As Promised, Content of Little Interest to Anyone But Myself

Yoga, Farmers' Market, and now some random photoblogging, just because I can:


A typical shot, in which I tend to stick things in corners. Here's another one:


See what I mean? (say it with me: "Nobody puts Mary in the corner." heh.) I'm also a negative space addict, so let's try to break that by experimenting with a crowded-frame composition:



Hm.

Okay, maybe I'll just go transcribe some things.

I Wrote a Super-Long Post Last Night...

...about class, aspirations, and academia, a reaction to this:

"I can only recommend graduate school in the humanities—and, increasingly, the social sciences and sciences—if you are independently wealthy, well-connected in the field you plan to enter (e.g., your mom is the president of an Ivy League university), or earning a credential to advance in a position you already hold, such as a high-school teacher, and even then, a master's degree is enough."

This was preamble to a call to reform higher education. Fine. But when an author leads off by telling people like me that non-vocational graduate education is not for us, I get pissy, and spend an hour writing and editing a long and very personal post.

Upon waking, I decided there were enough of these posts floating around out there (see below), so I didn't need to add another 1000 words to the soup. So how 'bout I just say to people from the losing side of the socio-economic gap** that:

1. ...academia is a tough path, and you should have no illusions that finishing a Ph.D. will land you a tenure-track job, and certainly not that it will catapult you into an economic bracket significantly better than that your parents had***; yet...

2. ...if you know these things, have asked yourself the hard questions, and you're still yearning to devote years of your life to something you love, maybe because when you're learning history, or literature, or invertebrate reproduction, you know that you're exactly where you're supposed to be, and if you've got a real talent for whatever it is and you can bust ass and get the work done, then don't you dare let any random blogger tell you that your choices are wrong, just because they're not economically practical.

Conclusion: Telling people what their priorities "should" be based primarily on their class, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, or whatever is the epitome of condescension. If you're doing it, knock it the hell off.

Post roundup:

• Dr. Virago does a roundup.
• Karl Steel talks about rethinking his own identity within academia
• A post by newish blogger jsench, on why s/he had no regrets (or not many). A longish post, but worth a read if you've got 15 minutes or so.
• Dr. Crazy puts her critical theory chops to work on the whole debate, with some thought-provoking ideas about identity in academia.

**Now there's one thing I'd be happy to see named after Ronald Regan.

***I'm actually only marginally better-off (economically speaking) than my parents were at my age, and that's only because I have no children to support. And if you factor in my debt and their real assets, I'm much worse off.

Writing Group Week 9: How Not To Panic

Welcome to week 9!

With any luck, this post will be going up Friday morning -- I'm trying Blogger's pre-scheduling thingy, because I'm taking off in a couple of hours to spend 48 hours visiting friends out of town. A few days after that, an out of town friend is coming to visit me for a few days. Then a week after that, I'm going to visit family for a week. And then there's 5 days left to my summer.

Kind of ironic that my least productive summer since the Great Depression of 2002 (and no, I'm not depressed this time) should be the one where I start up a group dedicated to productivity, no? But those of you who don't know me will just have to trust me when I say that slowing down for a summer is an act of effort for me.

And for those of you who do know me, you probably know that this low productivity is inducing regular spasms of panic. So it occurred to me that, with the end of the twelve weeks approaching, the semester looming, and all that, perhaps some of that panic was starting to set in among the ranks here. So that's the theme of this week: Do. Not. Panic. ALL IS LOST IF YOU PANIC!!! AAAHHHH!!


::ahem:: Excuse me.

Okay, so here's what I want you to do this week, right now, before you clock in your progress for next week and your specific goals for next week:

1. Deep breath. Think about what you got done this week.

2. Deep breath. Tell yourself that this last week is over and done with. If it wasn't as good as you wanted, let it go.

3. Three weeks left. Another deep, slow breath here. Get rid of panicky thoughts of the upcoming semester. Take as many breaths as necessary until you're there. This may take a few minutes. Now: What can you reasonably get done in the final three weeks? That is your new goal. Set an intention to get there.

4. One last deep breath. Tell yourself, with complete confidence: I can do this.

Report!

• ABDMama [Draft of an article MS]: Revise the second half of the article and have it set for peer review
• ADM [conference paper for Leeds; revision of paper after]: Get draft sent to journal; make plan for August
• Cly [revise article for publication & draft chapter for book]: article [NPhD: you mean, finish the revisions, I assume?]
• Dame Eleanor [Revising a conference paper into article MS]: mini-essay draft just to get words on paper
• Digger [drafts of two book chapters]: Work a couple of hours a day; write at least two good pages of the chapter I've been avoiding.
• Dr. Koshary [work on book MS]: Excused absence: moving this week
• Erika [Review-ready draft of an article MS]: edit 2 pages / day of article draft
• Frog Princess [rewrite Chapter 3; get another draft of the introduction]: look at documents in special collections and do some additional secondary reading; start poking at structure of ch. 3.
• Gillian [an article that needs writing]: planned incommunicado for another week while traveling
• Godiva [First draft of diss. chap.]: write 500 words/day on my documentary sources, and do some additional research
• Jeff [Review-ready draft of completed dissertation]: fix trainwreck section of last chapter; continue to wait for feedback
• Matilda [Draft of a publishable paper]: working through Week 9 section of WYJA; re-writing again the argument and introduction of task 1, submitting task 2, making a start on task 3
• NWGirl [Revising a conference paper into an article MS]: Finish introduction for upcoming conference presentation, plus revisions 2 hrs/day.
• Sapience [Prepare presentation of full dissertation for department]: Write at least a paragraph about each text I plan to cover, explaining what use I think it will be to my overall argument
• Scholastic Mama [Revising a conference paper into an article MS]: excused absence for faculty seminar, but will use the time to do some reading
• Susan [Revise & polish two chapters of a book MS]: do research to figure out if Great Idea will work
• Travelia [prepare book MS for review]: work seriously on revising the introduction to the MS
• Zabeel [Complete draft of an article]: one-week holiday planned
• Zcat abroad [write an article]: work on structuring an argument, and building up the word-count

Awaiting report:

• Audie [working on transitioning a dissertation chapter to an article]**
• Eileen [First draft of a dissertation chapter]*
• Firstmute [chapter draft; send out article]*
• J. Otto Pohl [Complete draft of 2/3-finished book MS]**
• Jen [Revising conference paper into article MS]**
• Kit: [Write the first draft of a dissertation chapter]*
• Mel [Finish dissertation!]**
• Scatterwriter [Complete expansion/revision of an article MS]*
• Tigs [Completed diss draft]*

Something Weird Happened (again) Today

Today I rode my bike to the dentist's office, which is about 9 miles away. No, that's not the weird thing (though an 18-mile round trip is a bit out of my usual range). I ride my bike everywhere, and for more than the environmental, financial, and health benefits of it: the bike is one of the truly happy-making things in my life. I have, in fact, been known to let out a joyous "Wheeeeee!!!!" while riding, and on more than one occasion.

fig. 1: This is not me. But it IS completely awesome.
(image credit here)

Here's the thing I consider weird: On my way out of the office, I stopped by the receptionist's desk to schedule my next appointment, and the fact that I had ridden came up in conversation. How long did that take?, she wondered. 20 minutes or so? No, no, I demurred. I'm nowhere near that fast.** More like 40. But it's a gorgeous day for a ride. Yes, she agreed, and besides that, now when you get home, you can have whatever you want for lunch and not feel guilty about the calories.

Did you see what just happened there?

Now, for the record: I have, at various times throughout my life, chosen to watch closely what I eat. I have been medically overweight in the past, and was even obese as a child (back when that wasn't so common as today). But for years now, I've been quite obviously at a healthy weight, with a pretty average-looking body type. You'd have to have a pretty warped idea of what a woman should look like to think I should be dieting.

And really, that's not even the point, is it? I mean, I could weigh a couple of hundred pounds more than I do right now, and still I think it would be out of line for someone to suggest that "food = guilt" and "exercise = expiation" should be my points of reference.

Yet this isn't the first time this has happened. I know another woman who reacts to my perfectly reasonable food choices with, "but that's so fattening!"

I can't figure out whether these women are trying to do girl-bonding ("We all want to be thinner, right?") or projecting their own issues, or what. I don't detect any malice anywhere (and I'm pretty sensitive to malice). But I'm sort of offended on behalf of women in general that the unquestioning assumption is that any food- or exercise-related decision is based on poor body image, and that pure enjoyment, whether in eating or in moving one's body, isn't even a factor. And I'm always just left there, gaping like a fish, without a response.

I don't know what the point of this post is. Maybe it's a call to do things just because we enjoy them (see fig. 1, above).



**This would be 27 mph or so on average, some of that in traffic, and sustained for a while. With cargo. I'm not that ambitious.

Writing Group Week 8...

...is up, over at ADM's place. This week, she asks about writing schedules/patterns during the semester, which is something I'm not ready to think about just yet...

Writing group comments

...are up. As in, I just wrote them (again, not necessarily for every post) and posted them on the comment thread from Friday. See my comment to NW Girl for my explanation for the delay. Look for a new post shortly entitled "two weeks of sloth."

Writing Group Week 7: Goal (re)setting

Welcome to week seven! We've bid farewell to a few people over the past few weeks, but hopefully some of them will rejoin us when we reconvene in the fall. We're over halfway through now, but the good news is that we still have almost halfway left to finish up those goals!

So, let's talk about those goals. In last week's post, ADM referred to me as a "Type A", and she's not wrong. And what this Type A has been noticing is a bit of chaos in the area of your overall goals for this 12-week term. Now, some of this has been for excellent reason: you've finished a project! Yay! But some of it has been due to a lack of appropriate goal-setting. Maybe you set your summer goals without taking into account the inevitable detours you knew were coming. Maybe you over- or underestimated what you could accomplish this summer. Were your goals too ambitious? Not ambitious enough? Did you, perhaps, start off with a goal of multiple projects, rather than just one central goal (with the papers and presentations as side projects), leaving you unfocused as the project went forward?

Let me put this another way, for this week's discussion question: If you could go back to pre-week-one, what advice would you give late-May you as you were thinking about the goal you were going to set for the summer? Knowing what you know now, what would that summer goal be?

That's it. No long post this week. Just that one question, and the usual requirement that you report in your progress, and your specific goals for next week. Here's the run-down:

• ABDMama [Draft of an article MS]: incorporate the 2,500+ words of source writing and ideas into the larger article draft
• ADM [conference paper for Leeds; revision of paper after]:
• Audie [working on transitioning a dissertation chapter to an article]: have the first section of the paper reworked
• Cly [revise article for publication & draft chapter for book]: Leeds paper? Chapter?
• Dame Eleanor [Revising a conference paper into article MS]: finish all the mini-outlines for the article-in-progress, and start expanding them
• Digger [drafts of two book chapters]: finish Mash Chapter; try to get that last image permission
• Dr. Koshary [work on book MS]: finish off chapter 4, then begin drafting chapter 3,
• Eileen [First draft of a dissertation chapter]: figure out a path to the finish; integrate quantitative data set #2; decide whether to include or jettison planned section on religion; maintain 500 words/day.
• Erika [Review-ready draft of an article MS]: 500 words / day, plus 1 page of revisions [per day, I assume]
• Frog Princess [Review-ready draft of completed dissertation – done ahead of schedule! Yay!!]: finished major goal; taking a week to poke around and develop a goal for the rest of the summer
• Godiva [First draft of diss. chap.]: ((goal for this week??))
• J. Otto Pohl [Complete draft of 2/3-finished book MS]: ((goal for this week??))
• Jeff [Review-ready draft of completed dissertation]: Review-ready draft of chapter 2
• Jen [Revising conference paper into article MS]: Reinstate morning writing (500 words per morning), and finish this section
• Matilda [Draft of a publishable paper]: work through week 7 of WYJA; revising argument of task 1 (this WG project); complete task 2; start reading materials of task 3
• Mel [Finish dissertation!]: Finish chapter 4?
• NWGirl [Revising a conference paper into an article MS]: finish writing section 2 of the paper
• Sapience [diss chapter (done! ahead of schedule!) Prepare presentation of full dissertation for department]: finish revisions on the article, and get at least four pages of the presentation drafted.
• Susan [Revise & polish two chapters of a book MS]: On vacation for two weeks
• Tigs [Completed diss draft]:
• Travelia [Write two conference papers (done!); prepare book MS for review]: On vacation for a week
• Zabeel [Draft first two sections of new article]: Read two more books; complete a first draft of section 2
• Zcat abroad [write an article]: try out this '500 words a day, first thing'

Awaiting report:

• Bardiac [Review-ready article MS]**
• Caleb Woodbridge [MA thesis]***
• Firstmute [chapter draft; send out article]*
• Gillian [an article that needs writing]*
• Jason [First draft of a dissertation chapter]***
• Kit: [Write the first draft of a dissertation chapter]*
• Scatterwriter [Complete expansion/revision of an article MS]*
• Scholastic Mama [Revising a conference paper into an article MS]*