--is over!
(Seriously, how do you do accents in blogger?)
So yeah, it's done, and it was fine. My committee had questions and whatnot, but for the most part the questions weren't particularly difficult, and they were also pretty complimentary. So uh...I'm finished! No more grad school for this girl!
(And therefore: No more fretting about my upcoming defense on this blog!)
Thanks to everyone who wished me good luck! Now--to enjoy my free bottle of champagne at the grad bar. Hooray!
Showing posts with label dissertation. Show all posts
Showing posts with label dissertation. Show all posts
Monday, April 2, 2007
Sunday, April 1, 2007
Could it be I'm...nervous?
So I couldn't sleep last night. Almost literally. I slept from about 1 to 2, then my chumpy downstairs neighbors (ha ha--I wrote "neighboors," entirely by accident) came tromping home with a bunch of their chumpy friends, and started living it up on the 2nd floor. At 2:30, I decided that the pumping reggae was really too much, and went down there to complain. I didn't have to complain, actually; the guy opened the door, saw me, said "Oh, too loud? Sorry, sorry, no problem, we'll turn it down." Still, I finally got to reveal my grumpy-old-lady colors, and that was satisfying: I've been dreaming of that moment since they moved in last fall.
Anyway. I went back to bed, but still couldn't sleep. The hours ticked by. At 4:30, I was bored and cross and got up to go knit for a while, thinking that that would soothe me. After a bit, I thought that I might as well do something productive, and worked on my defense until the sun came up. I went back to bed at 6:30, slept from about 7:30-9, and then managed to sleep again from maybe 10:45-12:15. So that's, what, 4 hours total?
I mean what the hell? I haven't been insomniac in a long time. My first year of grad school was peppered with nights like this, and they were a lot more dangerous back then, when I had so very much work and actual classes to get to. And you know the thing where the harder it is to fall asleep, the higher the stakes get? So when I'd go to bed after 2 consecutive insomniac nights, I'd be so afraid of not getting enough sleep that I'd find myself incapable of sleep. It was awful.
I feel a little bit nervous about the defense tomorrow, obviously. But not terribly worried--certainly not consciously so. Evidently, however, all is not peace and sunshine in my psyche.
--But how worried can I be, really, when it's 1pm, I've been up for 45 minutes, and I haven't started working yet? Okay. Time to get down to business. 24 hours until The Spectacle begins (and I'm hoping to get to yoga this afternoon, so time is short!).
ETA: Okay, I'm obviously nervous. I just practiced my spiel and found my body engaging in its Relatively Benign Manifestation of Anxiety (i.e. I'll need to wear my stronger deodorant). Funny how the body knows what the mind ignores, isn't it?
Anyway. I went back to bed, but still couldn't sleep. The hours ticked by. At 4:30, I was bored and cross and got up to go knit for a while, thinking that that would soothe me. After a bit, I thought that I might as well do something productive, and worked on my defense until the sun came up. I went back to bed at 6:30, slept from about 7:30-9, and then managed to sleep again from maybe 10:45-12:15. So that's, what, 4 hours total?
I mean what the hell? I haven't been insomniac in a long time. My first year of grad school was peppered with nights like this, and they were a lot more dangerous back then, when I had so very much work and actual classes to get to. And you know the thing where the harder it is to fall asleep, the higher the stakes get? So when I'd go to bed after 2 consecutive insomniac nights, I'd be so afraid of not getting enough sleep that I'd find myself incapable of sleep. It was awful.
I feel a little bit nervous about the defense tomorrow, obviously. But not terribly worried--certainly not consciously so. Evidently, however, all is not peace and sunshine in my psyche.
--But how worried can I be, really, when it's 1pm, I've been up for 45 minutes, and I haven't started working yet? Okay. Time to get down to business. 24 hours until The Spectacle begins (and I'm hoping to get to yoga this afternoon, so time is short!).
ETA: Okay, I'm obviously nervous. I just practiced my spiel and found my body engaging in its Relatively Benign Manifestation of Anxiety (i.e. I'll need to wear my stronger deodorant). Funny how the body knows what the mind ignores, isn't it?
Thursday, March 29, 2007
Deadly Boring
Yes, that's what I'm thinking about my dissertation right now.
(I know that I shouldn't complain: it's almost over. But indulge me for a moment, if you will.)
In a mere 92 hours, I will present a tedious and yet whirlwind 20-minute summary of my dissertation to my committee, my significant other, and whatever grad students/faculty from my department bother to show up. I'm trying to prepare for this event by working up a coherent outline from which to speak, but I am so tired of talking about my argument. And how am I supposed to sum up 8 chapters in 20 minutes? I ask you.
I guess I'm kind of anxious, too. It's a little nerve-wracking to think of my committee--who have been my allies through this whole process; really, they're a spectacularly kind and supportive committee--turning on me on Monday. They're going to ask me all these questions. In front of people. And they won't tell me the answers if I falter.
(Well, actually, given my committee, they might.)
I know it'll be fine, and I'm almost done preparing, and I'm kind of excited to be finishing up. But it's weird to be, at age 30, on the brink of what feels like some kind of pubescent rite of passage: time to have the final showdown with the parents, and then start fending for myself. It'll be good to be on my own, intellectually speaking. But you know, it'll be kind of sad, too. I like my committee. Grad school, for all of its irritations, has been an incredibly cushy gig (for these last two years, at any rate; fellowships have blotted out all memory of adjuncting, seminars, office hours, and so forth). I anticipate being very slightly depressed next week.
Mitigating the depression, however, will be the realization that I won't have to summarize my dissertation anymore (especially if I manage to get myself a job). And that, my friends, means one thing: elation.
(I know that I shouldn't complain: it's almost over. But indulge me for a moment, if you will.)
In a mere 92 hours, I will present a tedious and yet whirlwind 20-minute summary of my dissertation to my committee, my significant other, and whatever grad students/faculty from my department bother to show up. I'm trying to prepare for this event by working up a coherent outline from which to speak, but I am so tired of talking about my argument. And how am I supposed to sum up 8 chapters in 20 minutes? I ask you.
I guess I'm kind of anxious, too. It's a little nerve-wracking to think of my committee--who have been my allies through this whole process; really, they're a spectacularly kind and supportive committee--turning on me on Monday. They're going to ask me all these questions. In front of people. And they won't tell me the answers if I falter.
(Well, actually, given my committee, they might.)
I know it'll be fine, and I'm almost done preparing, and I'm kind of excited to be finishing up. But it's weird to be, at age 30, on the brink of what feels like some kind of pubescent rite of passage: time to have the final showdown with the parents, and then start fending for myself. It'll be good to be on my own, intellectually speaking. But you know, it'll be kind of sad, too. I like my committee. Grad school, for all of its irritations, has been an incredibly cushy gig (for these last two years, at any rate; fellowships have blotted out all memory of adjuncting, seminars, office hours, and so forth). I anticipate being very slightly depressed next week.
Mitigating the depression, however, will be the realization that I won't have to summarize my dissertation anymore (especially if I manage to get myself a job). And that, my friends, means one thing: elation.
Wednesday, February 28, 2007
Dissertation: DONE
I turned in my dissertation yesterday.
Not the final-final version, but the pre-defense version; nonetheless, I got to print out a beautiful title page with "submitted in partial requirement of the degree of doctor of philosophy" and a table of contents and all that stuff. Sooo pretty!
The finalizing process was brutal, though. I was still waiting for my advisor's comments on the most recent version that she had (a two-month-old draft), and at about 2 pm I got an email that basically said, "I can live with it." Not the wild applause that I was hoping for, but, okay. (And there were a fair number of typos and weirdo sentences in that draft, to be honest. Which have been eradicated through three days of backbending labor.)
Then there was the photocopying. Oh, dear god, the photocopying.
Then I carried 1500 pages of text around campus, leaving 300 pages in the boxes of each of my 4 committee members. No two of whom have offices (or mailboxes) in the same building.
Then I went home, with my own 300 pages.
And felt really, really tired.
And today I turned on my computer and started screwing around, as usual, and felt this little I-should-get-to-work pang, and then I thought: Hey! No I shouldn't!
Not the final-final version, but the pre-defense version; nonetheless, I got to print out a beautiful title page with "submitted in partial requirement of the degree of doctor of philosophy" and a table of contents and all that stuff. Sooo pretty!
The finalizing process was brutal, though. I was still waiting for my advisor's comments on the most recent version that she had (a two-month-old draft), and at about 2 pm I got an email that basically said, "I can live with it." Not the wild applause that I was hoping for, but, okay. (And there were a fair number of typos and weirdo sentences in that draft, to be honest. Which have been eradicated through three days of backbending labor.)
Then there was the photocopying. Oh, dear god, the photocopying.
Then I carried 1500 pages of text around campus, leaving 300 pages in the boxes of each of my 4 committee members. No two of whom have offices (or mailboxes) in the same building.
Then I went home, with my own 300 pages.
And felt really, really tired.
And today I turned on my computer and started screwing around, as usual, and felt this little I-should-get-to-work pang, and then I thought: Hey! No I shouldn't!
Friday, February 23, 2007
The joys of revision
One thing that's been keeping me somewhat entertained through this gruelling--and hopefully final--round of revisions is identifying my more bizarre writing tics, and finally eliminating those awkward phrases that have been eating at me for months but that I hadn't, for some reason, been able to do anything about. Here are a couple of examples; all but the first are from today's work:
1. Over the past several months of revision, I have discovered that I once had an inordinate love for the word "tripartite." It came up no fewer than five times in my dissertation. I no longer love this word. Its incidence has been reduced to a single use, which I've kept in just for kicks.
2. In talking about medieval faculties psychology, I keep referring to "the human faculties." What other kind of mental faculties would I be talking about? Panda faculties? Some kind of mystical, divine faculties? Academic faculties?
3. The word "profound" has been deleted everywhere that I've been able to locate it. In most cases, I didn't even need to replace it with anything--it was totally extraneous. Nothing ever needs to be called "profound."
4. I have an occasional propensity towards wordiness--writing things like "failing to possess" instead of, simply, "lacking."
5. I have decided that I am not comfortable capitalizing the words "heaven" or "hell."
6. The phrase "the usurpation of the linguistic" is simply unacceptable.
I'm sure that there are a number of other outrageosities in this (and every other) chapter. Now that I've started a list, I'm tempted to keep an eye out for more--lists do make things more fun, don't they? A couple of years ago, I started a list of my students' amusing misunderstandings of cliches; I can't remember most of them, but I do know that "to put [someone] on a pastel"* appeared at least twice. Looking for them made grading a lot more fun. The same principle applies to my own writing, apparently!
*instead of a pedestal, in case it's not obvious.
ETA: Two more student errors I've remembered:
-"breath-talking"
-"slapping her resolve" (this one came up twice, if you can believe it. What must they think the phrase means?).
1. Over the past several months of revision, I have discovered that I once had an inordinate love for the word "tripartite." It came up no fewer than five times in my dissertation. I no longer love this word. Its incidence has been reduced to a single use, which I've kept in just for kicks.
2. In talking about medieval faculties psychology, I keep referring to "the human faculties." What other kind of mental faculties would I be talking about? Panda faculties? Some kind of mystical, divine faculties? Academic faculties?
3. The word "profound" has been deleted everywhere that I've been able to locate it. In most cases, I didn't even need to replace it with anything--it was totally extraneous. Nothing ever needs to be called "profound."
4. I have an occasional propensity towards wordiness--writing things like "failing to possess" instead of, simply, "lacking."
5. I have decided that I am not comfortable capitalizing the words "heaven" or "hell."
6. The phrase "the usurpation of the linguistic" is simply unacceptable.
I'm sure that there are a number of other outrageosities in this (and every other) chapter. Now that I've started a list, I'm tempted to keep an eye out for more--lists do make things more fun, don't they? A couple of years ago, I started a list of my students' amusing misunderstandings of cliches; I can't remember most of them, but I do know that "to put [someone] on a pastel"* appeared at least twice. Looking for them made grading a lot more fun. The same principle applies to my own writing, apparently!
*instead of a pedestal, in case it's not obvious.
ETA: Two more student errors I've remembered:
-"breath-talking"
-"slapping her resolve" (this one came up twice, if you can believe it. What must they think the phrase means?).
Thursday, February 22, 2007
My Eyeballs Are Falling Out
Well, okay. That's a bit melodramatic. But you know the feeling, right?
I'm in yet another round of dissertation revisions, and have read, I think, 93 pages of my diss in the last two hours. No, wait. I will have read 93 pages when I finish rereading the chapter I just started--I was getting ahead of myself. After that...oh, who knows. Another 150 pages, I think.
Ohhh. I can't stand it. And I know I'll have to reread it again next week, before I turn it in, just to put my mind at ease.
MSWord sure does get annoying when you're dealing with Middle English, too. It keeps changing my condetions and propertes to conditions and properties, and, what's worse, "forbede" became "forbade"--a totally different tense. Of course, it still isn't worth it to turn off my spell-check, so this is something I'll just have to continue putting up with. (Hence all the rereading, see.) And EndNote, which has some usefulness, is getting under my skin with all its underlining and straight quotes. One project for the next few days is to retype ALL of my citations, the thought of which is, perhaps, contributing to my malaise.
Other than that, I'm spending a lot of time thinking about how I need some new shoes. Badly. I mean it. The situation is dire.
Okay: I absolutely must get through this chapter before I go home for the day, or my schedule (such as it is) will be thrown totally out of whack. Off I go....
I'm in yet another round of dissertation revisions, and have read, I think, 93 pages of my diss in the last two hours. No, wait. I will have read 93 pages when I finish rereading the chapter I just started--I was getting ahead of myself. After that...oh, who knows. Another 150 pages, I think.
Ohhh. I can't stand it. And I know I'll have to reread it again next week, before I turn it in, just to put my mind at ease.
MSWord sure does get annoying when you're dealing with Middle English, too. It keeps changing my condetions and propertes to conditions and properties, and, what's worse, "forbede" became "forbade"--a totally different tense. Of course, it still isn't worth it to turn off my spell-check, so this is something I'll just have to continue putting up with. (Hence all the rereading, see.) And EndNote, which has some usefulness, is getting under my skin with all its underlining and straight quotes. One project for the next few days is to retype ALL of my citations, the thought of which is, perhaps, contributing to my malaise.
Other than that, I'm spending a lot of time thinking about how I need some new shoes. Badly. I mean it. The situation is dire.
Okay: I absolutely must get through this chapter before I go home for the day, or my schedule (such as it is) will be thrown totally out of whack. Off I go....
Monday, February 12, 2007
A Question and Some Non-Griping
Okay--first, the question, for the medievalists and/or lit folk among you:
Does anyone know whether there's any kind of tally of the response time for various literary journals, particularly those with a medieval focus?
I have an article I'd like to send out; in an ideal world, I'd like to have it accepted somewhere before next year's job market showdown begins. (An astonishing dream, I know.) I'm afraid of shooting too high, as it were, and getting rejected in oh, say, September, when it would be too late for me to hear back from a less worthy journal before sending out my apps. On the other hand, I don't want to play it too safe, and wind up publishing somewhere relatively unimpressive without even having tried for a bigger journal. Any suggestions on this front would be hugely appreciated; I plan on asking my advisor, too, but the more opinions the better.
Now for the Non-Griping. I've noticed that my default blog tone seems to be one of either complaint or self-deprecation, and, while these things have their place, I figured I should try to put a more positive spin on at least some of the things that I say here. So here goes:
I met with my advisor today, and it was pretty productive, I think. We ended up mainly talking about the introduction to my diss. There are a few points that I need to work out; I have this whole crazy bit where I'm trying to draw connections between volitionist action theory, Franciscan visual meditation, and the role of the intellectus, and I'm not sure I've got that settled yet. So I still have some work to do, but nothing too onerous: there were several great moments in the meeting where she said things like, "When you revise this for publication as a book, you'll want to think about X, but as far as the dissertation goes, you don't need to worry about that yet." It reminded me of the meetings I had with a (different) committee member back at the stage of my prelim project, where he would say that I should really read, for example, Augustine, "but not yet--that's for the dissertation." Hearing basically the same phrase echoed today, but with the dissertation in the past tense--well, it was very gratifying.
All right; I think that counts, doesn't it? I'm so eager to be done with the diss, at this point. And lucky enough to have the end in sight. Making those last revisions will be a unique challenge in their own right (it's always most tempting to stop working right when you're almost at the end, isn't it?), but in two months' time I'll be FINISHED. I already have my private day-after-defense celebration planned out. (Nothing racy, I swear. In fact, it might even qualify as tame, but that's okay; I'm looking forward to it.)
Does anyone know whether there's any kind of tally of the response time for various literary journals, particularly those with a medieval focus?
I have an article I'd like to send out; in an ideal world, I'd like to have it accepted somewhere before next year's job market showdown begins. (An astonishing dream, I know.) I'm afraid of shooting too high, as it were, and getting rejected in oh, say, September, when it would be too late for me to hear back from a less worthy journal before sending out my apps. On the other hand, I don't want to play it too safe, and wind up publishing somewhere relatively unimpressive without even having tried for a bigger journal. Any suggestions on this front would be hugely appreciated; I plan on asking my advisor, too, but the more opinions the better.
Now for the Non-Griping. I've noticed that my default blog tone seems to be one of either complaint or self-deprecation, and, while these things have their place, I figured I should try to put a more positive spin on at least some of the things that I say here. So here goes:
I met with my advisor today, and it was pretty productive, I think. We ended up mainly talking about the introduction to my diss. There are a few points that I need to work out; I have this whole crazy bit where I'm trying to draw connections between volitionist action theory, Franciscan visual meditation, and the role of the intellectus, and I'm not sure I've got that settled yet. So I still have some work to do, but nothing too onerous: there were several great moments in the meeting where she said things like, "When you revise this for publication as a book, you'll want to think about X, but as far as the dissertation goes, you don't need to worry about that yet." It reminded me of the meetings I had with a (different) committee member back at the stage of my prelim project, where he would say that I should really read, for example, Augustine, "but not yet--that's for the dissertation." Hearing basically the same phrase echoed today, but with the dissertation in the past tense--well, it was very gratifying.
All right; I think that counts, doesn't it? I'm so eager to be done with the diss, at this point. And lucky enough to have the end in sight. Making those last revisions will be a unique challenge in their own right (it's always most tempting to stop working right when you're almost at the end, isn't it?), but in two months' time I'll be FINISHED. I already have my private day-after-defense celebration planned out. (Nothing racy, I swear. In fact, it might even qualify as tame, but that's okay; I'm looking forward to it.)
Thursday, February 1, 2007
In Conclusion
One thing that relationships and papers have in common is this: Ending them is much harder than beginning them.
No, I'm not going to talk about the elation and pleasure of starting to write a really good paper. (The analogy breaks down pretty quickly, see.) I'm going to write about conclusions.
In the beginning, the paper can go any old where--especially if, like me, you tend to come up with your "real" arguments mid-draft. But the conclusion is a whole different animal. Wrapping things up in some definitive and comprehensive way requires a kind of certainty that I seldom possess at the draft stage--a problem that may be personal, intellectual, or (the preferred option) rhetorical.
Yes, sometimes I do make gradiose and totalizing claims in my conclusions, and sometimes they sound really good. But sometimes they're just, well, false.
So anyway, I'm thinking about this because I'm trying to finish up (yes, that's right) the conclusion to my dissertation. It is a ghastly process. I refuse to reiterate the details of my individual chapters' arguments. I refuse. So I'm trying to do the whole implications-for-future-research thing, and I think I've got that nailed, but then there's the question of the last sentence. The very last sentence is tripping me up, here. In its current form, it's an absolute monstrosity containing the words "examining," "mechanisms," "highlights," and two separate uses of the word "limitations." I hate it.
On the one hand, the last sentence is what the reader will take away from the whole project--it generates the feel of the work, right, and it's whole after-effect and all that business. The glow.
But, on the other had, who the hell cares.
Okay, that settles it.
Which means that--hey! My dissertation is done.*
(*barring edits. Of course.)
No, I'm not going to talk about the elation and pleasure of starting to write a really good paper. (The analogy breaks down pretty quickly, see.) I'm going to write about conclusions.
In the beginning, the paper can go any old where--especially if, like me, you tend to come up with your "real" arguments mid-draft. But the conclusion is a whole different animal. Wrapping things up in some definitive and comprehensive way requires a kind of certainty that I seldom possess at the draft stage--a problem that may be personal, intellectual, or (the preferred option) rhetorical.
Yes, sometimes I do make gradiose and totalizing claims in my conclusions, and sometimes they sound really good. But sometimes they're just, well, false.
So anyway, I'm thinking about this because I'm trying to finish up (yes, that's right) the conclusion to my dissertation. It is a ghastly process. I refuse to reiterate the details of my individual chapters' arguments. I refuse. So I'm trying to do the whole implications-for-future-research thing, and I think I've got that nailed, but then there's the question of the last sentence. The very last sentence is tripping me up, here. In its current form, it's an absolute monstrosity containing the words "examining," "mechanisms," "highlights," and two separate uses of the word "limitations." I hate it.
On the one hand, the last sentence is what the reader will take away from the whole project--it generates the feel of the work, right, and it's whole after-effect and all that business. The glow.
But, on the other had, who the hell cares.
Okay, that settles it.
Which means that--hey! My dissertation is done.*
(*barring edits. Of course.)
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