There's always one more thing...

Oooog, I am so ready to be done. Proofread? Check. Triple-proofread? Check. Gone over the journal's style guidelines? Check. Fixed all the damn footnotes? Check. Checked up on the bibliography? Check. Assembled the drawings and captions and gathered up all the permissions info? Sigh... check. Let's get it out already! My eyes will start to bleed if they have to look at this damn essay one more time!

Ok, write up the little cover letter.... no problem, it's basically a formality. (Hurry up!) Go to the website thingy ... log in ... no, create a log in ... find the right page ... (Arrrrgh hurry!) ... click on the right checkboxes... Ugh. Abstract. An abstract?

I want nothing more than to cut this albatross from my neck and now you want me to write a goddamn abstract for it?

Gaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhh!

Now you've done it, you made my eyes bleed. Somebody got a napkin they can hand me?

Death by Footnotes

Excuse me:


Arrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrgh!


I hate this! I am wrangling with footnotes right now --- for an essay that has been written as a dissertation chapter and then revised about 3 separate times. I need to go through and make sure that all the footnotes (and citations in general) I need are in this latest version, in the right place and the correct order. And I'm switching citation styles. Since I have expanded and contracted the piece, not to mention massively reorganized it each time, this is no easy undertaking!

Not to mention the fact that I hate waste and have the urge to include everything once I have found it, so I'm trying to figure out which things I need and which I just want to include because they finally got written down and made pretty.

And right now my nemesis can be summed up in a single word:

ibid.

I like a lot of things about research and writing, but this isn't one of 'em.

My Plate is Full

(Picture taken from The Girl Who Ate Everything's blog. )

Yes, my plate is full --- I have been diligently working away at cleaning my plate and getting all the various projects off of it, and yet, there is much to do in the rest of the summer! I wanted to represent my to-do list with an enormous plate of different fried foods, but the pictures were a little too off-putting. This one looks both inspiringly tasty and sure to induce major indigestion afterwards, which sounds about right.

Just like a plate of 15 or so fried twinkies, my projects are very rich and overwhelming and I can only work at them for a short time before needing to take a breather. But! While recovering for a moment or two I will encourage myself with my progress to date:

- finished, one revise-and-resubmit.
- very close to done, one previously rejected article
- extensively brainstormed, one brand new article idea

Not bad. Not bad at all. I'm actually happy about my work, except for that first five minutes when I sit down at the computer and my brain automatically blurts out, "WTF? You can just climb back into bed, you know. No one is there to stop you."

I also have:

- several small article-idea sprouts,


which I have compiled some crap on and put into a folder on my desktop. I'm hoping that the ideas will germinate completely on their own in my subconscious while I work on the other projects and in a couple years I will just wake up and bust out the entire article in one sitting. I can hope, right?

So you can see, as long as you completely ignore that whole dissertation-into-book-manuscript business, I am working my way through that overloaded plate. I want to finish that damn article revision, proof it up, and send it out next week. That should give me some breathing time before I have to get back on the job-search treadmill.

Anybody wanna revise my dissertation for me? I have no clue how to start! Some people gave me advice (thank you! I owe you an email!) but that was mainly useful advice about some specific publishers who might like my stuff. And other people mentioned the Germano book, which I have. I'm just kinda feeling overwhelmed by ... starting. Like, literally: do I go reread my dissertation and make a list of all the stuff that needs to be changed? do I brainstorm an introduction? How do I even start to tackle this? I mean, I can't unhinge my jaw like a snake, so how do you bite into a humongous burger that is the size of my head like the picture up there?

As a caveat, I should note that none of these projects have anything to do with each other ... so while I have a "research agenda," it would seem, I do not have a coherent research agenda. I like to study everything. I'm just finding stuff that's interesting and working on it, regardless of topic or field. If that's really bad, you might want to let me know.

Oh, and I ordered the gold bottle.

I Want the Shiny!

The shiny what? you may be asking. Anything, as long as it's shiny. I'm not picky; I'm in the mood for buying something shiny and pretty and fun --- something that I can dangle in front of myself when my brain is fried, saying "ooooh, sparkly!"

I missed my first-of-the-month academic deadline (oops). I have revised half of the article instead of the whole thing. On the other hand, I think I need this much time to get it all fixed, so I'm not too upset. Obviously having it done already would be ideal, but then again, so would having a team of handsome models to feed me chocolate truffles while I cogitate. As always, I'll just have to make do with the limitations of reality. Sigh.

Anyway, I was searching for something properly Shiny! and Fun! and decided that I need one of these:
Perty, huh? I like it. And I've been very good about going to my exercise class lately, and feeling grumpy about my workout clothes, which are boring and I'm tired of them, so maybe it is time to get something cute to look at while spinning! (I guess the team of models with chocolate would also work...)

I think I like this orange/gold color best:


But then again I like the red a lot too (I love the color red anyways):

Which do I choose? Help me!

Ok, also ---- I could just buy this now to celebrate the fact that I seem to have made exercise a new habit for myself, or I could not buy it until I send out the article and reward myself with it then. Only problem is if I had to order it and then wait, even longer, after all the waiting to get my article revised! Hmmm. Pondering. If you weigh in on this you also must pick a color! There was also a beautiful green-and-gold flowery type design on their site when I looked a few months ago, but it seems to be gone now. Sad. I guess it makes it a little easier to choose though.

In other silly news, my niece is such a total overprepared weirdo that she shops for Christmas presents early. She just emailed me to say that, at July, this is her latest and most behind she has ever been on her Christmas shopping, so I better get her some suggestions damn quick. I must be getting a garlic press in December. Heh.

I'm Oooooooold!

• I must be old because my brother has just turned 45. (hi bro) Eeeeek!
• On the plus side, his favorite birthday food is angelfood cake ... which my mom hates because it is not chocolate. So for the past several years we have had a tradition of making a dark chocolate fondue and everybody dips the cake and strawberries and banana chunks and other fruit in the fondue. Yum! Sadly, while raspberries go so well with dark chocolate, they do not hold up well to being skewered and dipped in hot liquid. It was just a mess rather than making it to anybody's mouths.
• One neice was talking about something --- music, I think --- and kept talking about "the 90s" in the same tone of voice that I talk about "the 60s." When I commented on how weird it was for me to hear talk about the 90s in this tone of them being totally distant and past and closed down and irrelevant, she goes, "well yeah. That's cause they are --- that was a totally long time ago!" Oh, I am cut to the quick! At least she was born in the 80s and thus can remember the 90s, unlike my other neice and nephews. "Yeah dude, they are starting to talk about "the millenium" in that same way already," another tells me. Sigh.
• Likewise I rewatched 10 Things I Hate About You today while going through a pile of bills and stuff --- it's still a cute movie, one of my fave teen Shakespeare adaptations, although time has proven that Julia Stiles really is incapable of acting and I had been giving her too much benefit of the doubt in that film --- and since we were on the subject of the 90s I mentioned it. "Ohhh, god, that movie is sooooo mid-90s," said my niece with an eye-roll. "it's cute" I protest. "Soooo dated" was the reply. This whole exchange is funny because I was having warm fuzzies during that movie because the "shrew" character reminds me a lot of this neice, who is blond and sarcastic and individualistic and strong and I wish she read The Feminine Mystique and listened to Bikini Kill like that character. Still, she's good people.
• Likewise my neices are both talking seriously about getting married and having babies because now that they have graduated, what the hell else do you do with your life? This makes me feel not only baffled by their logic but reeeeeeeeeally old at the thought of them with babies.
• After dinner and the presents we're all still sitting around the table talking and my various nieces and nephews are telling stories about various cute and crazy squirrels they have seen at their schools and when visiting college campuses. One neice starts talking about a cute video someone shot at Santa Cruz of a big squirrel and a little squirrel and I break in: "Noo! That was UCLA because I have seen that one! Someone posted it on my facebook!" It's here. I explained the "plot" and how cute it was and they all laughed and my brother started talking about some photoshopped squirrel pictures his friend sent him, where the squirrels have been spliced into various Star Wars scenes. My dad shakes his head and drops his forehead into his palm. "My god." he says. "And this is why we're going to lose in productivity to the Japanese." "Yeah," I say, "but at least we'll be happy."

The Academic Life Cycle

Here's a little blast from the past, to show you that I was weird and wacky and fond of bizarre metaphors (and apt to get myself in trouble in the department) long before I got myself a blog:


I had a quasi-admin gig at one point and made sure to abuse my powers (and my access to photoshop and dreamweaver). They let me run some workshops as long as I did all the stuff they wanted first, and --- surprise! --- I wanted workshops that would help me learn about the profession as a systematic structure, and how to survive in it.

Funny thing is, I got in major trouble for this poster --- one of the other grad students was very angry about it and gave me such shit. (I remember getting shouted at, or at least her getting way up in my face about it, in the hallway --- I don't do well with loud confrontations. We didn't mesh, personality-wise.) Anyway, she was incensed by the notion that we were spawns --- I am not just a number! I am not a frog! I remember her shouting. I didn't get it. Of course we are; recognizing this is the first step to changing it, or even surviving it. But then again, I'm perfectly ok with saying I'm a little cog in a big machine ---- rather than assert I am somehow special or unique, that I transcend or am separate from the machine, I'd rather take some steps to change the machine itself if it needs fixing. But I'm also very aware of the limits of my power to change things, even if I were to work collectively or collaboratively.

Anyway, like the teeny little mortarboard on the ABD frog? I feel like the tenured frog needs some sort of accessory too, but can't figure out what it would be.

I'm planning on working up some posts that link all my blatherings about certain topics, like grad school and the job search, in one central page list, but it's taking a lot longer than I had thought and so it will be a while before they go up. And someday, I may even write some new posts for the blog! Don't hold your collective amphibious breaths though --- I need to do my actual work too.

Coffeeshop Eavesdropping on Something Totally Different

So this Latino guy diagonally across from me is talking. He's wearing dark blue jeans with a narrow cut, so saturated with color they almost seem black, and a similarly vivid striped button-down shirt in blues and purples. He's very dark skinned, middle-aged, starting a bit of a paunch, with a long face and the prominent arched nose I associate with Mayan paintings. The guy across from him, over my shoulder and mostly out of sight, keeps saying that he must be so proud.

When Not Visible Guy asks, "so what was her dissertation about?" I perk up my ears.

"It's Edu-edu-edu -CA-shun, something, they've got these learning communities, and they track them across schools, but she's pulling them out and tracking things by kids and not by school, hell, I don't know. I keep asking her why she doesn't have something lined up next yet."

Now they are off on a conversation about money. It seems like there are two ways to give money, one is all about the show, it's a way of demonstrating your pride and showing both of you off to everyone; that kind you don't expect the other person to take the help, in fact you make a big show of offering money and they make a big show of not taking it and demonstrating their independence and that's totally cool. But then there is the other kind, where you want to give money because you are genuinely worried and want to help out, and how do you actually get the money to the daughter in scenario two when she's already made a show of refusing it like in scenario one? They're brainstorming methods; it kinda reminds me of when my dad and my brother fight over who gets to pay the check. :-)

* * *

She may be the first person in the family to get a degree but she's not the only one; he got a BS last spring (Not Visible Guy is ribbing him that now he has to go back to school and get more degrees than his girl. The guy groans. "Education is important," says the dad with a wry smile, "but not that important.") I'm assuming he did some sort of engineering thing? He seems to be in construction. These guys are making me cry the happy tears.


* * *

Ok I had thought the other guy was white but he's telling a story about somebody --- a relative? a friend? I missed that --- who is Hopi and Navajo on his mother's side and Cherokee and something else on his father's side. "They were big in The Movement," he says. "The Long Walk, total activist stuff. Totally messed him up because he was pushing all that and overloaded and nearly flunked out."

This is fascinating; I'm having a hard time concentrating on my own work stuff. Ok I missed part of that story ---- did the other guy manage to go back to school and graduate? ---- but the moral is all about the Importance of an Education. I totally love these guys. They are warming the cockles of my heart. Heh.