Well, near enough. Now what?
(I'm not sure why I bothered to come, but whatever. I'd just be eating chex mix and being nagged by relatives about being unemployed otherwise.)
Wednesday, December 26, 2007
I'm Here!!!
Well, near enough. Now what?
(I'm not sure why I bothered to come, but whatever. I'd just be eating chex mix and being nagged by relatives about being unemployed otherwise.)
An informative note about the MLA Graduate Student Caucus*
I don't have any of my material with me --- for really interesting info and background on our profession, you all should immediately read Ellen Messer-Davidow's book Disciplining Feminism: From Social Activism to Academic Discourse --- but I wanted to give a quick shout-out to another aspect of the Modern Language Association and conference: the Graduate Student Caucus, which has been around for quite a while, was very active in the 90s around the job crisis, and has been a bit more quiet lately but is still doing good work. I got peripherally involved as the big visible stuff was winding down, back when I first started grad school, but was sidetracked into more local political concerns.
The MLA GSC, though not quite as rowdy and visible as when William Pannapacker headed it up, still performs a valuable service in the profession, and that service is to shout loudly and repeatedly, "there's still a job crisis! Grad students are still being exploited and tossed aside! Hello! We don't have the money to do ____! (fill in the blank here)" In the past, the GSC has shouted and raised hell and gotten some concrete tiny improvement, but any time they (or we) stop our hollering and constant reminding, things slip back into a very uncomfortable status quo and those with power and secure, busy academic lives, get distracted from the fact that structurally, the big problems have not been solved.
Passing resolutions to make it standard for job candidates being flown out be reimbursed? GSC pressure. Resolutions not to ask job candidates for piles of material because of the copying and mailing costs? Also GSC (you'll notice that the burden of writing samples and other requests has crept back up again lately). There are more good things the GSC has done, but I don't have anything saved at my parents' house, or the Disciplining Feminism book with me. And we seem to have accidentally lost the web domain name for the GSC's cool website, and they are replacing it with a Facebook account. I'll note that not all grads have or want a Facebook account, and besides, a web site does a better job of preserving and presenting an organization's history and back story for easy searching. Might I suggest that the GSC look into a blog? They are free, and could combine the ease of Facebook with the flexibility of a web site. But I digress.
Below I'll put some workshop and panel info that went out on the GSC listserv, but first I want to reiterate the importance of the Disciplining Feminism book, not just to feminists and their allies, but anyone who wants some background on how the upheaval of the 60s impacted the MLA. In her book, Messer-Davidow traces out how feminism was transformed as it moved from activist groups outside the academy to an official academic discipline, and a methodology or complement to other academic disciplines, including literary studies. This is where the GSC, the 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago, and the Florence Howe award all tie together. Or at least, I remember constantly going "whoa! I had no idea about our past or why we do things this way!" while reading that chapter, so I hope it is similarly inspiring to you all. Plus the preface, in which she tells the story of how she became a feminist, is short and wonderfully teachable to undergraduates who haven't personally experienced the kind of sexist shit that used to be more rampant (although women getting a divorce today can still have their husbands say "I will ruin you" and all the institutions from the courts on down can collude, this isn't so common that all of your students will have encountered it). If you want to be in this profession, you have an obligation to know its history. This is a slightly less standard, but perhaps slightly more useful, account --- go get this book.
And now:
"Dear members of the Graduate Student Caucus of the MLA--
1.) MLA events:
This year the GSC will be hosting a panel, a professional roundtable, and an informal (i.e. "unofficial"!) happy hour get-together at MLA. We hope to see many folks at all three of these events.
The GSC's professional roundtable, "The Dissertation and the Book: A Roundtable for Graduate Students," will be Saturday, December 29th, 8:30-9:45 am in the Burnham Room, Hyatt Hotel, and will feature Professors Karen Cardozo, Jennifer Fleissner, Kent Puckett, and Jennifer Scappettone talking about the process of turning the dissertation into a book.
The GSC's academic panel, on "Genre and the Forms of History," will be on Sunday, December 30th, from 1:45-3:00 pm in Superior A, Sheraton Hotel, and will feature papers on the "postcolonial surreal" (by Maureen Fadem), neo-noir film (by Ted Martin), Renaissance tragedy (by Martin Moraw), and the contemporary Georgic (by Margaret Ronda).
The GSC will also host an informal Welcome to the MLA get-together on Thursday, December 27th, at 7:00 at the BIG Bar at the Hyatt Regency."
* This post was originally titled "A Short Note..." but, as usual, I can't be brief to save my life.
The MLA GSC, though not quite as rowdy and visible as when William Pannapacker headed it up, still performs a valuable service in the profession, and that service is to shout loudly and repeatedly, "there's still a job crisis! Grad students are still being exploited and tossed aside! Hello! We don't have the money to do ____! (fill in the blank here)" In the past, the GSC has shouted and raised hell and gotten some concrete tiny improvement, but any time they (or we) stop our hollering and constant reminding, things slip back into a very uncomfortable status quo and those with power and secure, busy academic lives, get distracted from the fact that structurally, the big problems have not been solved.
Passing resolutions to make it standard for job candidates being flown out be reimbursed? GSC pressure. Resolutions not to ask job candidates for piles of material because of the copying and mailing costs? Also GSC (you'll notice that the burden of writing samples and other requests has crept back up again lately). There are more good things the GSC has done, but I don't have anything saved at my parents' house, or the Disciplining Feminism book with me. And we seem to have accidentally lost the web domain name for the GSC's cool website, and they are replacing it with a Facebook account. I'll note that not all grads have or want a Facebook account, and besides, a web site does a better job of preserving and presenting an organization's history and back story for easy searching. Might I suggest that the GSC look into a blog? They are free, and could combine the ease of Facebook with the flexibility of a web site. But I digress.
Below I'll put some workshop and panel info that went out on the GSC listserv, but first I want to reiterate the importance of the Disciplining Feminism book, not just to feminists and their allies, but anyone who wants some background on how the upheaval of the 60s impacted the MLA. In her book, Messer-Davidow traces out how feminism was transformed as it moved from activist groups outside the academy to an official academic discipline, and a methodology or complement to other academic disciplines, including literary studies. This is where the GSC, the 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago, and the Florence Howe award all tie together. Or at least, I remember constantly going "whoa! I had no idea about our past or why we do things this way!" while reading that chapter, so I hope it is similarly inspiring to you all. Plus the preface, in which she tells the story of how she became a feminist, is short and wonderfully teachable to undergraduates who haven't personally experienced the kind of sexist shit that used to be more rampant (although women getting a divorce today can still have their husbands say "I will ruin you" and all the institutions from the courts on down can collude, this isn't so common that all of your students will have encountered it). If you want to be in this profession, you have an obligation to know its history. This is a slightly less standard, but perhaps slightly more useful, account --- go get this book.
And now:
"Dear members of the Graduate Student Caucus of the MLA--
1.) MLA events:
This year the GSC will be hosting a panel, a professional roundtable, and an informal (i.e. "unofficial"!) happy hour get-together at MLA. We hope to see many folks at all three of these events.
The GSC's professional roundtable, "The Dissertation and the Book: A Roundtable for Graduate Students," will be Saturday, December 29th, 8:30-9:45 am in the Burnham Room, Hyatt Hotel, and will feature Professors Karen Cardozo, Jennifer Fleissner, Kent Puckett, and Jennifer Scappettone talking about the process of turning the dissertation into a book.
The GSC's academic panel, on "Genre and the Forms of History," will be on Sunday, December 30th, from 1:45-3:00 pm in Superior A, Sheraton Hotel, and will feature papers on the "postcolonial surreal" (by Maureen Fadem), neo-noir film (by Ted Martin), Renaissance tragedy (by Martin Moraw), and the contemporary Georgic (by Margaret Ronda).
The GSC will also host an informal Welcome to the MLA get-together on Thursday, December 27th, at 7:00 at the BIG Bar at the Hyatt Regency."
* This post was originally titled "A Short Note..." but, as usual, I can't be brief to save my life.
Monday, December 24, 2007
A holiday tradition
Our family traditions are really much more about food and people, and boredom, than the religious stuff. One such tradition has been going strong in my family since 1986, when my cousins and I (all a year apart in age) got our first Nintendo systems:
The other half of the tradition is, of course, snarfing down as much chex mix as possible, to the exclusion even of regular meals. (Christmas cookies just don't do it for me; I'm a salty kind of girl).
It's all a great exercise in nostalgia and crunchy goodness, as my two cousins and I regress back to being 10 and fighting and being silly and competing with each other on a game system so old we need masking tape to hold the cords on the controllers and jimmy the cartridges in with paper clips. It's a powerful reminder of why you shouldn't throw out certain things just because they're outdated, or they mostly don't work any more.
Since getting the Nintendos we've had them break and had various other iterations of game systems come and go from the household, have had fascinations (always soon dropped) with computer games, and had a whole other generation of kids get born and grow up learning to play Metroid and Mega Man under the tutelage of us cousins.
So I just wanted to wish everyone out there happy holidays and remind everyone of the true meaning of Christmas: I've got to go beat Kevin's ass at Joust.
The other half of the tradition is, of course, snarfing down as much chex mix as possible, to the exclusion even of regular meals. (Christmas cookies just don't do it for me; I'm a salty kind of girl).
It's all a great exercise in nostalgia and crunchy goodness, as my two cousins and I regress back to being 10 and fighting and being silly and competing with each other on a game system so old we need masking tape to hold the cords on the controllers and jimmy the cartridges in with paper clips. It's a powerful reminder of why you shouldn't throw out certain things just because they're outdated, or they mostly don't work any more.
Since getting the Nintendos we've had them break and had various other iterations of game systems come and go from the household, have had fascinations (always soon dropped) with computer games, and had a whole other generation of kids get born and grow up learning to play Metroid and Mega Man under the tutelage of us cousins.
So I just wanted to wish everyone out there happy holidays and remind everyone of the true meaning of Christmas: I've got to go beat Kevin's ass at Joust.
Friday, December 21, 2007
The 2007 Beloved Books Meme
I'm tired, and yet I have been allowed access to the family computer. Therefore I will post on a meme I was tagged for --- I believe, by multiple people, as usual --- because it does not involve much brainpower. You won't get pictures of the covers, either; too much of a hassle on someone else's computer.
The rules, as explained at Absurdist Paradise, are to list (or describe, or quote) five books you have loved over 2007. They might not be books published in 2007, but you experienced them this year. What's depressing about this is that I don't think I read five books for pleasure over the whole year, sigh. Even if you threw in the texts I read for my diss, it's still primarily historical and critical stuff, not fiction or reading that is "pleasurable." And it's probably not possible for me to keep my tiny reading list if we stick to the criteria that I loved them and they really moved me, cause, as I mentioned in some distant blog posts, most of what I did read this year was just all right. Is there anything sadder than feeling constantly too behind or too exhausted or too overworked and guilty to do what you always truly wanted to do, which is read? Anyway:
1. Citizen 13660, by Mine Okubo. When you think "historical graphic novel" everyone instantly goes "Maus blah blah blah," and yes, Maus is wonderful and moving, but Okubo's spare drawings and blunt narrative of the Japanese American internment during World War II gives us a different entry into what we think of as graphic novels, the history of WWII, and the history of the graphic novel itself, as it was published at the close of the war. Trained as an artist, and actually having worked as an assistant to Diego Rivera on his murals in San Francisco, Okubo's visual style and focus on a collective protagonist make for a reinvention of "comic book" style (not without a biting sense of humor). She documents the removal of Asian Americans first to the Tanforan Race Track near San Francisco, and then to an internment camp in Topaz. What fascinates me about this book is how she documents the little acts of resistance and agency the Japanese Americans used in their everyday life --- most poignantly to me, she shows how they ripped apart part of the race track and recreated Japanese-style formal gardens, complete with little bridges and a mini-lake, as part of making themselves feel "at home" and providing themselves with some beauty and dignity. A lot of this novel is about everyday artistry, and using beauty as resistance, even if it might not be recognizable as political resistance. After reading this book, I wanted to go to San Bruno and check it out. Unfortunately, I guess they (the US gov? local racetrack owner? dunno) returned Tanforan back to its previous racetrack glory after all the Japanese Americans were shipped out, and now it is a shopping mall. They've erected a plaque there though.
2. Native Speaker, Chang-Rae Lee. I think I posted a bit on this one back in spring; he has such a lovely way with words and sketching out powerful scenes. Being as it's set in New York I don't have quite the same background and connection to this one; it feels like New York should feel, but someone who actually knows the place should speak to that rather than me. Henry Park, the protagonist, moves through the book as if swathed in cotton, but you aren't sure at first if that's because of his status as the child of Korean immigrants in America, the breakdown of his marriage, or the tragic loss that he's experienced and never really dealt with. (I don't want to give too much away.) He is a keeper of secrets. So is New York. In Lee's book, New York is a city bursting with immigrants, throbbing with noise, and yet everyone is isolated, desperately desiring to make a connection. This city, so full of grit and crowds and yet so dreamlike and profoundly saturated with language made tangible and strange, reminds me of nothing so much as Roth's Call it Sleep, also a novel of Global New York before it was fashionable to consider it that. I liked that this novel, unlike most literature, dealt with politics --- literally, I mean party politics and campaigns --- yet I wasn't quite happy with how that strand of it played out. I may hand it off to some of my poli sci and soc friends and see if they can put their fingers on it more securely.
3. Atonement, Ian McEwan. You may recall that I read this recently and was all, eh, fine. But now I have seen the film --- a free pre-screening, no less! --- and I will tell everyone: drop the book! Go see the film! I loved loved the film version. There was an interesting interview with the director in our local free weekly, where he said something to the effect of "everyone says they have to get away from the book to make a good adaptation. Me, I stayed exactly with the book." Now, I think this statement of his is highly disengenuous. Bad adaptations "stay with the book" as in try to put all the events, words, dialoge, on the screen. Good adaptations --- like this one --- translate the novel in a metaphoric fashion into what is appropriate for a different medium. The director here boils down pages and pages of prose into, say, a spatial arrangement, or a sweeping camera move, and the result is, in my opinion, a better work of art than the original (but remember I found all the name-dropping of famous dead authors pretentious). The score has wonderful percussion pieces that sound like (and perhaps incorporate) a typewriter; you can see the imaginative gears turning too fast in Briony's little writer brain. And the first half or so has a lovely sharp wit that I don't really remember from the novel, and snappy intercut dialogue that one review aptly characterized as "telegraphic." That and I am lusting after the green satin backless evening dress, even though I would look terrible in it. So go see, go see!
4. The Namesake, Jhumpa Lahiri. After all that praise of craft and beauty up above it would be harsh to note, as my friend rather cruelly did, that she had heard Lahiri wanted a Booker-Prize winning novel and sat down with the last ten year's or sos shortlists and reverse-engineered what the prize committees were looking for. On the other hand, I responded, if you or I tried to do that we probably wouldn't ever have produced a finished novel, much less a good one, so maybe there's something to that approach. On the other other hand, I heard that one of the profs uses the phrase "aesthetics without politics" to teach this book and that really gets at something that bothered me in this book --- such beautiful, lapidary sentences, such poignant moments and encounters, such gorgeous stuff recounted in equisite detail, and yet part of me was constantly thinking, "I'm supposed to feel pity and terror because this couple can't renovate their own historic brownstone and afford the right kind of gourmet cheese?" I also could tell you the exact floor plan of his one girlfriend's parents' massive house and cabin on the lake, but nothing about the New York of this book. The other denizens of this New York, besides the few main characters, are also ghostly. Is that a shortcoming of the novelist or a sign of the characters' self-centeredness? Not sure. But it is a very pretty read.
I'm even more tired now, and can't think of another book. Can you all just consider yourselves tagged and go on without me? Maybe I could read something in the odd-end days of the year and come back and update this post later. Yeah, like that's gonna happen. But do as I say, not as I do!
The rules, as explained at Absurdist Paradise, are to list (or describe, or quote) five books you have loved over 2007. They might not be books published in 2007, but you experienced them this year. What's depressing about this is that I don't think I read five books for pleasure over the whole year, sigh. Even if you threw in the texts I read for my diss, it's still primarily historical and critical stuff, not fiction or reading that is "pleasurable." And it's probably not possible for me to keep my tiny reading list if we stick to the criteria that I loved them and they really moved me, cause, as I mentioned in some distant blog posts, most of what I did read this year was just all right. Is there anything sadder than feeling constantly too behind or too exhausted or too overworked and guilty to do what you always truly wanted to do, which is read? Anyway:
1. Citizen 13660, by Mine Okubo. When you think "historical graphic novel" everyone instantly goes "Maus blah blah blah," and yes, Maus is wonderful and moving, but Okubo's spare drawings and blunt narrative of the Japanese American internment during World War II gives us a different entry into what we think of as graphic novels, the history of WWII, and the history of the graphic novel itself, as it was published at the close of the war. Trained as an artist, and actually having worked as an assistant to Diego Rivera on his murals in San Francisco, Okubo's visual style and focus on a collective protagonist make for a reinvention of "comic book" style (not without a biting sense of humor). She documents the removal of Asian Americans first to the Tanforan Race Track near San Francisco, and then to an internment camp in Topaz. What fascinates me about this book is how she documents the little acts of resistance and agency the Japanese Americans used in their everyday life --- most poignantly to me, she shows how they ripped apart part of the race track and recreated Japanese-style formal gardens, complete with little bridges and a mini-lake, as part of making themselves feel "at home" and providing themselves with some beauty and dignity. A lot of this novel is about everyday artistry, and using beauty as resistance, even if it might not be recognizable as political resistance. After reading this book, I wanted to go to San Bruno and check it out. Unfortunately, I guess they (the US gov? local racetrack owner? dunno) returned Tanforan back to its previous racetrack glory after all the Japanese Americans were shipped out, and now it is a shopping mall. They've erected a plaque there though.
2. Native Speaker, Chang-Rae Lee. I think I posted a bit on this one back in spring; he has such a lovely way with words and sketching out powerful scenes. Being as it's set in New York I don't have quite the same background and connection to this one; it feels like New York should feel, but someone who actually knows the place should speak to that rather than me. Henry Park, the protagonist, moves through the book as if swathed in cotton, but you aren't sure at first if that's because of his status as the child of Korean immigrants in America, the breakdown of his marriage, or the tragic loss that he's experienced and never really dealt with. (I don't want to give too much away.) He is a keeper of secrets. So is New York. In Lee's book, New York is a city bursting with immigrants, throbbing with noise, and yet everyone is isolated, desperately desiring to make a connection. This city, so full of grit and crowds and yet so dreamlike and profoundly saturated with language made tangible and strange, reminds me of nothing so much as Roth's Call it Sleep, also a novel of Global New York before it was fashionable to consider it that. I liked that this novel, unlike most literature, dealt with politics --- literally, I mean party politics and campaigns --- yet I wasn't quite happy with how that strand of it played out. I may hand it off to some of my poli sci and soc friends and see if they can put their fingers on it more securely.
3. Atonement, Ian McEwan. You may recall that I read this recently and was all, eh, fine. But now I have seen the film --- a free pre-screening, no less! --- and I will tell everyone: drop the book! Go see the film! I loved loved the film version. There was an interesting interview with the director in our local free weekly, where he said something to the effect of "everyone says they have to get away from the book to make a good adaptation. Me, I stayed exactly with the book." Now, I think this statement of his is highly disengenuous. Bad adaptations "stay with the book" as in try to put all the events, words, dialoge, on the screen. Good adaptations --- like this one --- translate the novel in a metaphoric fashion into what is appropriate for a different medium. The director here boils down pages and pages of prose into, say, a spatial arrangement, or a sweeping camera move, and the result is, in my opinion, a better work of art than the original (but remember I found all the name-dropping of famous dead authors pretentious). The score has wonderful percussion pieces that sound like (and perhaps incorporate) a typewriter; you can see the imaginative gears turning too fast in Briony's little writer brain. And the first half or so has a lovely sharp wit that I don't really remember from the novel, and snappy intercut dialogue that one review aptly characterized as "telegraphic." That and I am lusting after the green satin backless evening dress, even though I would look terrible in it. So go see, go see!
4. The Namesake, Jhumpa Lahiri. After all that praise of craft and beauty up above it would be harsh to note, as my friend rather cruelly did, that she had heard Lahiri wanted a Booker-Prize winning novel and sat down with the last ten year's or sos shortlists and reverse-engineered what the prize committees were looking for. On the other hand, I responded, if you or I tried to do that we probably wouldn't ever have produced a finished novel, much less a good one, so maybe there's something to that approach. On the other other hand, I heard that one of the profs uses the phrase "aesthetics without politics" to teach this book and that really gets at something that bothered me in this book --- such beautiful, lapidary sentences, such poignant moments and encounters, such gorgeous stuff recounted in equisite detail, and yet part of me was constantly thinking, "I'm supposed to feel pity and terror because this couple can't renovate their own historic brownstone and afford the right kind of gourmet cheese?" I also could tell you the exact floor plan of his one girlfriend's parents' massive house and cabin on the lake, but nothing about the New York of this book. The other denizens of this New York, besides the few main characters, are also ghostly. Is that a shortcoming of the novelist or a sign of the characters' self-centeredness? Not sure. But it is a very pretty read.
I'm even more tired now, and can't think of another book. Can you all just consider yourselves tagged and go on without me? Maybe I could read something in the odd-end days of the year and come back and update this post later. Yeah, like that's gonna happen. But do as I say, not as I do!
Wednesday, December 19, 2007
A Cog in Review
My biggest problem is time. Well, time and my memory. (What about your unemployment and current job search? --- Shut up, shut up! You are distracting me from my point and making me talk to myself. I mean, ahem. I didn’t hear anything just now.)
Yes, my biggest struggle is managing current time and remembering what has happened previously. I blame the trauma of my field exams, which radically altered my brain cells and turned me into the pile of eccentricities and neuroses I am today. (Perhaps all those crazy and eccentric professors in our dept. really were normal as grad students. Perish the thought.) Or perhaps the second exam and going ABD, which leaves one feeling unmoored and at sea in a very unstructured environment. Couple that with a very big project (the dissertation) and it’s hard to distinguish the days from each other, month to month.
Profgrrrl did a semester wrap-up post a little while ago, which I thought was an excellent idea. I’m not going to steal the exact same format, since I’m not on the tenure track and dealing with the balance of research-teaching-service (scary!), but I love the idea of periodically looking back and remembering one’s projects and accomplishments. Otherwise I assume that I have been doing no work at all, since my dissertation was not finished instantaneously, and then I really do get no work done because I am depressed and disheartened. You all reading this blog might think all I do is take naps, pet my cats, and complain about not being finished writing yet --- which is true! --- except I do find some time to get real work done as well.
Not only do I have this blog, but a few years before I started it I began a “bitching log” ---- a journal where I tried to keep tabs on my problems and how I was feeling about them (as opposed to whining about the exact same problems to my dissertation group every day). So I’m looking back over it and picking details out of it, as well as my old planner (no I don’t ever remember to throw anything away --- I will be some future historian’s archival dream, if s/he is studying the procrastination patterns of grad students.)
So with that, let’s review the past year:
January
It’s not in the bitching journal but I remember having a horrible and emotional meeting with my advisor right after break ---- basically a meltdown over last year’s job market. Advisor said she wouldn’t let me drop a chapter and graduate right away since I didn’t have a job waiting for me, and we had a lot of … conflict and misunderstanding about my options for work and funding. On the more positive side I turned in my chapter.
February
I started this blog around this point, got a completely useless “readership” grading for a class ---- lots of work for not a lot of money and my fees weren’t paid by it either. I did a lot of rereading and rewriting for an article that had been rejected (it came back right in the middle of getting job rejection letters --- that was fun!), researched and wrote a conference paper, and then went to that conference.
March
Ok, it doesn’t look like I did do much this month. Oops. I continued grading for my readership and kept banging my head against the brick wall that was the rejected article. I did go camping, though.
April
With Spring, I managed to grab an actual TAship, and started reading and gathering my research for Chapter 4 --- I may have even started prewriting. Sometime around this point I finally decided that the (really harsh!) readers’ reports were right and this article was not salvageable ---- a lot of it was derivative and the most interesting stuff I had to say had recently been scooped. So I put it aside, reluctantly. --- And in a side note, I learn everything by doing it wrong the first time. You should hear about all the things I learned about how not to do research or how not to have an advisor-advisee relationship during my senior thesis. Now, I feel like I learned a whole lot more, and eventually am doing a lot better, than some of my friends who had a very smooth and easy time doing a more manageable senior thesis with a more “hands-on” advisor. But as the job market and tenure track and all of academia gets more competitive and professionalized, the stakes for “fucking up as a learning strategy” get more and more dangerous. I’d hate to think that a combination of rocky diss writing and steep publishing learning curve, combined with funding cuts and raising bureaucratic bars, might push me out of academia. But perhaps that is a rant for another day.
(And I have a note that as of April 23rd my chapter is done. That must be the day I got the whole committee signed off on it.)
May
Still teaching and grading, still reading and gathering chapter material, and I started pre-planning my summer course (I think I had to apply for it back in Jan). Then I wrote another conference paper and went to that conference, where I mocked some people cruelly for their appearance (that would be on the blog, not in person). My panel, I should add, was highly attended.
This month would actually be a year anniversary of being dumped, but there’s no notes about it in the bitching log, so I guess I was too busy to care. (Ha, take that, dude!)
June
This month I started revising one of my chapters into an article and was buried in end-of-the-quarter grading. I was still checking out books on chap. 4 evidently too. I also had the brilliant idea of how to get work done while exhausted, but it backfired.
July
A very productive, if boring, month --- I revised and sent out the article, plus revised the conference paper into an article and sent it out. Despite the occasional need for a nap, I was still reading background stuff for chap. 4 and preparing in earnest for my summer class. Oh, and probably sitting around on the beach too. But it was highly productive sitting, I’m sure.
I also had a minor freakout at the thought that one needs to plan out academic stuff a year in advance, as well as wondered how to juggle all the different academic deadlines. So I asked you all about it. You provided the advice, I brought the pretty pictures.
August
That summer course kicked my ass! I even stopped filling out any of my datebooks or journals after a while. I had no energy to do anything outside of teaching, grading, and prep. Heaven help me if I get a job somewhere with a high teaching load and each course takes that much work to set it up.
September
Finished the class and started right into the job market prep. I must have chased down and harassed my letter writers for a month straight. I also wrote another conference paper. Once I get to that spot in my chapter, I’ll unearth it and splice it in.
I asked the blogospherians for lots of advice, and you all delivered. What follows is my nifty Compendium of Job Search Advice and General Bitchiness, and no, you can't really have one without the other.
October
Full-on job market craziness. I should have kept a job-materials word count like with the international dissertation writing month count. I updated my letter and abstract, rewrote my statement of teaching philosophy, and applied for over 60 jobs. I asked the blogosphere about the usefulness and competitiveness of postdocs, and so far I’ve applied to one. Unfortunately, nobody counts or cares how many words you produce in the process of applying to jobs, even though it feels like the job search is a course load’s worth of work in and of itself.
Other job-search related discussions included how shitty expensive the whole process is, when you should go out on the market (ABD or PhD in hand? I think the answer is that you're fucked either way, but differently. Go figure.), and what I should do with those stupid piles of teaching evaluations. Oh, and a response to the debate over "it's a first job" vs "it's your one and only job you just married it and now you can never leave you sap."
November
Still reading for chapter 4 and still dealing with bits of the job applications, this is the first month I actually sat down and produced my chapter outline and pages of prose. This is really important for me to remember, because I keep thinking that I was intensively writing the chapter since January, not pulling the research. And then I think that this chapter was the only thing on my plate all year and start kicking myself for not being done. Really, I’m moving along and making some progress.
December
Well, that’s where we are now. You should be caught up. (Or you could just look over there to your right and see the word meter. I have another chunk that I’m revising into drafty sentences and will officially count them as soon as they no longer sound like stream-of-consciousness.)
Ok, so now that I've written out all my accomplishments I feel like I worked hard this past year, but damn if I'm not incredibly boring and pitiful ---- I have no life! Great, now I've just switched the topics to be upset about.
Yes, my biggest struggle is managing current time and remembering what has happened previously. I blame the trauma of my field exams, which radically altered my brain cells and turned me into the pile of eccentricities and neuroses I am today. (Perhaps all those crazy and eccentric professors in our dept. really were normal as grad students. Perish the thought.) Or perhaps the second exam and going ABD, which leaves one feeling unmoored and at sea in a very unstructured environment. Couple that with a very big project (the dissertation) and it’s hard to distinguish the days from each other, month to month.
Profgrrrl did a semester wrap-up post a little while ago, which I thought was an excellent idea. I’m not going to steal the exact same format, since I’m not on the tenure track and dealing with the balance of research-teaching-service (scary!), but I love the idea of periodically looking back and remembering one’s projects and accomplishments. Otherwise I assume that I have been doing no work at all, since my dissertation was not finished instantaneously, and then I really do get no work done because I am depressed and disheartened. You all reading this blog might think all I do is take naps, pet my cats, and complain about not being finished writing yet --- which is true! --- except I do find some time to get real work done as well.
Not only do I have this blog, but a few years before I started it I began a “bitching log” ---- a journal where I tried to keep tabs on my problems and how I was feeling about them (as opposed to whining about the exact same problems to my dissertation group every day). So I’m looking back over it and picking details out of it, as well as my old planner (no I don’t ever remember to throw anything away --- I will be some future historian’s archival dream, if s/he is studying the procrastination patterns of grad students.)
So with that, let’s review the past year:
January
It’s not in the bitching journal but I remember having a horrible and emotional meeting with my advisor right after break ---- basically a meltdown over last year’s job market. Advisor said she wouldn’t let me drop a chapter and graduate right away since I didn’t have a job waiting for me, and we had a lot of … conflict and misunderstanding about my options for work and funding. On the more positive side I turned in my chapter.
February
I started this blog around this point, got a completely useless “readership” grading for a class ---- lots of work for not a lot of money and my fees weren’t paid by it either. I did a lot of rereading and rewriting for an article that had been rejected (it came back right in the middle of getting job rejection letters --- that was fun!), researched and wrote a conference paper, and then went to that conference.
March
Ok, it doesn’t look like I did do much this month. Oops. I continued grading for my readership and kept banging my head against the brick wall that was the rejected article. I did go camping, though.
April
With Spring, I managed to grab an actual TAship, and started reading and gathering my research for Chapter 4 --- I may have even started prewriting. Sometime around this point I finally decided that the (really harsh!) readers’ reports were right and this article was not salvageable ---- a lot of it was derivative and the most interesting stuff I had to say had recently been scooped. So I put it aside, reluctantly. --- And in a side note, I learn everything by doing it wrong the first time. You should hear about all the things I learned about how not to do research or how not to have an advisor-advisee relationship during my senior thesis. Now, I feel like I learned a whole lot more, and eventually am doing a lot better, than some of my friends who had a very smooth and easy time doing a more manageable senior thesis with a more “hands-on” advisor. But as the job market and tenure track and all of academia gets more competitive and professionalized, the stakes for “fucking up as a learning strategy” get more and more dangerous. I’d hate to think that a combination of rocky diss writing and steep publishing learning curve, combined with funding cuts and raising bureaucratic bars, might push me out of academia. But perhaps that is a rant for another day.
(And I have a note that as of April 23rd my chapter is done. That must be the day I got the whole committee signed off on it.)
May
Still teaching and grading, still reading and gathering chapter material, and I started pre-planning my summer course (I think I had to apply for it back in Jan). Then I wrote another conference paper and went to that conference, where I mocked some people cruelly for their appearance (that would be on the blog, not in person). My panel, I should add, was highly attended.
This month would actually be a year anniversary of being dumped, but there’s no notes about it in the bitching log, so I guess I was too busy to care. (Ha, take that, dude!)
June
This month I started revising one of my chapters into an article and was buried in end-of-the-quarter grading. I was still checking out books on chap. 4 evidently too. I also had the brilliant idea of how to get work done while exhausted, but it backfired.
July
A very productive, if boring, month --- I revised and sent out the article, plus revised the conference paper into an article and sent it out. Despite the occasional need for a nap, I was still reading background stuff for chap. 4 and preparing in earnest for my summer class. Oh, and probably sitting around on the beach too. But it was highly productive sitting, I’m sure.
I also had a minor freakout at the thought that one needs to plan out academic stuff a year in advance, as well as wondered how to juggle all the different academic deadlines. So I asked you all about it. You provided the advice, I brought the pretty pictures.
August
That summer course kicked my ass! I even stopped filling out any of my datebooks or journals after a while. I had no energy to do anything outside of teaching, grading, and prep. Heaven help me if I get a job somewhere with a high teaching load and each course takes that much work to set it up.
September
Finished the class and started right into the job market prep. I must have chased down and harassed my letter writers for a month straight. I also wrote another conference paper. Once I get to that spot in my chapter, I’ll unearth it and splice it in.
I asked the blogospherians for lots of advice, and you all delivered. What follows is my nifty Compendium of Job Search Advice and General Bitchiness, and no, you can't really have one without the other.
October
Full-on job market craziness. I should have kept a job-materials word count like with the international dissertation writing month count. I updated my letter and abstract, rewrote my statement of teaching philosophy, and applied for over 60 jobs. I asked the blogosphere about the usefulness and competitiveness of postdocs, and so far I’ve applied to one. Unfortunately, nobody counts or cares how many words you produce in the process of applying to jobs, even though it feels like the job search is a course load’s worth of work in and of itself.
Other job-search related discussions included how shitty expensive the whole process is, when you should go out on the market (ABD or PhD in hand? I think the answer is that you're fucked either way, but differently. Go figure.), and what I should do with those stupid piles of teaching evaluations. Oh, and a response to the debate over "it's a first job" vs "it's your one and only job you just married it and now you can never leave you sap."
November
Still reading for chapter 4 and still dealing with bits of the job applications, this is the first month I actually sat down and produced my chapter outline and pages of prose. This is really important for me to remember, because I keep thinking that I was intensively writing the chapter since January, not pulling the research. And then I think that this chapter was the only thing on my plate all year and start kicking myself for not being done. Really, I’m moving along and making some progress.
December
Well, that’s where we are now. You should be caught up. (Or you could just look over there to your right and see the word meter. I have another chunk that I’m revising into drafty sentences and will officially count them as soon as they no longer sound like stream-of-consciousness.)
Ok, so now that I've written out all my accomplishments I feel like I worked hard this past year, but damn if I'm not incredibly boring and pitiful ---- I have no life! Great, now I've just switched the topics to be upset about.
Monday, December 17, 2007
Ok, I fold
A while back people were posting cute "random facts" on their blog, from a generator that would state exactly how ridiculously badass one was. I can't find the original link now, but I remember that one of mine was "Sisyphus once won a World Poker Championship by bluffing with a hand that consisted only of a Jack of Spades, a two, the poker rules card and a Green 4 from the Uno set."
I'm thinking my job market hand currently looks a lot like that. And I'm not as magically badass as that generator claims.
I've been trying to come to grips with this all weekend. There are only a couple places I applied to that are still unaccounted for on the wiki, and frankly I don't see myself as a close fit and desirable candidate for them. I'm basically out, at least for this round. And I need to work through this and get over it as soon as possible. (That's what the wiki is good for.) Mostly, I'm ok with it and will soon be asking you-all's advice on various Plan Part IIs I'm working on.
What I really need to do, though, is to shift myself out of waiting mode and into action. The old goal was to try to land a job by getting an MLA interview. The new goal is to make myself as attractive a job candidate as possible by 1) finishing my dissertation and 2) getting some pubs out there. I absolutely have to get going on this and not sit around fruitlessly waiting. I have shitloads left to do on the dissertation and unless I get cracking, finishing it by grad division's deadlines is going to be nearly impossible.
Sigh. I have to get moving. I can't get myself moving. Hello, self! Get moving! Get writing. If you're stuck on that spot, maybe try writing a chunk from the end of the chapter next. What I want to do is take a nap. How will that help me graduate on time??? Gahh.
I'm thinking my job market hand currently looks a lot like that. And I'm not as magically badass as that generator claims.
I've been trying to come to grips with this all weekend. There are only a couple places I applied to that are still unaccounted for on the wiki, and frankly I don't see myself as a close fit and desirable candidate for them. I'm basically out, at least for this round. And I need to work through this and get over it as soon as possible. (That's what the wiki is good for.) Mostly, I'm ok with it and will soon be asking you-all's advice on various Plan Part IIs I'm working on.
What I really need to do, though, is to shift myself out of waiting mode and into action. The old goal was to try to land a job by getting an MLA interview. The new goal is to make myself as attractive a job candidate as possible by 1) finishing my dissertation and 2) getting some pubs out there. I absolutely have to get going on this and not sit around fruitlessly waiting. I have shitloads left to do on the dissertation and unless I get cracking, finishing it by grad division's deadlines is going to be nearly impossible.
Sigh. I have to get moving. I can't get myself moving. Hello, self! Get moving! Get writing. If you're stuck on that spot, maybe try writing a chunk from the end of the chapter next. What I want to do is take a nap. How will that help me graduate on time??? Gahh.
Friday, December 14, 2007
Random Bullets of Dentistry
- So I went to get my teeth cleaned yesterday; it turns out that it has been two years rather than one --- fuck, where has the time gone? Evidently I didn't have the energy to deal with this shit the last job market run.
- No cavities, but I got a lecture on having incipient gum disease and not knowing how to brush from the Painful Tarter Nazi Nurse. (seriously! other grads have named her this, not me.)
- I still have no job interviews and am frankly not very hopeful, as who would hire somebody so fucking incompetent that they can't clean their own teeth?
- Besides a dentist appointment I got my eye exam out of the way, as I obviously don't have other stuff to deal with at the moment.
- Did you know you have lymph nodes all around your jawline and collarbone? The dentist examined my jaw and lymph nodes before looking at my teeth and it was kinda nice ---- like a very gentle lymph node massage. At least I seem to have no allergies or sinus infection stuff.
- I have a "divot" in one of my front teeth ---- purely cosmetic and a sign of the regular wear and tear of aging. It's not through to anything important, unlike one corner of a back tooth that we have to watch, it just looks funny. Great. I must say I'm more vain than interested in health.
- Today we had the department "holiday" (read: Christmas oops we should be more inclusive of other religions) party and I drank lots, but not enough, of wine. I'm sure that was horrible for the teeth, as was all the chocolate.
- While at the party and not talking about dentistry I had a good chat with Not My Advisor, who is dealing with the grad program at the moment. He's both helpful/sympathetic and seems slightly peeved I'm not doing better on the market, which makes for ambivalent conversations with him. I got back at him by telling him how his plan to re-arrange the grad program was all wrong and how he should do it instead. Neither of us will probably remember any of the details tomorrow.
- Why does the industrial-strength toothpaste they use in a dental cleaning always taste like pure Suck? Bubblegum? That, sir, is not bubblegum flavor. You should be ashamed of yourselves.
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