tigg

ABD.

In layman's terms: tested and PASSED!

I'm not sure if eating Ghirardelli Peppermint Bark Squares straight from the bag en masse is really the best idea for me, but it sure seems like just the right thing for this paper-writing stuff!

Happily: I have 28 pages of sheer drivel. In the next few hours, I hope to:

1. tone down the drivel
2. up the good stuff
3. make it coherent
4. cut about 13 pages

If I do this right, I can have the paper nearly done tonight and just ready to tweak tomorrow.

Please, please, please, please, PLEASE let me get this 15-20 pager drafted and well on its way today.

PLEASE.

PRETTY PLEASE????

My winter "break" is calling...

All of a sudden it's AUGUST? I start classes four weeks from tomorrow, and I realized this week just what that means: four itty-bitty weeks in which to cram too many activities.

Today I've ditched the reading, even though I'm just 18 books away from completing my exam reading. I've got to get cracking on this GIS and website project to wrap up the technology training/fellowship from this summer. Fortunately, that should all go pretty quickly....I just have to start working on it, which is the plan for today.

Next week: family in town.
Week after that: research trip! Everything's in place; I just made my hotel reservations.

Then family in town again once I return, along with my frantic efforts to prep for the fall. Here we go!

I've long been very good at two things: time management and self management. In particular, I've been really good at these two things as they relate to work or school, which is useful (as you might imagine).

This means that when I'm faced with crazy to-do lists during the semester, sure, I get stressed (who doesn't?), but in the end I know it'll all get done. Of COURSE I have those weeks where I think I'm going to fail everything and flunk out (although those happen only rarely now), but after two years, I think it's safe to say that I'll make it.

My summer has been mentally problematic, mostly, I believe, because nothing has gone the way I thought it would. As I've said before, this isn't necessarily a problem. I'd rather be sitting where I am right now and having this issue rather than having this issue AND dealing with my original summer schedule.

What I'm grappling with right now is the fact that I have 3 weeks until my archival trip. When I return, I have about a week and a half before classes start, although the MAIN class I'm taking won't start until after Labor Day. I'll get my TA assignment in the next few weeks, and then I'll have a much better idea, I think, of how this will all play out for the fall.

There are priorities, and there are priorities, and right now I'm trying to reconcile myself to What Will Get Done and Where That Will Leave Me. Ultimately, of course, everything will get done in its own time. So why am I worried?

I think I'm just a little more angsty than usual right now. Bear with me.

I must be at an all-time record for lack of posts anywhere online recently. I'm usually quite more active than this, but it's summer, so we'll chalk it up to that.

It's been a week and a half now of my working-from-home only stuff. Not much has changed, except that, for the first time all summer (well, since May 12), I don't *have* to be anywhere to fulfill work hours (even if it was anywhere from 2 days a week to a full 5). Granted, this is what would have been my DREAM scenario two months ago, but now I think I'm just freaked out that it's already mid-July.

Is it, really? REALLY? Because I swear just yesterday I was grading papers and bemoaning how long the summer would be. Now it's just a teensy too short, but that's probably good for me.

Last week, I established a routine that goes something like this:

6:15 to 6:45 a.m.: Stumble out of bed and take dog for a walk.
6:45 a.m. to 7:15 a.m.: Upon return from walk, ensure husband is getting ready for work (or has left). Feed dog.
7:15 to 7:30ish: pour a bowl of cereal/milk, grab a spoon, and herd dog outside so I can eat breakfast on the porch swing, where it's blissfully quiet.
After Breakfast: Grab black notebook, pen, and one of my dissertation-related books (subject-related, not the general "how to write a dissertation" books, although I've scored some of those from the library). Spend at least 30 minutes freewriting, making notes on, reading, or otherwise brainstormingdissertation topic.

Proceed to feel quite accomplished.

After Dissertation Time: Grab one of the many, many books off the shelf and read it. This usually takes anywhere from an hour to 2 hours. When the book is done, I make my notecard about it (argument/themes - I keep it pretty short), then I check it off my list and modify my Google Chat status to reflect it.

CURRENT BOOKS LEFT TO READ STATUS: 48. Yes! (Down from 115, plus 6 articles, as of March/April. The articles have been read, btw.)

Then I move on to whatever seems most pertinent to do. Today, I'm on campus for a meeting about my summer digital project thingy. I came to campus early so I could do some work for the project - and I did (read: look for potential funding sources). And then I remembered: we're meeting today, in part, to assess where to go next. At least, that's MY take on the event.

And frankly, there ARE NOT going to be that many funding sources out there. The funding source identification process is probably the easy part, anyway: it's drafting a proposal that's going to be the hard part.

So here I am.

Aside from my immense satisfaction at being so productive lately - particularly with my dissertation prep - I'm eagerly awaiting the Harry Potter release on Friday. I've seen the fifth movie TWICE now (and I highly recommend it; it's perhaps my favorite) and I'm rereading all six of the books.

(With that said, let me note that you will NOT find spoilers here, nor should you post them in comments. I have too much respect for my fellow fans.)

At any rate, the summer seems to be going nicely. It's going to disappear before I know it; in just a few weeks, I head east to an archive (just for 4-5 days), and then I'll have a couple of weeks before classes start. In between now and then, there's:

-continued dissertation work (goal: have proposal draft by mid-September at the latest)
-revise two papers (goal: get bulk of work done this summer and leave tweaks to the fall)
-continue reading (goal: have all but 15-20 done by end of the summer, which is very doable)
-clean my house (goal: do the stuff that always irks me: deep cleaning, filing, pantry and closets, etc.)
-finish off my work on this digital project (goal: whenever.)
-begin prepping for my BIG class this semester (goal: read and start drafting a major historiography paper my professor recommended. this will also be useful for my dissertation)
-somewhere in there, actually build up my university-based website and do some digital projects of my own (goal: eh, sometime before classes start...)

Being the now-motivated (ha!) summertime grad student that I am, I made it to campus this morning to do some work on the technology-related project I have.

I am so very, very proud of myself. Next step: edit the report I started typing, then create an appendix. By Friday. In my mind, Phase 1 will be done by that time.

I want to post it online, so I'll have to play around a bit. However, that shouldn't be too hard; I can do it, I just need to actually take care of it.

However, I hit a brick wall with Photoshop. I was going to mock-up some design ideas for this digitization project - although a web design is probably not necessary at this juncture, actually. The reasons for doing it are primarily because I have plenty of time to burn for this project, and I should do some mock-ups because they will eventually be useful.

However, one never realizes how little one knows how to deal with Photoshop until one starts a project like this. I.Am.Screwed.

I have absolutely NO clue what I'm doing. I know what I want to do, but I can't get it to work. I thought I could make layers and do it, but apparently not. So I'm not sure what I'll do. It probably doesn't matter, but I should play around some more and look some stuff up.

I should probably leave it to the professionals....

And I guess this means it's time to think about my dissertation.

I've started and abandoned a half-dozen entries in the past week or two; it's been crazy around here and I've been trying to reaccustom myself to the Things I Need To Do.

Last month was just weird. This month, I hope to be focused, but I'm not there yet. I'll begin by getting through the 9 remaining volumes of Richard Hakluyt's The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries of the English Nation. Once I get that beast off my shoulder, I think I'll be able to move on.

And I've actually started to think about my dissertation. Just a bit, but it's more than nothing. I spent the last five weeks doing some in-office work for the company I do summer work-from-home for, which was a nice change of pace, but I told them this week that I need to just work from home now. I helped them out of a jam and they were happy; now I can actually get more work done.

(It's amazing how much time you lose when you're working at an office two days a week - even for four hours a day - then running to campus to do work for someone else, then helping out friends on the other days.)

In about six weeks, I'm off to the east coast to do a week of research, and I'm petrified. Hence the need to think more about this dissertation thing.

What resources or techniques do you use to keep track of your schedule, to-do list, and other projects or events?

Before grad school, I never worried about this. I used a legal pad at work to keep track of my calls, but that was all; it was simple, and it was all I needed. My personal life has always been uncluttered enough that I didn't really need a day planner or anything else.

Of course, grad school changes that game. In my first year, I tried a dayplanner, and I really loved the one I had. If I had found an identical dayplanner for this year, I probably would have been all set - but I couldn't find one for the life of me, so I went for alternatives.

In this past year, I've tried:
-A crappy dayplanner that didn't work, despite its purported "student" format that allowed a breakdown by school stuff, personal stuff, and "other" (really, it just wasn't big enough, space-wise).

-A PDA. Except that coordinating the PDA, remembering to charge it, and syncing with Outlook was, well, a bit too much. I liked the idea of it because if a student wanted to make an appointment with me after a class, then theoretically I'd have my calendar right there and wouldn't have to flip through pages.

-Very late in the game, I discovered Gubb, which is great for lists, but doesn't really work for me as well as a dayplanner.

-Most recently, I've migrated everything to Google calendar. So far, I love it. It emails my agenda to me, as well as specific reminders. This is great, because otherwise I'd forget to check the calendar. However, I'm ALWAYS on my Gmail account.

I still think I need to get a good dayplanner (paper-based) as backup. But I really, really like being digital. But if you have any tips or ideas or resources YOU use, I'd love to hear them. I'm still evaluating this system; we'll see if it works as the summer progresses.

I'm feeling very in-betweenish and unsettled this weekend.

First, I spent this last week in the nebulous phase of having no schoolwork (but lots of books - the neverending pile), PLUS I had office hours for three straight afternoons. It made me realize how much I'll miss teaching this summer, and how much I'll miss these students.

Now, I'm fielding last-minute-ish emails from students (I count 4? or 5? different students so far today), and expect the same tomorrow and even perhaps into Monday morning. The papers will be turned in by 4 p.m. on Monday. I have 2 papers I could start grading already, but I'm just too darn tired.

Also...next weekend I'm hosting a bridal shower, so today the other "of honor" and I went shopping for our gift and discussed events. Now I need to buy the super-cool prizes and gift bags I'm planning, then actually get the house in shape for the event next Saturday.

I don't handle in-between so well. I'll feel better in a bit. And maybe, too, when I get more reading done...

Not only did I make it through last week (obviously...), but I also made it through with, well, flying colors (I think). My grading got done, my assignments got done, and on Friday I let my students out about 20 minutes early. (I even got a round of applause, but that was either them being glad I let them out early, or being appreciative of my teaching. I'm assuming the latter, simply because I can. Also, I got a compliment from a student, so I think my assumption is fair.)

And now...now.

The strange thing about now is that although the semester is over, I still have a bazillion tons of work to do. Of course, it's all reading. And revising two papers. And starting to solidify my dissertation topic. And, starting in a week and a half, working four jobs, plus my research/reading/dissertation stuff this summer.

And I feel...strange. One part of me knows that I'll get into the summer jobs and be happy as a lark, enjoying new experiences and time off from classes and generally having a blast with all the movie-watching I'll have in the "spare time". Plus, I can now start my Second Annual Buffy the Vampire Slayer marathon.

But let's face it: I'm really just a school nerd and I want desperately to start Year 3.

Soon, grasshopper, soon.

I'm theoretically writing a paper. No, really, I am!

My research paper for this semester is due on April 24, the last week of classes (and the last day of that class). This is fantastic in many ways, because between this class and my other class, I'll actually be done on April 27 and will just have grading to do a bit over a week later. I am very, very happy for that; last spring, I had a research paper due early in the finals period, then two 20-page historiographical essays due within 1-2 days of that. Last year, I literally spent a week holed up in my office collecting cans of Diet Coke and bags of Hershey's Kissables everywhere.

Last spring, it was fairly chaotic, but it came out well.

As I've mentioned, this year is different (hooray!). The undergrads in my seminar are REQUIRED to turn in a rough draft of their research papers on Tuesday; for us grad students (all 2 or 3 of us), a rough draft is optional. HOWEVER, I like to think that I'm being smart to take advantage of this rough draft option. It does several things for me:

First, I get the crappy first drafts out of the way well in advance of the final due date.
Second, I get professorial feedback (and this is my advisor who's teaching the class).
Third, I will stress less in the coming weeks.

So this weekend is writing weekend. I'm on page 11 of the rough draft (the final paper is supposed to be 25-30 pages). I've gotten through the historiography and I'm just now moving into my various evidence on the topic, so from here on out it should be rather smooth sailing.

In fact, if I'd just get off the 'net, I could probably get this done in an hour and a half.

Yes, granted, this is the really crappy first draft and there's no way I'm turning THIS version in on Tuesday. BUT finishing this first round today means that I can play with it over the next three days and pop in my citations and have something reasonably non-crappy to turn in Tuesday.

Oh yeah. I also need to get started on my review essay that I'll turn in Thursday or Friday, plus do some grading and reading.

The semester is both winding down and getting incredibly busy at the same time. It's hard to believe - and yet not that hard, really - that I'm already at the end of Year 2. In just a few weeks, I'll be able to call myself a third-year PhD student, and just one year from now, I'll be hitting the illusive ABD (All But Dissertation) designation.

It's. AWESOME.

A year ago, I was panicking that I wouldn't make it through the first year. Now, I have no doubts about my abilities....although let's face it: African history has been my Achille's heel this term. Although I've had plenty of doubts about that, the fact of the matter is ( I've come a long way, baby... )

Dear Sean Wilentz,

While I really do appreciate The Rise of American Democracy, did you really have to make it almost 800 pages long? And couldn't your publisher have let you do footnotes?

Footnotes make an 800-page book so. much. better.*

Respectfully,
tigg

*For example, please see Michael O'Brien's fabulous analysis of Southern intellectual life. All 1202 pages of it were more bearable because of footnoes.

About an hour and a half ago, I started typing up an entry that basically told how I was giving up on this African seminar review essay.

Yes, that's actually a possibility, as we don't have due dates in this class - we choose when to turn in the assignments whenever we want during the course of the semester. On the one hand, this is fabulous; on the other, it can be a bit flustering - particularly with the professor's comment that "well, if you don't do well on some papers, you can always do extra papers...". So I decided a couple of weeks ago (before turning in my first assignment) that I'd plan to do one extra of each (we have to do 3 discussion papers and 2 review essays).

I got my first discussion paper back, though, and it turns out I did well ("particularly for a non-Africanist," the prof wrote). This means I probably won't need to do those extra papers after all, but we'll see how later assignments go.

Next Monday, we're reading John Thornton's Africa and Africans in the Making of the Atlantic World, 1400-1800. I read this in my first semester of grad school in the historiography survey course we got, and I LOVE it. I may have issues grasping early African history, but Atlantic history and the slave trade? Yeah, that I understand. Don't get me wrong: I find African history fascinating now, but when you've spent a year and a half being inundated with American history, stepping outside your field is a bit intimidating.

Because I like this book so much, I figured I'd do my first review essay around it. The problem? We have to have 1 book and 3 articles - as it turns out, written after 2004!, which I had wrong at first - beside the assigned work. That shouldn't have been an issue; after all, I found and read 3 books besides the Thornton.

...and I sat down to rough draft my essay and got five pages on Thornton this and Thornton that and just couldn't get it to go anywhere, which is when I decided, you know? I can do this in March and April.

I thought that was that. And I started to make a note to myself to get the materials to do my previously-planned discussion essay for NEXT week - and then it hit me: certainly I could do a discussion essay for THIS book! Sure, I'm supposed to use some outside sources, but there's no preset rule on how many, and I can talk about the differences between African slavery and Caribbean slavery! Heck, within five minutes on Jstor I had 2 articles by prominent scholars. Plus, I've got a book on New World slavery by one of those guys that I'd just finished recently.

As you may have guessed, I now have a rough draft of my discussion essay. I'm feeling pretty good about this one, and I'm glad I went with it. Now, if I actually DO do a discussion essay for next week, too, I can have all of those out of the way...

I did make it home okay last night, although it was a stressful ride. My house is literally 30 miles from campus, which I generally don't mind - I like to drive and find it relaxing - but on days when the weather's bad, I DO mind. Quite a bit.

I grew up in places that tended to get snow, but here? We got snowfall once or twice a year. They'll close schools for a half an inch of snow, which my family used to think was ridiculous (coming from Montana). The worst part is, people around here just aren't very good at driving in the snow.

...hence the bazillion accidents I saw on my way to school yesterday (fortunately, those were on the OTHER side of the highway).

Coming home last night, things were actually pretty decent until I crossed the river into my county. I mean, there were some bad patches on the roads, but it wasn't too horrible - mostly slushy, really. When I got into my county, the roads got even better in places, but then those good patches would alternate with really, really, REALLY bad patches.

In fact, things got to their worst within a mile and a half of my exit - where, incidentally, the road widens to six lanes (3 coming off from an extension highway) as it slopes downhill. In that huge downhill spot, it was pure snow-packed and icy roadage, and I'm surprised I was able to stay in my lane. Once I got off the highway, though, it was even worse. I live less than 2 miles off the highway, just off a fairly major road, but that fairly major road had MAYBE half a lane cleared on each side - if even that much. I was driving in the right lane, which wasn't so much of a lane as it was a great spot to slide one's bobsled (if only I had a bobsled...). It was so bad that I didn't even try to turn in to the grocery store parking lot and just came straight back to the house.

On the plus side/down side last night, I discovered that the book I checked out yesterday as a last minute "read this for my review essay! QUICK!" book doesn't exactly meet the requirements. Although J-Stor SAID it was published in 1998, that's just the English translation; the original edition was 1986, and since the scholarship technically isn't that new, I can't really count it (my sources have to have been written after 1995). I'm sure in some world I could make it work, but the fact of the matter is that I really don't have time to read another book - in fact, I should've started drafting this paper yesterday (for my own piece of mind). It'll get done, though; I can turn it in tomorrow night, or even early Friday morning at the absolute latest, although Thursday's preferable.

So today, on my lovely day-off-from school for the week, The Spouse headed to work an hour late (due to traffic) and is expected to call me when he arrives. Really, I want to know whether I can make it the two miles to the store later today. I've successfully completed and sent off an application for a summer institute and played with my conference paper, so now it's really time for that review essay...

I'm usually quite up-beat and perky in person. Very few people get to experience the down-beat and non-perky me; it has to do with my own personal philosophy that no one else should have to suffer from MY bad days, if I can help it.

This generally means that, however down or negative I'm feeling in my "me time" (which includes driving time, walking around campus time, reading time - all non-social interactions times), I get back my typical up-ness when I interact with folks.

And, despite the crappy, crappy weather, my terribly stressed-out mindset (driving in said weather is NOT helping me today), my exhaustion (didn't sleep well last night), and so on, I'm somehow managing to operate NICELY in conjunction with other people. For the most part.

...but I'm not sure how this will hold true for my seminar this afternoon. Unless it gets canceled or lets out early.

Before I dash off to finish off my to-do list (and eat lunch), I thought I'd pop in to say hi and all that.

Funny, I got a lot of reading done this weekend, but I still feel behind. This is primarily because I'm working like a maniac to finish off the required portion of one of my exam reading lists - and am on track to finish in about two weeks, which is great timing. The downside of this is that I'm badly overloaded. And I know this. And I should stop, but I'm not, for several reasons (one of which being: I'm THIS close!).

However, aside from reading 7 books this weekend (one for seminar tomorrow, 4 for my exam list, and 2 for my Africa seminar paper), I also graded some essays and went to the gym. Oh! I also prepped the preliminary bibliography and rough drafted my research question/statement for my sexuality seminar (to be turned in tomorrow). I did not get the laundry done (it's going NOW), nor did I get vacuuming done or bathrooms cleaned - or grocery shopping for that matter. Some things just end up by the wayside, and I'll get to them this week.

This morning, I've walked the dog, gone to the gym, started laundry, showered, typed up summaries of four books, revised my CV for a summer institute application, revised the summer institute application, played with my sexuality paper research question for tomorrow, and am now off to pack my bag and eat lunch before moving on to some essay grading before I go to school (at which point I hope to start reading).

More to come soon, like: my thoughts on my upcoming trip to NYC, the reasons why I'm killing myself with all this reading, and how in the world I think I'll make it through this term!

Done, Done, and More Done:
-Two chapters in my African history textbook
-A difficult article about some sort of compendium of West Africa Arabic written sources
-Two pages of a rough draft of a paper for my Africa class
-Three pages of random ideas for said paper (me writing to myself)
-A two-page outline to support the two pages of rough draft and three pages of random ideas
-A 20-minute nap (before Puppy woke me up)
-Speaking of, an adventure with Puppy and a neighborhood dog on our walk this morning.
-Cleaning: swiffered the kitchen, vacuumed the living room/hall/my office, wiped down counters, put dishes in dishwasher, dusted
-Typed summaries for the six books read last weekend
-Grocery shopping (such as it was)
-Department website updates
-Identified library call numbers (and availability status) of remaining titles on an exam list
-Created list of final proposed titles for another exam list (and figured out what other books on the list I'd read already)
-Emailed all qualifying exam committee members regarding meetings to discuss next year and my plans
-Watched several episodes of Veronica Mars: Season 1
-Finished reading an honors thesis meant to help me think about my sexuality research paper
-Prepped a PowerPoint presentation for my students
-Showered
-Watched Beauty and the Geek
-Ate dinner (Quiznos...)
-Prepped a preliminary list of possible resources for sexuality paper.

To do tomorrow:
-Retrieve library books loaned to an administrative office
-Return said library books, plus another pile of library books
-Attend lecture
-Complete African seminar paper
-Prep for Friday teaching
-Draft preliminary application for a summer workshop thing
-Identify resources for Next Africa paper
-Grab too many books from the library (for sexuality paper, Africa paper, and exam list reading)
-Attempt to do more reading
-Go on field trip
-Return home to collapse in front of Grey's Anatomy.
-Pray week ends quickly....

To assure you all that I have NOT, indeed, fallen off the face of the earth, here I am!

I have more to say later in a locked post regarding the teaching stuff, but for now, I'll crawl out of my study hole to say hello and let you in on all the fascinating things I've been doing...

This semester, I'm taking African history to help prep me for my world history exam field. In the fall, I'll actually take world history, but the prof teaching African history is teaching that one and both courses are offered only rarely. Truth be told? Africa's not really my thing. It's not that I don't like it, but rather, it's been my Achilles Heel for years (case in point: I almost made it to the final three at the state level of the National Geographic Geography Bee, but lost because of a question on Africa. doh!). Also, I had an undergrad African history course that was - of course - predominantly colonial history (despite the fact that the prof was from Sudan), probably because it was a 100-level course. It was also very dull, again, probably because of the course level.

Now I've spent so long getting acquainted with my own major fields that doing African history is really, really foreign to me. I've only recently come to that point where I can name major authors, works, themes, and arguments in US and women's history...but African history? Um, yeah. I saw the King Tut exhibit this last year....does that help? (Answer: no, not really)

I really, really, really like this prof, and I like to challenge myself. In short: it will be a good semester, but getting oriented to African history books is a bit of a challenge. It's sooo different from what I normally read, and I know soooo little of it that I often feel like everything's over my head. Also, we have a total of five papers due this semester, and we choose our own due dates. I'm doing one for next Monday's session - which means I have to have it done by tomorrow afternoon.

I've successfully written a bit over 2 pages, plus another 3 pages of rambling ideas, plus a 2-page outline on what I think this needs to be (the outline's the last thing I wrote). This will get taken care of tomorrow, but for now I'm a little spent on it and need to move on to something else and let that breathe a little.

Also, I have a general topic area for my history of sexuality research paper - not exactly what I *dreamed* of doing, but by now I know that there's no way I could get the sources I need over the semester. Later today, I'll look through an honors thesis on a similar topic to pull some resource ideas; in two weeks, I hae to turn in my research questions and a preliminary bibliography.

Those two courses really are the main of it - aside from my teaching this semester. And that? It's not so much difficult as it's just a matter of making time to prep for it each week - which I enjoy.

Still, I think I'll feel much better when I get this five-page African history paper out of the way tomorrow...