Still and Still Moving

New Article and Other Updates

2011-10-21T13:54:00.000-04:00

So despite my great hopes of posting more in the blogosphere post-dissertation, this full-time faculty thing tends to keep me pretty busy.

However, I managed to find time to write and publish a non-academic feature article for catapult magazine recently, so I thought I'd mention it.

In other news, I've been having a ton of fun talking with my students in bits and pieces about writing and writing processes, language, and other related things in the midst of my teaching this semester of speech communication, communication theory, and interpersonal communication. I love having opportunities to have these discussions with my lovely students.

In all I don't mind so much that it's a season of teaching and grading and grading and grading and busyness. Other seasons will come again for more heavy writing activity. In the meantime I get to read a lot of what my students have to say, and I enjoy that much of the time.

Finishing a PhD; or "The Return of the King"

2011-08-18T10:23:00.011-04:00

I remember sitting in the theater at the season that millions new people were being exposed to J.R.R. Tolkien's final chapter in his Lord of the Rings trilogy, The Return of the King. I remember hearing those around me murmuring that the ending never seemed to end--that it was a series of false endings over and over and over again.

I remember feeling like these people didn't understand the way Tolkien's story worked. After all, his trilogy was continuously page numbered all the way through. This was not simply the resolution for this particular movie, but for the entire 10 hours.

Big things take a long time to resolve, and they do so in fits and starts.

As I look back over my recent posts on my blog as well as my experiences this summer, it occurs to me that The Return of the King, whether or not it is good fictional narrative strategy, is awfully real life, at least when it comes to things like finishing a PhD.

One finishes one's first full draft and hands it to one's advisor. One's friends congratulate one. [Sam picks up Frodo and brings him up Mount Doom in what feels like one final push of strength.]

One gets it back, makes lots of changes, and hands it in again. One's friends congratulate one. [Sam and Frodo make it to their destination. Unfortunately, it's Mount Doom.]

Eventually, one is congratulated by one's advisor that it is nearly ready to hand off to one's committee for review. One makes the changes, hands it off, and one's friends congratulate one. [The ring falls into the fire at Mount Doom and hovers on the surface of the fire, then we see Frodo and Sam surrounded by flowing lava. The quest feels completed, and yet it still feels like it may yet fail.]

One prepares for and attends the defense, which contrary to nightmares is successful. One's friends, along with one's advisor and committee, congratulate one and call one "doctor," a term which sounds foreign. [The ring is seen to dissolve, and Sam and Frodo are seen to be taken away by eagles and eventually reunited with their friends. Happy, but with a sense of melancholy and uncertainty. The hobbits are still far from home, and are going to be parted from their friends.]

One tells oneself it will feel more real after the dissertation is accepted for deposit. Despite wanting to go home to sleep for a long time, one metaphorically girds up one's loins for the final(?!?) few paragraphs requested by the committee, runs them past one's advisor, eventually has them accepted, then proofreads the whole thing and goes through the nightmare of final formatting. After a few more final final changes, last minute running around to get forms signed, one has a successful dissertation deposit appointment, with only one last change done during the appointment. One's friends congratulate one, and it feels a bit more real, but like the defense, a bit anticlimactic. [The crowning of Aragorn, and the public honoring of the hobbits, fade to black, then another scene starts...]

One, after expending energy one does not currently fully have in a move to one's new place of post-PhD employment, returns to walk the stage. One's friends and family congratulate one, along with the university president and one's lovely advisor. It finally feels real, except for the note in the fake diploma in one's hand, which states that the information is still being compiled, the transcripts will reflect graduation, but not until a certain day, and the diploma will arrive within 4 weeks. [The hobbits, after a long journey, return to the shire at long last. But all is not perfect.]

One checks the online transcript site a few days past the promised date, and one still sees that one is listed as a continuing student. One is sad and a trifle panicked--after all this, is it not really done? It is not until a conversation with a friend the next day that the words "degree awarded" are deciphered on the online transcript and one rests easy again. One feels that the ending has come. [The friends go to the elf ships and Frodo says goodbye to Sam. One can't get more final than the hero leaving, one thinks.]

That is, once one's new employer gets the ordered transcript and agrees that yes, a degree has been conferred. Then one's new employer will congratulate one. [Sam begins his new life with his family. Roll credits.]

*Sigh*. I still like The Return of the King, but I'm beginning to think the genre was wrong--not fantasy drama, but farce...definitely farce. Or some weird (post)modern play about life never really having true endings...

Ph.Did

2011-08-17T23:48:00.000-04:00

I can't believe it's been 10 days since I crossed that stage, was hooded by my advisor, and shook the Purdue president's hand. And today, finally, it said in the online transcript system that it was official--that a degree had been awarded.

It's real. I'm done. So they tell me.

I still probably won't believe it until I hold the real diploma in my hands, which should be in the next couple of weeks.

But I'm done. The dissertation was deposited and officially accepted by the university. I'm free to move on to push its research deeper, to seek publication in the academic realms for articles related to it, to move eventually to other related and unrelated research questions.

I'm free, now that the dissertation has been approved, to also immerse myself in other non-academic projects as well, when teaching permits.

And now that I've slept a bit more, have begun to come down from an incredibly stressful year, am beginning to see the fog clear around me, I'm excited to move into a new school year with new syllabi and lesson plans. And I'm beginning to get excited about some of these writing projects as well.

But I need to read some poetry first. It's been a long year with lots of words having been plowed out on demand--I need to remind myself that word play is possible.

But the Grass! It Really IS Greener!

2011-06-15T20:10:00.006-04:00

As of this past Monday, the dissertation is off to my committee. The defense is in less than 2 weeks. I've gotten more sleep. I've noticed that there's a world outside my doors. And I've already started one of the large-scale writing projects that was waiting behind the dissertation.

The beautiful thing is that having researched and written a large project on the scale of my dissertation (approved by at least my advisor so far) has given me confidence to embark on other similarly large-scale projects that I've been dreaming about for years. People may at times take the three little letters that will hopefully soon adorn my name somewhat lightly. And at times I'll be among them.

But in reality, the pain I have nearly won through in getting this degree to this point is worth its weight in gold--or should I say writing confidence. It's not just that the credentials will give me more credibility, both in and out of the academic arena.

That's key, of course. But even more important to me is the fact that I've won through a major battle with that part of myself that insists that I can't finish large projects quickly. That I don't have the words to describe things adequately. That I have to wait to start writing things until I've done years of research I don't feel qualified to undertake.

With the (near-)completion of this dissertation project (which, incidentally, I liked, and still like a lot), I've done more than get to the (near-)end of a project that has taken a lot of time, and induced blood, sweat, and tears (along with a few hives, which is a story for another time). And I've even done more than jump enough hurdles to get to the time I've been craving for these other projects.

I've also been given the grace to beat my way through a lot of barriers to writing motivation and found a land of no excuses on the other side.

And I must say, the grass really is greener over here.

The Diss Handoff, Part Deux: On Strength Training

2011-05-11T12:00:00.003-04:00

So I've been thinking a lot lately about page counts. Page counts have always been my nemesis. This story is perhaps best told in numbers:

Undergrad: 6-8 pages in about 10 hours. Much angst. Best push ever in undergrad: 21 pages in three different papers in 10 days. Thought I was Superwoman.
MA in English papers (yrs. later): 12 page paper in about 12 hours, though still only 1 or two days of that a week max. Feeling proud, though--not only coming back, but getting faster.
MA thesis: still about 1 page per hour, but simmering and analysis, so 100 pages for a single large writing project produced in roughly 4 months while working 12 hours per week. Doing well and happy with the results.
PhD papers: getting closer to 2 pages per hour when under the gun. During final month of the semester produced 70-80 pages for 3 different final papers. Best day: 18 pages of a single paper.
PhD preliminary exams: Many were in-house in 2-hour chunks, so I pushed the amounts up to 3.5 pages per hour. 70-80 pages produced during about 30 hours spread out over the course of a month while teaching 20 hours per week. Feeling good and strong.
PhD dissertation (while teaching 3/4 time, roughly equivalent to 30 hours per week):

As of December 2010, 90 pages of prospectus (half, approx., to stay in the dissertation, as it turned out) had been approved.
In a two-week period in March/April, I wrote 65 new pages in 2 weeks and 1 day. Personal record.
As of last week, I deleted 55 extraneous pages I knew didn't fit but had been saving up and edited the other 230 remaining pages of text. Then I finished writing the final 30 or so pages, finished adding 140-some references for my primary data, and handed in 302 fully edited pages (including references and appendices) this past Monday.
Best dissertation day: wrote 16 new pages and edited 120 pages to final form in one day.

If you were to have told me 4 years ago I'd be able to produce 370 pages and edit it down to 302 in such a short period of time, I'd have looked at you like I feared you'd had--or were about to have--one too many books dropped on your head.

But it's true. While my physical muscles have grown rather sad and pre-spinach-Popeye-like from sitting in front of this screen this past year (a condition I hope to fix this summer), my writing muscles have grown strong. I've gotten much faster, not only in pages per hour but in pages per day and pages per week. And for that, I'm thankful. One of these years I might actually be ready for NaNoWriMo.

Reflections on the Diss Handoff (Pt. 1)

2011-05-10T11:36:00.000-04:00

So the reason I've been absent from the Internets for so long is pretty predictable: I've been too busy writing and editing to write. The dissertation project was huge and nasty, and it's not entirely done until it's successfully defended, formatted, and deposited.

But yesterday I passed a huge milestone in this pursuit: I turned in a full dissertation draft to my doctoral advisor, a full 4 days ahead of the end of the window we'd talked about.

I've worked tremendously hard in the last couple of months, especially in the last week, to get ahead of schedule so that I could shoo away this little dark cloud that's been following me everywhere for the last year like some sort of cartoon menace. I've given up days off. I've stayed up repeatedly until 5 a.m., giving myself only a few hours of sleep.

But it was worth it, all the pain. The cloud isn't gone, but it's moved over a few feet, allowing for the sun to peek through. And the draft feels good. I won't know whether I truly successfully communicated until my advisor tells me I have (followed by my committee), but this feeling, the feeling that I've discovered new insights and was able to put them on paper in the right sorts of ways--this is my "crack" that keeps me coming back again and again to writing, no matter what kind.

It's interesting, because of course there were huge chunks of time during this process when I absolutely hated it, when I despaired of ever moving the black cloud even an inch, when only having one of my dissertation support group (brilliant invention, by the way--thanks Pamela for starting it!) come over and make me write worked to keep me going. But the payoff is worth it.

Anyway, more thoughts on this soon--there are many churning around in my head about the dissertation writing process that I need to, well, process. For now I'll say farewell, and promise that this blog will become more active again this summer, because now that I'm done with the bulk of my writing I have time to write again.

The Next Step on the Journey

2011-02-11T14:12:00.004-05:00

It's official: I'm an author!

That's right--my name now appears on Amazon with that little all-important underline. Previously, sure, I had things that appeared in books, but never before have I enjoyed Amazon-underline-authordom.

But seriously, I loved working on this project writing the script for an iPhone tour for Purdue's Discovery Park. It allowed me to apply my academic dissertation-related knowledge to a creative project, and to use my creative writing skills in an academic project. Can't get much better than that.

Plus, it was great working with Sorin Matei, Robert Yale, and the rest of the team on the project.

Okay, I've enjoyed my moment of joy. Now back to my dissertation-writing.

I Blame the Dissertation

2011-01-23T14:53:00.003-05:00

Yes, yes, I know. I've been gone a lot lately. Absent from these pages in much the same way the sun is often seemingly absent from the winter sky.

I blame the dissertation. It's a lot of work.

Well worth doing. And most days I still really get into the topic.

But it's a lot of work.

The kind that will probably keep me from regularly updating this blog much for a couple more months yet, at least.

On the up side, I'm glad to hear that they'll be discussing my "Cooking Chicken Wat" essay in The Spirit of Food (see a couple posts back for the link) over at the book study group at www.thehighcalling.org. Tomorrow. So go check it out.

Or if you're coming from there, welcome. I will start posting here again at some point in the next few months, I promise. And in the meantime would love to respond to comments.

Maybe if you comment enough I might even start posting again sooner.

Correction 1/24/11: Fixed the link (oops!).

Toward Remembering Oneself

2010-10-19T15:30:00.011-04:00

Some days the deadlines seem overwhelming. The list of tasks seems endless. The number of licks it will get to the faux-chocolate center of the dissertation lollipop seems to be one of those numbers that go on and on. Like Pi.

On those days, it's easy to forget a few crucial things. That, for instance, one likes to think. One likes to write. One even likes to turn double-hyphens into em dashes. That one chose one's dissertation topic (or...[insert long writing project here]) because one actually likes thinking and writing about it.

And then something-or-other happens (it's not always even easy to pinpoint what), but the waking occurs. One opens the document. It makes a certain amount of sense. Adding a few citations to Zotero no longer seems like a Sisyphean task, but something that's eminently manageable. One re-reads a few pages from, say, Walter Benjamin, and it jumpstarts the thinking and theorizing battery in one's brain. One starts to think about one's dissertation not as the weight of Atlas on one's shoulders, but something one gets to do. And one begins to revise and write. And it is good.

I think it can't be emphasized enough that I'm not simply talking about a change of attitude here, or a simple matter of procrastination and motivation. This is a forgetting and remembering of self. In these off periods, quite frankly, I'm convinced the grad student or writer literally forgets and/or strongly doubts his or her identity as a writer or a scholar. (Perhaps I'm not either of those things after all, the voices might murmur. Not really.)

Sometimes, in the good cases, something triggers an awakening and the demons flee. The students remember with joy who they are and that they enjoy it. That they really are writers and scholars. That it only takes 1500 or so licks to get to the center of the dissertation pop (the rest of those innumerable numbers are after the decimal point, so they don't matter). That they're already a good way in. And that the center is sweet and chewy.

(Now if only we could find a way for this forgetting to stop happening at least once during any major writing project, for both graduate students and writers in general...)

New Publication: Essay in The Spirit of Food

2010-10-05T06:40:00.005-04:00

So I promised the URL of the book in which I have an essay and recipe appearing, and there are several of them for The Spirit of Food. I haven't gotten my copy of this fabulous new book yet, but am incredibly honored about the company I'm keeping in this collection of essays with recipes: Wendell Berry, Robert Ferrar Capon, Andre Dubus, Lauren Winner...the list goes on and on.

At any rate, the book's Facebook page can keep you up-to-speed on the great press we've been getting. If you want to order it (which you of course will), it's also at both Amazon and the publisher's page. There's a glowing review at Heart & Minds. And it looks like the lovely blog The Church Cook is cooking a recipe per week and sharing photos, so make sure to follow along!

I can't wait to get my copy and see where this book travels!

Back after a Small Disruption

2010-10-05T06:30:00.004-04:00

So after that lovely post last time, in which I talked about how blessedly idyllic and balanced my life had become, my hard drive crashed and everything went wonky for awhile. [Pause given to reflect on the relation between pride and falls.]

Thankfully, my dissertation pages were saved, since I was writing them in the notes function of Zotero. [Pause to say "God bless Zotero" under breath.]

And really, most of the important stuff was saved, and I got a new bigger hard drive out of it for free. [Pause to say "God bless Apple Care."]

It just made it a royal pain to get back up to speed on things. Thankfully, I'm getting close to managing things once again. Life is crazy-busy now, at this point in the semester, but it's feeling a trifle more almost-possible to do this. [Pause after typing words, fearing they betoken another such hard drive crash, but decides honesty is the best policy.]

Drafting Away

2010-09-01T10:54:00.003-04:00

So this year reminds me a lot of my MA thesis year. I feel like I'm getting into a rhythm like I did then: teaching certain days, writing others. Training my mind to let the academic thoughts simmer in their polysyllabic stew during spare moments until it's time for them to be served. Feeling the pressure about writing a large document and needing to produce those words on schedule. All the same, enjoying the thinking and the writing.

There's one key difference, however: I'm better at letting those words come out faster. Of course, it helps that the meat of this topic has largely been marinating in my head for 3 years now. But it also helps that I've had lots of coursework semesters and the Big Nasty Exams to force me to write a lot in a short period of time.

Specifically, to force me to be okay with writing first drafts at first. That's important, because that's always been the hardest part for me. Once I've gotten something down on paper, I can do something with it. Of course, I know this draft I'm working on needs a lot of revision. But the fact that it's gradually growing in page count is an important thing. One I'm grateful for.

Back to Blogging

2010-08-27T10:41:00.004-04:00

So yeah, I've been away for quite a few months now. There have been very good reasons. Among them:

I gave a talk at Calvin's Festival of Faith & Writing in the spring. It was lovely. I talked about connections between the mystery genre and faith. People seemed interested, which was encouraging.
I took a creative writing class in the spring (for fun). One might think this would contribute toward blogging, but it didn't. Instead it poured the energies I would have put into this blog into new stories and critiques of others' stories. This, too, was an encouraging process.
I was narrowing in on my main dissertation theory. That was a lot of work.
I've been reading reading reading for the dissertation. I've done the bulk of that, thankfully--or so I hope. I'm in the midst of plowing out pages now while learning to balance that work with teaching that just started up again this week.
I've been teaching a lot, and loving it. I've realized more and more that I really love this profession. I'm particularly fond of coming up with activities based on Food Network and other reality show competitions. The formula is eminently useful for pedagogy.

At any rate, I'm back. Oh, and publication update: I have a new academic publication in the delightfully titled tome Interpersonal Relations and Social Patterns in Communication Technologies: Discourse Norms, Language Structures and Cultural Variables. Since I know all of you are going to run out and buy it, just look for chapter 3 by Deborah Leiter and John Dowd: "Textual Expectations, (Dis)Embodiment, and Social Presence in CMC."

In other publication news of the less academic brand, I have an essay appearing in a new book on spirituality and food coming out next month. It doesn't look like the book's listed on the publisher's website yet, but I'll provide a link when I have one.

Oh yeah, and the latter will be the first print-based publication under Deborah Leiter Nyabuti. It's a good name, and I'm excited about the prospect of using it more and more.

A Year of Reading

2009-12-08T09:40:00.000-05:00

I wanted to pause in my lessons from my time away from the blogosphere to present to you some lessons a woman learned in her year of reading. My favorite from the post, both as a writer and a reader:

I believe that in my year of reading my brain has become more robust and energized, and life all around me is better. The writer of a great book gives us, the readers, a new tank of oxygen, allowing us to dive again and again into life. Great good comes from reading great books.

May we all be able to write and read good books.

Writing Lessons: Research Results Gymnastics

2009-12-07T10:54:00.003-05:00

So this year I presented 4 papers and a poster at 4 academic conferences. This fall alone I presented two. The first one I presented at the Semiotics Society of America conference in Cincinnati in October, the second at the National Communication Association conference in Chicago in November.

Both of these papers started as course papers. The first started as a 30-page conference paper, and thence needed to be turned, Alice-in-Wonderland style, into a short abstract for submission. Then later, after acceptance, it needed to be cut down into 8-9 pages of coherent presentation. After the presentation, it needed to be cleaned up and the style converted to be submitted for the best student paper award.

However gymnastic these efforts sound, the other paper was even more convoluted in its parallel-bars-style revolutions. It started out as a 12-page course paper. Then it was converted into an abstract plus a description of how it contributed to the panel it was a part of (which was all people from our class). After that, it had to be extended to a 24-page paper to send to our eminent reviewer before it was cut to a 4-5 page paper short enough to be fit into the 10 minutes I had to present at the conference.

These gymnastic writing gyrations have at times made my writing muscles a little sore this fall--after all, it's not easy to sum up a 30-page paper in a few hundred words, and even harder to take a complicated French philosopher and express your ideas about his work in a 10-minute presentation.

But these exercises, like those for the physical body, have ultimately strengthened my writing skills. I even think they've helped my fiction-writing skills. For instance, previously writing from a plot outline, which previously felt unnatural, doesn't sound all that untenable after all these practices of research results gymnastics.

So I'm planning to work soon on some plot outlines for the short stories I've been wanting to write, since yes--forgot to mention it previously--I'm taking a short story-writing class in the spring. Since my course work is done, the course is for fun, and I'm definitely looking forward to it. I naturally think more in chapters of a bigger whole than in short stories, but after these gymnastics I've been doing this fall, it feels like my writing muscles might be just strong enough to pack a lot of oomph in those short pages. We'll see how it goes.

Writing Lessons: The Big Nasty Exams

2009-12-03T08:42:00.003-05:00

So I'm still not sure whether Blogosphere has fully accepted my apology, but as a show of good faith, I plan to do a series of posts on writing lessons learned during my bloggy absence.

The first--what I learned about writing in general from my Big Nasty PhD Exams (which I passed, by the way--woohoo! I'm ABD officially!).

Okay, so as I think I explained a few months ago, my exams consisted of 20 hours' worth of written exams in the period of a month on a variety of subjects related to courses I'd taken, followed by a 2-hour defense of what I'd written.

As it turned out, most of my exams were 2-hour in-house exams, which meant that on Mondays and Wednesdays, I studied for a particular question during the day, then from 3-5 p.m., came into the department and wrote on a laptop as fast as I could for 2 hours.

From this, I learned that I could create 7 nearly-coherent pages of prose in 2 hours. A valuable lesson, indeed. I'm pretty sure I can repeat this project in other academic and non-fiction writing circumstances, now that I have this skill. In fact, I'm thinking about using a "write a bunch in two hours several times per week" strategy for drafting the early stages of my dissertation.

The only downside? If you have to add citations, it can be a royal pain to go back in and add them afterward, as I learned when I tried the same strategy for my take-home prelim. So if I do this with my dissertation, I'm planning to have all my references pre-loaded into Zotero and clear in my head, ready to pull in clearly, BEFORE my 2-hour sessions begin.

I do like this idea, though--I think it would work better for me than the also-interesting "write a page a day" strategy mentioned by a colleague. See, with research and editing rhythms, it doesn't always work well to write something every single day. If I plan to do two or three 2-hour sessions per week (more if I'm feeling inspired), it will get a lot of pages out there, leaving me lots of research and editing and simmering time between. I think it just might work, both for the upcoming dissertation and in the future for other potential non-fiction drafting.

Woohoo! The Big Nasty Exams have both been successfully completed, AND have given me another writing skill. This is a beautiful thing.

In Which Deborah Tries to Make Nice with Blogosphere

2009-12-02T09:45:00.001-05:00

Deborah knocks loudly on Blogosphere's door, box of chocolates in hand.

Door cracks open. "What do YOU want?"

"Come on, Blogosphere, at least be willing to hear my case. I know it's been awhile, but there were prelims, and then those two conferences I had to give papers at, while teaching all the while and taking a class..."

"You didn't seem to have a problem keeping up with Facebook. Clearly you're better friends with her anyway."

"Well, that's true," Deborah replies, angling to insert her toe into the door to display the chocolates. "I did keep up with Facebook during that time, but that doesn't mean you're not important, Blogosphere. I just got so busy..."

"Clearly. Too busy to spend time with me. And now you want to come crying back to me, asking to be friends again."

"Yes. Yes, I do. I'm saying I'm sorry, dang it, and I brought virtual chocolates."

Door opens a bit wider.

[Was Deborah's attempt successful? Stay tuned or contribute your own continuation of the story in the comments...]

More than Halfway Up the Climbing Wall of Prelims...

2009-09-14T20:59:00.008-04:00

Deborah pauses, moistens her hands with chalk from the bag tied around her waist, and tightens the muscles inside her climbing shoes so that they curl more firmly around the footholds.

She looks down toward her feet to find the next sturdy foothold, then looks up. Look! The top of the wall! It looks so close now that her oral defense date is set for October 5, and now that all the written exams must be completed by next Thursday.

Only a few more footholds, she thinks. You can do this. Twelve hours of written tests down this month, eight to go. Three more in-house exams of two hours each, and finishing up that take-home before preparing for the two hour oral defense.

Her mental muscles are getting tired and a bit trembly, but the adrenaline is high. Surely she can push through. Moistening her hands once more, she takes a deep breath and moves one of them up toward the next handhold.

Onward and upward. Onward and upward.

Thriving in the Third Year

2009-09-09T11:49:00.010-04:00

So I'm learning/remembering a lot about my preferred working style/kind of life (including the writing life) by my first month of this, the third year of my PhD. Mostly, I'm confirming that I was right about myself, in that I thrive better when I don't have to take 3 classes while also doing a million other things.

It's not that I'm not fantastically busy. In fact, if possible, I'm busier than I was last year. But I'm finding that I enjoy the academic life much much more when I have more of a say in what I do when.

It's not that I don't have deadlines now: quite firm ones at times. I must finish these preliminary exams by September 24, for instance, because I'm given a month to do that. And I have a month to defend the exams. But I negotiated the timing of that, and have been able to choose what kinds of questions I wanted to take/prepare for when.

I chose to do this now, at the beginning of the semester, before my students have their major assignments due. This small juggling act I'm allowed to do allows me to be a better teacher, because I won't have so much other craziness at the end of the semester.

It also allows me to really focus on writing these prelims well, because while I have lesson planning (and have been really enjoying planning lessons this semester without 3 classes at the same time--having a chance to use my creativity to make up good new interactive activities), I don't have a huge amount of grading to do until the prelims are done.

It helps all of this so much that I only have one (last required) class I'm taking. I really like taking classes, but am glad the crazy 3-per-semester requirement is done.

I can begin to see the end of the tunnel a bit, and that helps too. After all, if I pass these exams, I'll be officially qualified to teach at the university level. After that, (just?) the dissertation, which is a topic I'm incredibly motivated to dig further into and have already collected and written a lot of material towards. (And since writing is my thing, and I wended my way through writing a 100 page MA thesis only a couple of years ago, the length of it doesn't overwhelm me too much. At least not at the moment.)

So, while I'm fantastically busy, I'm not minding that. I'm really enjoying this academic life of mine.

Sorry It's Been So Long...and Exam Progress

2009-09-04T10:47:00.005-04:00

Sorry it's been so long since I posted last, but the beginning of the semester has overwhelmed my blogging impulse a bit. I'm teaching 2 sections, taking my last officially required grad class, and using the first month of classes to take my 20 written hours of the Big Nasty Tests (to be followed by an oral defense).

Plus I've been blessed this week with the usual 2nd-week-of-school seasonal allergies. Thanks, Indiana--I'll find a way to repay you for this someday. Maybe drop an anvil on one of your fallow fields while no one is there. (That would be not harmful for anyone, but incredibly cathartic, don't you think?)

Actually, despite the busyness and the stupid allergies, as I settle in to teaching this course I haven't taught before and write my exams in 2-hour chunks, I find myself enjoying myself quite a bit. I'm very much enjoying my students, the class I'm taking will definitely be helpful, and I'm getting intensely good at writing 2000 words (give or take 200 words) in 2 hours in response to each of my preliminary exam questions.

In fact, I'm appreciating the learning experience of these exams much more than I thought I would. Reviewing the materials I've been learning over the last couple of years is really helping me synthesize everything I've learned. And writing the answers to questions in the areas I've studied that I'm looking to dissertate on is also helping me to transition to that area in my head as well.

So, despite the Big Nastiness of these tests, I'm--dare I say--enjoying them. Weird, I know. But true. I think--hope--I'll even enjoy the oral defense of these written portions next month. (I actually did enjoy my MA thesis defense, so there's precedent.)

Anyway, I have a take-home to work on this weekend (Labor Day DOES mean labor, doesn't it?), a few final revisions to that creative writing project I got hired for this summer, and, more immediately, two classes to teach this afternoon, so I'll sign off for now. More later.

Eeeeek!

2009-08-12T08:35:00.004-04:00

Well, I had a lovely vacation and now I'm back in the thick of it. Lots of assistantship hours in this last 2 weeks of summer, including revising that creative writing project.

Studying for my prelims, which I actually did quite a bit of while I was gone, but now, with less than 2 weeks left has become much more urgent. Making sure they're scheduled, etc.

Finishing up preps for school and teaching this fall. Getting ready to welcome and meet new classmates.

Yup, there will be little sleep in the next 2 weeks or so.

Nothing like 0-60 in 1.2 seconds. Or minutes. Or something. At any rate, it was pretty quick acceleration. Must...drink tea. Grab something to eat. Quickly, to move on to the next task.

Go team!

Oh, and I'll leave you with a great blog post reflecting on the question of whether writers need to be visible in the public eye. I find it particularly interesting since part of what they teach you at grad school is how to be visible within an academic community.

New Yorker Review of the Kindle

2009-07-27T16:11:00.008-04:00

I'm away from email and Internet for a week and a half starting the day after tomorrow. But I leave you with a fascinating, extensive, and largely negative review of the Kindle at the New Yorker. I haven't tried the Kindle yet, but am not surprised, having come from working for a book publisher in the web usability field. As the review points out, these devices have a ways to go before they've really got it yet.

I first heard about the MIT E-Ink project in 1998 or 1999, and not to be show-off-y, predicted when I first heard about it that it would take quite some time for these things to be remotely usable (witness the 10 years before even early adopters started actually using the things). Along with an excellent reflexive/auto-ethnographic in situ review of one user's experience with the device, this article includes a good history of the ebook movement as well.

Personally, I'm waiting for the invention of a book with a series of flexible Bible-page-thin pagescreens that can be loaded up with electronic ink and at least a series of which could actually be turned back over/easily referred back to like normal pages (after all, what good is a mystery, for instance, if you can't look back and try to figure out the clues?), but then loaded up with a different ebook from memory at any time as well as having a search function, etc. It could be something like 100 pages long and reload itself as necessary. Careful work would have to be done, as the author above mentions, toward making sure illustrations worked properly and the typefaces and contrasts, indices, etc. were well-designed.

And if they want to do anything with the academic--or any kind of "books-for-studying"--markets, they MUST MUST MUST work with the others (creators of Zotero, Endnote, etc.) who are creating academic reading/citation/note-taking tools and with services like Google Scholar and Google Books, which academics and students are already using a ton. And with the libraries who are working with zillions of academic databases.

Hm, well, back to my studying.

By the way, my paid creative project is now past its first writing stages and has moved on to rewriting and revising, completely on schedule. It's nice to be getting past that awful first draft stage and to feel on track to finish it before my Big Nasty Exams start. Woohoo!

Offline

2009-07-24T10:47:00.003-04:00

I'm on vacation as of later today. Granted, it will be a vacation in which I haul a large chunk of my books and binders for studying for my Big Nasty Tests with me, but still a vacation. I may post sometime early next week, but then I'll be offline for a week and a half.

It will probably be quite productive for my studying, though I would still prefer to have a laptop to take with me to type things in. Ah well, I'll survive, and likely thrive outside of those times when I have the deep urge to retrieve or create a new studying document.

A Plot, a Plot!

2009-07-22T11:51:00.004-04:00

I'm ridiculously excited. I love the creative process when it goes this well.

Over the last couple of weeks, I've been doing extensive research for this creative writing project for my assistantship. I've been thinking through all the pieces of information I know, and seeing if they fit with the very rough story framework I came up with last week.

Talking with various people to confirm. Floating my ideas past people as the story evolved.

Last night, after I lit my candles in the living room, I was trawling through the web doing some more research and came up with a potential ending for my story.

I slept on it. I woke up. I called around to a few people to confirm that my story was feasible and sounded like it would work for the client. It is, and it does.

I've got a plot! Now just to write the story! Currently I'm waiting a bit on some final key research from some of my contacts, but that should arrive later today. And before then, I can at least start jotting down some parts of the story that don't relate so closely to it.

I love it when a plan comes together (visualize evil tenty fingers).

My New Writing Practice

2009-07-21T21:18:00.005-04:00

I used to have this wonderful routine down, back before I went back to grad school. I was working more than full-time, so I'd work my 10 or 12 hours in a day. Then I'd come home, maybe play some piano, maybe take a walk (with or without my friend across the street) to clear my head from the stresses of the day.

And then, around 9 or 10 p.m., I'd sit down in the living room with the TV off, I'd journal out whatever thoughts were running around in my head, and I'd think and write at least 100 words of my creative project (often several pages). The writing would sometimes take me up till 2 or 3 a.m. And then I'd get up at 7 and start over again.

Retrospectively, I'm not sure how I had the stamina. But it worked well.

The problem with grad school is in part that I often work at home. It then becomes harder to find practices that clear my head and help me to move from one thing--and one kind of thing--to another. Especially when so much of my work of all kinds is done on the computer.

But I've begun exercising again (sans iPod because it died) and that is helping. And last night I discovered that lighting a few candles in my living room and staring at them for a few minutes also helps.

Which is good because I have to switch back and forth between heavily academic tasks, errands, and this creative project for my assistantship for the rest of the week. And the creative project has passed most of the research phase and moved into the writing stage. And there's a pretty strong deadline, so I need to get into the creative writing mode pretty frequently. And quickly. And well.

You go, candles. You go.