was having a miscarriage?’ From my excessive amount of research, excessive bleeding during early pregnancy could mean a miscarriage. I knew from the second I found out I was pregnant, I am going to terminate the pregnancy. First of all, my parents would destroy ME. And secondly, I’m too young. I’m only 21, without a stable job, about to finish my last semester of undergrad, and we’re in the middle of a pandemic. However, the fear of knowing I may be going through a miscarriage was different than finding out I am pregnant. It sucks I can’t share this with my mom - the women who went through three pregnancies and is aware of what is normal and not. As any sane person would do, I made an appointment with an online doctor, and hopefully receive some answers.

The doctor wasn’t too helpful. Right off the bat, she scared me and was adamant on the idea that I should get another pregnancy test done. “Oh you missed your period and been bleeding for a month? Go get a pregnancy NOW!1!!1!” She also told me I could be experiencing either one of the two types of pregnancies - ectopic or chemical pregnancy. Neither sounded good. Which was also why she was so adamant about me getting a pregnancy test. If I was pregnant, I quickly needed to get an ultrasound to figure out if my pregnancy is healthy or if I am experiencing a miscarriage. Obviously, I was terrified, but mostly, I was really confused. This was all new to me. I had no one who experienced and would understand what I was going through. I mean, my friends don’t have knowledge about this, I couldn't ask them for advice or opinions on my situation. The doctor didn’t really hear me out. And the internet is huge, with several different answers trying to explain the bleeding I am experiencing. No matter how much research I did, I never got a clear-cut answer.

So, I listened to the doctor’s instructions and got a pregnancy test. My friend, being the sweetest person ever, dropped it off. I wasn't too eager to do the pregnancy test right away. I honestly believed it may be negative and all of this would end, and I would get my period soon enough. So the next morning (which is January 15th), I did the pregnancy test. And it was positive. Again? Positive again? I felt like I was experiencing the situation back in December all over again. I chose not to do the second one since I got the results really quick from the first pregnancy test. Now, I must carry this secret, this guilt, this sadness around my family. I can’t even be around them because all I can think about the pregnancy. Which fucking sucks.

As of right now, being stuck at home, in the middle of a pandemic, there’s not much I can do. I called the nearest abortion clinic and explained them my situation. The receptionist was sweet and gave me her honest opinion and advice. She believes I’m experiencing a miscarriage (which may be why I have been experiencing all the bleeding and cramping) and tells me I need to get my blood work completed ASAP. That’s where I’m at. Right now, on January 15th, all I know is I may be going through a miscarriage.

With all the cramping and bleeding I am experiencing, plus a positive pregnancy test, my brain feels foggy. I understand that there is not much I can do. Because of my situation, I have to wait until it is appropriate for me to leave the house to do all the necessary steps. I must wait a little more longer to fix my situation, but I am happy to know that I have a great support system.

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lazylacadaemon · 7 years

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(1) hi! this is a similar question to the other anon asking advice, but with a different twist. i'd like to ask specficially if you have any advice for uni students planning to major in classics/classical studies? how was your experience with it? did you end up focusing more on the history/archaeology side of things or the ancient languages? is it possible to do both? also, on a somewhat related note, how do you find doing your masters in classics in canada? i'm briefly (cont..)

(2) considering it (i’m on the west coast), but job prospects look…. a little dismal. is that just me, or is that a legitimate concern? would you happen to know what kind of options are out there in academia now for people who’d like to pursue more than an undergrad in the humanities? sorry that this ask is a little out of control with the questions. feel free to filter out your answers; i don’t want to bother you too much or take up too much of your time!

Hey thanks for dropping by to ask, I’l do my best to account for as many things as I can. This could get long haha. A lot of this is from my (limited) personal experience and the experience of people I know, so don’t take it as the be all end all answer.

1. Classics in general

I adore the discipline, I adore my profs, and while I complain a lot about dead languages I really don’t have any regrets doing it. I think the experience will vary from school to school and country to country, but I just want to get my overarching fondness for the ancient world out of the way.

In my undergrad I focused mostly on art history and archaeology (though my minor is in linguistics) because I’m a very visual person, I’m a self-taught artist, and it was interesting to me. My supervisor (who sort of adopted me because I took so many of her classes) is the one who really loves getting down in the dirt and she’s always trying to get me to get out there too but I’ve never been on a dig and I honestly don’t know how useful I’d be on one. xD In grad school now I’m in a program called Ancient Societies and Cultures which is an interdisciplinary program- there are people like me who are Classics majors that want to bridge that gap between literature/language and archaeology and history, but there are also people who major in things like math/engineering who want an older perspective on things too. As far as I know, my university is the only one with such a MA program in classics.

But yeah it’s certainly possible to do both in undergrad- I took a lot of myth courses, a lot of history courses, and a few courses I wouldn’t have thought to take due to limited options in certain years (but tbh I nearly died in 500 level Roman Monarchy because I know pretty much nothing about Late Imperial Roman History, just the art lol). I of course took a lot of Greek and Latin- I was going through a bit of a crisis in my first couple years trying to decide between East Asian Studies and Classics, and taking Intermediate Japanese at the same time as Intro Ancient Greek was… interesting. I didn’t take Latin until my MA- I don’t think it was a Super important requirement for what I was doing, but I’m very glad I did it anyway. Also… a shameful admittance… I have my BA in Classics, I am maybe 2 months tops from getting my MA… and I have never read the Iliad- the closest equivalent to a bible there is- all the way through. In English. (I’ve read the Odyssey twice to make up for it though)

2. Classics in Canada

The first most important distinction in Classical studies: in North America, Classics is usually put together with the history department. In Europe, Classics is still fundamentally linked to its origins in philology. Classical archaeology in particular is actually a really niche discipline, at least in North America- the anthropologists don’t want it because we have “too much literature”, the historians don’t want it because we have “too much dirt”, and the art historians sometimes begrudgingly take us in even though they aren’t super fond of dirt either. I had a colleague who referred to a complete and utter lack of good programs in classical archaeology at “the university that shall not be named” in Toronto (whatever it was, it did leave quite a sour impression on him).

Secondly, Canadian students relative to American and European students entering classics are at a particular disadvantage if they want to dive right into languages: in the States, there seems to be a Latin revival in secondary school- maybe even in primary school- so you can legitimately have people with 4 years of Latin straight out of high school under their belts. In Canada, the last private school that offered Latin at the secondary level dropped the program. It’s not a big problem if you are doing an undergrad and are super interested in doing languages (although they’ve cut the Classical Languages Major here because only like 2 people did it… pretty ridic still and a lot of my profs are Very Angry), but say you are me who took Greek in undergrad on a whim but no Latin, and then looking at grad schools like UBC who seem to cater to American/International students by requiring a minimum of six years of Latin or Greek and four in the other- friggin impossible when you only have been doing Greek and no Latin for half your undergrad. However, if you love Latin there are (or at least… there were, idk what’s up with this political mess) a lot of prospects in the US for teaching Latin and it’s an easy straight shot from uni into the field (easy if you don’t mind living in the States).

Finally, specifically, I don’t know much about Classics outside my university. I’m a student at the U of A and, being the filthy rich Albertans we are, we tend to have a lot of advantages that other universities might not. We have a tidy little collection of artefacts in our museum from Greece, Italy, Egypt and the Near East, the UK, and so forth. We have regular exchange programs in Italy for students interested in poli sci, history, art history, or classics, and we have regular digs in both Italy and Greece. We also have pretty decent entrance requirements and great profs- still pretty limited to Greece and Rome, but I think we recently got someone who is an expert in Sanskrit for instance, which is great. I don’t know much about other universities- I’ve heard gossip that U of T has some interesting department drama, and I had a former classmate who really really really loved a particular school on the east coast (the name is escaping me right now but it was clear she would have much rather been there- I want to say it’s in New Brunswick).

3. Job Prospects

ok let me get one thing very clear: i’m really

really

rEALLy tired of people who have only taken high school repeatedly telling me that the Only Thing you can get with a History/Classics Degree is being a professor (or a teacher). The professor life is a very viable option and a lot of profs will either nudge you toward it or away from it- my dad is a prof (not in humanities) and is really pressuring me to do a phd because ‘its the best job in the world’ etc etc but I’m not sure if it’s what I wanna do, at least not yet. I really don’t like the idea of moving around where the jobs are, and a lot of it does depend heavily on travelling around to lectures and talking to people and hoping you make a good connection. It is dismal, as my profs will be the first to admit, but Classics is definitely still hiring new profs- my uni just got a new mediterranean archaeologist I believe after holding auditions for a couple months.

This is a worry that comes up so often in classes and there isn’t a straight answer for it- the terrifying and also liberating answer is that life is messy. It’s not terribly likely you’ll get a job in your field- but that applies to classicists and historians just as it does to engineers and microbiologists. The degree, the specialty, isn’t that important. Getting it done, doing something is more important.

I’m not the best person to ask about what happens after university because I’m right on the brink of moving to Toronto to do another MA in Museum Studies/Information Studies - I’ve been in school from Kindergarten with no breaks and I’m going to be in University for exactly 10 years- not too keen on spending another 7 doing a phd. I’ve been in a very lucky position and my parents have been very supportive of me, I can’t thank them enough. They’ve been saving since I was born to send me to university, and my dad was very supportive of my arts degree because I get to do a lot of the things he didn’t have the option to do when he was going to school and I get to provide his discipline with a new perspective and vice versa every time we talk. I have a great support network of family and friends who have made this possible for me and I’m forever in their debt.

Knowing ancient greek isn’t going to get me a job, but knowing how to talk about ancient greek to people who are curious, knowing how to communicate in writing, how to communicate orally, how to make my subject less impenetrable and elitist for other people are all skills that are invaluable to me. Who knows, maybe some employer will look at a resume like /you know greek AND latin? you must be a crazy hard worker and disciplined to pick up dead languages/. If you get wrapped up in the “what am I going to do with this”, you’re not really focusing on the right things? Sometimes it won’t be obvious until you’re looking back on it, or until someone else is looking at it. I’ll pull up the typical ‘JK Rowling was a classics major’ of course, and I’ll point out that there are so many many many more jobs out there than there are fields that account for them. If that piece of paper gets you a job you enjoy, regardless of whether you use 100% of your skills and knowledge every day, then enjoying the road to getting that piece of paper is worth it imho.

Think beyond teaching, think about archaeology, museums, archives, local history, information, movies and documentaries, writing fiction or non-fiction… and there are possibilities out there that haven’t occurred to me only because I’m still in school. You can’t predict what jobs are going to look like in the future and hell, job prospects for snake people are dismal enough as it is. I live in a province that’s absolutely flooded with engineers for example, and a lot of them face difficulties because of the rollercoaster economy here regardless of how ‘useful’ the degree is considered relatively. Might as well do something you enjoy, something that is applicable to multiple disciplines (Classics is like history, language arts, art history, etc all rolled into one and they all teach basics of communication, critical thinking, etc. that are indispensable for any society). Also, Classics remains desperately isolated from other disciplines in part because people have been avoiding it- there’s a lot that could be done uniting it with other disciplines like cultural studies or computers - especially because so many profs make new websites that look straight out of the 90s. -cries-

I know this wasn’t part of your question but also consider it from a social angle- Classics is considered to be a dying discipline in part because it is considered “useless” and partly as it has been historically perceived- correctly- as “elitist”. However, you’ll notice that classics is becoming more and more relevant, particularly with the rise of extreme right, white/euro supremacist groups appropriating the imagery of “western civilization”. The discipline desperately needs fresh ideas, new perspectives, and challenges to the status quo to keep idiots like this from misusing the ancient world for their own racist, sexist agendas. My thesis is getting increasingly relevant to this as I continue writing it, and though it will ultimately reach a small audience the knowledge that I’ve researched myself and have had peer reviewed will become invaluable to me in dispelling misconceptions and outright lies about ‘western’ civilization. Please consider it from that angle as well.

#hapo rambles #hapo's gradventures #gradblr #classics #advice #Anonymous #hapo advice

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