Eating an Elephant

How to Finish A Dissertation in Two Easy Centuries! (Part II)

2006-06-01T09:08:00.000-05:00

Part II: So how did I get here from there?

I've actually spent the last few days boxing up all my dissertation documents (for now), and what a good feeling! So it has given me a chance to reflect on how I made myself finish the beast. Keep in mind that I wrote my entire dissertation while in my first three to four years of a 4-4 teaching load... It certainly was a learning process, something that is unique to each writer, but hopefully we'll have some ideas in common. Here are my thoughts about How To Finish, in no particular order:

1. MOMENTUM IS KEY.
Action leads to more action, inaction leads to paralysis. I think momentum is important in the larger sense, since finishing a chapter or two really makes you feel like you can do it, i.e. who would bother to finish 65% of a dissertation and not keep going from there? Getting over the hump in the middle is important. And when I look back on how long it took me to finish each chapter (usually 6 months per chapter), I was able to finish chapters in shorter amounts of time toward the end. Going downhill is a powerful image.

But momentum is also important on the day-to-day level. I'm the kind of person who could very easily sit down to work and find myself feeling incredibly anxious about the next task at hand. But I learned over the years that while I would have loved to avoid the anxiety-producing task (hence the years-long blockage I experienced) that I would, in actuality, feel better if I plunged ahead. Even while I was directly grappling with whatever made me anxious in the first place, I felt better than if I had tried to avoid it entirely. Doing something felt better than doing nothing.

2. THE ONLY GOOD DISSERTATION IS A DONE DISSERTATION
Thankfully I learned that slogan from my advisor. I've known a few graduate students who were cursed (in my opinion) with advisors who set unrealistically high standards for a dissertation. Mine only wanted it completed. A related slogan could be: YOU ONLY HAVE TO PASS. That gave me the freedom to turn off some of the perfectionistic voices in my head and just stumble forward. I can think of hundreds of times when I reached a fork in the road and faced a choice between two options: one option involved doing more research or reading or writing until I felt I'd really, really, really covered that particular point. The second option was to, frankly, do a half-assed job of it and hope it was good enough. I figured that if I needed more historiography or more primary sources, my advisors would tell me. And they never said a word. So obviously what I felt was a "half-assed job" was certainly good enough to pass. Again, momentum. By reducing my expectations and giving myself permission to take frequent shortcuts, I didn't slow myself down.

A related issue here: for those of you teaching while dissertating, it can be incredibly difficult to apply this same logic to your teaching. Teaching is more immediate in terms of pressures and rewards, and I firmly believe that teaching expands to fill the space available. But again, you'll come to a fork in the road and you have to choose the path that results in less work. Assign fewer papers. Give the same crappy lecture again. Show a film. Etc. You're almost certainly still doing a better job teaching than most of the faculty and you'll keep yourself sane at the same time. Learn to say no.

3. DO WHATEVER IT TAKES TO GET MOVING AND KEEP MOVING
This idea is clearly related to momentum again. Physicists might disagree, but for me, momentum was not a self-perpetuating state. It had to be started and re-started numerous times. Sure, it got easier the more I did it, but it was still challenging to start from a "cold start" each day, week, chapter, whatever...

So how do you make yourself work? In Dissertation Land, there is no time clock. In most respects, you're on your own to set the hours and conditions of your work. I think dissertators often choose between time-oriented and task-oriented solutions to this problem. For me, I found that requiring myself to work for a certain time period each day was not the solution in and of itself. For example, saying I needed to put in two hours of work on my dissertation often resulted in me trying to wait out the clock, daydreaming, etc.

But what did work for me was to divide the work into smaller and smaller tasks. At least for me, writing a history dissertation included a lot of non-thinking scut work. I'm a fast typer, so it was easier to type in the text of a lot of primary sources, add a few thoughts, and keep going. Later I would re-arrange them, add text, delete sources, etc, but again, typing in the sources was something to do. It kept me moving. It produced pages and pages. It convinced me that I had enough sources and, more importantly, I had something to say about those sources. And trust me, some of those early "drafts" were pretty rough, stream-of-consciousness kind of writing.

So all I had to do was examine the tasks at hand. Typing in sources? Putting sources into a coherent paragraph? Whatever it was, I would require myself to do X amount of tasks before taking a quick mental break. Type in 5 sources, check e-mail. Write one paragraph, hang up clothes on the floor. Etc. Sure enough, my chapters would grow and grow, little by little. And there's nothing more anxiety-relieving than to find yourself with 60 pages of writing. Sure editing can be tough, but editing is always easier than staring at a blank page.

And I do mean "whatever it takes." Don't be afraid to be silly and to reward yourself with whatever little rewards work for you. Sometimes I would bring up a pile of grapes or nuts or whatever and eat one after each task. I actually had a package of shiny star stickers (the kind your grade school teacher gave you) and I would give myself a star for each task. When I completed a pyramid of stars, I would earn something else, etc. It was a good motivation to keep going when I was tired of working, i.e. if I write three more paragraphs I can complete the pyramid.

4. THERE WILL NEVER BE A "PERFECT" TIME TO WORK ON IT
This was probably the most important lesson imposed by having a Real Job at the same time. Perhaps ironically, I managed to accomplish far more on my dissertation while having a full-time job than I ever did when I had more free time to work on it. I always had jobs in grad school -- I never got awarded any fabulous fellowships that would have enabled me to write without any other commitments. So for a while I think I romanticized the concept of Being With Fellowship as the ideal way to write a dissertation and thus not having one became an excuse not to work. But after becoming Unblocked, I had no choice. I had decided to work on it. And work I did.

Some dissertators will tell you that they required themselves to work a little bit on their dissertation every single day. I didn't do that. For one, sometimes while teaching you just have to concentrate on teaching. You can't expect yourself to work on your dissertation during finals week. And I also firmly believed in the concept of Having a Life while dissertating. I often opted to spend Saturday cooking some fabulous gourmet meal. Sure, it probably added months to the entire process, and if you're facing a gnarly deadline you might have to make some tough choices, but in general I managed to nurture myself, my marriage, and my friendships while writing. (it goes without saying that making time to do things like exercise should be a part of your routine regardless -- finding ways to stay sane should be your first priority.)

For me, the key was to find a way to be productive during those "orphaned hours," and in fact, to create an orphaned hour here or there. For a few semesters, my teaching day began mid-morning. I'm not a morning person, so there was no way I was going to force myself to get up at 5 a.m., but I did force myself to get up earlier than I had to. I made myself sit down at my computer for an hour each morning before going to campus. Sure, that served to crunch teaching into a finite space (and often a very stressed and hectic space!) but hey, no matter how stressed I was later on, I had already done an hour of work on my dissertation! Those hours add up. If I could put in another hour in the afternoon, I'd have 10 hours of work under my belt by the end of the week, even in a busy teaching time.

So for me, there never was a perfect time. Sure, I had breaks and some time in the summers. And those uninterrupted times were much more productive. No doubt about it. But I think knowing the pressures of the school-year forced me to take advantage of every "free" week I had. And yeah, it did grow tiring to feel that I never got a true break, i.e. every "day off" from teaching had to be viewed as a great opportunity (!) to work on something else, but so be it.

***

There endeth my Deep Thoughts about finishing. It's good to write them down, because it is easy to forget some of the strategies I developed, i.e. I took a bit of a break after writing my introduction (almost the last thing I wrote) and writing my conclusion (the last thing I wrote.) So when I sat down to write the conclusion, all the same old demons reappeared, but I was able to dispatch them by using some of these strategies. And frankly, mixing scholarship with teaching only means more of the same. Might as well get good at it.

So what about you? What strategies have worked for you? What hasn't? How did you finish? How are you finishing?

How to Finish A Dissertation in Two Easy Centuries! (Part I)

2006-05-24T19:24:00.000-05:00

PART I: How I Became Blocked and Unblocked

Okay, so it didn't literally take me 200 years to write my dissertation, but it sure felt like that at times. And technically I did start the sucker last century. So before I move on to the next big change in my life, I figured it would be good to pause for a de-briefing. Maybe someone else out there is as blocked as I was...

So, forgive me for a moment, but since I'm a historian, I have to go back a few years to put this in its proper context. As we historians say, in the "olden days," I passed my doctoral exams. Nothing had ever or has ever terrified me as much as my doctoral exams -- it was a 3 hour oral exam with 5 faculty members lobbing questions at me. After passing that trial, I needed a break. Plus my husband and I moved away from my Home University into a much unhappier situation. Not a good combination. Thus began my dissertation block. A much-deserved break turned into years of avoidance. Now that I look back, I was battling all sorts of tough things such as working crappy jobs, missing my friends, not having my usual academic support system, missing my previous professional identity, etc. Probably some depression thrown in for good measure. In my defense, I did manage to spend my summers and occasionally times during the semester doing all the research I needed to do. But somehow three years had passed! I had crates and crates of xeroxed documents, but nothing much else to show for that passage of time. And there was at least one, if not two, chapters that I could have been working on, even prior to a single research trip.

So then we moved again. This time to a happier situation, but I was still blocked. And now I was really blocked. No more research trips to give me the semblance of making progress. Now I really had to WRITE. No more excuses. And that was pretty terrifying! How do you start? After all, I had thousands upon thousands of pages of documents. What if I can't make sense of them? What if I can't say anything original about this? I'm sure many of you have heard a similar chorus in your heads. Starting from a cold start is probably the hardest thing to do. You have no sense of how you're going to do this -- after all, you've never written a dissertation before! You haven't developed any coping skills or tricks or routines. And in some sense, graduate school doesn't really prepare you for this task. And since I have an advisor who is relatively hands-off, I didn't have anyone out there holding my feet to the fire or giving me deadlines. At times I appreciated that, but at other times it was probably to my detriment.

So how did I get un-blocked? Two events come to mind. One, my husband and I had an emotional, horrible, terrible, yet necessary Come-to-Jesus conversation in which he told me he was basically disappointed in me, and did I really want to end up like X Person in Grad School Who Never Finished? Even though I had my tenure track job at a community college, and even though getting tenure at this job was not contingent on finishing, I had to take a good, hard look at myself. He was right. Did I really want to become that person (we all probably know them) who never finished? Could I live with being disappointed with myself, and knowing that others would also be disappointed in me? I knew that if I decided that quitting was best for me, my friends and family would have solidly supported that decision -- but the key was to decide what was best for me. To finish or not to finish? I decided for a number of purely personal reasons (thankfully the professional ones were not weighing heavily upon me) that, yes, I did want to finish what I had started.

Secondly, once I decided that I did intend to finish, I had to face the music. How much had I accomplished so far? (not much.) How much was left to do? (pretty much all of it.) Okay, stock taken. Situation not looking good. Then I had to give myself some sort of rough timeline. Problem is that I faced no official deadline and no advisor-imposed deadline. What possible time constraints would I have? Well, I knew that my husband and I would eventually want to have kids. And I knew I was already in my early 30s, so we couldn't wait forever. And I knew that I most certainly wanted to wait until I was closer to being finished with my dissertation before having a kid. So I tried to plan ahead a few years, guessing when we'd want to have a kid, and guessing how long it would take me to finish. [In the end, I ended up being pregnant later than I had originally planned, and finishing my dissertation took longer than I had originally thought. Turns out the timing of finishing was perfect in terms of being pregnant, but that was actually just a lucky coincidence.]

So there I was, sitting at my desk, pondering the road ahead. I knew I intended to finish, and I knew there was something of a deadline out there. When I worked backwards from my prospective finishing date, it became painfully clear to me that I was already behind! I had no more time to waste. The time was NOW.

And I think that was it. I had my "moment of clarity" and knew what needed to be done. I'm not saying it was easy or quick or effortless from then on, but at least I had made a commitment to myself. And now, in hindsight, it is clear to me that the decision to become un-blocked and really work on my dissertation had to be something that came from within myself. It wouldn't have worked for me if it was due to external pressures, personal or professional. Those pressures might have helped to get me off the fence, but moving forward would have to come from within. How I navigated the bumpy road ahead will be the subject of part II.

The Road to Hell is Paved With Good Intentions

2006-05-24T12:20:00.000-05:00

Note to self: when Blogger warns you you'll lose your settings, listen! I'm working on a new template, look, whatever... so all my links disappeared. Bummer. Stay tuned...

Otherwise known as: Histgrad 'fesses up.

I'm guessing this post will fade into the ether, since even my most faithful readers have certainly tired of my lengthy silence by now. I've reached a bit of a blogging crossroads for two reasons. One, the ostensible purpose of this blog is no longer relevant! And two, I'm about to experience another major change in my life.

First of all, I am officially, finally, certified, 100% GRADUATED! I am done. Finished. Finito. I am now Dr. Histgrad. After sprinting to my defense back in December, I took a few well-deserved months off. My committee signed the signature form, so I figured that I didn't technically have to make any changes that I didn't want to. Which encouraged my natural tendencies to procrastinate until sometime this spring. I got up the courage to take out my advisors' comments and I started to work on them. Thankfully they were mostly cosmetic and easy to implement. It was slow going because it was hard to justify putting tons of effort into something that 1) will probably never be read and 2) would be totally transformed into something else should I ever write a book. But I felt I owed my advisors at least a token effort to implement the suggested changes. So I formatted and edited and double-checked and measured and printed and re-printed... and voila! I was done. I was even able to use UPS regular delivery instead of the Package of Shame (Fed Ex.) So after years and years of never making a self-imposed deadline, I turned it all in on time.

And secondly, my readers can decide which is the greater achievement up to now, but... to make a very long story short: I'm currently 39 weeks pregnant! For those of you happily ignorant about such matters, that means I'm due to have a baby in about a week. Here's where the road to hell part comes in... I kept intending to blog and write and comment about this whole pregnancy deal, but the longer I waited to do so, the more it seemed like I should write The Best Mea Culpa Blog Post Ever. And obviously that never happened. It's like having an incomplete -- the longer you wait to turn in a paper, the better it has to be. Probably not the best mind-set to be a blogger, but there it is.

So I've really reached a crossroads in my life, now that I think about it. I'm no longer ABD. I no longer have a dissertation hanging over my head. I could pack up all those boxes and files and piles and folders and put them away forever. Hell, I could even have a big bonfire and burn them all! I think I'll opt for the putting-them-away option and see if I feel like returning to this someday and writing a book. It really hasn't sunk in yet. In the many years it took me to finish, I have had weeks or months when I didn't touch my dissertation, so it doesn't feel quite real yet.

And I'm also about to become a parent. A mother. Unlike studying for a test or training for a marathon, being pregnant actually doesn't prepare one for parenthood. I know, I know, on a hormonal level it does, but as far as Actual Preparations, being pregnant only prepares you for being pregnant.

If I can turn over a new blogging leaf, I think that "Eating an Elephant" still applies. I think that works with caring for a newborn. For teaching. For pondering how to mingle scholarship with teaching. And I've found this community to be helpful and supportive in all those things.

So hopefully this will not be the last you hear from Dr. Histgrad!

As heard in class, redux

2006-02-22T12:22:00.000-06:00

Many of you enjoyed the "Black people were bred to be better athletes" story, so now I've got a follow-up story, featuring the same student.

A few weeks ago we were studying European immigrants to the United States in the early twentieth century. As part of their assignment, the students looked at some Jacob Riis photographs. (Riis was a famous photographer and reformer who went into the tenements to document immigrants' living conditions.) Not surprisingly, many of the photos showed dirty and crowded apartments, some of which were used by family members who operated sweatshops out of the apartments.

During class discussion students shared their impressions of the photos, which usually included surprise about the "bad" living conditions and being somewhat impressed with immigrants' fortitude. Then the student in question raised his hand and asked why these families continued to have so many kids if they were already poor and crowded into these small apartments. Fair enough question. And one that I'm actually fairly well-prepared to answer. So I launched in what seemed like an endless answer, including the following points:

*Many immigrants arrived with large families, something that might have been necessary back in the farming areas of Europe
*Some people considered children to be economic assets, i.e. to either work on the farm or work in factories to provide additional income, as well as to provide care for their parents in their old age
*Higher rates of infant mortality encouraged higher birth rates

I also went into the issue of birth control and why it was not available and/or utilized:
*Most poor women did not have access to knowledge about birth control, and would not have been able to afford it, even if they had known about it
*Birth control was illegal at the time, and in fact, it was even illegal to mail information about birth control

Then I told the class a bit about Margaret Sanger, who agitated for birth control during this period, and when she opened a clinic in a working-class neighborhood, it was deluged with women who were desperate for some information. Sanger's personal "epiphany," in fact, was when a young woman died from repeated pregnancies that she could not avoid. When this young woman asked how to avoid pregnancy, an insensitive doctor told her to tell her husband to "sleep on the roof." So I also pointed out to students:
*It's likely that most people back then had little to no understanding of the female reproductive cycle and would not have known about the timing of "safer" periods
*And even if they did, traditional gender roles did not usually empower women to refuse sex with their husbands. Which is why Sanger wanted to find some sort of female-controlled contraception.

So... that seemed like a pretty complete explanation, but he refused to buy it. He kept asking things like, "So, you're saying they're too stupid to know that sex results in children?" and: "Can't they read?"

So I reiterated most of what I had already said about the lack of knowledge, power, and access that these families experienced, and how most immigrant families either chose to have larger families or were simply unable to avoid pregnancy. It didn't take. So finally, I asked him simply, "So what you're saying is that poor people shouldn't have sex."

He looked a bit perplexed, and then denied that's what he was saying. I believe, however, that that is exactly what he was saying. The "punishment" for being poor and unable to access birth control should be denying yourself sex. And this is not the first time the question has come up -- it is more likely to be raised when we discuss Anne Moody's book about being part of the Civil Rights Movements. Anne's mother (an impoverished sharecropper in Mississippi) continues to have children throughout the book, which puts an economic strain on the family. Most students are quite critical of the mother for this, and don't understand why she doesn't just "stop having kids."

Any thoughts??

As heard during Faculty Development Days

2006-02-22T09:05:00.000-06:00

Okay, still 'fessing up to being a slacker, so I'm trying to clear out a back-log of little gems to share. This one is a few weeks old, certainly, but still worth a grimace. During our Faculty Development Days at the beginning of the semester, our college President was previewing some of the upcoming events -- i.e. Chinese New Year celebrations, African-American History Month, and "Women's Appreciation Month" in March.

Of course, March is Women's History Month, and those crazy gals who pioneered the whole idea of Women's History would probably not be happy to learn that it is being "celebrated" with (get this) a table where you can buy flowers to show your appreciation for the women in your life (?) and a table to build awareness of breast cancer.

Surely, both worthy ideas in the abstract, but I'm not sure breasts and flowers are really what the founding mothers of women's history had in mind....

[In reality, our Director of Diversity will certainly work to beef up the offerings for Women's History Month, and I'll try to help out. This is one of those On-the-back-burner-until-I-finish-my-dissertation kind of things. Next Spring should be much better!]

Things that make a teacher cry

2006-02-21T09:33:00.000-06:00

Okay, okay, I know I've been a total slacker in terms of blogging. More on that soon. But I just couldn't resist sharing this one. My evening class uses an on-line discussion board so we can continue to discuss the material during the week following class. Last week we watched Birth of a Nation. (For those of you who don't know, this 1915 film was horrendously racist and basically tried to convince the nation that the KKK "saved" the South from the "anarchy" of black rule during Reconstruction.) We watched a 30 minute clip that included the young white "heroine" choosing to leap over a cliff to her death rather than "marry" the "renegade Negro." I introduced, we watched, we discussed. I pointed out that even though many protested the film at the time, it did very well at the box-office and even President Wilson called it "true." Most students who posted comments wrote things that were right on target. I figured that everyone was clear on the concept. Until this post:

"After this movie I came to thinking and even though predjustice was so bad back then...there are going to be bad people in every race and there is never really much said about the terrible things blacks did. It always showed them as vicitims(which most of the time they were) but it was interesting to view it from a white mans stand point. I liked to here that the president at the time thought it was an accurate portrayl, then you know that it is what is really going on."

Must. Go. Bang. Head. On. Wall.

As Heard in Class This Week....

2006-01-25T09:02:00.000-06:00

In my night class this week (read: non-traditional age students) we were talking about the Jim Crow South. I think we must have been talking about Booker T. Washington and his advocacy of a trade-based education (i.e. put freed slaves to work learning trades and farming). One student raised his hand and asked if, during slavery, slave owners tried to breed the strongest and best slaves. I told him that, yes, some slave owners did express interest in "breeding" (for example, purchasing female slaves known to be good "breeders") and that the horrendous conditions of the Middle Passage and slavery itself might have worked to create something of a "survival of the fittest" dynamic. But no, I didn't know of any systematic approach to "breeding," especially since they didn't understand how and which traits would be passed.

But this student wouldn't drop it. Apparently he wanted me to agree that the "strongest and most muscular" African-Americans had been bred during slavery because it would explain "why they're so good at sports." There are two women in the class who took my US I class last semester and they looked quite amused, wondering how I was going to handle this one! So, in the heat of the moment, I think I did pretty well. I told him that I did not believe that was true. For one, slavery happened many years ago and I'm not sure we can draw any causation from that, even if such "breeding" occurred. But more importantly, I don't think it is true to say that African-Americans are "good at sports" because they may predominate and succeed in certain sports. Why are almost all swimmers, tennis players, and golfers white? (Tiger Woods notwithstanding.) I suggested to the student that perhaps socio-economic factors served to concentrate African-Americans in certain "cheap" sports (tossing around a basketball) rather than sports that require memberships in certain swim or tennis clubs -- which both cost money and have historically excluded African-American members. Sadly, the student didn't seem to buy it, but the rest of the class nodded as if that made sense. As always, with teaching, forward progress can be slow...

Any thoughts?

As Heard on Local News...

2006-01-24T16:42:00.000-06:00

File under: Stating the Obvious and/or Commodifying tragedy...

Last night I heard the following promo for the local (relatively big city) news (in fake Colbertesque anchor voice):

"Tonight we'll meet an area resident who spent three years during World War II in a Nazi prison camp. Not an easy place to be, especially if you're Jewish..."

Grading Gems

2006-01-13T08:18:00.000-06:00

Okay, like any graduate student, I'm excellent at procrastinating. So I'm still trying to "catch up" with my blogging from last December. (even though I'm already one week into the new semester.) But still, I just couldn't resist sharing these grading gems. Right after my defense, I was just too mentally and physically exhausted to grade all those exams I brought on the plane. Plus there were friends to see, lunches to eat, coffees to drink! All (mostly) guilt-free!

When I returned home I had two full days to read all the exams and compute the final grades. Not fun, but certainly possible. Does anyone else get really cranky when grading? I have to continually remind myself that the students did not sit down to their bluebooks with the intention of annoying me. But I probably compound the cranky-factor with my choice of an essay question: The Civil Rights Movement. In USII, I devote quite a bit of time to this subject, and it is also a subject that is important to me personally -- especially after spending a week in Mississippi and Memphis this summer. And I must also add that the students knew ahead of the time that the essay would focus on the Civil Rights Movement. Yet I still get some really bad essays. Here are some winners in a few categories:

Word Choice:
"The black power statement made by Charmichael (sic) was a good thing because it got people riled up and ready to go on a march or riot or whatever they were doing that day." [RIOT?? Where did he get that word???]

Unclear on the Concept: (of the danger African-Americans faced in the South):
"One thing that I thought they could have done better was to protect themselves and their families more. I thought they could have done more to protect their communities instead of letting crazy white men drive through and hurl bombs into homes or squeeze off a few rounds into a house. They could have set up neighborhood watches or something."

Anthropomorphization (not Civil Rights-related; this is an identification of Silent Spring):
"This happened in 1962 and was a book written by Rachel Carson. This book came out of Pensilvania (sic) and made its way up to Washington DC."

That one had me laughing for a while -- not only did they get the direction wrong (up to Washington DC?) but I just imagined a book slowly shuffling along the interstate, perhaps trying to hitchhike?

I passed!!!!!!

2006-01-03T10:25:00.000-06:00

Dear ever-patient blog readers:

I hope that you have all been way too occupied by your own holiday activities to be worried about my silence regarding my 12/15 defense, but the short story is: I passed! This radio silence over the past few weeks has been due to frantic grading, holiday craziness, other factors, and now, a horrible cold... but I'm finally feeling coherent enough to put some words together. Rather than one terribly long post, I'll try for a few posts over the next week.

So, onward to the defense! As my friend reminded me beforehand: all you have to do is get a C. And he's right. So the most important thing is that I passed without revisions. I'm not going to officially graduate until May '06, so I've got months and months to work on a few typographical things, fix a few ornery items in the bibliography, and contend with our new electronic submission requirement (read: nightmare).

But perhaps that description makes it sound worse than it was -- in my mind, all I cared about was passing and I had no higher expectations for my performance. But in reality, I think it went really well. Due to end-of-semester schedules, there were no spectators. (fine with me!) So it became an engaged and private discussion between me and my committee members for two hours. I received many nice compliments from my committee when it was over -- and they had even brought champagne with them!

But I realized later that a defense (if it goes well) is really a strange animal. Theoretically, everyone has already decided to pass you and the conversation should be about what happens in the next phase, i.e. what you should do as you turn this into a book. And that was certainly the tone of my defense. But... if you think about it, that's a really strange situation. Rather than talking for two hours about what you did do, it becomes a conversation about what you did not do. So instead of talking about my area of expertise (my dissertation) the conversation mostly contained my ill-informed speculating about what I might find if I did X research, and what I thought might happen if I focused on Y area of theory, or if I had taken the project in Z direction. Very strange, but also a situation in which I felt comfortable saying numerous times, "Well, I don't know, but that's certainly an interesting idea!"

Perhaps my biggest worry was my one committee member who is More Theoretical Than Thou -- but this did not present a huge problem. He was on a speaker phone since he has moved to another university in the meantime. And while I probably didn't understand most of his questions, I managed to come up with something (my motto: If I'm talking, they can't be asking more questions). So my babbling, combined with a judicious use of "Well, I don't know, but that's certainly an interesting question," seemed sufficient.

Now for the tragi-comic relief: You're probably all imagining me conducting this defense in my most favorite Professional Outfit -- a camel-colored silk jacket over black pants and a black shirt, heels, and my grandmother's necklace. Ah, if only that were the case! Northwest Airlines (yes, this is my bad karma for crossing a picket line, but flying to my Home University presents few other options) failed to deliver our luggage for more than 48 HOURS. TWO DAYS LATE. Since I had to bring my dissertation and all related papers (articles to read, notes, thoughts, etc.), my laptop, and all my exams to grade, our carry-on items were full. So we erred and checked more items than we normally would. So we were without a change of clothes, without our toiletries, prescriptions, etc. Total bummer.

I knew from the flight schedule that there was no way the luggage would arrive before my defense the following day. Thankfully we were staying with a friend who was able to provide toiletries and sweatpants and other items of comfort. I had some hopes of borrowing some professional clothes, but discovered that my shoe size was at least one size off! So basically that meant I was stuck with the hiking boots I wore on the plane. And if you can't change your shoes, there's no need to try to borrow a skirt or something. I did borrow a sweater and blazer, but below the blazer I wore my remaining clothes: jeans, hiking boots... and inside-out underwear! Not quite the professional impression I wanted to convey.

So where was our luggage?? We figured the luggage was just sitting in Detroit (or Day-twoi, or Detroilet) waiting for the next flight. Well, two days later, our hostess answered a call from Northwest. Northwest told her they had "found" our luggage. My thought: we didn't know it was lost! The Northwest worker told our friend (while giggling. I kid you not.) that the luggage had been sent to Another City With a Similar Name, since (giggling), "The airport code is only one letter off!" We were not amused.

But even this incredibly frustrating event was a good lesson in finding something to be thankful for: the luggage was originally delayed by a winter storm, so we were simply thankful that we had made it -- we could likely have been stuck in Detroit for two days and I would have missed my own defense.

So, in the end, all that matters is that I passed!

Digital coincidence? Or my new oracle?

2005-12-09T08:55:00.000-06:00

Okay, so I confess, I'm procrastinating. (the mere existence of another blog post should tell you that, but I'll elaborate.) I'm reading through secondary literature to try to bring my brain up to speed. It's slowly working. I think my brain has turned into a Ford Festiva, circa 1993. Not a lot of power. But I digress.

So, thanks to Badger, I clicked on "What Hit Song of 2005 are you?" I answered the few quiz questions but felt like this quiz (like most) didn't even give answers that remotely reflected the kind of music I listen to. Okay, another confession, I didn't even know most of the artists that were listed. Lucinda, where are you?

But these were my results. And for those of you who know anything about my 2005, this is pretty eery.... Will I truly be "moving on" with my dissertation?? Yes!

Your 2005 Song Is

Since You've Been Gone by Kelly Clarkson

"But since you've been gone

I can breathe for the first time

I'm so moving on"

In 2005, you moved on.

What Hit Song of 2005 Are You?

Random thoughts

2005-12-08T12:03:00.000-06:00

Just a few tidbits for those who have persevered in reading this blog...

*This week one of my night class students asked me about my defense. I told her I was pretty certain I would pass but that I wasn't looking forward to the process itself. She said, perplexed, "But you talk real good in front of us!" :)

*I poured orange juice on my cereal this week. A brain status predictor?

*Then later that same day, I was sitting in my office. My wedding band has a raised carved design on it. I usually take it off to apply hand lotion so it doesn't get gunky. So: I put the ring on the desk, immediately opened the drawer, took out the lotion, squirted it on my hand, and went into panic: "I lost my wedding ring!" Forgetting that merely five seconds before I had placed it on the desk...

*For the last reading of the semester in my US II class, I have the students read a chapter from Fast Food Nation entitled "The World's Most Dangerous Job." It's about current conditions in slaughterhouses. The savvy students discern that this reading 1) provides a good comparison to our earlier reading in The Jungle and 2) tells us something about the 1980s and Reagan's cuts in OSHA inspectors. Let's just say the title really does say it all. Anyway... this reading is on "electronic reserve" through the library, a process in which students have to enter a class-specific password, click on the class number, click on the title of the reading (which is the same title that is listed on the syllabus) and then download the reading. Pretty easy. Except one student somehow managed to work his way into USI and spent all his time reading something about Thomas Jefferson. (!) He did not think this was in the least bit strange until he looked at the quiz questions on the overhead. He asks, "Did I read the wrong thing?" I said, "I don't know how to answer that."

*A funny selection from my bedtime reading last night, America: The Book. For some reason this really made me laugh. From "The Founding of America" chapter: "In pre-Colonial times, 'Colonial Williamsburg' was seen as a glorious vision of future utopia."

Limbo

2005-12-02T09:03:00.000-06:00

Thanks for your many congratulations for reaching this point. Alas, all is not finished. I'm in quite a stressful limbo at the moment... mostly finished, pretty darn sure I'll pass my defense, yet dreading the defense and not sure how to best prepare for it. I'm worried that years of talking to undergrads about the basics of U.S. History have turned me into a drooling idiot when it comes to Big Ideas and Talking Scholarship. I spent a few hours on Wednesday morning reading some monographs and it gave me quite a headache.

So I'm working on the bibliography and organizational chart (Good Lord, are both tasks tedious) and also trying to fit in some reading and thinking. I've got to print out the whole dissertation again and read it again -- I need to refresh my memory about the minutiae even if I fear the defense will focus on those pesky Big Ideas. And I should add again that I HATE oral defense/argument situations so this is not something I relish in any circumstance.

So I'm in limbo. This limbo is also complicated by the fact that I've recently started a week-long course of the "gold standard" of antibiotics for some minor infection. No big deal. I've taken plenty of antibiotics here and there. But for some reason the warnings on the bottle seem to be coming true! So I am plagued by nausea and headaches. The bottle's suggestion? "Frequent mouth care and sugar-free hard candy." Okay, I can see that. I feel like a mangy rodent has died in my mouth. (yes, that combined with my current "uniform" -- sweatpants that could probably walk to my defense on their own -- makes me quite a pleasant companion these days.)

So I've fallen back on a tried-and-true strategy from one of my many self-help attempts over the years. I'm trying to visualize what my world will be like Afterwards. I'm still having trouble with big picture kind of things (complicated by my natural superstitious nature... if I think about passing I'll jinx myself) so I find myself focusing on little things that are bugging me. When I was studying for my oral doctoral exams (we had no written component, just three hours in the hot seat) I became obsessed with the cup of pens on my desk. I knew it was full of pens that didn't work. But which ones?? I felt I couldn't take the two minutes to sort through the pens until after my orals were over.

This time I've got bigger fish to fry. Like the two crates full of old cooking magazines that are begging to be clipped and organized and recycled. The stack of photos that need to live in albums. The digital photos that need to be emancipated from the camera. And oh yeah, we're hoping to buy a new car in December. That takes a bit of effort. And my 6 year old desktop will not allow me to turn it off anymore... I'm voting to pull the plug and get an upgrade. It will take me days to move everything over and reinstall my wireless network. (she said, confidently, knowing this will likely be impossible.) And my cellphone is also about 6 years old and the battery lasts about 10 minutes. Time to call Sprint and threaten to quit. And I've gotten an inkling that some major holiday might be on the horizon, so that might require some time and effort. So I guess I'll be busy Afterwards. And in the poorhouse...

But for now, I'm in limbo.

One step closer!

2005-11-17T16:33:00.000-06:00

I did it! It's in the mail! I think it is totally fitting that one of the final steps in this process includes boxing something up and taking it to the post office and waiting in line, etc, etc, which is something I HATE to do. I haven't mailed a box of my own since they invented the internets.

The one hitch in my plan involved the slackers who work at my local Kinkos. I went in there last night and figured I could drop it off and pick it up fairly soon. There were lots of workers who seemed to be standing around and no machines were running... nope, it will take at least 6 hours but I could come back at 1:00 a.m. to pick it up if I wanted to! Um, no thanks. I could have done self-serve but it would have cost $15 more, and once a cheap graduate student, always a cheap graduate student. So I had to go back this morning, when the check-out person tells me that I should check it to be sure it's all there because they didn't have time to check it themselves. Like I do? So it went unchecked.

Wow. I'm so strung out that I don't have much emotion to offer at the moment. Plus I've got to get myself ready to leave the house at 5:15 a.m. for my weekend out of town... I really wish I wasn't going. I want a few days just to rest and catch up and read and all those other good things, rather than chit-chatting with my mother-in-law. So, next weekend will be for resting, then. In the meantime I have to pack and make the house a little less disgusting so I don't scare off my friends who are feeding our cats.

I will pause to "celebrate," however, with a take-out pizza from my favorite place and the new CSI tonight.

The best laid plans of mice and dissertators

2005-11-15T17:53:00.000-06:00

I almost had to laugh today (the other options were to cry or scream, and they didn't seem appropriate) when my teaching literally, directly impeded dissertation work. For me it has always been a nebulous battle between the time-suckage of Teaching Blob versus Dissertation Blob, each gaining the upper hand from time to time as they engage in an epic battle for my sanity. But since both are somewhat mushy around the edges, I can always cut corners to prioritize one over the other. But then I've never had an actual deadline staring me in the face!

So today I sat at my desk contemplating the Entire Printed Copy of my dissertation. Because of the aforementioned mucking about with the order of each chapter, I need to read it one more time before sending it off. Before class I got through about 20 pages. After class I sat down with my powerbar for lunch and prepared to put in a good solid hour of reading before my next class. Not my office hours. Door shut. Until... knock, knock. It's one of my best students and she wants help with the (admittedly dense) reading, and then to sit and talk about feminism, etc. 30 minutes later, and it's time for class. Argh! But in the end it was time well spent (as long as I make my deadline, that is!)

So I'm almost there. I screwed up the font on the notes in the footnote text and apparently the only solution is to go in and individually change the font of each and every footnote number. Well, that's not going to happen this week and may never happen. And I'm trying to make my perfectionist self live with that. I hope Bill Gates gets a really nasty paper cut today. And I still have the final paragraph of the conclusion to noodle with.

But yes, I'm almost there. My goal is to finish these last edits tomorrow (I won't be at campus), get to Kinkos at some point in the evening, and then to the post office on Thursday morning. I'm leaving to go out of town on Friday morning (obligatory visit to the mother-in-law, yippee) so that's an Actual Drop Dead Deadline for me. Convenient that the only 24 hour post-office in the metro area is next to the airport....

I always feel better if I've got a back-up plan!

p.s. Thanks to those who've sent supportive comments and/or emails! Obviously I've got a bit on my plate these days but will be in touch soon.

Um, so, yeah, what about that dissertation?

2005-11-08T16:37:00.000-06:00

I have a bad habit of waiting to share news... I keep thinking that I'll wait until "X" happens, and then I'll really have something to tell. So while I have not yet reached the ultimate "I turned it in!" moment, I thought it was time for an update.

This feels like death (or life?) by a thousand small revisions. I sent an almost-complete draft, minus the conclusion, to my advisor around the first of the month. She gave it the thumbs-up and said that I should distribute the whole thing to my committee when it's ready. So that's good.

The not-so-good part is that I just can't quite seem to work on it! I know that the deadline will eventually be upon me (I should mail it around the 16th or so) and I know that I'll need a day or so for getting it copied and into boxes and into the mail (why does snail mail seem so annoying?) and I know that I don't have that much to do, but still.... ugh! argh! ack. I think the fridge needs to be cleaned out... and what about that laundry?

Okay, perhaps it is time for a blog-style reality check. I've still got teaching and some overdue grading. I'll be out of town from Thursday evening to Sunday evening and won't have much chance to work while I'm gone. So with that in mind, I need to fit in the following tasks:

*Revise the conclusion. It is written and has passed the initial review (the totally new second draft, that is) of my husband/editor. It also needs one final paragraph with some oomph. I figure that I'll end up revising the conclusion after discussions during the defense, so my motivation to make it absolutely perfect is low.
* Clean up the debris that must have resulted from a minor reorganization. My dissertation is about one single topic over a limited amount of years, so my chapters are not in a clear chronological order. Rather, I think of them as spokes on a wheel. My husband/editor and advisor both think that Chapter 4 should be moved up to become Chapter 2, with the rest of the chapters re-numbered as a result. I agreed, since Chapter 4 had always seemed out of place. Since each chapter really stands alone, it won't require that much work, but still... I need to read the beginning and end of each chapter and make sure they flow into each other. It's really strange, though, to adjust to this. My idea of "Chapter 4" has been "Chapter 4" for many, many years... and now it is Chapter 2? I'll have to devote some time to memorizing which chapter is which!
* Make an organizational chart. (Thanks to kj for earlier suggestions about that.)
* Finish checking the footnotes with a fine-toothed comb. I've already done 4 out of the 6 major components, Turabian in hand.
* Track down 3-5 small detail-oriented factual questions somewhere in my pile of documents.
* Merge the whole thing into one document and make the page numbers work.

And I really do think That. Is. It. I thought making a list would stress me out enough so as to make me put my nose to the grindstone, but actually it makes me pretty excited. I mean, if I do these things on this relatively small list of tasks, I'll be done!!! And if that isn't enough motivation to get me to work on it, nothing is....

Standards

2005-11-03T19:19:00.000-06:00

I realized that I tend to complain a lot in this blog, so before I begin my complaint du jour, let me first say that I just finished teaching the Civil Rights Movement in my course and we had an amazing discussion of Anne Moody's book. Many students participated and almost all agreed that this book had done a lot to interest them in the topic and to change how they perceived the CRM. Apparently there tends to be CRM fatigue among recent high school students -- I guess they hear a lot about the big events and the famous people. So I was glad that my approach (combined with a lecture about the big events and the famous people, of course) helped to expand their thinking. Last week most of them seemed to think that African-Americans in Mississippi should just "do something" about their situation, but today they seemed to understand and even sympathize with the justifiable fear that many African-Americans felt, especially of economic or physical retribution. And usually once students understand the fear and the obstacles...then comes the genuine respect for those amazing people who managed to transcend that fear.

One interesting thing happened -- one of the white students expressed his feeling that this book made him hate white people. Other white students nodded, as though they all shared this collective guilt. So I got to give them my spiel on the subject, which is this: unless they are all secretly attending KKK meetings after class, why on earth would they automatically identify with the white racists in Mississippi? Why didn't they identify with the young college students (black and white) in SNCC? Or the white allies of the CRM? They seemed to understand that. And one quiet student even stayed after class to tell me that our discussion and the film we watched made him really think about whether he would have had the courage to sit with the African-American students at a lunch counter during a sit-in and remain non-violent. He liked to think that he would have. I told him I would like to think so, too. So, all in all, an excellent day.

Here begins my complaint:

There are four male students who sit in a row together. Almost every lecture they engage in some small behavior (talking to each other, laughing, writing notes) that distracts me. It isn't loud enough to distract the class and I can usually ride herd on them by walking in their area a lot. I've also had individual discussions with them, but I reached the end of my rope on Tuesday. We were talking about conditions in Mississippi and how people faced being shot. I looked over and one of them was laughing about something. So I halted class and asked them what they were laughing at, since I didn't see anything funny about our discussion. They sheepishly looked down and shook their heads.

I figured that today was Drop the Hammer day if they misbehaved again. Sure enough, during our class discussion when every other student was listening and paying attention, they started chatting to each other. I halted class and called on one of them. Instead of making up some comment that would have related to our discussion (which might have been the strategic thing to do,) he plainly admitted he was "just talking to my buddy." I told him that wasn't cool and returned to class discussion.

I pulled them all aside during the break and laid down the law... how I didn't go to graduate school because I wanted to deal with behavior problems from immature high school students and that their behavior wasn't appropriate for a college classroom. I told them this was their final warning and any misbehavior in the future would result in extra paper assignments. I feel the need to be an Extra Hard Ass in situations like this because I worry that (as a petite, young, woman) I might have let authority slip away from me. (see some of Stewgad's excellent posts about this sort of thing.)

So 3 out of the 4 nodded and had the grace to look ashamed of themselves. But the fourth one said he was "angry." Puzzled, I nicely asked him why he was angry. He said that he felt angry that they had received my warning when, really, they didn't misbehave "all the time." I told him that other students seem to be able to go day-in and day-out without making a peep (except in discussion and when I ask questions) and that I frankly had a higher standard than having good behavior "most of the time."

So am I on crack? I am unreasonable to expect that students sit through class and pay attention without talking and laughing to each other??

Chaos Theory

2005-11-02T10:04:00.000-06:00

At some point in the semester do you just lose the battle? In this case I'm thinking of the battle to stay ahead of the river of paper that seems to flow into my office. I started the semester with a fabulous new filing cabinet and I really thought that I'd finally cured myself of my prior fondness for piling each folder (one folder per lecture, discussion, film, etc.) in an ever-growing pile that would become structurally dangerous by the end of the semester.

But, alas, apparently not. My years of being a slob are not fixed with new furniture. Yesterday I realized I'd crossed the rubicon. My office now features numerous small piles of files and, even worse, piles of things that need to go into files. And I won't even tell you about Drawer #3, which contains many more (hidden) piles of things that need to go into files.

Can I reclaim my office? Or will I write off this semester and start anew in January? I'll hope for the first, but probably will default to the second. As long as I can wade through the paper and still see my keyboard and mouse, I'm good to go. I know there's some annoyingly applicable acronym that self-help devotees espouse about only touching something once (i.e. instead of piling that file on the desk so I have to touch it several times before putting it away, I should just file the damn thing directly after using it) but obviously I haven't embraced that particular tactic. Can an old dog change her tricks?

And to add insult to my office injury: I killed my cactus. I've already accepted my pronounced lack of a green thumb, but really, this is a new low.

Playing God

2005-10-28T12:18:00.000-05:00

Insert evil scheming laughter here: bwahahaha!

Now is the time to reconfigure small group discussions. Since my classes are around 40 students each, I must resort to small group work most of the time. Not my favorite... since making students stay on task and then making them listen as they all report back to the larger group is quite a challenge. But that's a blog for another time.

At the beginning of the semester I divide them into small groups based on last name. Some groups work well, others don't. So I revise the groups after midterms. And here is my confession: I use the reconfiguration as a way to reward good students and to (somewhat) increase pressure on the unprepared students. I start with my group list and highlight all the good students -- the students who are habitually prepared and engaged. The students who sometimes have to "carry" the weight of the small group, who have to explain the reading to their non-reading colleagues, and then give the report during large group discussion. I figure these students deserve to be rewarded -- they deserve to be assigned to a small group where they can talk to others like them, to others who have done the work and want to talk about it.

Which usually leaves approximately two groups of students who had previously been "dead weight" in their small groups. The ones who were not prepared, were not doing the work, and who were content to coast on their colleagues' efforts. When I first started doing this, I figured that (in a small, petty sense) this "served them right" for their prior efforts.

But then something interesting happened. When faced with the need to actually do the work, with the need to actually prepare their report... the "Slacker Groups" actually came up with something! Sure, I sometimes have to embellish what they've said so that the class as a whole gets the complete picture, and sure, they might be faced with more awkward silences within their discussions as they're not used to participating. But with the pressure on, they must become accountable members of the class as a whole.

Am I an evil genius? Or just evil?

Translation, please

2005-10-26T17:39:00.000-05:00

This one has me stumped. In my night class this week, a young male student had on a very perplexing t-shirt. Let me tell you a bit about him, which might inform your answers. He's not a stellar student and sometimes borders on disrespectful. He shows up late. He misses class. He never contributes. And this week he sat back in his chair with his arms crossed across his chest for the whole class. And he had on a white baseball hat -- backwards.

He was also wearing a t-shirt that I just don't understand. Given what I've gleaned about his personality thus far, I'm guessing it is some offensive message but I can't figure out just what he's trying to say. Certainly I live in a bubble. The t-shirt was white with the traditional black+red lettering, which said:

I ♥ Lesbians

Any ideas? I wish I knew if it was clearly offensive because I wouldn't permit it in my classroom. Or maybe this is one of those "teachable moments" for me about making assumptions about students?

****
Update: After talking with several friends and receiving several comments -- a consensus has emerged. This young man was voicing his approval of "lesbian" porn. If that is indeed the case, WTF?? Who wears a t-shirt to school that says I ♥ Porn?? (And on a night when our class discussion is about the sexual exploitation of female slaves??)

So what would you have done if this guy appeared in your class?

****

Update, again: Another consensus. Most feel they would ignore the t-shirt, which is what I did. Of course, it is possible think of t-shirts that would be so offensive as to merit comment, but this nebulous one isn't quite there. And you're right...it's quite possible he's trying to draw attention, which I did not provide. And yes, I can see the Onion headline now! "Area Man Unsure What Own T-Shirt Means." :)

Tired

2005-10-20T08:51:00.000-05:00

Okay, so it's been a while... and unfortunately I can't claim that my radio silence has been due to a furious pace of work or production. I've been coasting along, and I'm in something of a funk. Mostly I'm just tired of things. Ever have the urge to rearrange your whole house? Your whole life? At the moment, I'm tired of my job. I'm tired of grading midterms. I'm tired of trying to get tired students to be excited or engaged or outraged about things that they should be excited or engaged or outraged about. There are times I'm quite grateful that my little group of students don't run the world because we'd all be living in some post-apocalyptic nightmare with no civil liberties. Okay, that's an exaggeration, but if you can't get even slightly upset about Japanese-American (emphasis on American) internment, what can you get upset about??

I'm tired of the ever-looming dissertation. I am such a stick person (as opposed to a carrot person.) I have to turn this in to my chair for her overall approval in just under two weeks. (yikes! shit. excuse me for a moment while I have a panic attack.) Okay, now I feel better. So, yeah, two weeks. And I just can't seem to build up any momentum. I actually don't have that much to do, but the one large-ish item still outstanding is that I have to write a conclusion. Then polish the footnotes, then take care of about three tiny little details per chapter, then a bib. Then, fini!

So I suppose I should get working on it. I've got a few days without classes, and although those stacks of bluebooks are taunting me, the dissertation should come first. At least for a few hours.

Coming Soon to a Television Near You

2005-10-05T15:30:00.000-05:00

Thanks to Jo(e)'s comment in my post about Candid Camera, I've begun to ponder just what a graduate student reality show would look like... (who would actually watch it is a different matter.) Jo(e) proposes that grad students be locked into a house with one computer and some kegs of beer... and then we'll watch what unfolds. Good. Like the competition angle plus the beer angle.

I must confess I don't watch reality TV, but hopefully I've absorbed enough from my cultural surroundings to ponder the following: what are your ideas for a grad student reality show?

One idea would be something called The Revolution. In some ways, I've never met a more downtrodden group of people as graduate students... and I've always had a theory that in separate little clusters across this country, as a psychological self-defense mechanism, graduate students apply their training in whatever theory they're steeping in (post-modern, lit-crit, political, etc.) to plot The Revolution. Ours began by pondering who would be "first against the wall." If I'm right, what did your revolution look like?

But upon further reflection, I think I could cook up a better TV show than that. So here's my idea for the show. I think I'd call it something like "You're Hired!" and then pick 8-10 graduate students from the same field and dangle their Dream Job in front of them. They would then spend each week of the season competing in events such as : Advisor Avoidance, Leading an 8 a.m. Section of Surly Unprepared Students, Receiving Brutal Criticism without Crying, Making Wallpaper with Rejection Letters (special judge: Martha Stewart!), and perhaps even a cooking demonstration called Foods I Can Afford on My Stipend. In keeping with academia, no contestant would ever be eliminated, instead, they'd each be given the false hope that they will finish the season as the chosen one.

Each event would be judged by a panel of star faculty in the field (note to self: hire numerous wardrobe consultants) and then the winner would assume his/her Dream Job at the end of the season. American viewers will literally be stunned when the contestant is thrilled, thrilled, thrilled to earn $46K!

Oh, wait, that's way too depressingly actually like reality. I must be in a dark mood today. I guess I won't quit my day job to pitch this in Hollywood.

Am I On Candid Camera?

2005-10-03T09:51:00.000-05:00

I keep waiting for a man with a camera to jump out of the bushes and hand me tons more revisions to my chapters. I'm sitting here feeling quite stunned that I might have a revised copy of almost the entire dissertation by the of the end of the week. The fact that my advisors won't be giving me comments on Chapter Five (see previous post) until the defense effectively removes Chapter Five from the revisions process, obviously.

So, wow. I just finished Chapter Three. One advisor wanted me to read a few books and incorporate them... but part of me wonders if that isn't Book Manuscript kind of revisions. So I did a slightly half-assed approach, in that I sprinkled in quotes at appropriate moments to demonstrate I'm aware of this scholar. I might have to return to this issue after the defense, but maybe not. My brain just isn't engaged in that kind of thinking right now, and I realized I'd completely stalled out waiting for it to re-engage. And that's not helping... so I did the bare minimum and will now forge ahead. My approach has always been to take the easy way out and see if anyone complains. It's worked until now...

So, what's left?
1. Revise Chapter Four. Very few comments. Can probably fix this on Wednesday.
2. Revise the intro. Again, very few comments.
3. Write a conclusion.
4. Do all sorts of little things like standardizing footnotes, draw an organizational chart (any ideas here?? what software works for something like this? I need boxes and lines between them), number my pages, do the bibliography, etc. Time consuming, but not brain draining.

And then I'll send it off to various committee members, friends/colleagues, and, of course, my ruthlessly effective in-house editor (my husband.) I want to get a range of comments before the defense so I'll have some idea of where the discussion might go. I feel good that I'll have a few weeks to actually THINK about this topic as a whole...since writing a dissertation becomes, in part, an exercise in minutiae, and you lose the ability to see the forest through the trees. In fact, they could have grown an entire forest of new scholarship and I wouldn't have noticed.

But for now, I'm happily avoiding anyone bearing extensive revisions...

If at first you don't succeed...

2005-09-30T08:42:00.000-05:00

Try, try, again. That's become the theme of my week, in terms of my dissertation and teaching.

I stalled out on Chapter Three. I just couldn't face it on Wednesday (one of my "dissertation days" in the week) so I caught up on some life stuff and a bit of teaching chores. So I'm trying to get back on the horse today so I can push through and just finish the damn thing. I swear, there must be some circuit in my brain that trips every time I'm on the verge of actually getting ahead of schedule... like I need to live on the edge just to keep motivated.

I also exchanged e-mails with my two main advisors, who are both otherwise occupied this semester with Prestigious Professor Things. Consequently, the amount of time they plan to spend on, well, me appears to be shrinking by the day. There are a few components of my dissertation that still lack comments from one or both of them. Apparently that might not happen before the defense. (!!!!) On the one hand, I believe that each component has at least been read by at least one of them, so I would know if Major Problems had been spotted. On the other hand, hello, it's October! I would have thought that giving some feedback between now and December would be possible. On the other hand, they both expressed "complete confidence in my final product" and left it at that. Since I now find myself in the position of being an anxious and somewhat frustrated supplicant, I am consoling myself with believing that all of this inattention is really shorthand for: We can't be bothered now, it's all a formality from here on out, Histgrad, you will pass. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

Teaching: had a few interesting moments this week. In my USI class, a student showed up who hadn't been there for a few weeks. He wants to try to get back in the swing of the class. I explained just how much of a hole he had dug for himself (moderately deep) but suggested he could still pass with regular work from here on out. I almost said, "Why don't you save us both some time and drop the class now?" when I learned that not only had he bought the wrong books (volume II of both the textbook and reader, which are the books for my USII class) but he read the assignment in the reader for class. So when the syllabus said "Boston Massacre/American Revolution" and he read all about the World's Fair in St. Louis in 1904 and US Imperialism, he didn't see any disconnect, until I put up the reading quiz questions and then he knew he'd read the wrong thing. Oy. Another student asked if colonial America was the time "when we had all those Presidents, you know, like Jefferson."

On Tuesday my Women's History students were supposed to debate the ERA in the 1920s. Lesson learned: they can't figure this out without significant guidance. In the past, it's always been a random student or two who can't figure out their side of the debate, so this year I told them to be very certain they understood their side, and to come and see me if they're confused. So Tuesday we attempt to start the debate and I realize that at least 50% of the students had completely prepared the "wrong" side, and even wrote speeches with the wrong evidence! So, thinking on my feet, I opted to postpone until Thursday, came up with something to do on Tuesday, and gave them a lot more background and context. Final result: Thursday we had an excellent debate and I was impressed by how thoughtful they were about the issue. So I think it is a good exercise but needs much more hand-holding beforehand.

Okay, my horse has arrived. Time to get back on it.

Angst: Histgrad, Chapter Revisions, and the Difficulty of Composing Titles

2005-09-23T11:30:00.000-05:00

Chapter Three? Not so much.

Very random MST 3K quote: "Slow the plot down! Slow the plot down!"... which is how I'm feeling about Chapter Three. Prior to this chapter, I was happily speeding along, a chapter per full day of work or so... until now. This one is going to take a wee bit more work. After I stopped freaking out, it really doesn't look so bad, but it is the kind of work whereupon I have to get a book from the library, skim it, and incorporate it. Hopefully it will be easy to insert this author's perspective without having to redo entire sections... a few pages at most. But still, it'll take a while. My new goal is to have it in good shape by the time I head back to teach on Monday.

Some other random thoughts about writing and revising:

Chapter Fatigue: Sometimes I think it's a wonder that I ever managed to finish these chapters in the first place, since by the end of each one, I was so amazingly tired of them and almost couldn't bear to read through them one more time, to put in a few more edits, etc. Now I'm returning to these chapters, some of them having been finished YEARS in the past. So, I figured my fatigue would have worn off and they would seem new and fresh when I went back to revise them. Unfortunately not. Like some toxin, I've become quite sensitized to my own chapters and my own writing, and now I think the elapsed time from First (Re)View to Chapter Fatigue has got to be under eight hours. Good thing most of them are in good shape, or I have no idea what I'd do. Ugh. How do you keep yourself working when you're so sick of it all??

Things I Suck At: Thinking of Titles. None of my chapters have official titles. When I e-mailed them to my advisors they were just titled Histgrad Chapter One, etc. In my computer they had their own names, such as "This is IT," "Onward and Upward," "Keep Going," and "Almost There." Obviously not suitable for the Official Dissertation. I try so hard to resist the traditional title format (which, of course, I succumbed to for the title of the whole dissertation), you know, the ubiquitous colon format... Snappy Little Phrase: Long explanation, Usually With Commas, That Describes the Subject and Argument of the Chapter in a Perfectly Compact Way. Historians also love the related version of this which is "Long Quote Before Colon:" followed by the description of the chapter. I'm not a fan of the quotation as part of the title, partially because figuring out the punctuation is a nightmare, especially when citing someone else's. I always admire folks who can name chapters or books without resorting to the colon. But I digress. Long story short: every chapter needs a title and that's going to cause me (and/or my husband) some angst.

In the end, that's the theme of the day. I kind of like dictionary.com's definition: "an acute but unspecific feeling of anxiety; usually reserved for philosophical anxiety about the world or about personal freedom."

Chapter Two: Check.

2005-09-21T16:35:00.000-05:00

Again, wow, that was easy. I entered a few minor changes suggested by my advisor, and it's practically finished. I've got two small bits of information to track down, but they're footnote fodder, so they're not part of any Substantive Thinking that needs to happen. So I'm calling it completed. Which is a good thing, because the temperature in my study/sunroom is above 80 degrees at the moment, and I think my brain is starting to melt.

I've got a few hours left before doing some evening errands. My husband finally Saw The Light and agrees with me that our 19 inch TV is a bit, well, small. Our living room is long and narrow, so we literally have to move the furniture every time we watch TV, or else get up and run towards it, hoping to be able to see the football play before it is over.... So we're going to see how cheaply Costco will sell us something a wee bit bigger. Nothing fancy at all. I don't have the energy to decode all those terms like HD, plasma, blah, blah, nor do I want to pay for them...just something larger will do for now.

So I'm going to use my few spare hours to revise a lecture I'm giving tomorrow on business and labor in the 1920s, just so I won't have to subject myself to the same internal monologue when I'm giving it: "Are you giving this same crappy lecture again? Seriously? Because it makes no sense whatsoever and, really, you don't know much about labor, do you?" I always have something of an ulterior motive, which is to marshall historical evidence to demonstrate to students that Unions Are Good, so perhaps I'd better actually make some sense!

Onward to Chapter Three! I'm currently ahead of schedule, which is so unprecedented as to make me slightly nervous... hopefully staying ahead of schedule will allow me to share the whole draft with friends before the defense. And stay sane. Sanity is good.

Guilty Pleasures

2005-09-19T19:26:00.000-05:00

Thanks to Community College Dean for a fun post about guilty pleasures -- he asks, "what are your guilty pleasures, and what’s the term for the opposite of a guilty pleasure (something you’re supposed to like, but don’t)?"

Here are mine:

Stuff I’m supposed to like, but don’t: Foreign films (I want to watch a movie, not read it...wait, didn't Joey from Friends make this same argument?), all types of mushrooms (eeew... must be the texture), Serious Novels, cartoons from the New Yorker (I just don't get them, and then I feel like a small town hick), eating lamb (only one person has ever cooked lamb that I liked, so perhaps I should just admit defeat), jazz (can't think of a good excuse here...just don't like it), gazpacho (what is it? soup or runny salsa? In which case, soup should be hot and salsa should come with chips), seriously dark chocolate (give me the sweet Euro milk chocolate any day) and any fish that has white flesh (I'll eat "pink" fish like salmon or tuna, whereas fish sticks make my skin crawl.)

Stuff I like, but I’m not supposed to: Friends (now that I've mentioned it), 90210 reruns, Kraft macaroni and cheese that comes from the box and is all fake yellow and yummy, trashy mystery novels, that song by Hanson "Mmmm....bop" (great for exercising), Diet Mountain Dew (all natural!), Dairy Queen (I know, Big Corporate Franchise and all that, but it's soooo good.), Manwich (such a good, quick dinner), any sugared cereal made by humankind (Cookie Crisp, Apple Jacks, Cap'n Crunch, Lucky Charms...all my good, good friends), anything with a fake strawberry or banana taste, and that white frosting on a grocery store cake that you know is pure Crisco, but oh, so good.

I guess most of my guilty pleasures are food. And no, I'm not 300 pounds, if you were wondering. See previous posts about exercising to verify that fact.

Confess away, readers! (this means you, too, lurkers....)

Rewards

2005-09-19T15:10:00.000-05:00

How do you reward yourself as you work?

I'm big on both small and large rewards. Delayed gratification is one theory I regularly apply. If I grade five more quizzes, I'll have dessert and watch the Daily Show. After I make it through my Monday/Tuesday gauntlet, I get to sit and enjoy the new Onion and "Savage Love." There are many things -- walks to get ice cream, a nap, taking 20 minutes to finish my current mystery novel, etc. Of course, I rarely just DO these things without attaching them to some minor achievement (guilt being the raison d'etre of a grad student, of course -- I have to really deserve a break before taking one!)

I've also used somewhat larger rewards to mark the completion of each chapter. A nice pair of shoes, kitchen appliances (ice cream maker! sensing a theme? and having a dishwasher installed, something that I love more than someone should love a material object), and a vacation. I've still got a Chapter Five completion reward sitting out there... I'm thinking of something made by LeCreuset. Things that are somewhat "frivolous" but are also ways to pamper myself for all the hard work.

Chapter One: Check.

2005-09-19T08:20:00.000-05:00

For once, that was easy. I entered my advisors' suggested typographical changes, slightly edited the conclusion to the chapter, entered a few other random bits, and it's finished! Onward to Chapter Two!

Who knows if the rest of them will be this easy... my memory is that I don't have any Major Revisions to do, which I guess is a good reason why chapters sent to advisors should be in good shape in the first place -- or -- it says that my advisors are not trying to stand in my way by making suggestions that would take months to implement. Either way, I'm happy. We're all on the same Histgrad-Will-Finish page.

So... just to help me get up the courage to open another chapter (this revision process is an exercise in adrenaline production) I'll look at a few of the comments first. Okay, this isn't so bad... "Bravo! A wonderful chapter that needs only a few changes. Nicely argued and written with great evidence." "Real control over your evidence..." "... Central set of ideas holding everything together." "Excellent."

Okay, breathing better now. It seems like the main critique was that I over-stated my evidence in places, which kind of surprises me, since I would guess I'm more likely to be somewhat of a timid historian. [see that previous sentence?? how many times did I qualify what I said?] But that's okay, I can go back in and soften my argument. No problem.

Success!

2005-09-18T09:12:00.000-05:00

No, no success yet on Chapter One (although my advisors' suggested revisions were so minor I should have it finished by tomorrow). Rather, I just found something after searching and searching for it! I can get very obsessed about finding something... even though I claimed I don't have ADD in a previous post, my office does look pretty messy. I always say there is a method to my madness, but the past two days have tested that theory.

In September of '03, I attended my good friend's dissertation defense. A side benefit for me (besides attending the party afterwards, of course!) was that I took some notes. Part of the notes were for her benefit because, after all, who remembers what is said in moments like that? But part of the notes were for my benefit, as I noted what kinds of questions the advisors asked. (we share 2/3 of the same committee members, and the same chair.) I figured that all academics are somewhat creatures of habit, and they'll likely approach my defense with some of the same questions. It just felt like a little security blanket for me, something that gives me some sort of an idea of what I'm getting into.

Well, part of the process of getting ready to revise the Whole Thing was pulling out jumbled papers that include thoughts and notes and others' comments... but the defense notes were not among them! Yikes! So I looked and looked and looked yesterday, but no luck. I took the notes before we moved to our new house, so that always involves another level of thinking, "Well, in the apartment it would have been there... so where is that stuff now?"

This morning I realized I'd have to become my own historian and discover what I was working on at the time. So I had to face what I thought would be a depressing investigation: what chapter was I working on at the time, and how long was I working on it? Pretty interesting findings, I must say. Chapter One took way too long to finish, but was finished in April of 2003. (which was during my first year of full-time teaching!). Chapter Two was finished a year after that, in April 2004. That's my biggest chapter and drew from an enormous amount of documents, so it sure did take a while. Chapter Three was finished in September 2004, which means it took 6 months. Chapter Four was finished in February 2005, which was also a 6 month process. Chapter Five (perhaps known as the Epilogue) was finished in mid-April 2005... a shocking 2.5 month process! Sure, Chapter Five was probably half the length of other chapters, but still... a good lesson in how momentum works. And how you just want to Get. It. Done.

Anyway...long story short, since I was working on Chapter Two at the time the aforesaid notes went missing, I concentrated my search there and found them in a folder labeled "Chapter Two Debris." hallelujah! I'm very relieved. When I do finish the written revisions I can begin to give some thought to the general questions they'll likely ask. For me, personally, defending something in an oral argument situation (our doctoral exams were 100% oral, nothing written, hence terrifying for me) has always freaked me out, so it's good to have some sense of how one worked. Knowledge is power.

A Serious Question

2005-09-16T18:13:00.000-05:00

Okay, really, where do all the odd socks go?? I'm taking a "break" from grading (only an academic would think this constitutes a break) to clean out the floor of my closet, which at this point is a graveyard of jumbled black shoes. Okay, so I have a problem.

But nonetheless, I hauled out an entire pile of mismatched socks that I've been throwing in there for months. Most of them will still lack their partners. I know they're not in the washer. Nor the dryer. Nor anywhere en route between the basement and the dresser. What happens to them?? Is there some black hole in the universe into which particularly bad (or good?) socks go? Are my feet so awful? Why do they leave me?

Good News, Bad News, and Tuning Out

2005-09-16T13:01:00.000-05:00

The Good News: I did it!!!! I just e-mailed off the introduction, which I'm pretty pleased with, in the end. Nice to feel that much closer to the end.

The Bad News: Yikes! Time to dive into the dissertation as a whole and first up: Chapter One revisions. I'm already behind Plan A Schedule (which, while tight, still meets my Advisor's revised timeline) so I've got to knock out this puppy this weekend to avoid stress down the road. So much for a brief celebratory respite after finishing the intro. With that said, I will make time tonight for a vanilla malt and some Daily Show taped earlier this week.

The Good News: My advisors (bless their hearts, as my mother would say) left really encouraging comments on the front page of Chapter 1, which gives me the courage to open it up and forge ahead. Some excerpts: "This is quite wonderful -- at once authoritative and lively. [which I confess is my all-time favorite compliment] Congratulations!" "Little room for improvement." "No writing problems." "Off to a good start." Etc. After getting these comments, lo' those many years ago, I really felt energized and ready to keep working on Chapter Two. So I've vowed if I ever supervise anyone who is working on a years-long project, that I will be Super Supportive in the early stages (i.e. don't drop the hammer at the beginning, even if merited) since getting momentum going is key.

The Bad News: the negative voices in my head are out in force at moments like this.

So... I'll just have to turn off those voices in my head. Every time I turn something in, I think something like, "Wow, what is it, mid-September? And when should this have been finished, why, yes, mid-June! And here it is, mid-September." But, I vow to you, I'm not listening to this voice today! (insert fingers in ears and yell "lalalalalalalalalaala.....")

I'm also turning off the voices in my head that will be slightly disappointed at the pace at which this entire thing unfolded...as in, my advisor's comments on Chapter 1 are dated April 14, 2003. I won't even depress myself further by beginning to count how many years it took me to get from prospectus to Chapter 1.

Water under the bridge. Lalalalalalalala....

p.s. My cat, who is nicknamed Varmint, spilled a half-empty can of coconut milk last night, which happened when she was (of course) up on the counter looking for food. Later I found her prospecting in the garbage and eating the papertowels we used to wipe up the coconut milk!!

Whisper, whisper, giggle, giggle

2005-09-15T18:27:00.000-05:00

Perhaps I should feel glad that I managed to make it four weeks into the semester before the chit-chatting students reared their ugly heads. I teach "large" (to me, anyway) classes of around 40 people. Apparently the folks sitting in the back and along the sides believe they've developed some special powers that allow them to be invisible, and consequently, I surely can't see that they're whispering to each other, giggling, and/or writing notes in each other's notebooks.

These are first year college students, so many of them are traditional college age (community colleges are full of 19-22 year olds these days because of students' financial constraints) so many of them haven't yet adjusted to how a college classroom works. But part of me says that's just an excuse -- isn't polite and respectful behavior something they should exhibit regardless of the location? So I've recently been pondering how to deal with this issue. (Thanks to New Kid on the Hallway for a great post about the Packer-Uppers.)

I've found that the chatters fall into two groups: 1) good students who are talkative during class discussion but just don't sit still and concentrate during lecture. So I'd hate to totally alienate them and embarrass them by making a big fuss and throwing them out of the room. With these folks, 95% of the time it works when I take them aside after class, explain the impact of their behavior, and ask that they stop it. They're good kids, and they listen. If they stray during the semester, giving them the Evil Eye during lecture usually brings them back into the fold, or I'll have another conversation after class. Group 2 is composed of students who only attend because they have to. I know they are not doing the reading because they habitually fail reading quizzes. They are not taking notes. They're just punching the time clock because attendance is required. They chat to pass the time and because they are not engaged in the class. The Evil Eye is only a temporary fix.

[A good friend of mine from graduate school adds an excellent twist to the Evil Eye. Not only is she unafraid to throw them out, she'll stop lecturing and say in a very loud voice, "Bob! I notice you're talking. I assume you have something to tell us about the economic crisis of the 1890s. Can you share it with the class?" She says it works like a charm. ]

Since this is a perennial problem, I make a big deal out of it during the first day of class and I threaten to kick them out of class for the day and not count their attendance. Since I require attendance, I have pretty close to 100% of the students there each day, so obviously they care about getting attendance points. The problem is: I'm not sure I have the guts to go through with it. I'm sure this comes back to some deeper psychological issue for me... fear of making a fuss, fear of being labeled a "bitch," etc. I also feel partially paralyzed by the issue... I feel sort of stunned that anyone is behaving this way in the first place! And, of course, by not following through on my threat I risk losing credibility.

In the past I've usually relied upon the combination I mentioned above (personal conversations + the Evil Eye) and that has generally solved the problem. But maybe I'm just short of patience this semester, but today I resolved to cut off the behavior at the pass instead of making individual interventions. But since I'm not likely to go through with my stated plan of throwing them out (unless, of course, they were really disruptive... even though I'm a Midwesterner, I do have my limits!), I realized I should come up with something else that felt more natural to me.

So today I tried something new. I told them that I had two announcements. One was that I was generally impressed with the class and their work thus far (true), and two, that I was becoming increasingly frustrated with a small minority of chatters, most of whom I'd spoken to on Tuesday either during or after class. [The timing could not have been more perfect, since in mid-speech the worst offenders of the Group 2 chatters were talking away... so I stopped talking, pointed at them, and said "THAT is what I'm talking about."] So I explained that while I still intended to enforce my throw-you-out policy, I realized that throwing them out would solve the problem for me, but not solve the larger problem for them, which is that they're not taking good notes during lectures and are putting themselves at risk for failing the class. So instead of throwing them out, I will now be coming to class every day with a paper assignment based on the lecture topic for that day (I worked up a generic topic I can use for every lecture, printed out a bunch of them, and waved them around as I talked.) I explained that chit-chatters would be given the required paper assignment, due next class. So hopefully this was a savvy way to revise my original policy in the guise of a larger pedagogical goal.

I think it worked! The usual chatters were silent. More notes were taken. And my semi-hard-ass routine didn't squelch the others, who asked more questions than usual today. So we'll see how it plays over the long haul... I vow to enforce this policy by actually handing out the paper assignment if needed.

A related tangent: in the past, this issue prompted me to learn another Fundamental Law (see previous post) about teaching. This is a lesson I learned last spring, namely: Don't Make Assumptions, although, of course, this post is full of them. Anyway, I had a student (we'll call her Debby) who was in both my USII class and my Women's History class. In Women's History, she sat near the front and was an A student. Prepared, respectful, engaged. In USII, she ignored most of what happened, and clearly wasn't engaged. She did enough reading to put herself in the B range, but she clearly was capable of more. In USII she sat in the very back row, next to a guy (we'll call him Andy.) I couldn't tell if they were girlfriend/boyfriend, or just friends. Well, I assumed that he was being a bad influence on her, and that she was altering her usual behavior to somehow please him. He was a similar student -- earning a B but could have been doing better, and he also gave the impression that he was not engaged.

One day (on which Debby was wearing bright yellow silky lingerie -- another rant from my past!) I lost my patience. She sat in the back row with her face in a book (granted, it was the book from my women's history class and she was doing the reading assignment, but still -- rude.). And he was sitting there, giving me what I perceived to be hostile body language (you know the pose, sitting back in his chair, arms crossed over his chest, etc), as he listened to the lectures without taking notes. I was talking about something horrible like prisoners of war or genocide and they started to laugh. I interrupted class to find out what was so funny, and that shut them up.

So I pulled them aside after class and said, "Frankly, I'm not sure why either of you bother to come to class. Clearly you are not engaged in the class. You don't take notes. You don't regularly do the reading, and today you sat there and read a book from another course. That's going to have to stop." I figured she'd be meek and embarrassed about her behavior, and that I'd get attitude from him. Just the reverse!

She immediately went on the defensive and said the only reason she came to class was "for the attendance points" and that it wasn't any of "my business" if she wanted to sit there and read something else because "she's paying for this." Once I emerged from the shock these statements caused, I explained that it was simple respect that she pay attention in class and she would have to exhibit respect or be asked to leave.

He, on the other hand, apologized profusely, admitted their laughter was inappropriate but explained why (something to do with his father still being in 60s protest mode, so while it was still inappropriate, it made something close to sense), and said that he really felt awful about how I'd mis-read him, and that he loves the class and thought we had a really nice repoire going. You could have knocked me over! A few hours later he sent an e-mail to apologize again, and told me that he would hate for me to assume that he's only attending class for the attendance points. So after that I called on him more often, he became more engaged, and he still keeps in touch via e-mail. For example, he sent me an e-mail this summer about the revelation of Deep Throat's identity.

So while I'm now on the offensive against the chatters, I try to remember that behind (almost) every chatter is someone who really wants to be a good student.

Fundamental Laws

2005-09-13T18:44:00.000-05:00

Right now I'm facing one of those marooned hours...just enough time to feel like I should really do something productive before yoga class, but I'm wiped and just can't seem to gather the willpower to fix some footnotes or grade some quizzes. Seems like a great time to blog, after I've killed some time at the Onion, of course. The weekly Monday-Tuesday punch has done me in. I teach a Monday night class, which is supposed to last from 6:30 to 10. Insane.

So that means a pretty late night on Monday and a quick turnaround before Tuesday morning's two classes. And the commute last night was rough... due to a light drizzle. The roads were all wet and shiny, SUV lights glared in my mirrors (when I run the world, you'll need a permit and good reason to drive one of those), and my damn windshield was, as usual, covered in some film that made it impossible to see. In dry weather, it appears crystal clear. Get it slightly wet and it looks all cloudy and opaque in spots. I drove slowly and kept my eye on the yellow line at the side of the road, and thankfully made it home. I came in the back door and started to cry. Now, I know I really should love my Reliable and Fuel Efficient Small Japanese Car, but it's always had some sort of windshield poltergeist that makes for crappy visibility in rainy weather, and the thing handles like a watermelon. And do you really want to be driving the same silver colored car that everyone else is? I swear that I'm either stuck in that scene from Office Space or trying to get into someone else's car in the parking lot.

So today I wandered into the auto parts store after work and bought the most expensive wipers in the place. Seemed like a good place to start, since one really should be able to operate one's motor vehicle in the rain. I bought a pair made by Bosch. I dunno. I figure since they make fantastic dishwashers they might make good windshield wipers (?). Tomorrow I will attempt to install said wipers and then clean the windshield but good.

Besides my griping, I've also been giving some thought to teaching and time management. It's a fundamental law of Physics (or some science-y) discipline that gases expand to fill the space available. I propose that this is also a fundamental law of teaching. On the positive side, this means that teaching is a profession that is endlessly new -- each day is a new challenge that you could prepare and prepare for, and then revise and revise after the fact. How could I teach this better? How could I design something that would reach this particular group of students in a more effective way? Am I really giving this same old crappy lecture again? Would taking the time to cue up a 4 minute film clip really make the point? I'm guessing that most teachers could think of a few things they'd really like to improve if time were not an issue.

The negative side of this fundamental law is that the expanding gas of teaching could be suffocating! How do you preserve your personal life, your family life, your physical and mental health in the face of a job that could be never-ending? And, more importantly, how do you find time to Be a Scholar? Scholarship for me requires taking off the teacher hat (let's hope my dissertation isn't written in the same lingo I use to boil down complicated historical concepts for my first year college students) and putting on the scholar hat. It involves engaging in a different discussion with a different audience. And it requires, quite simply, TIME.

After I came up for air -- which happened at some point in the second semester of my first year of teaching a 4-4 load -- I realized that, for me, teaching would always expand to fill the space available. And if I intended to make any progress on my dissertation, I was just going to have to shrink that time. So for years I've been shrinking and shrinking the time I spend on teaching. I believe that that quality of the output remains high since I made an initial investment in time before I put things In the Can. But it sure makes for some stressful mornings. I'll get up, work on my dissertation for an hour or so, then head for campus -- carefully calibrating to arrive an hour before class or so. And voila! I've got to prepare for class in that hour. Sometimes it's no problem, sometimes it's super stressful, and sometimes things just don't get done. But at least I worked on my dissertation.

And the only other Fundamental Law I can think of right now is that we should never, ever, assume we have any initial understanding of what our students do and don't know. This week my students in the night class were comparing statistics from the Virginia/Chesapeake Bay colonies and the Massachusetts Bay colonies. I asked them to work in small groups and focus on a few sets of statistics so we could develop a picture of the North vs. the South during this period. There was some confusion before I realized that some students didn't understand that Virginia is in the south and Massachusetts is in the north. Wow.

What are your fundamental laws?

Definitely an oncoming train.

2005-09-10T15:12:00.000-05:00

I just got one of those e-mails that makes any self-respecting grad student want to curl up in the fetal position. Or run around the house screaming in panic. I haven't decided yet.

In a previous post I detailed my "plan of attack" for turning in my dissertation on time. My advisor said I needed to send a copy of the whole thing to my committee by November 18. So with that in mind, I made a schedule. I felt that the schedule I'd made for myself was just about right... not too tight, but also just stressful enough so that it would keep my feet to the fire. Be calm, I told myself. Be calm. You've got just enough time.

So sitting in my in-box today, innocuously titled "Schedule Update," was an e-mail from my advisor, who had apparently just been reminded by another committee member that November 18 is the deadline for the whole committee to receive the copy, but that my advisor/chair needs to read the whole thing first, just to be sure I should be going forward with the defense. So when is that due?? Two to three weeks EARLIER!

Nice.

I told her that I'd just have to do my best. Since I've never revised a dissertation before, I have no earthly idea how long it is supposed to take! And frankly, I have never, ever, in the whole entire process of writing this dissertation met any of my self-imposed deadlines. Since this is the first time I'm coming up against an Actual Deadline, I'm a bit freaked out. Just a smidge. There's a first time for everything, right?

I just hate the feeling of sprinting to the finish... I always imagined that I'd leisurely stroll into my defense, feeling rested and ready. I guess the "break" between November 1 and December 15 will give me some time to marshall my forces, but still. I'm just way too old to pull anything akin to an all-nighter. And I do have a full-time job. I've got three classes. 120 students. I'm Department Chair.

Ugh. Enough complaining. Back to the salt mines.

Attention Deficit Disorder -- another name for Dissertation Deficit Disorder?

2005-09-09T16:01:00.000-05:00

Those of you who know my 72 year old father will find this not-at-all surprising: he's recently been diagnosed with ADD and is taking Ritalin! File this under: I coulda told you that! The man is the opposite of a couch potato (good, in that he's not overweight) but he simply could not sit still, or concentrate on any one task for a long period of time. Big projects went unfinished. His attention span for any movie was seriously 15 minutes, tops. He'd watch the movie, fidget a bit, talk (loudly) to his cats, try to discuss the movie with his family members, and then give up and leave the room. (That's for rented movies at least, I thankfully haven't been subjected to his behavior at a movie theater, but I think there he manages to rise to the occasion.) Somehow he got a bee in his bonnet about Adult ADD, went through an extensive diagnosis procedure, and is now fine-tuning his Ritalin dose. [I told him he would make a fortune if he went down to the campus of Local University and sold it to desperate students during finals week.] So far it seems to be having a positive effect -- he has more energy, is more focused, and is completing projects left and right.

In some ways, this is inspiring. You're never too old to try something new, to try to make an improvement in your life. But gradually I've started to wonder: since ADD is inherited, what does that say about me?? The Doctor told my mother that, yes, it can be inherited, but that girls ("especially those who are bright") are skilled at overcoming the situation and compensating for any ADD tendencies. So did I inherit it? Have I merely been "compensating" all these years?

So lately I've been viewing my fidgeting, my daydreaming, my dissertation avoiding with a new and anxious eye. Is there some biochemical reason I just can't make myself concentrate sometimes?? Oh, were it that simple. In the end, I don't really think I have ADD. I'm pretty organized. Even though parts of my life/office are sloppy, I know where things are. I finish projects. I certainly have no problems sitting for hours on end watching even the most mundane television show. And I have managed to write hundreds of pages based on thousands of (well-organized) documents. But wouldn't it be nice to take a magic pill that would enable me to sit and intensely focus on dissertation-related projects?

This is not to suggest, of course, that I don't believe that ADD exists and that, for some, Ritalin truly is a "magic bullet." I've seen it with my own eyes. If only someone could prescribe Dissertationin for me... but I guess that's something I'll have to find on my own, huh?

The light at the end of the tunnel? Or just an oncoming train?

2005-09-07T20:45:00.000-05:00

Well, folks, I can finally see a light approaching. I don't yet know whether it is friend or foe... I've finally, hopefully, maybe, nailed down a date for my dissertation defense: December 15. Because my advisors are away on leave this year, they are only available on specific dates during semester break. So December 15 it is. That falls during my finals week, so the timing is certainly not spectacular, but you gotta do what you gotta do. All that's left is to double-confirm the date, double-confirm all advisor attendance, find a room, buy a plane ticket, file the relevant paperwork, find an outside observer, and, oh yeah, one small detail: FINISH MY WHOLE DISSERTATION!!!!

Breathe in. Breathe out. Repeat.

T minus Defense = 99 Days
T minus due date to advisor=72 Days
T minus personal drop-dead due date = 55 Days

Yikes. All those numbers are under 100.

But I think I can do it. Hell, I guess I'll just have to do it. That's approximately seven weeks of major work. I've got about seven major projects/revisions. So that means one big project per week. If I stray too far from that schedule, I'll know I'm in trouble.

Along those lines, I made some strides in finishing the never-ending, languishing introduction today. I incorporated Husband's edits, so Friday (another non-teaching day for me) will be for ye olde padding the footnotes, i.e. picking up a number of books that I Really Should Demonstrate I Read and deciding whether they'll be part of the text, or shoved in the footnotes. The weekend for revising said footnotes, and voila?

Keep that encouragement coming. I'm gonna need it.

Nice.

2005-09-06T12:39:00.000-05:00

No comment necessary. Check out what Barbara Bush had to say on Marketplace:

In a segment at the top of the show on the surge of evacuees to the Texas city, Barbara Bush said: "almost everyone I've talked to says we're going to move to Houston."Then she added: "What I'm hearing which is sort of scary is they all want to stay in Texas. Everyone is so overwhelmed by the hospitality. And so many of the people in the arena here, you know, were underprivileged anyway, so this--this (she chuckles slightly) is working very well for them."

(from Editor and Publisher via Daily Kos)

WTF???

2005-09-02T08:41:00.000-05:00

A few rants on a Friday morning.

First of all: what is up with the lingerie, people?? My friends will agree that I'm certainly not a prude, and I'm the first one to throw on a tiny tank top in hot weather, but I don't wear such items (much less a lace trimmed lingerie-ish top) TO WORK OR SCHOOL. Apparently these students didn't get the memo from the New York Times Style Section a while back about how "demure is in." Yesterday I literally could not avert my eyes from a student in my WOMEN'S HISTORY class who was wearing a very low cut tank top that was trimmed with an inch-wide band of shiny silver SEQUINS that were literally like the flash bulb of a camera. "Sequins" really isn't the right word for these things because they seemed to be some supernatural event, some self-powered item that could emit a bright stream of light, which said, "Look! Look here!!!!" (I always start to laugh when I think of the Onion headline: Nation's Co-Eds Prepare Breasts for Springtime Display.)

Onto more serious matters: Katrina.

Words are, of course, inadequate to express my horror and sadness over the numerous heartbreaking stories I've heard over the past few days -- from the large to the small, from lost lives, to pets who were left behind, to a man in his 50s who lost the journals he'd kept every day of his life since he was 10 years old. But I do find that words are adequate to express my anger over how this whole nightmare had been handled, and my anger with the folks (read: Bush Administration) whose inaction and ill-preparedness has left my country looking like some far-away war zone or famine. Bush said "no one" could have predicted the break in the levees? No one?? Really, George??

The NYT has published blistering editorials. Daily Kos has numerous examples of how money (and National Guard troops and equipment) were diverted from FEMA and the Army Corps of Engineers to fund the war in Iraq and to give some rich fuck a tax cut. But then an excellent, eloquent rant about this whole situation (and how the media is covering it) arrived in my e-mail in-box this morning.

Here's my friend's rant:

I think I have massive guilt about being kind of perversely fascinated by the storm, like wanting to see a huge train wreck, and then I ACTUALLY saw the train wreck and now I'm like "I take it back I take it back I take it back..."

Plus I witnessed an exchange between Al Sharpton and Fucker Carlson last night that made me want to vomit. Everyone is a racist pig. Sharpton was like "I'm going down to minister to people and to lead a clothing drive," and Fucker is like "well, good for you [his actual words, totally condescending] but are you ALSO going to condemn all the violence and rape and murder?" and I was so angry, like this pudgy white fuck felt that it was Sharpton's job to say rape and murder are wrong. Fucker would NEVER have asked anyone else that question. Everyone condemns rape and murder. The victims are FUCKING BLACK, you motherfucker, why *wouldn't* he condemn it? To expect Sharpton to have to answer for every bad thing a black person does, and NOT give him credit for All of the Good he and others do ... it's so fucking nakedly racist I want to spit. All these fucking white people sitting around congratulating each other on their fine coverage of events, their daring, their generosity, etc. NOBODY FUCKING CARES, you are useless, people are dying slow, horrible, ignominious deaths right in front of your eyes -- it's a ratings bonanza! I have never seen such slo-mo suffering on such a scale. And this exact shit happens in Africa all the time, right now, where thousands of (black) people suffer the worst treatment / conditions at the hands of a well-armed evil few, and we don't do anything, nothing, because oooh, they're shooting at us. If only those blacks could behave themselves, we'd help. Well, guess what, they're EXPLODING us in Iraq, and we are in THERE fighting, so... We hate blacks and cannot get motivated to behave decently, mercifully where they are concerned because we blame them for being stupid and criminal and bringing it on themselves because if we let our conscience flicker for a second, if we take any kind of broad historical view of how things got to this point ... we would be so crippled by guilt that we would cease to function as a country. So fuck 'em. Thin the herd. Eliminate hundreds if not thousands from the gene pool and welfare rolls (mmm, welfare rolls). I'm sure there's secret glee in some conservative quarters (well, if it weren't for the crippling of our economy which is beginning now and will follow for years to come, thanks). It's nice to see Homeland Security was so well prepared for this event.

Plus some asshole was on last night commenting on the "lawlessness," talking about "this is what happens when you take God out of the schools..."

Rest in Peace, Mr. Badger

2005-08-30T18:21:00.000-05:00

Some sad news today -- for those who have been following the story of one of "our own" (ABDers/bloggers) -- Badger lost her husband yesterday. I've never met Badger, but nonetheless, I wish I had the words to convey my condolences. What a sad, sad story.

Back on the Horse

2005-08-30T18:09:00.000-05:00

So it seems as if another week has passed... I guess it was filled with house guests (much fun and good food was had by all, even those who slept on the floor. I hope.) and cleaning and cooking and sight-seeing and restaurant-eating and Ikea-going, etc. General living. Exercising. Oh, and some teaching, too. I have a theory that fall semester students are not as "good" as spring semester students, perhaps because they're not quite ready for college (or perhaps because our semester is the first one to start in what seems like the entire hemisphere. August 22? Are you kidding?) or perhaps because their parents made them do it. At any rate, my students this semester are proving the exception to my "rule" and so far have been engaged and inquisitive and a pleasant surprise. Wish I felt more motivated and "up" to the challenge they're currently posing. I guess in some ways I felt like I never really got a summer, and here I go again, crossing off weekly blocks in my syllabus. Isn't it time for finals yet?

So now that I'm back in the swing of things at school, and now that my house has been cleaned, messed up, and cleaned again, I think it is time to face the original music: my dissertation. Time to send another Come to Jesus e-mail in which I set up a series of deadlines. Time to revise that introduction one more time. Time to reload and hope for victory in the latest battle of my current Recall War. If there's one thing I've learned in all of my years of working on this beast is that even if you feel (or are?) stalled out, pick it up again. Get moving. You can't eat an elephant with one bite. And you certainly can't polish off the elephant if you don't have knife and fork in hand.

Day 35: Hanging in there...

2005-08-24T18:19:00.000-05:00

I've got a night class starting in ten minutes. I almost have all my syllabi finished, so that's better than most years. And I'm feeling only mild panic, which is also better than most years. Hopefully I will sleep the sleep of the exhausted tonight, instead of being plagued by anxiety dreams. Thankfully most of my anxiety dreams usually center around giving a final exam (even if it isn't finals time) because I make such a big fat deal out of the fact that they have to get to the exam on time OR ELSE. And my dreams, of course, feature me being unable to get to the exam and the attendant panic and embarrassment that results.

A digression. I usually tell my students it's their responsibility to plan ahead for all contingencies (good training for 2 year college students) and as an example, I use the story of what happened on the morning of my master's exam. At the time, I was driving a much-beloved 1986 VW Jetta (parental hand-me-down, of course) that had been as reliable as one could expect. But with an old car, one never knows... so I made arrangements with a friend. I told her that I'd try to leave my house at 8 a.m. and if my car didn't start, she would still be home so she could give me a ride. She was instructed to wait for my call and leave enough time in her schedule to give me a ride if necessary. My husband later told me he thought the stress had fried my brain because I really didn't need to make such elaborate arrangements for something that wasn't going to be an issue. And guess what?! I went out at 8 a.m. and the car refused to even turn over. Totally dead. Good soldier that it was, apparently various items in the chain of command had been failing for weeks but the others compensated, so we didn't notice anything amiss. Until the final failure on the morning of my master's exam. But thanks to my forethought, no additional stress, I arrived at the master's exam with plenty of time to spare.

***********

Okay, so I started this post on Monday, and here it is Wednesday. How did that happen? I guess I've got to give up counting days because I can't even keep track anymore, and plus, it's too depressing.

Classes went as well as could be expected, but sheesh, I'm exhausted. Why is the first week such a drain? We've got friends and family coming this weekend (starting tomorrow) so I spent all of today cleaning the house. I've got classes again tomorrow, so let's just hope that what's already in the can hasn't been dented and developed botulism or something similarly fatal.

Day 32: Paging Dr. Strangelove to the white courtesy phone!

2005-08-19T14:30:00.000-05:00

I feel it is likely that some insidious force has drained my precious bodily fluids...

I feel sapped. Drained. Exhausted. And the semester hasn't even started yet! A few days of long, jargon-filled faculty meetings, interspersed with numerous terrifying realizations about the state of my syllabi (or lack thereof) I offer up the following list of (semi-petty) things I am thankful for:

*colleagues who sit next to me in darkened auditoriums and crack sarcastic jokes
*my purring kitties
*that running high I got at minute 28 on the elliptical machine yesterday when I was about ready to quit, with 12 minutes to go...
*my iPod, for selecting a great song at minute 32
*CBS, for broadcasting a new-to-me CSI last night (I really needed to veg on my couch)
*my VCR, for recording the Daily Show last night (I went to bed at 9:30! What am I, twelve?)
*Starbucks, for making me a much-needed iced soy latte

What semi-petty things are you thankful for?

One interesting observation: one speaker mentioned an article in the Academic Leader (only available with subscription) about how academics are one group that is quite likely to fall victim to the "imposter phenomenon," meaning that academics are more likely to believe they're impostors (I don't really deserve this job, etc.) and that somehow, someday, they'll be "found out." Do you think your doctor or dentist or attorney goes to work every day and worries about that? So I wish for all of us, as we start our fall semesters, to avoid selling ourselves short. We're not impostors. Just think how much more you know about your discipline than your students do! After all, one of my students last semester claimed that the New Deal was designed to provide every American with a television set...

I'll close with a quotation featured in a presentation I attended yesterday:
"If a doctor, lawyer, or dentist had 40 (0r 400) people in his office at one time, all of whom had different needs, and some of whom didn't want to be there or were causing trouble, and the doctor, lawyer, or dentist, without assistance, had to treat them all with professional excellence for nine months, then he/she might have some conception of the classroom teacher's job." Donald Quinn

Amen! Have a good weekend everyone.

What a wonderful country we live in

2005-08-19T08:27:00.000-05:00

I'm diverging from my normal semi-daily rants to comment on something that caught my attention yesterday. Follow this link to Academic Coach's discussion of a fellow ABD/blogger (Badger.) In addition to the usual trials and tribulations of teaching while being ABD, Badger is also dealing with some tragic personal circumstances. Mr. Badger was diagnosed with severe liver cancer and she only has a short time left with him. Badger's postings about her family's story brought tears to my eyes.

In one sense, her story merits a sarcastic comment (what a wonderful country we live in) when, in addition to her own stress and grief, she has to fight bureaucracy after bureaucracy -- often without success. Her insurance company even cut off her prescription benefits recently when she was picking up morphine for her husband. Anyone who has been a graduate student with marginal health insurance (I, too, lived with a $100K limit) will likely get the chills while reading the results of such an abysmal system.

In another sense, though, we do live in a wonderful country when fellow ABDers and bloggers come together and make common cause with Badger through the fund that Academic Coach has set up. Check it out. And give your children/spouses/family an extra hug today. Life can be terribly fragile.

Day 30: Running from the Boulder

2005-08-17T08:40:00.000-05:00

How did it get from Day 25 to Day 30 so quickly? I guess the same way it is now suddenly August 17. Very strange.

A quick dissertation update: Spouse/Editor read the introduction -- which, to me, was an ill-formed, poorly written piece of crap that needed something major to happen to it. Either major re-writing or a huge shove out of my second floor window. When he's read chapters in the past the chapters have been much better (in my dissertation-drained brain) and more complete than this intro. He's never met a chapter he initially liked, but he liked the intro! It's a summer miracle. It's not complete yet -- some paragraphs are just sketched out, and the footnotes are a bloody mess, but progress is progress. I can't return to it just yet, but soon. Onward and upward!

So yesterday I went to campus for a meeting and within about ten minutes had my usual case of meeting rage. I am always vulnerable to cases of meeting rage, but after a summer of totally doing my own thing, my attention span is markedly short. Then I waited in line at Costco, then fought traffic all the way home... and felt like I'd been subjected to some horrible psych experiment. I think, for me, going back to school in the fall (even for a few days of faculty development days) is so difficult because of the over-stimulation. All summer I've been sitting by myself all day, with only some very vocal felines for company. And school brings obligations and noise and demands and schedules.... I'm not complaining, I certainly know that not everyone gets three months "off" in the summer, but still. I've got two more days of meetings at the end of the week, so wish me luck in the meeting rage department. I swear, we faculty are far worse than our own students. Force us to sit through two days of meetings and EVERYONE is sitting in the auditorium doing their own work during the meeting. It's sad and funny at the same time, but you can bet I'll be sitting there doing my own work, too!

Yesterday was also the new faculty orientation -- and that, combined with Stewgad's recent posts about beginning her full-time job -- has prompted me to recall (with some amount of horror) my first year of full-time teaching. At the time, I sent a group e-mail to my friends and confided that I felt like I was Indiana Jones, running as fast as I could from the boulder coming out of the cave. I had to keep running at top speed or else I'd literally be flattened. My friends wrote and shared their own individual boulders at the time -- so what are you all running from?

So, I guess thinking back to those hectic and terrifying days, this week isn't so bad. But I've recently decided to shelve my dissertation for a week or so in order to pursue another goal: to start the semester without feeling totally, completely, absolutely, hectic-ly behind. Every other semester I've turned in my syllabi for printing with "Rush! Thanks!" written on it, and there were lots of parts on the on-line course schedule which said, "To Be Determined." So my syllabus planning really lasted throughout the semester because I could never get my act together beforehand. A friend of mine told me that it took him at least 3, if not 4, years to feel relaxed at the beginning of a semester. So I'm vowing to attempt to be organized and relaxed. Of course, it is Wednesday and classes start on Monday and I haven't even started my syllabi, but still.

So today, in the interest of running from the boulder, I'm going to work on my syllabi (so I'll have something to print and revise during two days of meetings, of course!) and also work on those lingering chores from MAY that need to be done around the house, such as organizing our medicine/toiletries cabinet. It's one of those cabinets that we open, dig through piles of crap to hopefully find what we need, and then slam the door so things don't fall on our head.

So, thinking out loud, my to-do list:
3 course syllabi, drafts
3 course schedules, drafts
multiple loads of laundry
grocery store
KMart, to see if Martha Stewart can help me organize
Organizing said cabinet
Asian grocery store
exercise
fertilize tomatoes (does anyone know how to keep squirrels from stealing my tomatoes????)
shop for a gift for a friend
post office

So I suppose I should stop blogging and start working, huh?

One final question: what kind of get-to-know-you games do you do on the first day? I have large-ish classes (approx. 40 students) so I split them into the small groups they'll be working with, have them make table-top name tags (that I ask them to bring every day for the first month or so) and then within their groups they have to come up with a list of things they have in common that are not lame, i.e. they can't say they're all students, but they could say that they've all been to Canada, or something like that. The winning group gets candy, but first they have to read their list out loud for a group vote on the relative lame-ness of their findings. The students usually have fun voting for the other groups, so hopefully they actually enjoy it and are not just humoring their nerdly teacher.

Day 25: Yet another draft

2005-08-12T16:55:00.000-05:00

Well, I've reached the somewhat terrifying stage whereupon I print out a draft and have my husband/editor read it. What will the verdict be... fine tuning? Major revisions? I shudder to think. But I figured I'd better get a sense of how it's looking before I continue to work on it. Wish me luck.

So yesterday I went out to my office to unpack and enjoy my new furniture... and found an extra surprise: a new flat panel monitor! It felt like Christmas. We faculty usually get the hand-me-downs from students, so getting something brand new was quite shocking. I'm not entirely happy with the configuration of furniture in my closet/office, and what can you really say about soulless gray corporate desks and a filing cabinet, but it's new and it looks good. I'm planning a trip to Ikea for some more accessories and whatnot, and then I'll be all moved in. But going out to campus does take a chunk out of the day, plus errands, plus going to the gym... then frantic food prep and house cleaning.

But it was worth it -- the burgers were pretty damn good. Search for "Jalapeno Cheeseburgers with Bacon and Grilled Onions" on epicurious. The weather cooperated and we were able to sit out on the back deck in the candlelight until way too late, drinking wine and dreaming about future vacations. Hence my lack of productivity today, except for some minor edits. Blah. Anyway, I'm off to an event paid for by my husband's Real Job with free beer, appetizers, Scotch eggs (if you don't know what they are, be afraid, be very afraid) and lawn bowling.

Day 23: You know you're procrastinating when...

2005-08-10T19:32:00.000-05:00

I think that ABDs should compete in two Olympic events: Advisor Avoidance and Procrastination. I'd medal for sure in at least the second category. What's the craziest thing you've ever done? I'm sure we've all done the obvious (cleaning, gourmet cooking, laundry, litter box scooping, gardening, closet organizing, etc.) -- all those things that just have to get done, and then we'll surely be able to concentrate much better! (and yes, I'm aware of the irony of blogging about procrastinating.)

Probably my best example was at some point during grad school (perhaps even during coursework, but I think that counts) I was wandering across campus and I started to wonder: when was the last time I'd had a tetanus shot? I mean, I wasn't planning any big adventures involving rusty nails, but you never know.... perhaps I'd better get a tetanus shot instead of doing my seminar reading. Yes, of course I should, that's the only responsible and healthy thing to do. So off I went to health services instead of the library. And then I just had to go home and nap because my arm hurt and I felt yucky.

I guess compared to that, today wasn't so bad. Since working on my introduction was going painfully slow, I decided to face the music and call my dentist to schedule a cleaning. There must be something worse than writing a dissertation, why, yes, it's dental work! I'm a dental-phobe (or an anti-Dentite in Seinfeld-speak) so making the appointment is a big first step. Well, turns out they had three options: today, the morning of my first day back to school (yeah, right) or sometime in September. I thought about it and decided that spending an afternoon at the dentist was a marvelous way to procrastinate. The only problem is that my husband had our One Small Car, which meant that I'd have to either take the bus or hop on my bike. I opted for the bike. (my husband also had the map, the cellphone, and my sunglasses, but I forged ahead.)

It only took twenty minutes to get there, but somewhere along the way I managed to pop off the chain. But thankfully I put it back on, otherwise I would have been stranded there. Very greasy work, of course. When I got to Fancy Adjoining Suburb and my dentist's office, I'm sure I was a sight to behold, as I wandered past the Boutiques and Shoppes, dodging the groups of Ladies Who Lunch. I knew my hands were covered in grease but didn't know until I got into the bathroom to "freshen up" that my face also had grease all over it. But this all has a happy ending in that I cleaned off the grease, survived my cleaning, and had no cavities! And got a nice bike ride out of the deal. The only side effect will, of course, be a bad case of Tender Bike Ass tomorrow morning.

Otherwise, it's hard to get back on the wagon after taking several really nice days to relax out of town and then one day (yesterday) to handle the inevitable Trip Hangover which involved unpacking, grocery shopping, and using that $25 certificate from DSW that was going to expire. (scored a pair of Born clogs for fall semester and my usual Slightly Frumpy Yet Professional wardrobe. Those Scandinavians sure do know their footwear.)

All in all, the intro is coming along. I re-read it today and made a list of the Problem Paragraphs, which number 12. So I can work methodically through them over the next few days and move on to the next phase of revising. One pitfall for tomorrow is that I'm going out to my office to unpack (new furniture, etc.) so that will eat into my day. But I guess it is good to get organized and get my feet wet before we have to report for duty. And we're having some colleagues for dinner tomorrow -- I'm making some fancy embellished burgers from Epicurious. Reviews will be forthcoming.

Day 17: I digress

2005-08-04T17:02:00.000-05:00

I'll be out of town for a few days (for fun! no work will be allowed) but before I go, a few thoughts...

The heat: spent the night in a wonderfully air-conditioned climate. The power was flickering because we'd plugged the AC into our surge suppressor/power bar kind of thing. It didn't like that. I guess it just needs the juice directly from the source. Problem solved. And at some point during the night a glorious, glorious cold front moved in! I started this morning with energy, vitality, all while wearing a light sweater. This is further confirmation that my people must have some Nordic stock in them, and that I should never live in Houston. My brain tends to shut down at temps over 80.

Some comments to one of my posts from earlier this week got me thinking about the value of support groups for us ABD folks. What have you all found helpful? I've been in a number of writing groups with other ABD folks, and it was good to have comrades and some semblance of deadlines. And also the inspiration of having another group member literally say things like, "I'll have another set of chapterS for you to read at the next meeting." ChapterS??? Who writes them in bunches? Well, someone does, so I must be able to write just one. Etc. I also get periodic e-mails from the folks at ABD Survival Guide (good newsletters) and have done one of their teleconference workshops.

Also, loved the comments about the "perfect" place to work. I agree with Stewgad who thinks jail would be a good idea. That reminded me of a particularly stressful moment while studying for my doctoral exams/orals... I started to think about how wonderful it would be to be locked in an institution where I could stare at the walls and not take my orals. A good friend who was finishing her book at the same time agreed! So we thought perhaps actually going insane (rather than just feeling like we were going insane) would be a good strategy. But I digress.

About working in "jail" -- a few years ago I agreed (when my wonderful Dean asks, I agree!) to attend a workshop/conference about assessment. Spending three days talking about assessment is frankly my idea of a slow, painful death... but off I went to a suburb of Chicago where I spent the weekend imprisoned in a concrete bunker facility that was mostly like a hotel but was also somewhat dorm-like (in that it was constructed of concrete blocks.) The downside: talking about assessment. Scariest quote I heard, "A day without assessment is a day that's wasted!" True believers, all. But the psychologically interesting thing was that, by the end the weekend, I, too, believed. And I almost wanted to stay and learn more, more, more! about assessment. Stockholm syndrome in action. But thankfully we left and laughed ourselves silly in the car during the long drive home about taking some crappy old kitchen appliances and turning them into a robot who would eat data and do our assessment for us. (the opposite of the organic "faculty driven" process that is supposedly ideal, of course.) The robot would be named Rubric. And now I can't sit through any meeting about assessment without getting the giggles, because sooner or later, someone says the word "rubric." But I digress.

So, the upside to this place was that I thought it would be a wonderful place to work on a dissertation -- sort of like a writer's retreat, but more hardcore. So when I win the lottery, the first thing I'll do is pay for every woman to take a serious full-force self-defense course -- check out this link if you're interested in learning more about the kind of class I'm talking about and have taken myself. The final story is pretty amazing -- a graduate's story of fighting off an attacker. Digressing again. Anyway, after I win the lottery, the second thing I'll do is pay for ABDs to live in such a writer's retreat. There's nothing really going on, so you'll just have to work. Plus there is always coffee available and they put out snacks from time to time. And there's even a bar in the lobby for the occasional "adult beverage" and relaxing. Jail-like, but not as bad as jail. And if you don't work on your dissertation, someone will come and make you talk about assessment.... that should scare you!

Anyway, those are all the digressing thoughts I have for the moment. The intro. is coming along, actually. I spent this morning reading a couple of samples I got from friends who share the same advisors as I do. So that was good. Reminded me that this is not rocket science and that I don't have to actually write an essay that is so brilliant that it will mingle theory with historiography with my own Very Original Argument. I just have to accomplish a few pedestrian tasks. Interestingly, I realized that I sort of boxed myself into the corner that originally stalled me out years ago... the expectation that now that I'm working on a Dissertation it somehow has to be magnitudes better than anything else. And it doesn't... it just has to be done!

On that note, off to pack.

Day 16: Bleah. Ack. Sweat.

2005-08-03T21:36:00.000-05:00

I got nothin.' I am officially tired of this introduction and even more tired of being hot. All. the. time. I have a window unit AC in my study but that doesn't seem to be cutting it, for some reason. I think my body revolts at merely leaving the study for the bathroom, to grab dinner, or to get a bowl of Golden Grahams. Not the malt-o-meal version because those suck, by the way. Anyway, we just turned on the window unit in the bedroom to start cooling it down and our power is flickering. Nice.

But besides this griping, I'm making slow progress. I think I'll be able to print another rough (emphasis on rough) draft tomorrow and see how she looks.

I'm going to investigate this air conditioning issue. I need a good night's sleep that does not occur in the gale-force wind situation that my husband seems to prefer (fan on high, ceiling fan on high.) I want my AC!

Day 15: Looking for the perfect place to work

2005-08-02T16:12:00.000-05:00

Does anyone else ever dream about the ideal workspace or office? In addition to finding the exact right moment to work, sometimes I think that I would be fabulously productive if only I had the exact right office. A good view, but nothing distracting. Air-conditioned in the summer, cozy warm in the winter. Enough space and furniture to get really, really organized but nothing extraneous to distract me. The perfect desk, the perfect chair, and voila! A finished dissertation. Not surprisingly, I've never worked in this dream office, but I think it is funny that my "dreams" sometimes revolve around office furniture!

Otherwise, still struggling. Churned through revising a few more paragraphs today. Making slow progress. I have a sinking feeling that I'm revising something that will be truly, truly awful at the end and in no way resemble an introduction with a coherent argument... but in the spirit of "something is better than nothing" I will keep going. I'll fall off the bridge when I come to it.

My work day is ending a bit early -- my dear friend and college roommate is treating me to a night at a spa and then we'll have a chance to catch up over dinner. I'm not sure it qualifies as a "much deserved" break, but it will be quite wonderful just the same.

Day 14: Waiting for the "right" time to work

2005-08-01T16:40:00.000-05:00

I had a roommate in college who had an endearing habit of beginning her homework only at quarter-hour intervals, i.e. if it was 4:07, she would wait until 4:15 to start working, and then she would commence being productive. Part of me likes that approach... it assumes that if you wait for the "right" moment to start working, you'll be focused and ready to go. The problem (in the larger sense) is that writing a dissertation while having a full-time job and a full-time life means that the "right" time rarely, if ever, appears. I've had to train myself to make the most of those 30 minute chunks that appear after work and before yoga, or those Thursday mornings when I would get up early and fit in an hour of work before class.

I often think of what a "luxury" it must be to have a dissertation fellowship and have nothing to do but write. In my life, I rarely have the mythical uninterrupted weeks in which I have nothing to do but dissertation work. Summer break usually comes close, but this summer has been so disjointed that I haven't been able to get into a serious groove of working. I've found myself waiting for the "right" moment to come, for some classroom bell to ring, so I'll know when it is time to work. Obviously that hasn't happened and isn't likely to happen. All I know is that I've got a few short weeks before school starts (my union rep. must have been in the bathroom when they worked that one out!) and I really would feel much better if I made some progress between now and then. But for some reason I just can't make myself work. Argh.

So I guess it is best to go back to the drawing board. Reach into my bag of tricks. Scale back the expectations even more. So I'm going to have a snack so I'll have energy for yoga tonight, and then try to make myself do a bit more work tonight. Even if it isn't the "right" time.

Days 12-13: Weekend, weekend! Wherefore art thou, weekend?

2005-07-31T16:52:00.000-05:00

I've always liked those t-shirts that say "Unions: the folks who brought you the weekend." But, hey! wait a minute, I'm in a Union and I'm not sure I'm getting a weekend, now that I think about it...

Anyway, what really IS the meaning of a weekend when I'm supposed to be writing a dissertation? I don't mean to turn this into another whine/rant about finding a good balance between work and not-work, but sheesh, I think the biggest single emotion produced while one is ABD must be guilt. Sure -- fear, stress, boredom, anxiety, pride... all those emotions surface from time to time, but guilt is pretty much a constant companion. Again, this is not to say that I don't take plenty of breaks and regularly blow off my dissertation, but I just feel guilty about it while I'm doing it.

So, as you might have already guessed, this weekend's ratio has included much more non-dissertation-stuff than dissertation-stuff. Perhaps weekends are the time just to get one's life together. The highlights: Friday night dinner was fantastic. Check out the recipe for corn (on Epicurious.) I always used to consult "the Bible" (Bittman) for matters such as "how do you cook corn-on-the-cob?" and was assured that corn-on-the-cob was "done" as soon as it was heated... no matter how you did it, just get it hot. So we used to put the husked ears right on the grill until they got hot. Good enough. But this time I followed the recipe for grilling the soaked ears in their husks and it was truly fantastic -- the corn developed a really complex roasted flavor. And to make it more decadent, we added sour cream, queso fresco, and ancho chili powder. Yum.

Feeling the effects of staying up way past my bedtime meant that Saturday was destined to be unproductive. Plus having my husband home meant that my usual computer routine was a bit disrupted. So I compensated by taking care of much-needed organizational tasks, napped, went to the gym, and then after dinner we joined our neighbors across the alley who were having a block party, complete with a fire and s'mores. No, it's not quite cool enough here to merit a fire, but it sure helped with the mosquitoes, and the marshmallow-melting.

Sunday. Ditto. Read the NYT, took care of some more papers off my desk, ran a few errands, napped, exercised, and now I'm sitting down to do a bit of work in the spirit of momentum and keeping ideas fresh in my mind. We're going to a friends' house for dinner, so I should probably do a little something to earn the break, the mojito, the dinner, and our dessert of homemade ice cream and carmelized grilled bananas.

Well, since we'll be out of town next weekend for an Official Break for visiting and relaxing, I plan to have a complete draft of the intro. before we leave on Thursday night. Weekends notwithstanding, it is time to get some work done!

Day 11: Seeking 1BR, 1BA furnished cave

2005-07-29T17:51:00.000-05:00

I've finally figured out how I'm going to finish my dissertation! But unfortunately for the rest of you, it is going to involve a major catastrophe to the nation's electric grid. Or perhaps I will move into a cave with no electricity, bearing only my laptop and numerous batteries.

This morning I was puttering around the kitchen while my coffee brewed and suddenly the power went out. No idea why. It's been quite cool here, so there's no need for a brown-out. Thankfully my coffee had just finished brewing, so I was able to doctor my cup as per usual. And then what was there to do? No internet. No TV. No NPR. Well, friends, clearly the only remaining choice... my last resort... was to (gasp) work on my dissertation! And I did. I sat down and looked at some pretty frightening paragraphs, and actually got Into the Zone just a bit. Miraculous. I lost some steam when the power came back on, but was generally able to maintain the momentum for most of the day.

So that's the good news. And I'm finally getting a sense of the beast. I think what I have right now is Rough Draft Type #1. For me, this is very rough. Some general ideas have been put into paragraphs, but it is quite likely that some paragraphs will be revised, deleted, combined, or moved. Hopefully after one run-through of this draft, I can move on to Rough Draft Type #2, which means that each paragraph is generally in the right place and has the right ideas, they're just roughed out in places. I guess Type #3 would be line-editing and footnote-fixing, followed by a pause for husband's brutal yet incredibly helpful editing. Then perhaps a setback to Type #2... who knows. Sigh. But at least I'm making progress!

I took a break in the morning to run and saw a very funny (or disturbing, depending on how you look at it) sight. I ran over to Local Lake and was running along, and I saw a middle-aged, slightly pudgy man wearing a bright aqua speedo. And, of course, the problem with said speedo (aside from the glaringly obvious, of course) is that there are no pockets in which to put one's cell phone, wallet, etc. So this man improvised a solution: he strapped on a black country/western style leather belt with a huge silver buckle and then he clipped all his stuff to the belt!

My frequent breaks throughout the day have involved preparing our house and some food for dinner guests tonight. Foodies, the menu will be:
Guacamole (a food I would eat until it killed me)
Salsa
Chips
Pina Coladas
Mango-lime margaritas

Followed by:
Salad
Charcoal grilled corn with cream, cheese, and chili
Chile-glazed shrimp with tomatillo-cilantro sauce
Green poblano rice

Followed by:
Mexican hot fudge sundaes with homemade ice cream. I buy this cream that comes in a glass jar from a local organic dairy. It is yellow due to the fact that the cows are grass-fed, and so thick you have to coax it out with a knife... dairy heaven in a jar.

I've got a full weekend ahead, but am still committed to working on a few more paragraphs...forever in search of the Big Mo. And a cave with a month-to-month lease.

Day 10: A Delicate Balance

2005-07-28T21:02:00.000-05:00

My head was just not in the game today. See Stewgad's recent post for an excellent summary of how my brain has been responding in the past few days. Either I'm an untrained puppy, or I celebrated a bit too much last night with some folks who had just taken the bar exam. In either case, today was better spent on errands (Whole Paycheck Foods), cleaning chores, and exercising. In the interest of making progress, however, I did revise one sticky paragraph.

Which got me to thinking that, yeah, I've revised one more paragraph than the day before. So that's good. Progress is good. But at the current pace, I'll still be working on this damn thing when I'm retired! So that's not good. My question is: how do you find the delicate balance between holding your own feet to the fire vs. not being too hard on yourself? On the one hand, you shouldn't hold yourself to unachievable standards or goals, nor should you beat yourself up if you fail to meet a daily or weekly or monthly goal. Life happens. But on the other hand, if I don't put some pressure on myself, who will?? At some point, I simply have to get a lot of work done, and the only person who is going to make that happen is me.

So that is what I am pondering today. Tomorrow I hope to make more progress than one measly paragraph. My husband and I are going out of town in a week to visit friends and celebrate our anniversary (9 years! And no, I wasn't a child bride, but sometimes it feels like I must have been) so I hope to have a good draft before we leave town. Onward and upward...

Day 9: The Rough Draft. Emphasis on Rough.

2005-07-28T08:21:00.000-05:00

I'm taking a second before starting work to think about yesterday. When I sat down with my printed pages, I felt much more like I was on terra firma. I can work paragraph by paragraph, sure, no problem. That's a familiar rhythm for me. I adjust my mini-goals depending on how much revision each draft is going to need. Sometimes I'll do five paragraphs before taking a break, sometimes only one. In the past I've even resorted to giving myself gold stars for each paragraph. Whatever it takes.

So I started out, thinking this looked like a three paragraph kind of situation. Paragraph one, good. Paragraph two, okay. Paragraph three... what the hell is this? Huh? What was I thinking? Ugh. Cue mournful soundtrack music. But I sat there for a while and worked on it, strategized how to make the next few paragraphs work together, etc. So I'm ready to work on those today. I realized, too, that since I've had trouble working this summer, and since this introduction is a whole new and stressful animal for me, I need to lower my standards even more (and I'm all about lowering standards) and feel pleased with any small amount of progress. So my new question for myself is: do I have more done today than I did yesterday?

Thanks to my readers and commenters... I feel like this blog has got to be as exciting as watching paint dry, but it actually does keep me working from day to day...which is the point, I guess.

Speaking of which, time to work...

Day 8: Hung Jury

2005-07-26T19:02:00.000-05:00

Not sure how to evaluate today. We'll see if the jury can reach a verdict.

The downside: It felt like a great day to work. Normal morning routine, beautiful cool weather, cooperative cats, good coffee... but I still couldn't get "in the zone" and concentrate on much of anything. It felt like torture to stay in my chair as I attempted to focus on a few paragraphs. I felt so antsy, both mentally and physically. I know I was doing some work, but it never felt right. Very frustrating to be unable to work when I so badly to make lots of progress!

The upside: I think I made progress in spite of myself. I realized that the last few paragraphs I'd marked off as goals for today were essentially the same thing, and perhaps should be combined. That's one way to achieve a goal -- make it smaller as you're doing it! So I combined some paragraphs, wrote some filler, wrote some stream-of-consciousness stuff that will need serious revision, and now I'm very close to having a draft. It's taken me a while to work my way through the intro, and as I got toward the end, I realized I couldn't really remember what was covered towards the beginning. So I printed the thing and will wrestle with it tomorrow. But the upside is that, yes,I have printed about 25 pages of Actual Paragraphs. So that is progress, even if it felt icky to get there.

Another upside: had a great run today in the cool weather. And yoga last night was awesome, if quite sweaty. I do Power Yoga with an amazing instructor through a community ed program, and she really put us through our paces.

Tonight is homemade Indian food (what is known in our household as the Mahatma Gandhi Victory Diet) and a trip to Costco. Speaking of which, a friend of mine told me a funny story she heard from her neighbor. They live in Durham, NC, and this neighbor attended a barbecue that she described as "Bubbalicious." While at this bbq, the neighbor found herself in a frightening conversation in which she was urged to avoid Costco because it is "run by Communists." There are so many things wrong with that I don't know where to start, but by way of explaining this lamebrained idea to my friend, I thought maybe some folks in NC believe the Commies are running Costco because they actually treat their workers fairly?? Check out this good NYT story, and wish me luck in the cheese department.

Days 6-7: Regress, Progress, Spinning, and Running

2005-07-25T16:47:00.000-05:00

Today is "shadow reader" comment day! Let me know you're out there... (And yes, I do sound a bit too eager for company. Anyone else out there staring at a computer screen??)

Today is also spinning-my-wheels day. My husband worked from home a bit this morning, which totally threw me off my normal morning routine. And maybe being out of town this weekend threw my brain out of gear, but ugh, it's hard to work today for some reason. Too many internet searches have occurred. (does Marshall Fields have good shoes on sale? what do people think of the Daily Show's new set?, how can I get rid of moths without those horrible mothballs, etc.) I might have to turn off the internet crack at this laptop. I'm hoping it's just a Monday kind of day.

But... I finally buckled down to solve at least one vexing paragraph problem, which does represent progress. But after taking Sunday off (thus: regress), I feel like I'm standing somewhat still. I realized that writing "regular" chapters entails a more varied pace of work -- some notetaking, some thinking, some writing, more notetaking, etc. But this introduction seems to be all big-picture thinking and writing. Ack. So today I did not meet my ostensible goal, but instead I took some notes from articles and have set myself up to write a few more paragraphs tomorrow. Taking the pressure off myself to Think Big Thoughts, and instead, just type in some notes, oddly freed up my brain to brainstorm how all these things might come together. A better product will emerge, but it is slow going for now.

Most depressing edit: some of the text of this introduction is stuff I cut out of a chapter, and I believe it may even have originated in a seminar paper from grad school. In this portion of the intro, I comment on changes in the field and I had to change "during the past four decades" to "during the past five decades" because so much time had elapsed since first I first wrote those words! Oy.

Most obvious realization: Diet Mountain Dew Code Red has to be the least natural substance on the planet. But oddly enjoyable... And yes, it is sitting in the fridge next to my locally produced-organic-free-range-grass-fed-cows milk.

Now, about running. Many of you might remember that when I turned the big 3-o a few (many?) years back, I decided it was time for some changes -- namely, to get off my ass and start exercising! Many pounds and years later, it was the best change I could have made to help me survive the insanity of teaching and writing. I have a healthy addiction to endorphins and am quite content to be churning away on the elliptical machine at the gym while reading a mystery novel. But no running. Perhaps once a year I would think to myself, "This many people can't be wrong!" and decide that maybe I, too, should run. I'd go for a 3 mile run, hate every step, nurse sore muscles for the next week, and swear off running for the next year.

Until last summer. Last summer was the first time I had an uninterrupted spurt of dissertation writing. And I had my annual burst of temporary-running-desire, except this time I didn't think it was so bad. So I ran again. And again. And now it is a regular part of my routine. Strange days indeed. Don't picture anyone fleet of foot, or (shudder) anyone training for a marathon... on most days I shuffle along for about 40 minutes and call it quits. I've even done a few 5K races. As long as the temp is above 35, I'm out there. My explanation? One of two things. 1) Sitting all day and writing a dissertation wasn't masochistic enough, so I had to find something that I would hate more! or, more likely: 2) Sitting in one place and writing all day made the idea of sitting in a car to drive to the gym to churn in one place on a machine less appealing. So perhaps running symbolizes progress on my dissertation. And when I'm running along, I do think about the idea of One Step At A Time. And I also think about a story that Stewgad once told me, and the moral of the story is something that applies to both running and writing: Don't Quit On a Hill. So now I actually sprint up the one small hill on my running route. I don't relish the idea of sprinting to the finish line of my dissertation, but I do know that slow and steady wins the race eventually.

And one more item for my show trial someday: recently I've felt like I'm running on clods of concrete. I thought I was out of shape until, duh!, I realized that my running shoes were pretty old. I got a 50% off deal on great pair of shoes made by political prisoners somewhere, and all I had to do was swallow my pride and accept that the shoes are white and gray with pale pink accents.

Tonight is yoga and CSI and then back to the goals tomorrow. Stay tuned...

Days 4-5: Baby steps

2005-07-23T08:29:00.000-05:00

After a few days of Big Goals, my Friday/Saturday goals were quite small. One paragraph each day. The Friday paragraph was a scary one and I'm still not nearly happy with it, but it's something. Today's paragraph turned out to involve only minor changes. So I'm finished! It's good to recognize that not everyday will be overwhelmingly productive, but in the spirit of Momentum, it's good to knock off even a paragraph or two.

I knew yesterday would be a Time Suck in terms of progress (hence the small goal) because I had a doctor's appointment after lunch, then a shopping errand, then the gym... and then... housecleaning. I'm sure teenagers everywhere wish they could have such an exciting Friday night as we old married folk do! But after my husband and I spent 3 hours each in the heat and humidity cleaning our house (6 hours total) and it still isn't completely clean... we are pondering the possibility of hiring someone to help us out. My husband works a Real Job and, frankly, his time is quite scarce and valuable these days. And we mightily resist the "natural" conclusion one could draw from that: wife with flexible schedule and "more" time does all the housecleaning. So instead of making that choice, we default to having no one clean, and we end up living in a total sty. I won't ruin your breakfast by describing it. As acolytes of Barbara Ehrenreich, we would commit to paying anyone a living wage if we find someone to clean our house, and it certainly won't be the Merry Maids! I'm sure this is all Fantasyland kind of thinking, borne of three hours of housecleaning in the heat, but it is nice to dream... And yes, you can bring this up in my show trial someday.

Otherwise, today we are going on a Feline Retrieval Trip -- my parents live approx. 2 hours away, and long story short, they've been babysitting our beloved cats. (although with the lack of housecleaning, occasionally really large puffs of cat hair will drift through the room, and we can almost pretend we have our cats here...) So we're heading to their house today to be reunited with our kitties... and we'll take advantage of their air conditioning and home theater in the basement. We might stay for part of Sunday (see above: air conditioning, heat, humidity, etc.) so I should pack up some dissertation items just in case.

Day 3: Progress Continues

2005-07-21T16:14:00.000-05:00

I was pleasantly surprised to see Academic Coach's comment on my last post-- and you can now see me "starring" on her wonderful website! For a while today I thought that it was somewhat ridiculous to pass along my advice to other struggling academics -- after all, I started this whole thing last century! But then I thought about it some more (and not to pat myself on the back) but maybe my friend's mantra of "black words on white paper" will help someone else, too. In fact, once I got over my horrible years-long case of major dissertation-block, I've written the bulk of it during the past three years, while teaching a 4-4 load at the same time. So I must have figured something out... The sad thing about this whole process is that there really isn't a magic bullet that works for everyone.

But for the moment, the golden rules continue to apply. I slowly but surely slugged my way through my goal for today -- and finished it in time to blog, watch a bit of BH90210 (there's my confession for the day), go for a run, AND enjoy the free food and beer this evening. Not bad. Of course, the paragraphs I wrote are going to need serious revision someday, and my goal for tomorrow is already giving me an anxiety attack, but those are jobs for another time. Even though it has felt like running in place, once I looked at the cumulative effect of my efforts over the past few days, it added up to 8 pages!

I think the key for today was to TURN OFF the Inner Critic. For some reason, every time I sit down to start a new chapter, or even a new section of a chapter I've been working on, the Inner Critic returns in force. For me, momentum is a fragile thing -- so I took my usual approach and kept reminding myself that it doesn't have to be good, it just has to be done. Why should I take the time to craft a paragraph about historiography that doesn't directly relate, even if I can see theoretical connections? It would Be Better if I did so, after all. But whenever I come to a such a fork in the road, I always take the path of least resistance (and my advisors have not noticed yet, or if they have, they haven't complained). And today, that path was to put those citations in a footnote and keep on writing. And v0ila!

Time to lace up those running shoes...

The Memorial Service, and Day 1-2: Back to life, back to reality....

2005-07-20T20:03:00.000-05:00

The weary traveler has returned! I must say that my 10 days away were quite amazing, and I plan to blog about them during the next few days... while also blogging about working on my dissertation. So stay tuned...

The first stop on my trip was Oklahoma City and my grandmother's memorial service. It was really wonderful to see family again -- to reconnect with close family, and to meet and re-meet those who are more distant relatives. My mother's family has "double cousins" (my grandmother and her sister married brothers) plus my mother was born within days of a cousin-once-removed who became an honorary double cousin (I seriously need Family Trees For Dummies to figure this all out)... but the complicated genealogy notwithstanding, it is always pleasant to realize that I actually really enjoy spending time with family members.

The memorial service itself was really wonderful. It was held at my grandmother's church, a small Methodist church in Oklahoma City. I have really fond memories of attending it while a child -- while I'm not Methodist and am somewhat non-religious, I must have responded positively to the church because it had a female minister at the time. And coincidentally it still does. Anyway, the history of this little church began during segregation in OKC, when some people(my grandparents included) split off from their regular church to form a new integrated congregation. The church still continues that "renegade" tradition because they promise to welcome all, including gay men and lesbians. This forlorn little church must be relying on the 20 or so liberal Methodists in Oklahoma to keep their congregation going -- and I wish them well!

During the ceremony my aunt gave a beautiful eulogy, which focused on several primary characteristics of my grandmother: namely, that she had a strong moral core and she did what needed to be done. And it was always easiest to do things her way. Then the folks in attendance stood up and shared their own stories for quite a while -- such as my grandmother's leadership in the church or her influence as their teacher. But my favorite story came from an African-American gentlemen who first met my grandparents when they formed the congregation. My grandparents had recently moved out to a "lake" (a man-made lake filled with brown water, but quite fun when we were kids!) development, and they invited this man and his wife to dinner. Knowing it was a white section of town, this man called and inquired whether they were sure about issuing the invitation. My grandmother reassured them, and they came for dinner. They also went for a boat ride around the lake. When other residents of the area saw who was boating around the lake, they didn't like it. Several days later, someone told my grandmother at the next homeowner's association meeting that she shouldn't invite black people to her house anymore. She responded, "If you don't like who I invite to my house, you can MOVE!" I had never heard that story before! and I really wish I had known stories like that when she was alive. I can just hear her saying that, and more importantly, I can visualize the other members of the housing association recoiling in fear of a very formidable woman!

And after Oklahoma, I went to Mississippi... but I'll leave that story for another day.

In the meantime, since being home, I realized it was time to send the come-to-Jesus e-mail to my advisors and figure out if I can defend before they leave for a year abroad. Long story short, the answer is no. I would have to produce a complete draft of The Whole Dissertation before August 4, and that is just not possible. As much as I can somewhat romanticize the idea of pulling numerous all-nighters or something similarly crazy, I'm too old for that. And this isn't exactly the kind of project I want to rush to complete -- why break with precedent now? My advisors were very positive about a mid-December defense, and I'm all about running with Positive Advisor Sentiments... so there it is. I've been given something of an extension, which is good... but it means I have to defend months after I'd hoped to, which is bad. And frustrating. And disappointing. But as my advisor pointed out, finishing is all that matters. And I have no doubts that I will have a polished final draft in December.

But I've vowed not to succumb to the seduction of the extension, namely, postponing work even more... so I've been diligently working since I've been back. It was really difficult to get back in the swing of things, but I think I'm on the way. I've had to regularly remind myself that I've produced five chapters, so I must have learned something about working and writing along the way -- and perhaps it is best to apply the same approach as I've used thus far. And it is working! Even though the introduction seems terrifying and overwhelming at times, and is much more mentally all-encompassing than churning through primary sources, the same approach can work. So these are the steps I've taken:
1. Look over introduction, make a list of the sections and paragraphs that need work.
2. Break that down into do-able daily goals.
3. Break those daily goals down into even smaller goals. Today I worked paragraph by paragraph. After writing one paragraph, I could take a quick "break" to hang up laundry or empty the dishwasher, etc.
4. Just write! Go! Say something! I've learned that something is better than nothing, so I'm trying very hard just to put down sentences that vaguely resemble what I want to say. It makes the revising process more painful and makes it much more likely that I will grow quite tired of this before it is finished, but at least I've got something written. As a friend of mine says, "Black words on white paper. Black words on white paper. Black words on white paper."

So those are my four golden rules, and they seem to be working. I finished my goals for today, so I'm all set to go tomorrow. Fun, fun. If I finish tomorrow's goals, I'll reward myself by going to an event paid for by my husband's Real Job -- good beer, good food, all at our local Hipper Than Thou bowling alley. And I confess I do love bowling. Any Lebowski fans out there?

Thanks to those who have been reading and commenting -- keep those comments coming! Dissertating is lonely business.

P.S. Does anyone think the fact that a blog's spellchecker doesn't recognize the word "blog" is a bit bizarre?

Days 14-16: Excuses, cont. Hangover, cont.

2005-07-07T16:56:00.000-05:00

More of the same on my end. I have to remind myself that I do have another identity (professor) and that identity will often take precedence over my dissertation, as much as that feels stressful and "wrong" right now. In this case, after finishing the grades for my course, I slogged through two 450+ page books about the Civil Rights Movement in Mississippi (a startling fact: white folks in Mississippi could be quite awful) and I've still got one more to go. I think we're supposed to read these books to actually Learn Information (as opposed to the usual grad school ritual of reading books to tear them apart) and I have no idea if my brain managed to retain what it should have retained. I have no time to take notes, so it'll have to do. One very small bit of progress, however... I did spent an hour this morning looking at my introduction, realized the situation is not as grim as I had feared, and then I took some notes from a secondary source. So no huge leaps of progress and certainly no momentum, but at least I did it.

Otherwise, I've exercised every day and we had dinner with friends last night (more mojitos and grilled things... including some grilled veggies that were quite spectacular) and am just now sitting down to contemplate the packing nightmare that these multiple trips will entail.

So I'll be on the road for the next 10 days... blogging will likely be difficult, but I'll surely have time to check e-mail. Drop me a line! Hope that I won't melt in the Oklahoma and Mississippi heat. And be sure to vote about the best barbecue in Memphis, should you have an opinion about that.

Days 11-13: The Return of the Hangover

2005-07-05T08:14:00.000-05:00

Okay, okay... a few more days of feeling really busy yet accomplishing nothing, dissertation wise. Saturday we went to the Wedding Extravaganza. We started drinking margaritas at 3:00 (a bunch of us went for drinks and munchies in Rather Rich Suburb during the break between the ceremony and the reception) and then on to the country club... and wow. Mojitos (the bride is writing a really cool dissertation about Cuba), a perfect sunny day, a 12 piece live band that I'd actually pay to listen to (a well-known gospel singer in the lead), and a piece of filet mignon the size of a softball. So that certainly ate up the day, in a most pleasant fashion.

Sunday was spent finally catching up on Life Errands, mostly to buy cleaning products to clean our house and clothing. The cleaning hasn't happened yet, but at least we're all prepared, should inspiration strike. A quick trip to the gym, and then it was time to head over to my colleague's and his partner's house for a cookout. After eating my weight in munchies and drinking wine (sensing a theme?), we had yummy burgers and then a fairly depressing conversation about all the difficulties involved in gay adoption. Anyone interested in moving to Canada?

Monday? More of the same, in that we cooked things on a grill with some good friends, ate our weight in munchies, drank cocktails, and exercised. (must keep the munchies at bay.) But before the pleasantries commenced, I graded like a fiend. Much to my horror, I found out on Sunday night that grades were due Tuesday, and I wasn't anywhere near finishing them. So after lots of coffee and pages of convoluted undergrad syntax (remember not to take things for "granite," folks), I was finished! So now I am officially done with my summer class, the only thing remaining is to handle the inevitable complaining e-mails from unhappy students.

So I guess that means that the dissertation part of my summer really has to begin, huh? Well, you'd think so, but I'm getting ready to go out of town again. I leave on Friday for my grandmother's funeral and then from there I will head to Mississippi for a week-long NEH seminar about the Civil Rights Movement. The only downside so far is that we actually have homework (three huge books) that I haven't started yet, and the combination of lots of frantic grading while trying to read three books is giving me grad school flashbacks. The only new wrinkle is that I bought these books a while ago and I can only find two of them... so task number one this morning, now that I am properly caffeinated, is to tear the house apart looking for it... Anyone seen my copy of "Local People?" And yes, I've already looked under the bed...

Day 10: No excuses

2005-07-01T18:50:00.000-05:00

Even though I have no excuses for my lack of dissertation work today, I'm going to try to make some anyway. I hate that feeling of having a very busy day but with little to show for it. Even my house is a mess. Well, I managed to do some course work/grading in the morning, before leaving for my doctor's appointment, which took me by bus (the one we call the Slow Boat to China) into downtown. Then lunch with a friend. Then my return migration on the slow boat. But with Lucinda Williams on the ipod it was almost pleasant. Then a bit more grading. Then chatting with my colleague who dropped off his dog for me to dog sit. I think she is a Great Pyrenees or some other mountain dog. She looks like a polar bear, and while sweet and harmless, is also dumb as a box of rocks. And she is terrified of cats, which works well in our household, because our alpha feline demands that all creatures bow down before him. I swear, this huge dog will not even attempt to come upstairs if there is a cat sitting on the landing. Then I went for a run. And here I am. So in the great spirit of dissertators everywhere, I'll close by saying that "Tomorrow is another day!" and try not to think about the fact that we're going to a wedding extravaganza starting at 2 tomorrow...

Day 9: The Hangover

2005-06-30T21:13:00.000-05:00

After every binge comes the regrets... and in this case, I regret neither food nor drink. I'm regretting how many days were spent traveling. Well, not really regretting in that I wish I hadn't gone or that I wouldn't do it over again... but rather that I regret the passage of days during which no dissertation work was done. Horrors, tomorrow is July! I think one of the hardest things about dissertating is that you're never truly "on break" from your dissertation, even if you're taking a break. Sometimes I think the only truly acceptable moment when one can take a break is the few hours after you turn in a chapter, but after that it should be back to work! This is not to say, of course, that I don't fill my life with numerous forms of "breaks," just that they're partially guilt-inducing while I'm taking them. And while I certainly recognize the need (mentally and emotionally) to take a break, I'm simultaneously wrestling with the idea that momentum is key to forward motion, and that momentum is gained only by actually working. Therein lies the rub.

So now I'm hungover from my days of traveling. I've got that discombobulated-arrived-at-1:00-a.m.-feeling. (see earlier post regarding frugal vs. cheap...) And the usual post-traveling tasks like junk mail sorting, kitty petting, grocery shopping, clothes unpacking, etc. And my summer course (over today!) now means that I've got tons of grading in the next few days.

So tonight I'm catching up on e-mail, blogging, and watching The Day After (1983) on TV Nation. I'm taping it so I can show selections to my students, most of whom have no idea what it's like to fear a nuclear war. And they also believe we have Reagan to thank because he "ended the cold war." Don't get me started.

So tomorrow is another day. I hesitate to promise dissertation work in the midst of laundry, a visit to the doctor, lunch with a friend, a much needed run, and grading. But I will aspire to Do Something, since momentum is key. And then we're cooking dinner with a friend -- we're making the beef kebabs from Thursday's NYT Dining Section. Reviews will be forthcoming. Oh, and mojitos.

Perhaps I also measure the passage of time in my "normal" life with food and drink, too...

Days 5-8: Ups and Downs

2005-06-30T19:23:00.000-05:00

Our trip to the East Coast continued... the heatwave necessitated that we eat our way through restaurants in Cambridge, which was a treat. As was spending time with some dear friends that we made during a mutually difficult period in our lives (we were both uprooted from our happy grad school existence to move with our spouses when they pursued another degree.) Our friends called it the "Vietnam War of our relationship," and my husband and I nodded in agreement. "Good times," we said, mostly sarcastically. Despite our sarcasm, though, we're glad to have survived those years with our marriage intact and to have made good friends in the process. Truly a silver lining.

Next in the restaurant and visiting parade was family and friends in New Haven and New York... good Indian food in Little India, Venerios for pastries, Chinese food for dinner, and then Modern Pizza in New Haven for lunch the following day. Can you tell I measure time during "vacation" by what I'm having for the next meal? Anyway, here in my Large Midwestern City, I'd just about convinced myself that the pizza here was good, until I ate New Haven pizza again. As much as I disliked New Haven, I loved that pizza. I lost all patience for the most famous pizza places (the kind that Bill Clinton revisits when he comes to town) since their service is marginal if you're not Italian, a 50 year resident of New Haven, or, well, Bill Clinton. So Modern Pizza became my true love. Half sausage, half fried eggplant.

The downside of the weekend was the news that my grandmother died. She was in her 90s and had been living with dementia for a number of years. So I had already grieved the loss of the grandmother I knew, plus her death was not unexpected. But it was sad news nonetheless. She was an incredibly organized and practical woman, so her end-of-life instructions were spelled out to the letter -- no feeding tube, no deathbed vigils, etc. I hope such clear instructions made things easier for my mother and her two siblings. My grandmother also decided to donate her body to the medical school, thus removing the need for an immediate funeral. So all family members will gather next weekend on the surface of the sun (Oklahoma City) for a reunion and a memorial service.

I'd like to add that my grandmother was a very inspiring woman. She had a master's degree in Home Economics and worked outside the home for most of her life, spending the last part of her career teaching high school. After her retirement I remember that she took in special needs foster children. As a child, I didn't think anything was strange about visiting her and having an extra baby around -- even if he lacked an esophagus and had to be fed through a tube in his stomach. I like to think that my grandmother's life taught me that getting an education and having a career were important. Some of my most prized possessions are the "old fashioned" home economics books she owned, including those my grandfather gave to her during her studies. I wish I'd asked her tons more questions while she was alive, but I'm sure that's a common regret. May she Rest in Peace.

Days 3-4: Frugal or cheap?

2005-06-25T07:40:00.000-05:00

Day 3 was yesterday and certainly contained no dissertation work. I read the New York Times and most of a really bad mystery novel (and I mean really bad) but that's the only "intellectual" stimulation I received.

What we did, though, was travel. And then travel some more. The most convenient choice would have been to fly direct from Large Midwestern City to Boston, visit here for the weekend, rent a one-way rental car to get to New Haven, then train to Manhattan, then fly out of NYC. Since convenience rarely equals value, instead we used some Delta vouchers to save money on our plane fare (thus leaving our house at 5 a.m. and flying through Atlanta to Hartford!) then renting a car from there, and driving 2 hours to Boston. We will eventually return both the car and our ourselves to Hartford. But yesterday's ordeal meant sheer exhaustion. And what might have been a three hour trip took 12.

But it is nice to see friends, even if it is supposed to be at least 150 degrees here today... doesn't make us want to put on nylons or a wool suit. Thankfully everyone involved in the wedding is quite sensible and will encourage dressing down. Perhaps a nude wedding?

Day 2: Oh, and one more thing

2005-06-23T16:48:00.000-05:00

Yesterday I described the "Big Three" factors that have slowed my progress. I can now add a fourth: the heat. In the summers, I work at home in our second floor enclosed porch. This is our second summer in our house, and my experience from last summer is that the porch is like a cool leafy tree house with a view of the neighbor's garden next door. But last summer was unseasonably, unreasonably cool. We're talking space heater, sweatpants, and down comforters cool. I do live in an oft-frozen climate, but that was ridiculous. Nonetheless, very conducive to working.

This summer? My leafy tree house has now taken on some characteristics of the surface of the sun. And my brain tends to shut down when the temps go above 80. Big problem. Which is something that I repeatedly remind myself during the winter when it is below zero for days on end. We have an attic full of window-unit ACs and my husband even offered to install one for me today -- unfortunately his offer entailed that I get out of bed this morning long before I intended to. (since it really is a two-person job.) I thought sleepily to myself, "Nah...how hot could it be?"

So today was something of a wash, dissertation wise. We're leaving tomorrow morning at some ungodly early hour that begins with a 4 to fly to Boston for a wedding, followed by visits with friends and family in CT and NYC. Hence, the time-suckage of packing has eaten up a bit of my day. Plus the fact that I am currently being paid to teach my on-line class meant that I had quite a bit of class housekeeping details to attend to. And I have spent a considerable amount of time listening to Al Franken while eating cold Chinese food and staring blankly into space. Heat very bad. Is it possible for one's brain to actually melt?

My question of the day: how much luggage is an obscene amount? Once you cross the rubicon into Actually Checking Luggage, it's hard to moderate from there.

Day 1: The Trifecta

2005-06-22T11:29:00.000-05:00

Okay, so here it is, June 22 already. I've been out of school for more than a FULL MONTH. What I need to accomplish this summer could not be more clear: write an introduction to my entire dissertation, write a conclusion to my entire dissertation, and make mostly-minor edits to the five chapters in between. And voila! I'm ready to defend in late summer or early fall. In mid-May, the task-to-time ratio seemed almost leisurely...luxurious almost. After all, haven't I written the aforesaid five chapters while teaching a 4-4 load of 110+ students? All that's on my plate, teaching-wise, this summer is a 6 week on-line course. Piece of cake.

Yet, here I sit, June 22. Nothing. Nada. Bupkus. Well, that's not entirely true... I managed to take my own leisurely time researching and reading and trying to Really Understand The Relevant Historiography. Well, I should have known that was going to get me into trouble, since I've never taken the time to Really Thoroughly Do Anything on this dissertation -- Just. Get. It. Done. as a motto rarely allows for anything approaching a comprehensive approach. And that's my comfort zone. Where I should have stayed. Thoughtful, but hurried. Could be better, but hey, it's done. But with such a luxurious amount of time stretching before me, what's the harm... why not take a few weeks to read and think before diving back into writing? What's the rush?

And that's when the Trifecta hit. A "perfect storm" of events which have drastically slowed my progress and geometrically increased my anxiety. If you were to assume the role of a particularly cruel deity and ponder the three exact conditions that would make it mightily difficult for me to make progress on my dissertation, you would come up with the following:

Item #1. "Outside" worries. As PhD students, I believe that we are sometimes encouraged to view All Other Life Things (family, friends, relationships, sanity, laundry, etc.) as secondary in importance to Our Real Work, yet simultaneously all of those self-help books tell us to Find a Balance between work and non-work. Which is something I'm usually quite good at. While dissertating I've managed to search for a full-time job, get tenure at that full-time job, take up exercising, lose weight while also embracing gourmet cooking, survive moves to numerous cities, lots of travel, buy and maintain a house, and spend lots of time with friends and my spouse. So finding a balance isn't a problem for me, unless you think taking more than a decade in grad school indicates that my idea of "balance" is a bit skewed away from my dissertation. But I digress. Basically, for the past three or four weeks I've had some health-related worries that have proven to be Absolutely Nothing Serious and something that will resolve itself eventually (so please don't worry about me!) but nonetheless, you can imagine how that would cut into one's ability to concentrate. Sheesh. As if sitting inside on a beautiful summer day doesn't make it hard enough...

Item #2: The aforementioned task. The introduction. The underlying fear that it raises: what if I've spent years of my life and thousands of dollars to write a dissertation which really says nothing new? I know it can't be quite that bad, but I do have a bit of historiographical challenge here. How many ways can I say that I'm "drawing from" and "influenced by" other scholars who've taken a similar approach? Ugh. I really wish it was as simple as Scholar A says X, Scholar B says Y, but I'm saying something totally different: Z! So this one takes some thinking. Some Really Big Picture Thinking. I can't sit here and churn through primary sources. I have to Really Think and then synthesize tons of ideas while I write. Not to mention that apparently my historiography skills have gotten pretty rusty during the past few years of being focused on primary sources.

Item #3: The aforementioned calendar issue. I'm behind where I "should" be. Way behind. I'm going out of town soon, then again for a week in July, then again for a few days in August.. yikes. I hate the feeling of time folding in upon me... I don't find it motivating. I find it paralyzing.

Whew. So the above shall serve as my introduction to myself and a overview of my current status. Which might bring you to the central question: what did I get done today? Well, more than I've done in weeks, which feels good. I've got lots of pages of typed notes about secondary sources and I'm working on shoe-horning them into the skeleton of my introduction. It wasn't an ideal day of work, that's for sure, but Baby Steps will have to be my motto. I've managed to work through mental blocks before, so wish me luck.

I'm waiting for my husband to get home with our One Fuel Efficient Small Car (that I must confess to disliking... the car, not my husband) so I can go to the gym, perhaps to the Targhetto, and perhaps to the grocery store. We're leaving for a trip on Friday morning but I don't think we can survive until then without an infusion of food. Today is our weekly delivery from "The Hippies," the hard-working farmers who bring us our weekly share in their community-supported agriculture organic farm. So here's a question: is it bourgeois to pay someone to grow, harvest, and transport food to your house if the food is organic and you're supporting a local farmer? I live in a pretty big metro area and it would involve hours of driving if I were to drive out to their farm and help with the work (which is probably why they deliver!) Anyway, at this time of the summer it is going to be greens, greens, and more greens. I think I'll need some sort of fat or meat from the grocery store to provide the necessary non-healthy balance as we eat through the greens over the next few days.

And then I'm meeting a good friend (my college roommate!) for dinner in an outlying suburb that we have determined is equidistant from both our homes. Dining options are not plentiful, but she reports that I can choose between Vietnamese (which I just had on Sunday, but still, yum) and wood-fired pizzas. A nice end to a semi-productive day.

One last thing: I promise to be more succinct in the future. Really.