Graduate School:

Through a human lens

*Virtually* everyone who begins graduate school completes their first year. This, to me, makes the first year of graduate school unique. For this reason, I will write a different post about my transition from undergrad through the end of my first year of graduate school, including those thoroughly enjoyable qualifying exams. Let’s fast forward.

second year, 2014-2015

Starting the spring of my first year, I attended UNL’s Operator Algebras Seminar. That same semester, some graduate students started the Operator Theory Reading Seminar, a students-only weekly seminar to supplement the weekly Operator Algebra Seminar. So, I attended that seminar, too. I was told early on that my dream of doing non-commutative algebra while at UNL would not come to fruition unless I did operator algebras, a subfield of math I’d never heard of before grad school. Given my complete lack of background, both seminars were over my head, and I was disenchanted with the inner product symbols, asterisks, and norm symbols that dominated speakers’ whiteboards. I knew I had to follow my interests, possibly outside the math department.

Eager to pursue research related to quantum mechanics, I enrolled in the first semester of graduate-level quantum mechanics at UNL. I did so, naturally, without having had a single college-level physics course. My (inaccurate) mantra for that course was “classical physics; who needs it?” Nonetheless, my naive bravery carried me through the course, which was taught by the incredible Dr. Anthony Starace (1945-2019).

The desire I felt for doing mathematical research related to quantum field theory was irrevocable, and I was unconvinced that operator algebras was the ideal path to that goal. That summer, I studied for a comprehensive exam in measure theory while also requesting a reading course with Dr. Alex Zupan, knot-theorist extraordinaire and–at the time–a brand new faculty member at UNL.

In the middle of June, I re-aggravated a back injury I’d suffered as an athlete in high school. The intensity of the first few weeks after the pain began forced me to quit a bartending job I’d just started at a local Italian restaurant, to pull out of a summer teaching position, and to not travel to a conference for which EDGE had funded me. I still worked (while lying on the couch) as an online homework programmer for the math department and identified handlebodies for my reading course. My pain was excruciating and I could not leave my apartment, nor could I stand long enough to prepare food. I had some exceptionally generous and devoted friends who kept me fed and held my pain-related depression at bay. One of those amazing people would later become my husband.

In our whimsical, early days of dating, my future husband and I had booked a trip to NYC to see the production Sleep No More in late July. By that time, I was able to sort-of-move-around with adequate NSAIDS. So we went. I won’t go into details about how difficult my pain and mobility was, but I will say that this trip remains one of the best of my life, despite having to frequently lie down on piss-ridden sidewalks for back relief.

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Third year, 2015-2016

Despite having thoroughly enjoyed learning about Heegaard splittings with Dr. Zupan, I decided to return to the operator algebras crowd, hat in hand, in fall of my third year. Dr. David Pitts, one of my to-be Ph.D. advisors, gave me a paper by Erik Christensen titled “On Weakly D-differentiable Operators.” It frequently referred to unbounded self-adjoint operators and the trouble with considering them in commutators. Still in the infancy of my functional analysis coursework, which typically deals only with bounded operator theory, I spent the fall semester learning unbounded operator theory, while also performing in a community theatre musical.

My back wasn’t super thrilled about these things, but the pain was tolerable; three times per week I had spinal decompression therapy on my spine and did physical therapy. Unfortunately, after months of hoping and strengthening and wincing and worrying, a single sneeze on December 15 quickly devolved into unimaginable pain. Not only could I not stand, I could not get out of bed to go to the restroom. The details may be left to the reader’s imagination. I would have come undone without the love and attention I received from friends, my future husband, and my parents. I had surgery on December 30.

The first two weeks of spring semester, I watched my classes from bed via Skype. My teaching load was covered by an extremely kind graduate student colleague, Wei Hu. When I returned to teaching, I also attended my own classes in person, but I laid down on the floor or stood up and paced during them. A couple more weeks passed, and my surgical incision was discovered to be infected. For six weeks my future husband had to debride my infected incision daily. I never actually saw “the abyss” (what he called the tunneling infection) because my mental capacity for bodily injury was completely maxed out. The infection cleared in March and is now a weird scar smudge on my low back.

Research and independent learning felt nearly impossible. Although my pain was significantly reduced, I developed severe anxiety that I still struggle with today. Given the difficulty I had focusing on less structured tasks, I instead focused on preparing for a written comprehensive exam on functional analysis and unbounded operator theory. I studied, studied, studied, and then I studied some more. One of the proudest moments I had in graduate school was passing that written comprehensive exam on my first try that summer.

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Fourth Year, 2016-2017

On the first Tuesday of the fall semester, I jumped over the last hurdle to become a Ph.D. candidate: a comprehensive oral exam over functional analysis and unbounded operator theory. To prepare, Derek DeSantis and Mitch Hamidi–members of my peer-level operator algebra family– and Chris Schafhauser, who was visiting Nebraska from Waterloo, gathered to hold a mock exam. Great advice: have a compact operator up your sleeve that you can prove is compact.

Following the hour-long, actual oral examination, Drs. Allan Donsig, Kyungyong Lee, David Pitts, Anthony Starace, and Alex Zupan conferred that I had passed. There had been some panicked moments during the exam–Dr. Pitts asked me to calculate the spectrum of the Banach algebra l^1(Z), and I struggled until he gave some hints. Dr. Starace, that kind man, asked me to state the Cauchy-Schwarz inequality. Dr. Zupan asked me to explain the motivation behind the Hahn-Banach Theorem, while Dr. Kyungyong, an algebraic geometer, unsurprisingly asked me to describe the ideal structure of a commutative C*-algebras (continuous functions on a compact Hausdorff space). Dr. Donsig asked me to give an example of a compact operator, which I was far too prepared for after my mock exam:

“The Volterra operator! Here’s the definition! Would you like me to prove it’s compact?!” to which Dr. Donsig replied, “No…thanks.”

That fall semester I took the second semester of graduate-level quantum mechanics, again from the incomparable Dr. Anthony Starace. Having functional analysis finally under my belt, I was better equipped to translate the physics course, taught by a physicist to baby physicists, into something I could understand.

So much had happened during year 3 that I have a hard time recalling anything academically significant in year 4. In my personal life, however, a metaphorical bomb went off on the Ismert-side of my family. Today I reflect fondly on that time as my first act of courage against emotional manipulation and boundary violations. In January, I auditioned for and acted in a play called “Red Speedo,” which was directed by the fabulous Nathan Norcross.

There was one academic success of note. In April, Travis Russell defended his thesis. During his defense, I proved a sub-case of the result I’d set out for months prior. It was the first “thing” of substance I’d proven. I was ecstatic. Also–sorry Travis for being distracted while you were defending your thesis, or whatever.

During Summer 2017, I still had the theatre bug, so I auditioned and was cast in Big Fish. We rehearsed from late April until the show opened in June. Then in August, against the advise of my superiors (and consequently buying a very expensive plane ticket with my own $$), I insisted on attending the Young Mathematicians in C*-algebras conference in Copenhagen. It was a total blast. In addition to meeting some folks who are now some of my best math friends (is there any other kind?), I learned so much and had the rare opportunity to commune with fellow women in operator algebras. One of those women later reimbursed me for half of my plane ticket.

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Fifth year, 2017-2018

There is a real fear of being in your fifth year and not having any concrete results. I recall an autumn evening walk with my future husband around UNL campus where I admitted that I wasn’t ready to leave Lincoln, anyway. Knowing that that year would not be our last was an overall happy thought. On August 21 the total solar eclipse occurred, and classes at UNL were cancelled to accommodate its viewing.

In September, I got an invitation to speak in January at the Joint Math Meetings in San Diego. I was both over the moon and mildly terrified–I felt I didn’t have adequate results on which to give a talk, but I could bear the thought of letting this opportunity pass by. Unbeknownst to me, however, the invitation had first been OK’ed by Dr. Pitts. I smiled when I learned this much later on. I accepted the invitation and got to work. I was going to have a result by January. And, by November, I did.

In San Diego, I gave my talk and reconnected with several friends, both mathematicians and a dear theatre friend from my undergrad. I also recall a new acquaintance, Kristin Courtney, asking me a question about my presentation. She and I would later become friends and co-organizers for several future endeavors.

By now this may be predictable, but I also enrolled in UNL’s University Choir. I performed in two concerts and enjoyed the attempt to restrengthen my voice. My future husband formed a band with some magical people, and they performed a lot of local shows. This spring was not, however, void of hardship. In February, one of my best friends self-harmed to a nearly fatal extent. Being the first to arrive at the scene has left a deep impression on me. The feeling of nearly losing someone, like that, burns. My friend’s road to better health has helped me become more sensitive to the emotional needs of others, and of myself.

Over spring break, my future husband and I traveled to Central Arizona. We roamed around Sedona, Jerome, and visited the Grand Canyon. With the fall job search looming, we both wished there were a university around there that we could dream about working at together. Little did we know…

The picture on the left was taken on my grandpa’s 89th birthday, and it would be his last.

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Sixth Year, 2018-2019

Sometimes I do wonder how I finished graduate school. I know the answer–unwavering support from friends and family, and my sheer will. This year’s a doozy, so if you want to skip to the end, go right ahead. It ends how you think it will.

The summer had been great. I’d begun a research collaboration with Leonard Huang. It consisted of C*-crossed products and Hilbert C*-modules, neither topic of which I was particularly familiar with. By the time the fall semester started, we were already getting results. While at Young Mathematicians in C*-algebras 2018 in Leuven, Belgium, I received invitations to speak at both the Brazos Analysis Seminar at Texas A&M in September and the AMS Fall Western Sectional in San Francisco, CA, where I presented a new independent result related to analytic vectors of certain unbounded derivations. Finally, my research was nearly adequate to call “a dissertation.”

To top off all this good luck–or, dare I take credit; the rewards of hard work–I received a late invitation to attend the Women in Operator Algebras conference at the Banff International Research Station. Since this conference was announced in early 2018, I’d been gnawing at the bit to go. Despite receiving the invitation less than a month before the conference, I excitedly accepted the invitation to WOA and bought (another expensive) plane ticket.

October 26-28, 2018

One full week before WOA @ BIRS, I flew to San Francisco for the AMS Fall Western Sectional. About an hour before I was scheduled to give my talk, phone calls and texts started flooding in from that darn Ismert-side of my family, specifically from my father and grandpa, who was in a rehab facility recovering from pneumonia. Even if it wasn’t explicitly said that day, it was clear to me that I needed to be my grandpa’s primary caretaker henceforth.

October 29 – November 4

When I got back to Nebraska from San Francisco, I attempted to balance my teaching, research, and long-distance grandpa duties while preparing to leave for WOA @ BIRS. That week, my collaborator Leonard stayed with me to finish up our project and to attend the Nebraska-Iowa Functional Analysis Seminar. However, the constant phone calls from the rehab facility, my grandfather, and the office manager at my grandfather’s business–on top of my existing schedule sent me careening over the edge. I decided I needed to accept my counselor’s suggestion to take an anti-anxiety medication, and on November 1 when I was to see the campus psychiatrist, I slept through my alarm. This never happens to me. When I arrived to my appointment, 15 minutes late, the receptionist shook her head and told me I’d have to reschedule. I wanted to scream, “I’m not an undergrad!” and beg, “please, I really need this.” But I couldn’t speak. I walked to the restroom, where, once inside, I dropped to my knees and sobbed.

November 4, 2018

An e-mail to the WOA @ BIRS organizers and several phone calls with my grandfather later, I had canceled my plans to attend the conference and packed a very large bag for Kansas. My future husband sent my airline a cancelation request with the reason stated as, “I am the medical power of attorney for my grandpa and he needs me.”

November 5, 2018

As I drove south to Kansas, a representative of the airline I’d booked my Banff flight with called and said, “I’m canceling your flight and waiving the cancelation fee. I had to take care of my mom last year. I understand what you’re going through.” The level of gratitude I felt for that human stays with me, and I drove ahead knowing I’d absolutely made the right decision.

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Even though it felt like a year, my grandfather only lived for another 24 days. I spent most of those days with him. A slew of my fellow graduate students covered my whopping 7-credit weekly teaching load, some of them without asking the favor to be returned. I felt guilty, but mostly I felt desperate to find a way to make things work with this new arrangement. And, that arrangement was evolving. My grandpa wanted to be at home, and I wanted that, too. Due to the level of care he required, I spent tens of hours researching and scheduling at-home nursing services, bingo nights, elderly gatherings, and transportation to and from his dialysis treatments. It again became clear what I needed to do: I would humbly ask for a grading assignment in the spring, and I would move back to Kansas. The execution of this plan never came to be.

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November 23-29, 2018

Knowing my grandpa’s return home the following week would require me to be with him, I had returned to Nebraska the previous Friday (the day after Thanksgiving) to get things in order. Monday morning, my grandpa’s nurse called and reported that he was refusing to go to dialysis. The previous night when he and I spoke on the phone, he said he didn’t want to go. He and I both knew what he meant by that–it can take as few as 7 days for someone to die when they stop dialysis. I’d asked him to see how he felt in the morning. When that phone call came from the nurse, I knew it was time. My future husband was initially hesitant to leave for Kansas with–neither of our classes were covered and we were, between the two of us, responsible for 12 weekly credits. I left him on campus and began walking to our apartment in the cold. Twenty minutes later, future husband pulls up in the car, drove us to the apartment, and with Kiki in tow, we headed south.

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The job search for my future husband and I had already begun in October and was very busy during December. Family disputes surrounding my grandpa’s death and distribution of his estate erupted immediately following his funeral. Throughout the rest of this year I went to my grandpa’s vacant house, where I spent hours and days sorting through files and paperwork. He and my grandmother owned and managed a significant amount of real-estate over their decades of marriage, not to mention that my grandmother was the Sedgwick County Appraiser during the 1990’s. The most remarkable thing I found was a manilla file-folder titled “Prescott, AZ” in my grandpa’s stack of day-to-day bills, prescriptions, and insurance documents.

In January, my fiancé (I proposed on January 3, 2019!) and I flew to the Joint Math Meetings in Baltimore, Maryland for some first-round job interviews. One of the schools with which we both had interviews was, not surprisingly, with Embry-Riddle, Prescott Campus. And the rest is history.

On the other side…

In May 2019, I earned my Ph.D., married the love of my life, bought a house in Prescott, Arizona, and, alongside my husband, began a tenure-track position at ERAU-Prescott. Life continues to be really hard at times. But the intensity of that struggle is declining as I acknowledge the increasing resonance of pure joy, a sense of stability, and a resolute belief that life will continue to get better and better. Hang in there, reader.