Well that was stupid.

I enjoy Wednesdays because I don’t have class, which means I can spend between five and eight hours on campus doing whatever needs doing. Today I came in fully intending to dive into a couple primary sources for the paper I’m presenting at a conference next month. Then I got into my office, searched my desk, and realized very quickly that the two books I really intended to spend time with are in fact sitting in the stack of books next to my bed at home. I hadn’t even thought to check the stack, because I was equally certain before leaving the house that they were in one of the stacks on my desk. Score one for my today. Fortunately, I do have a collection of published primary source documents that I can sift through instead, together with more than a few secondary sources. But still, how dumb do I feel now for forgetting my sources (one of them fairly important) at home?

Opportunity Cost

Because I didn’t go directly to grad school when I finished my undergraduate degree, I explored a few other career paths before deciding on academia. One of them was retail, which I’ve rarely regretted leaving. The other was actually using my degree in secondary education. In the three years I substitute taught before returning to graduate school, I also coached Speech and Debate. It was a wonderfully fulfilling volunteer position, and I met some amazing kids in the process. However, since starting grad school, and especially in the second year, my time to devote to coaching has decreased to almost nothing. There have been times I worried about this, and even felt guilty over it. But sometimes that’s the price you pay for doing what you love. I had to give up one activity I enjoyed for the sake of having a career I love. I guess this just reinforces that I really can’t do everything, and when it comes down to it, sometimes the best choice is the one I want to make, and not the one someone else wants me to make.

Heavy.

That’s what revisions are for

This part week, I completed Draft One of the Thesis. As of 8:30 Thursday morning, I have decided that the next direction my thesis takes is out of my hands. I emailed the draft to my advisor and placed a hard copy in his mailbox. I met the deadline of handing in the first draft in January, and will now wait for the notes to determine what shall be done next. The first step will probably be to revise the conclusion, since that chapter is still the same two pages I hand wrote over break. We may return to the same coffee shop together soon to see what improvements can be made.

In the meantime, I will enjoy having succeeded in writing 74 pages in four months. I really didn’t think I could do it when I sat with my advisor in September, but I am pleasantly surprised with myself. Now for some wine, and the start of my reading for comps. For whatever asinine reason, I’m starting with Correlli Barnett’s tome, The Collapse of British Power. At a hefty 643 pages, this could rival The Making of the English Working Class for needed willpower.

Like Herding Cats

This seems to have been a productive week. At the very least I have (mostly) finalized my reading lists for my comprehensive exams. As it stands now, I will be reading 75 books in addition to my reading for my courses. The challenging part was finding a moment to talk to one of my professors, because email is hit or miss with him. But today I managed to catch him in his office, and we briefly discussed my reading list and my thesis. So for at least one item on my list of things to do in order to graduate as planned I feel in a good place.

My plan for the weekend, in addition to reading for classes on Tuesday, is to put the finishing touches on the first official draft of my thesis. I turned in four drafts as a research paper, but this will be the first Thesis Draft. It feels like a huge step, though I know I’m looking at a few revisions. I can only imagine how I’ll feel when I print it off and put it in my advisor’s mailbox. This is by far the most I’ve written on a single topic, and so far the preliminary feedback I’ve received has been positive. I’m hoping the feedback remains positive.

Somehow, I will accomplish everything for this semester and graduate in May as planned. Even if managing all the requirements feels a bit like herding cats at this point.

The Great Balancing Act

If the only thing I did was school, there would be enough time to get everything done. I would have time for research and all the books I need to read and write all my papers. I’d probably have time for two drafts of each paper. However, school doesn’t exist in a vacuum. There’s a rumor going around that I have a family, and apparently some of them like spending time with me. I have a romantic relationship which requires periodic attention as well. I have friends whose company I enjoy (outside of class, even). There are hobbies to which I occasionally like to devote my attention. And then there are the other constants: time to sleep, and time to eat. While I’ve succeeded in having working lunches (all those afternoons at Panera will attest to that),I have yet to figure out how to have a working nap. If anyone has any secrets, do share.

The secret to having a life while in graduate school is one of those great mysteries I’m still working to unravel. Don’t get me wrong, I love graduate study. I love my program, and my department. I love the look on the undergraduates’ faces in my 4/500 level class yesterday when we broke down the lyrics to “We Didn’t Start the Fire” and for about 90% of the lyrics I was able to identify the person or event to which the lyric referred. (What I didn’t reveal was that there are pages on the internet which explain it all. Shh.)

But there’s still that elusive balancing act of how to excel in graduate school while also finding time for things outside the department. It’s all too easy to show up in the morning, hide in the graduate commons all day, and never leave the building until it’s time to go home, sometimes at 9pm. But then it’s just me and school, and I lose touch with the other parts of my life. My cat is particularly displeased when I’m not around to take care of her needs. And she’s an oddly affectionate little critter.

I wish I had the answer to how to balance it all and not lose my mind in the process. I wish I could reveal how to take 13 graduate credit hours, write a 75-page thesis, and read 67 extra books for comprehensive exams while also going out with friends two or three nights a week, raising a family, and maintaining a stable loving relationship. But I haven’t quite figured that out yet. That’s why I like to tell people that my life is a work in progress.

Manageability

I like lists. I like how organized I feel when I make lists, even if I don’t actually use the lists I make, or get everything crossed off. I still like lists.

One tactic I’ve found which helps me during the course of the semester is take my reading lists and the syllabi and write a weekly schedule so I can keep track of what I need to have read when. Tonight’s task was to do just that. I took the syllabi for each of my courses, plus the one I’m just sitting in on, and creating a Word document that gives me a weekly breakdown. That helps when, in my 500-level US course for example, I only have four books to read and the assigned dates are spread over the course of the semester. Reading seminars are a bit easier, because I just have to keep track of what’s next. There’s always a book or article or book/article combination that needs reading, so it’s harder to lose track of due dates.

The good news about this semester’s list is that it comes to a very manageable two pages. (Yes, I took the font down a size to make it fit just the two pages, but that’s beside the point.) I don’t have more than five assigned readings in any given week, and those weeks are a combination of book chapters and articles. What makes this a particular relief is the fact that I will not just be reading for class this semester. I will be reading for comps. The book list for my Modern France comp currently has about 40 books on it. The book list for my Modern Britain comp currently has 27 books, with more likely to be added. If I’m lucky, my Modern US comp will be based entirely on books I’ve already read. But at this point, I’m not ready to count myself quite that lucky.

At the moment, I feel like my workload this semester is actually quite manageable. I give that feeling until the first set of books I’ve requested from the library starts arriving. Then, once my desk fills with books again and I’m continually only barely prepared for class as I walk in, I’m sure the more than familiar feeling of panic with set in again, and I’ll wonder yet again what I’ve gotten myself into.

Slowly building momentum

The semester started bright and early at 8:15 when I miraculously found a parking space in the deck closest to my building. I got the books I needed, discovered I’m signed up for the wrong independent study, and that I won’t be able to fix that problem until tomorrow. Then I started revising my thesis again to hand it over to my professor tonight so he can tell me what I should be focusing on for the research seminar this semester. I’ve revised up to page 57, and ran out of steam. But it’s not supposed to be perfect on the first day, right? That leave me twelve pages of unrevised text. At least until I get some feedback, and realize I’m not as well off as I thought. I have three hours before class, though, so after reading about German history for a while, I may decide I can get through the last two chapters of revisions after all. As long as I have something printed and ready to hand in tonight so I can get some idea of what to do next.

Although, perhaps not surprisingly, now that I’m sitting at my desk, staring at my expanse of blank wall (well, except for the “primary source” flier I found and hung above my desk), everything is falling into place as it should. Maybe I can do this after all.

The Best-Laid Plans

School breaks are always such promising things. A week or more with no deadlines, so the potential seems limitless. But then there’s sleep, and television, and hobbies, and food, and friends, and all other other little things that get forgotten about in the heat of the semester.

I had grand plans over break to research and write the paper I’ll be presenting at Louisiana State in March. Only some of my research got done. I was going to finish my thesis, but didn’t quite make it. I’m close enough a few dedicated hours will get me there. I was going to start reading for comps. Okay, that goal I’d set back in September but by the time break rolled around I’d pretty much forgotten about it.

Spring semester starts tomorrow. I don’t have class until the evening, but the two books I need to read by Tuesday evening’s reading seminar are waiting for me at the campus library. I got an email yesterday morning letting me know the books are ready for pick up, but when I checked the library hours to see what the latest time I could get them was, I discovered that the university’s library wasn’t open this weekend. Apparently, they were still on intersession hours. Let me tell you, more than a few choice words have been uttered about that one. Had the library been open yesterday, I’d have picked up my books, and I’d have made significant progress through at least one of them. But the library wasn’t open, so no progress was made. Because I still don’t have the effing books. So tomorrow I will wake up early, get my morning exercise in, and then head to campus to pick the books up shortly after the library opens. Hopefully that will give me enough time to master the material by Tuesday evening so I can contribute effectively when we have our first discussion. Nothing like making a good first impression on a professor I’ve yet to take a class with. And somewhere in there I will find time to make my thesis presentable so I can give a copy to my research seminar professor and get his opinion on how I should focus my attention for his class, since I’m using it as an opportunity to put the final revisions on my paper. I have some revisions I’ve written on paper, but I just haven’t gotten around to making the changes to the Word document. Hopefully, an hour or two tomorrow will be sufficient, and since I’ll be on campus, I’ll be more likely to focus on my school work.

I’ve picked out my clothes for tomorrow, and they’re washed and ready to go. Soon I’ll be getting my notebook ready and packing everything up for the morning. Then I’ll just need to pick out what I’m taking for lunch/dinner (the joys of long days on campus) and take a hot bath to get myself ready to go to sleep at a decent hour. I have the usual pre-first day jitters going on right now, but I’ve found from past experience that doing as much prep work the night before tends to help alleviate that. The less I have to think about tomorrow, the more I can focus on the work I need to get done on campus.

What’s the definition of insanity?

I’ve decided to abandon the “stare at the screen and hope for brilliance” method. Instead, I’m revisiting the historical background section of my paper. For the purposes of my research seminar last semester, I wrote a very long paragraph which briefly explained the religious history of Ireland (very briefly). Because Ireland is a place with very long historical memory, there are events between 1170 and 1968 which influenced the period of 1968-1969. One of the suggestions written on the final copy of my research paper was to incorporate some of those events (such as the relief of the Siege of Derry in 1690) into my background section. And so, because these suggestions come from the professor dubbed The Wise One, I’ve decided to revisit this section with a few sources I haven’t worked into the paper yet (and not an encyclopedia) and spend a few hours on this today.

The conclusion will wait until later. It’ll just have to.

Conclusions: The Bane of My Existence

Again, I’m trying to struggle my way through this conclusion. I’ve added another paragraph so far, and it feels quite like pulling teeth. Conclusions under normal circumstances aren’t exactly my forte, but it seems even worse with the thesis. It’s more than just slapping a paragraph on the end which will somehow hopefully tie it all together. I need an entire chapter. Of course, when the paper only needs to be about seventy-five pages, it’s not like the conclusion has to be that long. All the same, though, there’s the pressure to have a stand-alone chapter that somehow wraps up the entire thing. It’s painful. Not only to write, I’m sure it will also be painful to read. In fact, I’m so dreading the writing of this conclusion that I’ve spent most of the last hour or so working on my comps lists instead.

If I do ever finish this blasted thing, it’ll be a miracle.