The good, the bad, and the…well, good. November 7, 2009

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 think I can hack it October 28, 2009

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!

Duck and cover October 2, 2009

So, I’m going into virtual hiding for a few weeks. No blogging, no Gchat (horrors!!), and…wait for it…no Facebook. I feel like I’m at the point where I’ve got so much work to do that these activities can’t possibly contribute to my productivity. Besides, I need some excuses to stop staring at illuminated rectangles every now and then.

In addition, I’m curtailing my “real” social life, if you can even call it that. I figure those who know me and understand my predicament will be cool about it and those who don’t obviously don’t deserve my time. I’ve got a couple of family obligations and a few pre-planned friend obligations, but I’m not committing to anything beyond that.

Why, you ask? (All 4 of you!) In the next 2-3 weeks, I need to accomplish the following:

• Grade midterm exams for 3 sections, about 100 students total
• Grade essays for students who don’t meet the cutoff grade for the exam
• Finish writing my first draft (I probably have about another 15 pages to go)
• Get out the majority of my job application packets
• Work on a conference proposal to send out by the end of the month
• Get cracking on laying the groundwork for a study I’d like to start by the end of next month

I feel like my progress is being hindered by the insane number of distractions in my life, and so I’m taking a proactive approach to eliminating them. It may be extreme, but a lot of these tasks have very serious and direct implications for my (and my spouse’s) future. I owe it to both of us to get my shit done.

Get to steppin’ June 6, 2009

I find myself in somewhat of an academic rut. It’s nothing serious, but I once again have a load of work to plow through over the next few weeks and at times it feels like an insurmountable obstacle, to the point that I’ve spent more time worrying and procrastinating than I have actually working. I’ve been good about doing not doing this recently, and now is not the time for my old habits to resurface. After the hellish April I had coupled with my proposal defense and recovery from surgery, I feel like I haven’t taken a full breath in quite some time. I really won’t have a break until mid-late July, and even then, I’ll likely be busy packing. A busy life is better than the alternative, but when you’re in the thick of things, it sure doesn’t feel that way. By the end of next week, I need to pound out 3 conference proposals and finish up my analysis so I can get my presentation ready by the end of the following week. I’m really chomping at the bit now, but I’m feeling impossibly lazy and unmotivated at the present.

My reformation plan is going quite well. I’ve been running, going to the gym, and monitoring my eating habits a little more closely, and it’s paid off! I lost about 4 lbs over the past 2 weeks in part because I’m consuming less salt and way more water, and I’ve taken an inch off my waist, which is a welcome development. Tomorrow is my first long run (I’m training for a marathon and have one “long” run per week.) If all goes well, I’ll peel off 6 miles, but even 5 would be OK. I’ve never done more than 5 before in my life, so I’m curious to see whether I can even do it. Each week my long runs get successively longer until I’m able to do 26 in one try. I don’t see how I can’t substantially shape up when I’m running no less than 12 miles a week, and up to 32 miles in the later weeks.

First day back! May 19, 2009

I was bored out of my mind for the first half of today. Then I decided that I had too much to do to be bored, so I got to work on such important things as my symposium paper, getting a few more articles for my diss, and generally figuring out what I’m going to do over the next few weeks. After reading my notes from my defense and looking at some articles, I’m realizing that one of my committee members is (perhaps unwittingly) steering me to the very conclusion I’m arguing against. No me gusta! I’m reading the articles this person mentioned at my proposal defense so that I can say say, “Yes, but…” at my final defense without sounding like an utter moron.

This week and next, I plan on getting my candidacy paperwork finished, writing my symposium paper, and finish up on the last of my funding requests so that I can spend June doing nothing but conference prep and data analysis. My trip is really drawing close and I haven’t yet done anything of substance in preparation. I’m not panicking, but I am ready to crack down and get to work.

Enough already! May 16, 2009

I’m officially tired of feeling sore, swollen, and drugged. The first 2 days weren’t so bad, because I still had some anesthesia circulating in my system to keep me knocked out, not to mention the large amounts of Lortab I consumed to keep the pain at bay. I started weaning myself off the Lortab yesterday, which meant I actually felt some real pain. I still have a belly full of air, which feels as bad as it looks. My plan for the weekend is to force myself to start doing things (no lifting) in hopes that I will feel better by Monday or Tuesday.

I’ve been trying to plan out a few conference abstracts that I need to get ready this summer, but it’s significantly more difficult under the influence of narcotics. I also have a 1000-word paper based on my symposium presentation from a few weeks ago due on May 29, and I haven’t really started it yet. Maybe that will be my first task on Monday, assuming I feel up to it. I also need to follow up on some funding requests I put out for my conference trip to see if I’m getting any damn money.

It will be so nice to feel better and be productive. For now, I’ll just enjoy the break.

A relative return to normalcy March 3, 2009

I am definitely doing the conference thingy from 2 posts ago. When I told my advisor that I was probably just not going to bother, he said, “Oh, I think you should do it. It’s a line on your vita and it shows that you are involved.” It was too good of a point to dispute, so I’m definitely doing it now. He also pointed out that at one of the big conferences in our field you only get 12 minutes for your presentation, so learning how to boil things down is super important. I’m mostly done w/ my presentation, and we’ll go over it Friday to make sure it’s ready. He’s going to come watch my presentation, too, so I need to make sure that I won’t embarrass myself or him. It’s pretty nice of him to take time out on a Saturday to support his students like that.

This whole ‘getting over bronchitis’ thing is a lot harder than it looks. Walking for more than 5 minutes at a time or climbing 3 flights of stairs is enough to make me short of breath, which is depressing when you consider that I ran a 5K a little less than a month ago with no trouble. I cough a lot, and I’m generally just really tired. It’s hard for me to get motivated to do anything, and this is definitely not the time for me to lose steam. Hopefully over the next week I can fully recover and get back to my usual self and get back to the gym. Now that I’m eating again, I need a means of burning it off, not to mention that I feel so much better when I’ve been active.

J’y suis jamais allé January 19, 2009

How funny is it that within 12 hours of my post about trying to find a flight to the Netherlands, I find a flight for literally half of what I’d been finding for the past month? I’d been looking just about every day, and I wasn’t finding anything less than $1305. When you consider that lodging and food will be around $500, and the registration fee is over $300, I was feeling a wee bit panicky. $2100 for a conference trip?! Even with some funding assistance, we’d still have to cough up well over $1000 to make this happen. While not impossible, it wouldn’t be pleasant. At times I wondered if it was even worth it, and it caused a bit of tension in my household.

Last night, on a whim, I checked the flights from Birmingham to Amsterdam and I saw $645. I did a double take. It couldn’t be…could it? I said, “Hey, [Spouse], I’m finding flights for $645!!” He yelled, “BOOK IT!!!” And so I did, all the while doing a little happy dance. With that price, I can spend a couple of days in Paris and Amsterdam after the conference and still spend less than I’d planned. I’m guessing that I will do the whole trip for around $1500-1600. I should be able to get grants to pay for half of it, so between now and then I have to come up with about $700.

The downside is that I’m going alone, because my better half has to attend the wedding of a dear friend in Santa Fe the weekend after I leave. Even still, I’m super excited about finally seeing Paris, a city I’ve wanted to visit since I was 4. I’m hoping to find some accommodations in Monmartre and spend a day or two taking in a few sights (the Eiffel Tower, obviously, and probably Sacre Coeur and Notre Dame). I also look forward to spending time in Amsterdam to see the Anne Frank house, the Van Gogh museum, biking around town, riding on the canals, and maybe visiting a coffee shop.

Hopefully the excitement of all this trip will offer will help me forget the anxiety I will inevitably feel about presenting at the conference. This will certainly be a life-changing experience in so many ways.

Cue laughter here December 16, 2008

Despite the fact that I’ve allegedly been on break for nearly a week now, my life has actually become more hectic than when I was “in school.” (Although any reasonable grad student will tell you that you’re never not in school, if you’re doing things right. ) Whenever people say, “Oh, so your semester’s over now, huh?” I just want to laugh in their face.  My life is no longer divided up into semesters, but by completion of projects, and it seems like some things will never be completed. I’m about to head out of town for a week, and then I’ll turn around and drive 10 hours to the in-laws’ on Christmas Eve. Not looking forward to that. (To be clear, I mean the drive, not the seeing the in-laws part.) I just now packed my bags for the first trip, which if you know me is nothing short of insanity.

I’ve had some time to reflect on my defense last week, and I really feel like (with a couple of small exceptions) that I couldn’t have done any better. The questions I got gave me an opportunity to really show what I know, rather than expose my weaknesses (not that I don’t have any). I already have a bunch of leads on ideas that need to be discussed in my proposal, and I’ve been busily finding, printing, and reading articles since last Thursday. The next few months will definitely be busy for me, but I’m looking forward to it. I think now I’m starting to really feel like I’m actually doing something.

There’s a decent possibility that I may be going to a conference this summer in the Netherlands, if my adviser and I can figure out a way to do a brief write-up of my dissertation topic by the end of January. It’s going to be expensive as hell, and the frugal aspect of my being cringes at the price of the flight alone (four figures, dudes!), but I’d be stupid and crazy as hell if I didn’t take the chance. It’s THE conference in my field, and going could really open some doors for me, not to mention I’d be in the Netherlands (one of my many motherlands) in the summertime. Keep those fingers crossed!