Does it count as vacation if you are frantically cleaning your house for friends to stay in while you're gone, packing like a fiend, cleaning up the end-of-semester paperwork, and trying to remember every little thing that "needs" to be done before you leave your home for 2 weeks?
If it does, I'm on vacation. The Polish final was fine, despite the fact that it required the use of some verbs that I discovered about a half hour previous to the exam that I should have learned (and didn't), and that the oral consisted of chitchat about my Christmas earrings (which I didn't understand) and use of the past tense (which we haven't learned yet).
Anyway. A little packing, and we're off. B was a good boy and mailed stuff to our various destinations this morning. I got the three books I "plan" to read in the next two weeks. I should be ready to sleep in about an hour.
Happy holidays to all!
The chair of our department thinks holiday break is an EXCELLENT time to catch up on some reading, and get a leg up on the spring semester. Since there are no novels I'm just dying to read, I'm thinking that I'll read:
David Smith's Moral Geographies. Bonus chapter on Poland.
On Becoming a Geographer.
Then, either Fisher's book on Polish planning, or the book on Soviet planning if the chair can find his copy.
I'll work this out on Tuesday when I am in the office for what will probably be the last time. I should do some filing and also make a list of things that the new person should do. With students coming in as well, that's a lot for an hour.
The only thing left for me (I've given up on planning substantive work for the break, because I know there will be no time) is my Polish final. I alternate between thinking I can ace it without any more investment of time, and freaking out that I won't be able to manage the oral part: reading, translating, answering questions, and memorizing a dialogue. I have reviewed the first 5 chapters (out of 8); tomorrow I'll try to do the remainder, so that I can review vocabulary on Tuesday.
well, I turned in my seminar paper at 5:35 today. The office with the mailboxes closes at 5:30 but the clerk stayed extra, just for me. She's a good kid. My prof came around 5:40 and collected them.
It's been a LONG day. When I woke up, at 4:50 am or so, I wasn't sure I could finish. (She would take late papers without any problem, so the pressure was all self-imposed.) I worked for 3 hours; went and had office hours; came home for lunch and to collect B; went back to school; wrote like crazy; met with one of my committee members (he was in a mood to chat, TS for me); wrote and printed like crazy.
I am quite sure the final copy is full of typos. I really am afraid to look, despite B's very sensible observation that the time to look (and fix, and reprint, and drive to prof's house with replacement copy) is RIGHT NOW.
Also - we had drinks with friends and went to the theater ("The Miser" at Jeune Lune, highly recommended. Mature language) and then home for an after-dinner snack and now, it is to be hoped, BED. One of the neighbor-cats is sleeping in my dresser drawer - so CUTE!! If I didn't dislike cats so much I would definitely have to have some.
I have had a headache for the last 3 days, 24/7, and now that my paper is done, I don't have it anymore.
Here's another book worth reading over the break, if it's not too heavy (books for break are selected for portability).
_On Becoming a Professional Geographer_. Wilson Library has two copies, both on shelf: G65 .O5 1989.
The European Union: how does it work?
Eliz. Bomberg and Alexander Stubb
JN30.E9417 2003
My research has taken me away from the EU this term. I should get back to it over the break - but not while I'm on vaca, so we'll let this one go back.
Also, _Illuminations_. I finished neither the Theses on History nor Art in an Age of Mechanical Reproduction (which I MUST have read in college, but have no memory of). These are good to read, but not now.
That's enough for today. Most of the books I have out are for this blasted seminar paper.
I am looking around the house and thinking it would be smart to start returning books I'm not likely to need before second semester. First, they could be recalled while I'm away; and 2) it's a hassle bringing a shopping bag of books back to the library. (I always smile when I see people doing it though.)
Here's one I'll need to get back to:
Fields of Battle: Terrain in Military History. Peter Doyle and Matthew R. Bennett eds.
UA 990.F54 2002.
Repeat after me: It is NOT realistic to plan to write 1400 words per day on a difficult theoretical/research paper. The dean of our department had it right when he recommended 500 words.
I'm sort of coming up to where I "should" have been on Friday night. It's just really slow. However, if I can nail down the presentation outline tomorrow, I'll have Wednesday and Thursday afternoon and evening to finish the writing.
At first I was writing just slop - disconnected thoughts, including notes to myself. Sentence fragments. Then last night I got horrified at the mess, and today I've been writing in polished mode. I have to stop that, though, and find some place in between, so that I can get through more of it, write the presentation, and then come back and clean it up.
Yeah, sounds good, right? I took a little "break" and read two articles for class on Wednesday. Polish quiz? Don't even ask.
Someone PLEASE remind me, next time I get all enthusiastic about going to our department's series on professional development, how depressed I always feel afterwards. Here's a short (incomplete) list of the things I haven't been doing this term to strategically prepare for finishing my degree and having a life afterwards:
1. meet with advisor weekly.
2. continuously work on and refine dissertation proposal. Hell, I don't even really have a TOPIC!!
3. plan to attend annual conference.
4. present paper at said conference.
5. have contacts all lined up for summer pre-dissertation fieldwork.
6. have applied for funding for said fieldwork.
7. have detailed work plan for said fieldwork, with full set of alternatives if contingencies arise.
8. have detailed reading list to squeeze maximum efficiency out of 4 weeks between semesters. Jesus. My life is MORE complicated and busier during the holiday break than during the busiest time of the semester!
I am sure there is more, but that is PLENTY. Egads. It almost makes me want to go back to the relatively simple problem of worrying only about my seminar paper. (I'm about 700 words behind on my word count, btw. I blame the cat.)
I'm working on my seminar paper tonight (and for the next 8 nights, much like the Festival of Lights). The highly instrumental way I approach such large projects is as follows: I have to write around 7000 words. I have six days in which to do it (before the oral presentation). That means about 1200 words per day. But, what about the oral presentation? Thus, up the words per day and save the last day for generating the presentation outline.
This never works. I always begin to fall short on word count, usually from the first day onward. Then I get panicked. This is probably bad for my health, but it is a good spur to get the writing in gear. Lately I've tried a new writing tack: just writing down the facts/ideas in sequence, not worrying about elegant language. I think it will be more efficient. It will probably also require much more time for revisions after the oral presentation, but I've allowed 3 days for that, which ought to be sufficient.
Hmm. Sounds good from here. I should be a basket case by Monday.
The time of class presentations is upon us. Sometimes I think that it would be really cool to develop and teach a class on writing and presenting for geography. I'd use some ideas I got in the geographic writing course I took last fall (highly recommended) and add some ideas I've codified over the years of watching and trying to learn from other people's presentations.
Public speaking isn't a natural strength for me, so I think I pay extra attention to "how it's done." When I first started to think about such things, I developed three rules for myself, in order of importance.
1. know the material.
2. know the audience
3. know the venue.
If you don't know the material cold, you'll be tempted to explain more than you should, and your weaknesses will be on display (I came from a political arena, where such flaws could and would be exploited). If you don't know your audience, you might not connect with them and be as effective as you could. If you don't know the venue, there might be technical flaws (wrong presentation techniques, lack of equipment) that could trip up an otherwise flawless speech.
Sitting in presentations today, I jotted down a few ideas about front-ending the research question, findings, and significance. I'll let you know next Tuesday (my presentation) how that worked out for me.
PS: I was in Toastmasters for 3-4 years. I don't say it changed my life - but it definitely boosted my skills and confidence.
A number of the UThink blogs are written by grad students, and some question why they are in grad school - this one, for example.
Not to be all pollyanna or anything, but I feel lucky to be here just about every day. It's an opportunity that very few mid-career professionals have, what with family and other responsibilities. But I had the chance to kiss my (very demanding management) job goodbye, move to a different state, and 1) concentrate on learning the theory behind what I've been doing all these years; and 2) develop some ideas about how I can contribute to that body of knowledge, both by researching and by teaching it to others.
I think it's normal sometimes to have doubts - to wake up with the 4 am "freight train of self-doubt in the switchyards of self-loathing" (that's not the real quote but I can't take time to dig it out right now) - but I think that if you are constantly unsure if you should be in grad school, then maybe you should take some time out to think that through before continuing. The opportunity costs are just too large to waste time and money and effort on something that may not be what you really are passionate about. Face it: research and teaching will never pay off financially (compared with other ways of spending one's life); if you aren't committed to it now, when you are young and fresh and enthusiastic, when will you be?
I've been thinking a lot about narrativity this semester because of my course in historical geography, for which many of the readings were based on narrative methods. (I'm pretty sure I had some interest in this last year, too, but I can't remember what the context was - the memory seminar?)
Then, this past week, we got into a debate about the validity of narrativity as a geographical method. William Cronon, a historian, wrote a very geographical book about Chicago that was popularly and critically well-received, thereby annoying radical geographers whose work hasn't gotten the same purchase. They crabbed about his book in their journal of radical geography, and Cronon's rejoinder stressed his post-modernist belief in the value of narrative.
So imagine my delight when William Safire's column in today's NYT took up the history of narrativity. Some things about it I'd like to read someday:
Roland Barthes, 1966, some sort of essay which contains the sentence "Numberless are the world's narratives": the birth of narratology.
1966, Robert Scholes and Robert Kellogg, _The Nature of Narrative_.
Then there is a journal called _Narrative_ of the Society for the Study of Narrative Literature.
Is it a coincidence that the object of biography in A.S. Byatt's book _The Biographer's Tale_ is called Scholes Destry-Scholes? Sure, it'a a play on "scholar" - but does it have a relationship to this study of narrative?
Today was the grand opening of the light rail extension. We spent the afternoon riding the train to the MOA: walked over to the downtown station; rode out; waited in line for the return; rode back; walked home. Took about 3 hours.
The train outbound was PACKED with people riding to the mall. Young families; older couples exploring; teens getting a free ride. One thing that (prudishly) annoyed me: with all these young kids (the 10-and-under set) aboard, neither the teens who got on at Lake Street nor the middle-aged group of sport-fan-looking guys had any problem using the f-bomb as every part of speech, in every sentence.
Now, I love to swear, I honestly do. But I try to control myself. First, it really annoys B. Second, in a public place, it's really rude to expose other people's kids to that unwarranted crudeness. Fine for a bar, or hanging out at home with your friends, but not in public. Maybe I'm just old-fashioned, but it seems on a par with the rest of the decline in standards of what's acceptable in public - dress, behavior, dealing with others. When I talk about litigation in my course, I explain that the ONE place left in America in which you have to dress appropriately, sit and be quiet, pretend to pay attention, and manage to exist without food or drink for the duration, is US courtrooms. It's like stepping back in time.
But then again, writers have been cursing declining standards for several millennia. Plus ca change...
Dad is onto toast (he skipped right over semi-solids like pudding and jello, imagine that) and had a walk outdoors today. I talked with him last night; he sounded chipper but sounded like he didn't want to talk about the details of his surgery or how he felt. Typical, of course.
My mom told me he'd felt not-so-good for about a year, and the pain was severe enough this past Monday for him to be wheedled to the doctor. Also typical. My family is like a gaggle of Jewish mothers: "No, I'm fine. I'm just going to die over here quietly in this corner. No, it's alright. No, I don't need anything. Don't bother about me."
While I, by contrast, gulp Advils by the bottle-ful. Sometimes I wonder how it is that I've come so far from those Calvinist/Lutheran roots of self-abnegation and denial. In the end, perhaps not so far at all: while my body enjoys itself, my brain is composing a stern lecture to be delivered at 4 am each day, on my screwups and failures. One of the greatest things about quitting my job and going back to school was that, largely, the 4 am self-lectures have stopped.