There are stretches of the day when I am just so incredibly tired, and when I am ready for bed, I am ready for bed. It's like the times of the day that I've always been a little sleepy, right now, just knock me on my ass. Most nights, I haven't slept too well from achy sides or just tossing and turning, but thankfully, Katie doesn't wake up til 9 so I can at least stay in bed relaxing. I get really weepy at the slightest thing on tv- I saw a snippet of Band of Brothers today and was choked up the entire time. The nausea is still largely under control as long as I'm not too hungry. There have been a few moments, though, when I'm not sure I'm going to hang on to my cookies...
Beyond that, Dallas is making me a little stir crazy. I think it's a mixture of living in an apartment in Plano. We get out regularly, but this area is as old as me and rather unfulfilling. There's not much to relate to around here- no cool little bohemian-ish areas or soothing college campuses that I can get to easily. Mall walking has gotten really, really old.
When I'm in OKC/Norman, though, I do miss Eric. Maybe this edginess will subside if we find our own house (got a nice check in the mail today from the bank with our escrow funds...).
And, a bit of panic has started to set in, due to the warnings about how much work two small kids can be. I'm grateful, for sure, for the reality check, but the list of things that must be done before I can't leave Dallas for awhile is so substantial, I'm almost crippled by it. I just need to get organized and focused and just get it done...but that's always the hard part. I was talking to my master's advisor the other day about all this and as usual, she put my dissertation in perspective.
"Are you trying to make it perfect?" She asked, which made me realize, as much as I'd like my dissertation to be this beautiful work of art and beautifully conceptualized and designed, the old saying goes, a good dissertation is a done dissertation. Instead, my goal is now is that my project will be solid (so far, it is). I'll write it and focus on artfullness later. The flourishes, bells and whistles can come during tenure.
In the meantime, I need to get at least one, if not two conference papers out by the deadline, April 1. One's partly written, the other's an extended outline. The problem? I'm writing this paper outside of any class or professor feedback and that whole self-initiative thing is a muscle I haven't had to cultivate...yet. I'm not sure what I'm doing, or if the paper is organized in a way that makes sense...it's good practice for tenure when this will be the means to my livelhood.
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5 comments:
Hang in there! I'm with you on a lot of that, except the whole writing thing. You're awesome for how much you have accomplished, keep at it!
explain a little bit to me about the world of academia... why are conference papers the "means to (your) livelihood" during tenure? what are conference papers anyway?
your friend from the freelance creative world,
angela
;)
conference papers are research papers we present at scholarly conferences (to the three people who bother to come to the individual sessions). The idea is that feedback at conferences then leads to revisions, and then we submit the papers for publications in scholarly journals. Conference presentations aren't as valuable as publications when professors go up for tenure (at schools that emphasize research over teaching, for instance), but they're still important overall. For grad students, they're extremely important to get a job, although there's still some expectation that we publish as grad students as well. So, in academia, the saying is "publish or perish." That's what this means. There's usually some baseline expectation of how many journal articles, book chapters, or books professors are supposed to have to get tenure; at major institutions, the research expectations usually outweigh the two other factors in tenure (teaching and service).
The crazy thing is, not all journals are regarded equally. Some have lower acceptance rates, and therefore higher prestige. So, fewer publications in a more prestigious journal can be about the same as many publications in a lesser journal. And there are specific journals for specific fields and specialties...It counts if you author journal articles by yourself or with other people (single-authored publications are better, but harder, than multiple authored). a
In general, though, conference papers are a big deal for grad students. They're not as rigorously reviewed as publications, so it's not as hard to get a conference presentation as a publication...but it's still extremely important that we show we have sustained scholarly activity. Let's just say, I couldn't get away with saying that I've had two kids in grad school and therefore didn't have time to submit to conferences. Someone had to present for me after Katie was born. And it won't count in my favor that I've had successful submissions and presentations despite everything that's happened.
So, to get a job, this is what we have to do as grad students. To get tenure, we have to do this and get publications. The economy makes it suck even more right now, because so many of our peers that should be graduating this year aren't getting hired this year. There will be a glut of grads next year and to distinguish ourselves from other job candidates, our scholarly activity will count even more.
That's the deal. It's really wearing on my self-initiative and it's a rather masochistic process because academics can be vicious, vicious, vicious.
wow! and no guarantees. after all that time and money. egads!!! i, too, am trying my best to muster what little self-initiative and self-discipline i have to further my own career. it's a lot more difficult than when you have someone standing over you with a stick and high-expectations... good luck!
Self-initiative sucks!!! Good luck to you, too!
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