It will all balance out in the end

...but today, in addition to reading two articles for my revisions,** I cut 1,700 words on topic A ("too dissertationy!" cries Helpful Reader 1) from a rather long and sometimes too-detailed chapter one.


The "balancing out" will come later in the month, when I add approximately 500-750 words each on topics B & C to that same chapter, also at HR1's request. But I feel like there was at least some progress made today.

**I find it vaguely interesting how much easier it is for me to remain at my café table reading for a longer stretch of time than usual when said table is being shared by a friendly and not unattractive young gentleman who pauses in his own work now and then to converse in a friendly and not uninterested manner.

Apply Butt to Chair

Notorious has a deadline.


In less than two months, I'm supposed to have my revisions finished. Problem is, when I agreed to -- nay, proposed! -- that deadline, I neglected to take into account a late finals week, a one-month research trip (in which I got no work at all on the old project done), a one-week visit to parents, and a four-day trip to Fellowship City for a friend's wedding.

As the kids say: OMG.

And as my dissertation advisor, my friend Chimpy, and others** have said: time to Apply Butt to Chair.


**"Others" including Clio Bluestocking, who apparently even sells t-shirts with this exhortation writ upon.

Home Again

Last night, I slept in my own bed. For almost 8 hours straight. Woke up once, utterly disoriented in the dark, knowing I was in my own apartment, but not being able to remember how it was laid out. But other than that, all was well. Left unpacking until today. I'll be posting more soon, but in the meantime, here's a picture** from my trip (with more to follow):



Ooh! Bicycle! I should ride my bicycle today!


**I seem run into trouble whenever I photograph walls, getting a fisheye effect. Trusty point-and-shoot says I'm at the right distance, and I'm in focus, but still, problems.

A Phrase I´m Getting Tired of Hearing

"Those records all got burned up in the civil war/war with X/when the anarchists came through."

At this rate, I´m lucky to be finding as much as I am. But I have only one more day, so it´s winding down, at least for now. More updates (with photos) when I´m back home in July.

Afternoon off

With less than one week to go in the archives, and everything closed for the weekend, I´m starting to feel pressured. But today, I´m taking the afternoon off. Notorious is a year older today, and is celebrating by going to lunch and a hamam with one friend, and dinner with another.

Tales from the economic crisis: Academe edition

Well, it seems that Urban University may be headed towards furloughs for TT faculty. And they tell us it´s not a pay cut, but two unpaid days a month (where we´re not supposed to work -- yeah, right) comes out to 6% of our work days, which means that my tenure raise is effectively wiped out before I ever see it.

Add to this the suggestion from our dean that the course releases that allowed us to teach 3-3 rather than 4-4 may be going away (but with no decrease in research expectations), and you can see why I´m cranky.

Frankly, I´m getting discouraged. As someone (I forget who) recently said: "When someone is praising you for doing more with less, they´re usually about to ask you to do everything with nothing."

What about the rest of you? How have you been hit at your universities? Anyone come up with any creative solutions to make things better? Or, if not that, then any small acts of rebellion to make you feel better?

Going Fishing (A Tale of Two Research Methods)

Okay, I suppose that yesterday´s post requires a bit more elaboration.

I´ve decided there are two ways** to embark on a new project. The first is to cast about in the documents until a pattern emerges, and then write about that pattern. This is what I did with my dissertation-cum-book: I had a vague idea of a topic I wanted to study, and decided more or less arbitrarily*** on a collection of documents that would be "mine." I dove into these documents, gathering up everything that was vaguely related to my topic, then began arranging them into various patterns until I had a dissertation. Then when I wrote the book, I went back and rearranged those same things. This meant that both times, I ended up tossing out a lot of material that I had collected (Anybody want to buy a discursive footnote or two?) because it didn´t fit my chosen pattern. In other words, I cast a broad net, which meant that I caught a lot of fish I didn´t need.

The second way seems to be to have something very specific in mind. In the case of Shiny New Project, I have one "core" document that I find really interesting, from which I have drawn a list of about two dozen people I need to find in the archives. So the net isn´t as broad. this time, I know exactly which (fairly obscure) fish I´m angling for.

The problem is, the ocean is just as big.


**Likely more, or more variations on these two themes, but these are the two that I´ve encountered so far.

***Okay, so what I actually did was to start where the microfilm stopped. I hate working with microfilm.