Friday
Thursday
December 28, 2006
I read this interesting article today in the Seattle Times, which helped me understand why cashmere has become so much more suspiciously affordable in the last few years.
That low-priced cashmere sweater has a hidden cost
That low-priced cashmere sweater has a hidden cost
December 14, 2006
Last night I witnessed what may have been the first ever dramatization of a dissertation defense on primetime television. On the Fox show "Bones," the young forensic anthropology doctoral student was shown sitting in a small, hard wooden chair in front of a panel of scary-looking professors who were of course seated on a raised platform to make them look even more scary. Our young scientist passed, though not before a terse professor asked him how he expected anyone to take him seriously as a Ph.D. scientist looking the way he does (young and sloppy). So, what does that mean? You guessed it: Makeover!!!
P.S. I only started watching Bones because of my loyalty to all ex-Buffy actors, but I actually kinda like it too!
P.S. I only started watching Bones because of my loyalty to all ex-Buffy actors, but I actually kinda like it too!
Monday
December 11, 2006
I found out that my current employer (one of them) doesn't have any more non-resident tuition waivers, which I need in order to avoid paying an extra $1000 for three credits. My eye just started twitching.
Tuesday
December 5, 2006
I am copying excerpts from this piece of advice here so I can refer to it every now and then when I'm feeling discouraged - like now. I especially like the "isolate yourself totally from the stream of yammering humanity."
(From the Ms. Mentor advice column, The Chronicle of Higher Education, 12/8/06)
Question: Writing dissertation. Must be last person on earth, never see anyone anymore unless teaching. Does that count as seeing people? Think not. Need a laugh. Pray each night to write damn thing and finally finish Ph.D. without turning into bloviator. However, noticing that friends and family glaze over quite soon after asking about research. Hate to bloviate. Thus, no pronouns. Plan to eliminate other parts of speech as needed, maybe take vow of silence. Good?
Answer: Maybe. Maybe not.
Ms. Mentor obviously captivated by your writing style. Impressed by your efforts at minimalism. Thinks it's catching, but will try to extricate self and talk more ordinarily. (What is normal among academics? Discuss.)
Everyone knows dissertation stress. What you're doing will never be finished, or it will be laughable and absurd. In a just world, you would be hanged as an academic fraud and your remains fed to feral dogs (they'd call it recycling). Your B.A. would be yanked and your records deleted. Your high school would post your weaselly, smiling graduate photo on its Wall of Shame.
Or you could ignore all those febrile fantasies, decide to do a good-enough dissertation, and finish it — or not.
Half of A.B.D.'s (All But Dissertationers) never finish, but they are not failures. They've chosen other things — such as a social life, or children, or a career that doesn't require years of poverty (and maybe chastity) before a tenure-track job perhaps materializes in a Remote Village.
Writer's block is fear — fear of getting something wrong, not getting an A, being unmasked as an impostor at last. Every writer except the most doltish of hacks approaches a blank page or screen with trepidation, and the hardest word to write is the first.
Do not get on the Internet.
Turn off all phones and put your cellphone where you cannot see it light up, vibrate, and dance.
Write by hand — as Ms. Mentor writes her first drafts — so as to sneak up on the work. Tell yourself, as Anne Lamott recommends in Bird by Bird, that you're about to write a "shitty first draft."
If you can isolate yourself totally from the stream of yammering humanity, do it for the first draft. Lock yourself in your carrel. Hide out in mountain caves. Let beauty-school students practice pedicures on you while you scribble.
Encourage roommates to surprise you with treats, but only on Fridays after 5 p.m. Ignore their grumbling. Put your fingers in your ears and chant, "La la la la la." True friends will understand.
Many people, of course, won't, and the Dissertation Era (which Ms. Mentor hopes will not be a Dissertation Decade for you, as it sometimes is for unfortunate literary scholars who must work as adjuncts in three places and grade thousands of compositions while grinding out their great opuses) may mean giving up on those people who, well, aren't into you.
Except for family members whose caprices are inescapable, you do not need narcissists who tell you their love problems incessantly (unless their stories are vivid, lurid, and ever-changing, and you can use them in your chapters about neurotic behavior). You do not need broken-winged people, addicts, or whiners who have to sleep on your couch for a few days to "get my head together." You do not need people who "will be great" once they get over their bigotries or their resentments of you ("Why are you always writing? Let's go get a beer and forget your silly homework.").
Anyone whose moods get you down, or who picks a fight when you're trying to finish a chapter, or who disparages your work, does not belong in your life.
Find a writing critique group, if you have a strong ego. If you're not sure, convene a group of friends in which all of you make deadlines for one another and meet once a week to celebrate what everyone has written, taught, sold, or cooked. Have lots of chocolate.
Yes, give up useless parts of speech, especially adverbs. They are the softeners, the wimps of the grammatical world. You need to be ruthless, self-protective, fierce, whatever your mode.
Some writers are gushers, bloviators who spew everything in their first drafts and then pick out the best chunks. But you may be a bleeder, a one-word-at-a-time agonizer (as Red Smith said, you sit at your desk "and open a vein"). Or you may be a Beavisite, converting all long jargonized theoretical explications into the simplest of language: "Cool" or "It sucks."
Now all you have to do is explain yourself to the world.
Good.
(From the Ms. Mentor advice column, The Chronicle of Higher Education, 12/8/06)
Question: Writing dissertation. Must be last person on earth, never see anyone anymore unless teaching. Does that count as seeing people? Think not. Need a laugh. Pray each night to write damn thing and finally finish Ph.D. without turning into bloviator. However, noticing that friends and family glaze over quite soon after asking about research. Hate to bloviate. Thus, no pronouns. Plan to eliminate other parts of speech as needed, maybe take vow of silence. Good?
Answer: Maybe. Maybe not.
Ms. Mentor obviously captivated by your writing style. Impressed by your efforts at minimalism. Thinks it's catching, but will try to extricate self and talk more ordinarily. (What is normal among academics? Discuss.)
Everyone knows dissertation stress. What you're doing will never be finished, or it will be laughable and absurd. In a just world, you would be hanged as an academic fraud and your remains fed to feral dogs (they'd call it recycling). Your B.A. would be yanked and your records deleted. Your high school would post your weaselly, smiling graduate photo on its Wall of Shame.
Or you could ignore all those febrile fantasies, decide to do a good-enough dissertation, and finish it — or not.
Half of A.B.D.'s (All But Dissertationers) never finish, but they are not failures. They've chosen other things — such as a social life, or children, or a career that doesn't require years of poverty (and maybe chastity) before a tenure-track job perhaps materializes in a Remote Village.
Writer's block is fear — fear of getting something wrong, not getting an A, being unmasked as an impostor at last. Every writer except the most doltish of hacks approaches a blank page or screen with trepidation, and the hardest word to write is the first.
Do not get on the Internet.
Turn off all phones and put your cellphone where you cannot see it light up, vibrate, and dance.
Write by hand — as Ms. Mentor writes her first drafts — so as to sneak up on the work. Tell yourself, as Anne Lamott recommends in Bird by Bird, that you're about to write a "shitty first draft."
If you can isolate yourself totally from the stream of yammering humanity, do it for the first draft. Lock yourself in your carrel. Hide out in mountain caves. Let beauty-school students practice pedicures on you while you scribble.
Encourage roommates to surprise you with treats, but only on Fridays after 5 p.m. Ignore their grumbling. Put your fingers in your ears and chant, "La la la la la." True friends will understand.
Many people, of course, won't, and the Dissertation Era (which Ms. Mentor hopes will not be a Dissertation Decade for you, as it sometimes is for unfortunate literary scholars who must work as adjuncts in three places and grade thousands of compositions while grinding out their great opuses) may mean giving up on those people who, well, aren't into you.
Except for family members whose caprices are inescapable, you do not need narcissists who tell you their love problems incessantly (unless their stories are vivid, lurid, and ever-changing, and you can use them in your chapters about neurotic behavior). You do not need broken-winged people, addicts, or whiners who have to sleep on your couch for a few days to "get my head together." You do not need people who "will be great" once they get over their bigotries or their resentments of you ("Why are you always writing? Let's go get a beer and forget your silly homework.").
Anyone whose moods get you down, or who picks a fight when you're trying to finish a chapter, or who disparages your work, does not belong in your life.
Find a writing critique group, if you have a strong ego. If you're not sure, convene a group of friends in which all of you make deadlines for one another and meet once a week to celebrate what everyone has written, taught, sold, or cooked. Have lots of chocolate.
Yes, give up useless parts of speech, especially adverbs. They are the softeners, the wimps of the grammatical world. You need to be ruthless, self-protective, fierce, whatever your mode.
Some writers are gushers, bloviators who spew everything in their first drafts and then pick out the best chunks. But you may be a bleeder, a one-word-at-a-time agonizer (as Red Smith said, you sit at your desk "and open a vein"). Or you may be a Beavisite, converting all long jargonized theoretical explications into the simplest of language: "Cool" or "It sucks."
Now all you have to do is explain yourself to the world.
Good.
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