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...