On Friday night, around 7:30 pm, I made the last revisions to Chapter 1, thus coming to the end of the dissertation draft, a process that began almost 2 years ago, when I returned from fieldwork and started to write up my results.
I danced around the house for awhile yelling and smiling, and then we went out for a nice dinner. Yesterday I cleaned up my office.
Hm, what to do for the rest of the summer????? :)
I'm sure I'll think of SOMETHING. My first step was to return a bunch of stuff to the library, and check out Harry Potter #7, which I've just finished. How satisfying to read a great story that sucks you in and takes over your brain, and then spits you back into reality about 10 hours later. The world needs more stories like that.
(Did I mention that I'm Phinished???)
Well, I finished the first draft of my dissertation on Friday night. My adviser was in town, and he read through the last two chapters, so I now have two more chapters to revise (4 total) then clean up the front end, then copy and mail it to my committee.
After he took off, I took the rest of the day off yesterday and cleaned up the flowerbed by the shed. The landscape here is all about subtraction - in this case weeding the bed and making growing room for the perennials I'd put in probably six years ago. I uncovered the brick edging too, and edged it.
It didn't take nearly as long as I thought it would, giving me hope that I can get more subtraction done here this summer than I had been thinking. It's a real lift to see it from the kitchen window when we're washing dishes.
More subtraction today in the bed that has the lily of the valley - took down the bunch of maple saplings, leaving more space and light for the L of the V and the rhododendron. B has been cutting down much larger maples in the 'wild' garden. I am thinking of putting some orchard type trees back there: cherries, apricots, etc. Time to make this little piece of the earth more productive.
Hm, such a human-centric view. Given the birds and insects and other critters, probably our landscape is plenty productive, not just with human food crops! Still, the idea of living more off the land is appealing....especially with rising food prices.
I sent off my penultimate chapter today. That means that since 5/16 I have finished 3 chapters and revised 2. Not too shabby for about a month of work!
Actually I have spent gobs of time working on the last chapter (which is actually the literature review, Chapter 2) including lots of reading and rereading. Maybe I can finally send that one off soon, too?
In other news, my garden is growing well; I've outlined half of one of my new courses for fall; we've had houseguest and various parties here. I am trying to fight the "summer is slipping away" feeling because actually things have been quite productive, despite that usual feeling that I am slacking. (Must get anti-slacking-feeling device.)
I just finished a short course this week on distance learning (aka online learning) that is the gatekeeping credential one needs to teach online at my institution. For many reasons, I remain skeptical about online education, yet I was curious to know what the party line was - to smell the Koolaid, so to speak.
I learned more about pedagogy than about online learning per se - in part, I think, because there is not much there there, so to speak. I find the idea of student-motivated learning compelling, yet I am unsure how/if it would work in practice. There was a TON of good information about tying content to learning goals and outcomes and all that jazz.
It's a hugely time-consuming process, and I think that's why professors don't do more of it. It's much easier just to spew what you know than to think about what students need to know of the content to be able to do specific tasks in the "real" world. Identifying those tasks is no small matter, either.
Along the way I ran into some good information about use/abuse of Powerpoint as well.
Dan Pink, A Whole New Mind
Cliff Atkinson, Beyond Bullet Points.
(I think both of them are corporate-trainer types, but the point is still valid: powerpoint is not meant to stand alone, but to be illustrative of the lecture. I want to write THAT back into my syllabi, and very explicitly too. I am so tired of people zoning out during the visuals and then scribbling furiously whenever there is a text slide. In fact, I am tempted to play some games with that - along the 'ipsem lorem' lines. Too mean?)
Other possible authors to look for: Lawrence Lessig and Seth Godin.
I will have more on this stuff this summer as I develop the two new courses for fall.
Fareed Zakaria, The Post-American World. Norton.
Alexandra Harney, The China Price: the true cost of Chinese competitive advantage. Penguin.
Reviewed by David M. Shribman in the Boston Globe.
Zakaria's book is a balanced look at the good and bad of exporting capitalism and democracy around the world. Z may have "more intellectual range and insights than any other public thinker in the West."
China: our thirst for cheap goods is wrecking their lives (economically and health-wise) and will probably eventually have global implications.
The Big Sort: why the clustering of like-minded America is tearing us apart.
Bill Bishop with Robert G. Cushing. Houghton Miff 2008.
Reviewed by Scott Stossel in the NYT Book Review on May 18.
Less dialog, as media and activities allow us to self-select into niches where we never have to engage with opposite viewpoints.
The return of history and the end of dreams, by Robert Kagan.
Reviewed by David E. Sanger, same issue of NYT.
"The world is normal again [after the Cold War] and repressive governments are on the rise."
This would be a good counterpoint to Fukayama. Which reminds me, I saw on some academic blog a list of teaching materials for counterpointing Samuel Huntington. Good for fall - although I plan to have my hands full with the elections in the political geography module.