Don't cry over spilt (breast) milk

Ok, so I didn't actually spill breastmilk, but I did cry...

About 3 weeks ago, I presented at paper at SEWSA on biocultural (biology + culture) perspectives on breastfeeding. It focused on one evolutionary cost of not breastfeeding, precocious puberty (having your period before age 9 or developing breasts before age 8) and commented on ineffective public health campaigns that attempt to increase breastfeeding. It was well received. Many people asked questions and I felt great.

Flash forward to last Wednesday. The same paper was presented to my WMST seminar class who HATED it. They took offense to all the evolutionary stuff and couldn't believe that I, as a feminist, would include evolutionary perspectives. They asked me questions about lesbians and gay men who couldn't breastfeed. I explained that I wasn't advocating for all women or caregivers to breastfeed, just that those who want to face cultural barriers against doing so in public. They also complained about my stating the human breast was evolved for breastfeeding. Um, we are mammals? Evolution is a POPULATION based model, thus individual preferences don't matter fr the whole species (i.e. if you choose not to have children). Basically, I was so upset I snarkily replied to all they're comments that I would just toss all the evolution stuff because I didn't want to explain how evolution worked in my paper.

Well, that took made my paper substantially shorter than the 20 pages I originally wrote and the 18 page suggestion. Compounded with the other two papers I had to write this weekend, re-writing that breastfeeding paper was going to be difficult. Come Saturday night, I had one paragraph of my former paper that was salvageable, meaning I was going to need to write 13 pages tomorrow and re-research the topic. So feeling overwhelmed and frustrated and angry, I cried. And while crying wrote an "I have abandoned all hope on this paper and I have no clue what I am supposed to do" email to my professor. Real smart, Taylor. Real smart

The elusive grad school meltdown, which had escaped me all first semester finally hit me with one week on school to go. GREAT.

Anyway, I pulled myself together, and on Sunday, I magically pulled 12 pages of text, 4 pages of images, and 3 pages of citations out of my research on a completely different topic from the one I began with. Is it a good paper? Who knows. It's finished; it's passable; and I am slow getting over my perfectionism. Well, trying to...