Catching Up

So, it's a bit sad that my first post of 2011 is in March, but I think that should be a fair indication of what the last few months have been like around here.  So, here, in no particular order, are things I have been doing:



1) Dissertation Updates: I passed my defense last week!  It was tough and exciting in equal parts, but it's over.  I am now in the process of editing/formatting so I can submit to the graduate school.  Graduation is set for May.  Which leads me to...

2) The job search: I have nothing to say on this besides a plea for prayers.  I am hoping for a lecturer/adjunct position somewhere in the general area.


3) On being sick: I have had 2-3 colds, a mild case of flu, what was possibly a sinus infection, and a round of stomach virus in the last few months.  My doctor had told me back in August that there really wasn't any need to take my multi-vitamins since there hasn't been any proof that they do anything.  I'm thinking that they do something for me, so I'm taking them again.

4)  New Computer: After more than six years of excellent service, my laptop finally gave up the fight.  I spent more than a week computerless, which actually taught me that the world will not leave me behind if I don't check my email every five minutes and that Facebook really isn't a life necessity.  Nevertheless, I am very happy with the new laptop, and my ability to get online without a drive to the public library.

5) On books and travel:  I never thought I would say this, but I have been devouring Jan Karon's Mitford series.  I always assumed that these would be beyond cheesy and trite, but they are actually quite good - nice, peaceful, before-bed-reading.  I have also been reading Great British Walks and feeling that pit-of-the-stomach, achy, love-sick feeling I get when I start thinking too hard about England.  I want to go back sooo bad.  I actually got out the Fodor's again, just for fun, to start thinking about where we would go the next time - I'm thinking fly into Manchester, hit either the Lake or Peak District, go through Yorkshire, then north into Hadrian's Wall country.  Sigh. Oh, I listened to the audio book of Sarah Rose's For All the Tea in China: How England Stole the World's Favorite Drink and Changed History , an historical account of Robert Fortune's theft of tea production from China in the 19th century - very interesting.

6) Projects: After a mad flurry of knitting (I finished the Christmas gift shawl, the Villette vest, a pair of mittens, and a hat (pictures to follow)), I am taking a break from needlework.  Instead, I have been breaking out the old colored pencils.  For Christmas, Jordan got me a certificate for an art class on colored pencil technique which I very much enjoyed.  Then, on the new bookshelf at the library, I saw Wendy Hollender's Botanical Drawing in Color.  Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful.

6) On working out and goals:  Since January, I have been working out fairly consistently at the gym at school.  I was doing a program that Jordan found for me, that involved actually going in the weight room, where I was invariably the only girl.  I was actually impressed with what I was able to do - I finally figured out that the weights are supposed to be heavy (duh).  I had always picked light weights (like 5lbs.) because I thought that was what I was supposed to lift, because I am a little girl.  Then, I realized that you don't get stronger if you lift what it already pretty light.  I quickly moved up to the 15lb. dumbbells, which are almost too heavy.  I'm not sure that they are actually having the effect that I wanted - I think I am stronger, but my arms are still fairly stick-like.  I've been running on the treadmill too, and as soon as it gets sufficiently warm outside, I am going to start training for another 5k.  I ran one in 2009 in 32:10.  My new goal is to run in under 30 mins.


I hope to blog with something approaching consistency;  I also hope to learn how to end posts.  They always seem abrupt or weird.

The Academic Life: Perspective

I will now wax philosophical....

During my first year in the MA program, an undergraduate professor asked me to write an article on graduate school, to be read by students at my Alma mater who were considering applying themselves.  I can't remember exactly what I wrote, but I have the feeling that it was rather uninformed, and probably not very helpful.  A few months of graduate school hardly made me the best authority on the subject.

Recently, I have begun rewriting that article in my head, probably because I am almost done with graduate school, and I hope I have attained a slightly better and wiser understanding of the matter....although I can't be certain.

At any rate, I think that the single most important thing I have learned about the academic life is perspective.  Graduate school shunts you into a rather narrow paradigm, a mindset about academia that is propagated by mainstream culture as well as the academy itself.  This mindset can be broken down into the following ideas:

1) Being smart is the most important thing in the world.  There is the mindset, "We think big thoughts!  Big, important, but undervalued, thoughts!"  I remember feeling the pressure to think big thoughts - not for the sake of the thoughts or thinking or ideas, but to prove that I belonged, that I was academic material.  That I was important. 

2) Graduate school is necessarily competitive.  We must know who is the smartest!  Under certain situations, a classroom personality could emerge, a nasty, bullying personality.  Everyone trying to out-think everyone else, speaking English-ese and name-dropping obscure theorists. 

3) Graduate school is about a series of nearly impossible, soul-sucking tasks that must consume your every waking hour, as well as your dreams.  The program is set-up to try you.  The dreaded comprehensive exams.  The expectation is that in the face of such  an insurmountable obstacle, you must become a blithering zombie who gave up sleep and sanity long ago.  The dissertation is supposed to daily reduce you to tears of bitter frustration.

4)  The only point of going through this experience is to get a good job.  And, when we say good, we mean a tenured professor at a top, research university.  But, because the job market is abysmal, we will finish our work while alternating between nail-biting anxiety and spiraling despair.

There is another way.  This has not been my experience with graduate school, thank goodness.  And I don't mean this to be patronizing or otherwise self-aggrandizing.  Of course, graduate school is hard.  And, in a way, it should be - otherwise that fancy title you get at the end wouldn't mean much.  But, I think that we sometimes make things much harder than they have to be by believing the hype.

I believe that there are many, many important things in life.  The preceding list, however, doesn't make into the top ten.  I'm about to break out the Sunday School rhetoric, so get ready: God is the most important thing in life, and beyond.  How's that for perspective?  The God of the Universe, the Creator of all things, the One who save us, compared with comprehensive exams?  Puh-leaze.  Will my ability to make the smartest comment in class have eternal consequences?  Probably not.

And the amazing thing is, God gives us words and directions that help us to have perspective on things like graduate school.  He says things like, "Take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat , or what ye shall drink ; nor yet for your body, what ye shall put on . Is not the life more than meat, and the body than raiment?"*  Isn't life more than your grades and your degree?  But that's not the only reason not to worry - what am I going to do if I can't get a job, what if I don't pass my exam, what if I don't finish my dissertation?  Paul writes, " But my God shall supply all your need according to his riches in glory by Christ Jesus."**  I can relax because I know that I will be taken care of.  That doesn't mean that everything will work out according to my plan.  But whatever God wills has got to be better than anything I could have come up with.

Letting go of the hype is a very freeing experience.  It took me a while to get there, of course, and I am not now completely rid of the occasional round of worry.  But, I didn't lose any sleep over my exams.  I read some of everything on my list and actually enjoyed quite a bit of it (and what I didn't enjoy, I read as little as possible).  I am enjoying writing my dissertation.  I love my topic and I love the research and I love what I have written.  I believe that less stress actually makes you more productive.  If you say, in the long run, this doesn't really matter, you actually do pretty good work on it.  I don't work on weekends and I don't work in the evenings.  I go hiking.  I visit my family.  I read tons of good, absolutely non-academic books.  I teach a youth class, sing in the choir, and volunteer tutor.  I knit and crochet and draw and bake.  I have not had to compromise my real life for my academic life.  I recognize that this is a paradox - the best (most painless) way to succeed is to decide it doesn't matter.  This, however, does not mean that I take my work lightly.  On the contrary, I would like to think.  In fact, I consider it beyond just work, and something bordering more on craft.  But, that will have to be another post.

*Matthew 6:25
**Philippians 4:19

Dissertating

Writing a dissertation, at least for me so far, has been a bit disconcerting. I thought that because I had seminar papers for the basis of each of my chapters, that the way would be clear and I would know what to do. I didn't expect it to be easy. I am willing to work hard. But there is a difference between working hard and having no idea what to do. If I knew what to do, I would certainly do it.

The problem seems to be, I don't have any idea how to transform this seminar paper into a dissertation chapter. I am working on Pamela right now, and I have this seminar paper that I am very proud of. Maybe that's a problem. I didn't get a lot of feedback from the professor other than stylistic (I will eventually eliminate passive voice from my writing. I am beginning to wonder if this is somehow a personality indicator?) So, I'm not sure what to do with it. I have made some additions - trying to beef up the theory parts. I actually added about a page and a half of theory stuff to it today, then realized that all of that probably needed to go in the introduction chapter, so I took it back out again. I have been reformating it a bit, added a paragraph that reaffirmed my argument and laid out the direction of the paper. And, still, all I have is 17 pages. I probably need at least 10 more, but I don't know how I am going to get them.

I am tempted to go ahead and give the chapter to my committee, just so I can get some feedback and direction. I feel like I need someone to tell me, "Do this." It probably wouldn't hurt to get in on a writing group, but I'm not sure how to do that either.

I probably need to be reading more theory, but I can't, at this point, see how having another go at reading Judith Butler is going to translate into more pages for my Pamela chapter. I want to be making progress!

System Error

You know how when you are working on a computer and suddenly there's a noise and a screen pops up with some vague and threatening message, like "System Error" and suddenly everything goes nuts? That's how my life feels right now. I was late to volunteer teach my ESL class this morning, partly because I am lazy and partly because I didn't factor in time to scrape the frost off my car. As I am driving down the interstate at an illegal speed, I hear a startling "Crack!" and realize that what was once a tiny, almost invisible chip in my windshield has become a stark crack that runs all the way across. I didn't get to meet with my professor this afternoon because I was having my windshield repaired. I will now probably have to make another drive to Gboro this week. I was late to have my windshield repaired because I was on campus, trying to find a printer that printed in colored ink, and then to find a working terminal so I could load money onto my id card, so I could pay for colored ink prints. My life has become unmanageably caught up in trivial details. It takes 35 minutes to get to Gboro. Another 5-10 to walk from wherever I find to park (oh, and the parking deck is under construction too). If I try to get to the gym to workout for 30 minutes, there is an hour and half involved just getting there, parking, getting inside, changing, then afterwards, showering, changing again, trying to make my hair look decent. Is this worth it? I feel like I can't get anything done because I am always trying to get to the place where I could get something done.

What I Will Be Doing This Year

There are several things I am determined to do this year. I am not calling them resolutions. I am calling them plans.

1) Get the bulk of my dissertation written. Prospectus is done. I began the first chapter this morning. It is harder than I anticipated. I am working from seminar papers that I wrote for classes, but now I am sitting staring at this seminar paper wondering what I am supposed to do to it to make it a dissertation chapter. But I am going to figure it out, and I am still set on being a PhD by May 2011.

2) Go to England! Lifelong dream, often deferred. I think I have low self-efficacy when it comes to travel. I almost feel like I'm not allowed to go anywhere. Partly because Suze Orman would tell me we don't have enough money, and partly because no one in my family travels. But this is going to be the year. I will see London and Stonehenge and stand on a moor. Tentative travel dates are set for the middle of May. I have my own copy of Fodor's England 2010 that is becoming thickly crusted with pink post-it notes.

3) Write the novel. I know, how crazy do you have to be to write a dissertation and a novel in the same year? But this is one of those projects that I have been imagining all my life ("Oh, yes, when I grow up, I will write a novel and travel to England.") Well, I am grown up. I have the concept, the characters, the plot, and if I don't write it now, it will slip away, vaporized by academic paralysis.

Expect frequent updates on these three projects. In fact, if I don't update you frequently, get on my case. I need the motivation.

I Passed!

I did my orals on Monday. That is possibly the most intense hour and a half I have ever spent. There were definitely some rough points - especially the poets and some questions about my "methodology of history" - I think I babbled for five minutes about "um, the rise of the middle class, and the rise of the novel, you know, intertwined, and um, the middle class, yeah." But towards the end I talked about specific novels and some things I want to do for my dissertation, and I felt much better. And I passed! It was a much bigger relief to have this part done, even more so than when I finished writtens. It is done! I can now move on with my life. Which means the dissertation. Hopefully I'll have a nice draft of the prospectus before too long.

Comps Week

Yesterday, I took the first part of my comprehensive exams. After reading and studying since February, it is a relief to have this part of my graduate program underway. Now, I just have to make it through parts 2 and 3 on Wednesday and Friday.

I felt pretty good about the questions I got yesterday. I had to answer three out of five, and fortunately, three were ones that I had approximately prepared for. I felt good about the questions while I was answering them - of course, afterward there is the temptation to second-guess - mostly worrying about whether I wrote enough. However, I am trying to minimize that impulse.

Favorite things from comps: Middlemarch by George Eliot and the poems by Gerald Manley Hopkins

Least favorite: Lukacs (did I even spell that right? anyway, he is incomprehensible)

Best strategy advice: start early, make a calendar, read a little bit each day, take notes immediately; also, having the notes of someone who had a similar list is great

Mistakes: taking notes in the book without transfering them to the notebook - you won't remember what the poem is about

Extra advice: don't labor over a text that is just too difficult or boring - you're eating into your time - read enough so that you have an idea of the content and style, then find a summary or someone's notes on it - chances are, you are not going to be asked about that specific text anyway