orecast says more snow is on the way. We probably won’t have it too bad compared to those in the mid-Atlantic region. Friends of mine live outside of DC, and the pics they send of their backyard the other night were breathtaking. Three feet of snow all at once is quite the sight. They are expecting another 12-18 inches, while we will have to settle for another 8-12.
The young kid within me thinks about snow days, hot cocoa, and sledding with the prediction of more snow. The grown-up realist recognizes that no matter what happens I will probably be trudging up to campus tomorrow morning to teach a half-full classroom.
Today my motivation seriously waned as the day wore on. I think the task of cutting down the 22 page dissertation prospectus into a five page proposal is taking a mental toll on me. The task is a wee bit daunting, and I just don’t even know where to begin or end or what. Certain things are essential – the research question and the models I propose – but what else must be in there??? So many of the examples flush out the purpose of the document that I have trouble letting go of…. well…. so much of what I’ve written. Me thinks I am going to need some help with this task.
o power, no title, no good.
Very soon I shall be completely done with the dissertation prospectus (happy dance!!!). It went through my committee early last week, and I was given a few suggestions for additions, gestures, nods, and revisions. I’ve already tended to two of the three issues, so the prospectus is in wonderfully good shape, and I am most pleased with how very well the document has been received thus far.
There remains, however, one hitch. I still don’t have a title for the project. Not even a working title for the project. There are several sentences which look like this: “As processes and imaginings turn into interventions, the TITLE OF THIS PROJECT is no exception.” Dude, seriously, this cannot stand. I need a friggin’ title. So far the best I have come up with is “Your Kidney Has Your Eyes: something something, something something” — I need more than this and soon.
So the news is not great. A whole new electric meter box and junction are needed to fix my power problems. I am now looking at days/maybe a week without power in the vast majority of the apartment. This is going to get very exciting and annoying. My whole work and living areas in the house are dead. Just dead.
Thank goodness I don’t care for sports because if I did, I would be SOL as the TV is in a part of the house that has no power.
yes…. that is my apartment right now. Heat struggling and power out in most of the apartment, but not in all of the apartment (confusing). Unfortunately the power is not a small inside circuit breaker or fuse issue so much as the breaker or fuse on the meter outside which may not get touched for days. This might be a long weekend in the office.
Oh my, yes, I’ve reached Thursday – the day that ends all days and nearly my week as it drags me through the mud and kicks me and kicks me while I am down. It is a chaotic sprint nearly from start to finish with moments of down which remind me how winded I am and how much the following sprint is going to suck.
Yesterday’s meetings over my dissertation were really good. Things are going to progress fast over the next two weeks. More about all of that later or tomorrow for now I must slam down a bit of food to refuel and keep on keeping on.
I am not by nature a night owl. I am far more the early to bed early to rise type, but when I am nearing completion on a project and just want to finish it and email it off to people, I drag my little body forward through the muck of sentences trying to make them sparkle or at least making sure I’ve eradicated all typos from the draft. Goodness, I hope I sleep soundly after today’s work.
By noon tomorrow I must finish all non-dissertation related projects for the time being as I meet with my advisor to see what the committee says about the prospectus. I hope they are pleased and the revisions they request aren’t too painful.
I don’t know what has come over me, maybe it has something to do with the rather gray and bleak Ohio weather, but I am feeling very uninspired in terms even attempting to be creative today. That may be a decent state of being, however, as I suspect that my rather blah state might be useful in helping me to get some of the more mundane work done in my land of editing hell. We shall see.
Its not like this is a new post… I’ve been struggling with the work/life balance thing for a while now. From an early age my father always stressed the importance of working hard and playing hard. Thinking back on his life I mostly remember him working hard, but now I guess I realize that he really did play hard, too – he did really like his big, flashy, and expensive toys and playing with them.
Me, well, life has been crappy for the past two and a half weeks for a variety of reasons – none of them writing related, however – and I’ve been neglecting that balance. I’ve been pushing myself in terms of my work because that is something I can manage. I can write sentences and paragraphs, accomplish tasks, see documents grow and “to do” lists shrink. Those are good feelings even when the list seems never ending.
Life, well, I’ve been neglecting it. I have not gone running in nearly two weeks. I have not been out to poetry in I can’t even remember how long. I have had dinner with friends a few times and seen some people, but for the most part when the work has been done for the day I simply want to curl up and hide. Part of this is seasonal/weather related – who wants to get up at 5:15am and go running when it is this cold outside and still soooo dark!?!?! – but this is much larger than winter. I feel this almost constant need to be doing my work for if I am not doing work, than clearly I am a slacker. I wonder if this is about getting more of a life, which I had and still do have back on the coast, or just a very hard lesson I am going to have to learn at some point in my academic career. How do you balance things?
Why does Columbus have such a dearth of places that deliver??? I’m not talking pizza, but Chinese or Thai or Northstar (hint, hint). Sometimes I am home writing and my stomach interrupts me mid-thought to say ‘hey, you – we need food down here!’ (like right this very moment as write to you today). I would love to be able to pick up the phone and have sesame tofu delivered in 30 minutes or less, but NOOOOOOO. Not here. Not in C-Bus.
Yes, I could go into the other room and make egg whites on tortillas again, but I don’t want to stop writing as I am getting projects polished up and done. I don’t want to dirty any dishes or make a mess. I want this hunger thing taken care of so that I can get back to thinking about how to revise and refocus this one page document. And no, I don’t want to eat Pb&J as I had that for lunch when I was on campus all day yesterday. I want something that is highly nutritious and satisfying and yummy. I don’t want to breakdown and call Hound Dogs for pizza — I really don’t.
I am not sure what your goal is in pursuing the PhD. For some it is an industry job, for others it is doing non-profit work, and for some of us it is remaining in the academy. I am one who most clearly falls into the latter category.
To get a job at an R1 or an SLAC (Research tier 1 school or Selective Liberal Arts College for those who don’t know the lingo) requires and interesting mix and/or balance of things. Whether it feels like it or not some days, it is not all about the dissertation. Much of it is about your scholarship, but not all of it. It is an odd combination of scholarship, teaching, interests, abilities, letters, personality, who knows who, fit, and sheer happenstance. I was reminded of all of these things yesterday while having lunch with faculty members of my department and a candidate. I was also reminded of how an interview can suddenly turn on a dime with one wrong comment, facial expression, or response.
No, no, it was not the interviewee who reminded me of that fact – on the contrary, the candidate was quite good. Oh no, it was me who managed to make a glib comment while intending to wish someone the best that garnered a horrible look from a faculty member. Yup. I screwed up and totally felt like an ass. Emails of apology were sent and I do think/hope I’ve managed to repair whatever damage was done. However, my totally public and huge guffaw was a solid reminder that there is a way in which as graduate students we are always being interviewed – we are always “on” or in the “hot seat.”
When I go on the job market or happen to find myself applying for post-docs in the coming year or two, I won’t know who all the various selection committee members at those institutions know. Yes they might call my references, but they might also call my department chair because, perhaps, they go way back, or maybe one committee member may run into one department member of mine at some conference and informally get into some conversation about that applicant whose file they were just reading…. Yeah, so, my poorly received glib remark yesterday was a sobering reminder about not screwing up.