Dissertation=Submitted to committee!

This is the time of the semester where I am utterly drained and ready for everything to end. I’m sure it doesn’t help that I had an absolutely inhuman workload this semester (dissertation, teaching 3 classes, lab work, and job hunting) and the end of the semester marks the beginning of an awesome trip to SE Asia. 7 more working days until I’m free. 7 more….7 more…

My university (and my college in particular) uses two online systems with which to organize course materials, submit assignments, and track student progress. No doubt many of you in higher education are familiar with the demons LiveText and/or eLearning. Now that many of my students’ assignments are rolling in, I’m beginning to see what poorly designed, expensive overpriced pieces of shit these platforms truly are. As much as my students have grumbled about how much they hate these systems, I’ve assured them that it’s infinitely worse on my side of the coin. Not only have I had to wrestle with the inconsistencies and minutiae of such  clumsy beasts and battled intermittent outages, but I also had to endure a few hours’ of “training” at the onset of the academic year. Yes, hours. The few morsels of information gleaned from these so-called training sessions could have been bestowed via a brief e-mail, so of course it made sense for me to waste a few perfectly good hours with Captain Incompetent at the helm. These training sessions were obviously for people who still think AOL is at the cutting edge of computing. It sickens me that someone, somewhere is making an obscene amount of money, profiting from my (and others’) misery, all in the name of this elusive goal of “accountability.”

If anything, this semester has taught me why so many of the professors I know drink the way they do. Sigh.

A few big things crossed off the list:

Run a 10K
Run a half-marathon

My marathon training is going well. I ran a bit over 13 miles the other day! My next big goal is to reach 18-19 miles before I leave for Thailand. We’ll see how that pans out. As long as I can run at least 15 miles at a go, I should be fine for the big dance, or so most experts say. I can’t see how only being able to run a little over half of the distance means you can do the full 26.1, but then again, I’ve never run more than about 13 miles at a time!

Eat at Highlands

It was AMAZING! I took the spouse there as a surprise birthday gift, and it was worth every cent! We shared the most amazing salted caramel chocolate cake, and the service was just impeccable. I want to go back, even though it was pretty expensive. That place is truly a treasure, and I can’t believe that it’s in little old Birmingham, AL.

Find a pair of glasses that I actually like to wear

Even though my vision has declined significantly (thank you, grad school), stylish new specs certainly softened the blow. Check it!

As it turns out, I have now had a grand total of 3 papers accepted to Huge National Conference, and all 3 are paper sessions. That can’t hurt, right? Based on the advice of some friends in the know, I sent in the updated version of my vita to the institutions where I’d already applied, in hopes that (best case scenario) it would make a difference. All of the responses were positive, and in some cases, it means that they now know about my article accepted for publication and four new conference presentations (and they didn’t before). Pretty substantial difference, I’d say.

The job market still looks OK, and I’ve added another 5 or so jobs to the list since my last post. Still no word from any one else, which one of my references says is a good thing. I hope he’s right. I think I’ll start getting really nervous if I don’t hear anything at all by mid-January, but for now I’ll continue to tell myself that no news is good news.

On the research front, I have some ideas that I will act upon in the next couple of weeks, in hopes of having some fresh sets of data to work with for future articles and conferences. I want to come out guns blazing when/if I get a job, and this will certainly help. Now, to get that old conference paper in shape to send out by December…

So, bad news first: I received my first job search-related rejection. I’d applied for a postdoc at a really prestigious school that was a close but not exact fit for my skill set. I received an e-mail from the search head yesterday saying that my credentials were strong, but my skill set wasn’t as good of a match for the job as other candidates’. Fair enough. One down, 29 to go.

The good news: Both of my submissions got accepted for Huge National Conference in late April. Better yet, both were accepted as paper sessions, rather than poster or roundtable sessions. This in a year when they were trying to make things more inclusive which necessitated making the paper sessions far more competitive, and I got not just one, but two! The paper I submitted based on my dissertation research got a particularly amazing review. Some quotes:

Classical in tone, definitive in style, and analytical in content, this good paper raises more questions than it answers and that is good.

This proposal also speaks to the program’s theme and reveals a high quality of writing and organization. The paper’s objectives, theoretical framework, methods of inquiry, data sources, and results are all scientific and scholarly. This is a significant piece of work that deserves presentation.

It’s hard not to have a great day after reading those kinds of reactions to your work. As one of my friends said, “That sounds like a testimonial from a book’s dust jacket!” It’s just the boost I need to get my revisions done and to start working on some stuff to submit to other conferences and journals. It’s also a few more lines on my vita when I can certainly use all the help I can get to sell myself as a serious scholar who does work that other people care about.

I’m wrapping up week 2 of being sick, with a moderate amount of improvement. The Cipro has done weird things to mah belly, and I still have an insane amount of postnasal drip, which makes for unpleasant mornings. Using the sinus rinse has helped a bit, although sometimes I feel like I can’t get the solution all the way through. A blockage or some swelling, perhaps? I had some structural issues w/ my sinuses a decade ago (enlarged turbinates and an obstructed ostium) but I think that it was all permenantly fixed with my surgery.

I’ve found another couple of jobs, one of which excites me to no end given its location. I’ve got another 5 or so applications that I’m sending out this week and weekend, and then I’ll knock out the remainder over Thanksgiving break. Between that, writing up 2 finals, working on some articles and conference presentations, wrapping up my dissertation revisions (more on that in a sec) and prepping for my Asian excursion, methinks I’ll be a tad overwhelmed!

I received my advisor’s comments on my first draft and they were overall very positive. The changes he suggested shouldn’t take more than a couple of days to implement, and then I’m shooting it back his way mid-week for him to have at least one more chance to suggest changes before I send it to committee. My plan now is to send it to them around Thanksgiving, with a request for a list of potential days and times in late January that work for them. Then upon return from the holidays, I’ll e-mail them individually to ask about any particular issues that they want me to address pre-defense, so that the whole defense runs smoothly. One of my committee members thought it was a great idea and expressed appreciation that I was giving them plenty of time to read and think it over. If anything, I need to keep them happy!

Today, despite my ickiness, I taught 2 really good classes. The material covered in the 2nd half of the semester is much more my speed, and I think that translates into more exciting classes. Of course, there’s also the fact that I have more experience than I did at the beginning, and there’s something to be said for that. I feel so much more comfortable in the classroom, and even though I don’t want to have a teaching-intensive (as opposed to research-intensive) job, I really don’t mind that aspect so much. I’m really looking forward to next semester when I’m teaching material that I’ve covered before and I have a whole semester (3 classes) of experience under my belt!

I went back to the clinic on Thursday immediately after class when I started having some serious coughing/hacking/choking/wheezing fits before teaching my 11 AM. Had it not been for my inhaler, I’m not sure I would have made it through class. After checking me out, doing some blood work, and X-raying my chest, the doctor concluded I had a sinus infection that was dumping gook into my bronchial passages (hence the coughing) and put me on Cipro. I started feeling a bit better on Friday, but was still coughing and run down. A few friends (via Facebook) sang the praises of Neti pots, so I went to the store this morning to buy a sinus rinse kit. Yes, I’m too chickenshit to dump salt water into my sinuses.

It took me a bit of time to work up the courage to even start squeezing the bottle, but once I got things going (and the water poured out the other nostril), I began to see why people liked it. One downside to the process is that you tend to leak profusely for another half hour after you squirt, particularly if you lean over. I found this out when I leaned over to kiss the spouse (grading papers and all) and leaked water on him and some unfortunate student’s paper. Luckily, it caused no damage and we were able to laugh about it, but that kind of thing can really hurt one’s image in some circles.

Three hours hence and I’m feeling a ton better. I cooked dinner, made two loaves of pumpkin coconut bread, and I plan to stop in on a friend’s Halloween block party later. Basically, I’m hooked! The initial “OMG-ick!-It’s-running-through-my-nose” factor is pretty substantial, but the after effects are well worth it! My hope is that if I do it regularly that I’ll stave off a large number of future upper respiratory infections and have far fewer days where I’m a wheezy, weepy, sneezy mess.

It seems gross, but kids, irrigate your sinuses. They’ll thank you for it profusely!

I’m still hacking like a smoker. How did I teach my class today? I have no idea. I let them go about 10 minutes early because my voice (what was left of it) was totally shot. After class, I went straight home and applied VapoRub and a hot compress to my chest to loosen all the gooey bits. Three cheers for Mucinex!

On the job front, I have 25 jobs on my list, and I’ve applied for 11 of them so far. That figure will bump up to 12 by the end of the week. Once I hear back from Huge National Conference about all 3 of my proposed papers, I’ll apply for the jobs that have mid-November and December deadlines. I’m hoping to have all of my apps out for the jobs I currently know about by Thanksgiving. In applying for job #11 (a “safety” if there ever was one…), I found it to be the least clear and most complicated of all of the jobs I’ve applied for yet. It was enough to make me throw up my hands in defeat, but I’m hardly in a position to be turning down opportunities. This job is better than being unemployed, but not by much. I have to wonder about a place that makes you submit copies of your transcripts for a tenure-track position. Trust issues, much?

Three more classes to teach, and then a weekend to recover and write. It really can’t come fast enough!

Things were going fine for a while, but now I’m just over this semester. Students who couldn’t be bothered to come to class (or to participate when they did) are suddenly ultra-concerned about their grade, and blame their failures on me. Nice try, dear, but when I know I said something in class on three separate occasions, it’s hard for you to argue that I “never told” you when the assignments were due. A few have claimed I never told them my office hours. Never mind that they’re right on the syllabus and I make references to them liberally in class. RTFS, kids! I still have a ton of essays to grade, but like hell I’m getting anywhere near a grade book when I feel like this.

This is all coming down on me when I have a few important job apps to get out by the end of the week, not to mention a vicious cold/upper respiratory infection that’s had me laid up since last night. I felt sort of hoarse and sore on Thursday and Friday, but by Saturday night, I knew I had a full-blown illness. Now my asthma’s flaring up and it’s hard for me to breathe, so I’m off to the clinic in a few for a breathing treatment and perhaps a steroid shot to scare off any inflammation so that I can just start my week already.

I could use a drink, but I think mixing alcohol with Tylenol Cold is a bad idea, or so they say.

My self-imposed blogging embargo has ended! (And the crowd goes mild.)

The first bit of good news is that I turned in my first full draft of all 5 chapters on Friday. I’ve been working steadily for the past few months, but it took an 11th-hour near-all-nighter to get the damn thing done. I stayed up ’til 3, woke up at 7:30, taught at 11, and tweaked a few things before turning it in around 2:30 that afternoon. My advisor promised a 1-week turnaround, and then I’ll have it for another week or so for a round of revisions, lather, rinse, repeat. I’m kind of hoping to have everything nailed down and ready to send out around Thanksgiving, so that I can leave my committee w/ a full draft before the end of the semester (and over 6 weeks in which to read and review the whole document). I’ve often scoffed at people who frantically pull together shoddy work to meet a deadline and then give their committee something that barely qualifies as a draft a week before the defense. I want my committee to have plenty of time in which to read it, develop thoughtful questions, and come prepared to make me actually defend my work. I respect the folks on my committee far too much to force them to read some haphazard drivel and then make them sit through a weak and chaotic defense.

Another piece of good news is that an article I sent off for publication a couple of months ago has been accepted for publication. I’m really thinking that I should try to write up the results from the paper I did at a conference back in April to see if I could get perhaps one more pub on my vita before I start interviewing. It would be a stretch, but it may be worth a try! My hope is that with at least one pub and a few refereed conference presentations, my vita will stand out among a stack of others gunning for so few jobs in a tough economy.

The job hunt is also really revving up. I’m finding a few more jobs here and there, and so it looks like that when it’s all said and done, I’ll be applying for roughly 20 jobs. If only one quarter of them have any interest in me, I’ll be thrilled. My goal is to have all of my applications submitted by the time we leave for Thailand so that I can come home with a clear docket (and maybe a few interviews) for the spring semester.