Flying Time

Despite the best of intentions, it seems everytime I make a schedule for accomplishing work, I find it derailed in one way or another.

The derailment this time is a good thing. It's been about three weeks since I received an invitation to submit a book chapter for a new edited collection. I've been working furiously on it, and have actually made some good progress.

But it means I am now behind on the schedule I set for myself at the beginning of spring. It's not a bad thing, just annoying. Mostly because it seems that this happens every time I make a schedule.

And we're planning on moving this summer, so I'll get even less done as we search and then move. So schedules will have to fly out the window for the next few months.

I do hope this is the last time I have to suspend my reading, at least for a while...

Okay, this got a lot longer than it was supposed to

I recently learned that a friend and colleague has decided to quit graduate school. It was a bit of a shock at first, but after reading his explanation, I understand it.

I have certainly felt much the same way about graduate school. I also used to love to read. But graduate school isn't about literature as much as it is about the analysis of literature. Which sometimes takes you very far afield from literature.

His escape from the ivory tower made me question why I too haven't escaped. Why did I stay under the same circumstances? And then I realized that maybe they weren't the same circumstances. And that some of the things that I thought were handicaps, or negatives in my academic career, might actually have kept me at it.

There are similarities in our stories, but also differences, and in some ways I'm grateful to those differences because they allowed me to get through the rough spots.

Like my friend, I read voraciously as a kid. Loved reading. Not always high quality stuff. But I read a LOT! I did other stuff too, clubs, music lessons, painting and such, but reading was my first love.

When I started having kids, I certainly read a lot less. When they were young, I was usually just tired after they went to bed. And my hopes of staying home with them and raising them were quickly dashed with cold water when the hard reality of only one income squeezed us uncomfortably. So working while having little kids in the house made reading secondary. I chose to read shorter things - short stories, magazines, or even do activities that could be over in a half hour or hour, like crossword puzzles, instead of picking up novels.

But as I worked, I came to realize that the best I could do in the field I was working in was make district manager after a decade or so, and still only pull in about $30K. And I REALLY, REALLY, didn't want to be district manager. I couldn't imagine spending my life doing that. Let alone for the pittance that it would pay.

So I went back to school. At 29 I walked into my first university classroom.

That was a shock, and probably subject for a whole other blog post. And I went through a lot a changing ideas about what I wanted out of the university experience. One thing I was sure though, was that I wanted a degree that would be useful. English literature was the last thing on my mind.

But then I took an elective: The novel and the Short Story with a wonderful professor, who has since died (to the loss of all those students who will never study with him), but it re-awoke that love of literature. And I figured out a way to get an English degree and a Biology degree at the same time, so I felt justified in catering to my love while still earning a "useful" degree.

I took biology because I started considering a medical career. But then I realized I didn't want to go into medicine. It's not that I didn't want to be a doctor. I think I would've liked that. I think I would've even been good at it. I even think I *might* even have been accepted to one of the lower tier medical schools.

What I didn't want was the medical education though. I knew it would require more time and commitment than my undergrad, even beyond what earning two degrees concurrently required. And I wasn't willing to do it. I lived in the family housing on campus, and I watched my neighbor - single mom of three kids, just like me - do it. Yep, she was doing medical school. But it was brutal on that family. And she had a much more extensive support system than I did. I just couldn't muster the energy I imagined myself needing in the same position.

So I gave in to my love and went on to graduate school in English. And I loved it. I knew from the moment I began the Master's, that I wanted to spend my life reading and writing about literature.

I will admit now, that part of my motivation to enter graduate school had nothing at all to do with a love of literature. It had to do with being a newly divorced mother of three elementary school kids with an ex-husband who was beginning to make it clear that he had no intention of paying the child support he owed. I had little confidence that I could earn enough right at that time, to support those kids. I knew I could try. But I also knew that if I was in graduate school, I could supplement my earnings with student loans if I needed them. (I ended up with assistantships instead, but it was still extra cash that I sorely needed)

Perhaps that's a touch sacriligeous. To have financial considerations be part of my choice to follow this career path. It wasn't all of it of course, but it was part of the consideration. But once I was in, I knew this is what I wanted.

(And I actually ended up making more at my job the second year of my Master's than I ever thought possible, so I guess it was an unnecessary worry...)

The Doctoral program was a whole different experience from the Master's though.

My friend, the one who left academia, in part because grad school in English is more about the theory than the literature, went to a really good school. The kind of school I don't think I would've made it into. The kind where there are professors who people really want to work with (at least, I would've loved to work with a few of them). I was happy for him when he got in, but also a bit jealous.

See, this dissertation that I'm doing on Cyborgs and Clones is probably the furthest you can get from what I wanted when I entered my program. I came to my program with a clear idea of two areas of study I wanted to undertake.

I study neither of them now. And the transition from what I wanted at first, to now, has been really hard at times.

One area I don't study because the department did not offer courses during my coursework years that would allow me to study it. The other, I was told I really wasn't qualified for.

Those were both hard blows that first year. And then when I failed the prelims, I really questioned what I was doing in a program that wasn't offering me what I wanted, and really didn't think I could manage what they were offering.

We lost half our class that year too - one transferred out, and the other dropped out, leaving just two of us.

But dropping out wasn't an option. I was in a foreign country on a student visa. If I dropped out, I wouldn't be able to work. And I was the one with the teaching assistantship. Without my income we'd be living entirely off loans. And we wouldn't be able to do that.

It was do or die. If I flunked out or dropped out, we'd have to admit defeat and head home. And that would derail my husband's career too. I couldn't do that to him. And I didn't want to go home having failed to do what I set out to do. So I studied, and passed the prelims, and searched around for a new area of study.

Obviously I found it, but if I hadn't been forced to stay in the program, I wonder if I would've? I never really entertained the option of not staying because it just wasn't an option. But I wonder if it had been an option, would I have stayed?

Right now, I can't imagine not doing what I am doing. I'm loving the research and even the torturousness of drafting and redrafting and redrafting yet again to get the prospectus approved. But I can't imagine not doing it.

So maybe those life circumstances were benefits for me because in the long run they forced me to keep going through the rough spots. And now I'm in a place where I'm happy to be.

Well, either that, or I'm just too stubborn to realize I should've got out a long time ago! But I'd like to think this is where I should be...

Big soccer weekend

This weekend has been filled with soccer. Oldest daughter had a game on Friday and this weekend is middle daughter's tournament weekend. Their team won 2 and tied 1 game so far, so as they go into the medal rounds, we're figuring they'll be playing in the gold round. Not sure who they'll be playing, but we'll know in an hour when the game starts.

Even if they don't make gold, they've really worked well as a team, and I've seen a lot of improvement in middle daughter's play.

She's made herself a valuable member of the team, and they all seem to get along quite well, so I'm ready to declare the season a success regardless of how this game turns out.

UPDATE: They won silver. The medal round game was a tough one against a team that they've only played once before because most of their games against them were rained/snowed out. They played hard, but lost the game.

Congrats on a silver medal finish! and a well played season!

I knew this moment might come

So, I send off what I *hope* will be the final version of the prospectus yesterday morning. In the afternoon mail a book arrived. It's a book that was recommended to me for a non-dissertation related project.

But as I read the introduction to the book, I realize the book is doing much the same thing as I intend to do in the dissertation.

The sensation produced by that realization is certainly not pleasant. Sinking-feeling-in-your-stomach is one way of describing it. The world-tilting-on-its-axis might be a bit over dramatic, but it could serviceably be another.

I know this is a point that probably every doctoral student hits at some point in the research stage - finding someone else who has already done almost exactly what you want to do. My first thought actually had nothing to do with the dissertation itself though. My first thought was actually, "Now I'll have an even harder time publishing the book"

Yes, that's a long, long way away, but if I'm going to be honest, it was the first thought. After all, the expectation is that you will produce a book shortly after finishing the PhD, and you need to do so to gain tenure. The most logical material for a book is a revision of the dissertation, after all, you spent years researching and putting it together, it's the most logical candidate for book material.

After my initial distress at reading what this scholar produced (and just produced - it was published this year), slowly lessened, and I began to try to find the points of difference between what I'm trying to do and what she has done.

I discover there are several points of difference. Though even as I do so, I can't help but admire her book for its polished presentation of some of the same arguments I'm trying to formulate. My attempts look so clumsy and amateurish compared to their articulation in this book. But that just makes me anxious again, and I return to trying to find differences.

And there are differences. Though the major difference between our projects was really only going to be the subject of one chapter of my dissertation. I'm now thinking it wouldn't hurt to emphasize it more throughout the dissertation.

Thank goodness a prospectus is just that - a proposed project - and not written in stone!

Now that the internet's back up....

Lost our internet signal for four days, which seemed like an exceedingly long time.

But now that we have it again, I just sent off the final version of my prospectus. (I've already written most of a chapter, but at least now the prospectus is approved!)

Woohoo! I think I'll go celebrate with a couple of Coronas and maybe fire up the firepit if the mosquitos aren't too bad...

Yes, please do go away

It just started raining as I sat down in front of my computer. I activated the shuffle on my player. Terence Trent D'Arby's Rain started. How fitting.

We've already had more rain than this month than is usual for all of June (in fact, I think we had more in the first week). Makes everything a lovely green, but also brings the threat of flooding since the snow cap isn't finished melting yet.

Maybe I'm not part of the club yet...

Just when I think that I'm feeling like a scholar (and an erudite one at that), I get these moments when I panic that everyone will see right through me for the sham that I am. I know these feelings are normal, given my status as scholar-in-training, but they aren't any more pleasant as a result.

I just sent off what I hope will be the final draft of my dissertation prospectus today. Yes, I know it should've been completed ages ago. The first draft was. I actually wrote the first draft over a year ago. But since then I've waited a long time while each person looked at it and then responded. So it's taken forever.

I'm really hoping it meets with approval and I can get to what I really want, writing the dissertation itself.

But before then, I've been asked to submit a chapter for an edited collection on Octavia Butler. It's exciting, but also very scary, because I want it to be great. But I've only got two months to get it done, and if I want my advisor to look at it and respond, I've got much less than two months.

So the pressure's on. Look good. Do it in only a few weeks. Yikes!

Excellent vocabulary.

Your Vocabulary Score: A

Congratulations on your multifarious vocabulary! You must be quite an erudite person.

How's Your Vocabulary?

Soliciting my readers' help

So, I've got a question for you - my boss is considering submitting a project for funding tentatively entitled Urban Living: Expectation Management.


The project would be directed at young people coming to a large city for the first time. It would provide tips and information about how things in a city might be different than in a smaller community. Our client often serves youth who come from very small and remote communities (think no sidewalks, traffic lights, shopping malls etc.) Obviously if you've ever moved between rural/small town and large city, you might even have some first hand experience on this.

If you were to give one (or more) tip(s) to someone coming from a really remote and small community to a big city, what would you think was important to mention?

Tough reading

I've been reading two books this week that I'm finding particularly difficult. But for different reasons.

The first, Kevin Warwick's I, Cyborg, is really hard going because the man's arrogance screams through the pages, and you have to wade through it to get at the actual science being described.

All I can wonder is, if this man is like this in writing, what is he like in real life???

The other book I'm having trouble with is also making me disappointed, because I hoped to find some good arguments in it.

Francis Fukuyama's Our Posthuman Future tackles the challenges genetic engineering is creating for public policy. This should be good. It should balance the pro-technology writing of the scientists I've been reading lately. I want to hear from someone not involved in the science about the kinds of issues that we should be keeping in mind while contemplating the social effects of these kinds of technologies.

Fukuyama should be it. But the book is sorely lacking in actual arguments. Which is incredibly disappointing.

Now I will admit that I knew before I picked up the book that I probably would not agree politically or philosophically with Mr. Fukuyama. But I had really hoped to find some arguments worth thinking about, perhaps challenging my beliefs, and spurring me to think about and reformulate my own thinking about what posthumanism might look like, and whether we want to embrace it or fear it.

Some of the arguments I just found unbelievable, mostly because they were presented as statements without examples of how he got to that statement in the first place. For example, on pps 78-9 he states that genetic engineering will not change human nature because "modifying, eliminating, or adding to those alleles on a small scale will change an individual's patrimony but not the human race's. A handful of rich people genetically modifying their children for greater height or intelligence would have no effect on species-typical height or IQ". Okay, I buy that. Certainly one of the criticisms of genetic engineering is that only the rich will benefit from it and the divide between rich and poor will become larger as it also means it is a divide between engineered and not-engineered. (think de-gene-rates in Gattaca)

Then, only a few pages later, he claims that the state would make technology available to all its citizens, not just for the rich to prevent the creation of a two-tiered human species. What?!! Can anyone out there see the American government (all of Fukuyama's examples are based on an American model of science and government) funding genetic engineering for the poorest of its citizens? It doesn't even fund basic health care right now! Why would it fund enhancements?

He also argues that complex behaviors are influenced by large number of genes - an argument that most scientists adhere to. It's hard to imagine that there is only one gene for intelligence, for example, or athletic ability. That's pretty much a given for most geneticists. But then, in order to throw a scare into his readers, he throws out the proposition that we may find complex behaviors controlled by simple genetic interventions!

While it's true there's no telling what we'll discover as we go along, this statement is highly unlikely to become a reality, yet he introduces it as a means of making the point that the rich could easily change complex behaviors with simple (but presumably expensive) genetic interventions.

Overall, the arguments slip and slide around a lot in this book. Most annoying is Fukuyama's habit in the first half of the book of saying things about how a particular technology will affect policy making, but not saying how. I was looking forward to the second half of the book, hoping it would outline some suggestions for policy creation, but it was mostly just a description of existing policy. Interesting, but certainly not as helpful as if he had put his money where his mouth was and actually made some suggestions... but he does have a political career to think of as well, so I guess I wasn't really surprised...

All I know is I was disappointed by the book which held so much promise of good counterarguments to much of the other material I've been reading lately.

Science fiction or science fact?

According to the news in the last few days, a patent has been filed for the basic genes to create life - not genetic engineering, the tinkering of existing life forms by adding/subtracting/changing genes, but genetic synthesis, designing and creating an organism from scratch.

So here as I'm reading bioethicists debating the morality of creating life through what we know of genomics, there's a patent being filed for that very thing.

As I sit here in my office, far removed from biotechnology hubs, I wonder what the effect of this patent application will be - will it get the public talking about genetics, sparking a debate and various regulatory agencies' efforts to produce guidelines for future research? Or will this news story slip back down into oblivion after this brief blip across the radar screen, opening the possibility that a single company will own the patent to life?

Meanwhile, James Watson - the discoverer of the DNA helix - has had his entire genome mapped.

Certainly the million dollar price tag won't have people popping down to the local gene bank to check out a new love interest, as they did in Gattaca, but it's certainly an interesting development arising out of the Human Genome Project.

It looks like science fiction is becoming science fact right now. And it seem to me there's far too little discussion by human beings in the aggregate about how this might affect our lives and our ownership of our own genetic maps.

Grounded

It never ceases to amaze me at how attached we can become to our habits... and the places where those habits are enacted.

Due to an injury, I've had to curtail my running in the last week. It's very disappointing because I was preparing for a long race, and was scheduled to complete a much shorter one last weekend. Not only will I not be ready for the longer race, but I couldn't even participate in the short one.


But was surprises me is how much I'm reminded of this everyday.

I don't think I'd realized how big a part of my life running had become. I look at the weather forecast but realize that it's less important to me now than when I'm running.

I drive past road construction, noting that they've finally laid the sidewalk and my first thought is, "oh, good, I can use this run again" but then I realize I won't be doing that any time soon.

I drive past the trail running park, thinking how much I can't wait to get back to it.

I see an ad for shoes on sale, and realize there's no sense shopping for them because I don't know when I'll be using them... I just know it won't be anytime soon.

I'm trying to stay positive and just concentrate on healing, but it's hard.

On the brights side, I can still hike, so we went to Drumheller's Horseshoe Canyon last weekend. It's a little bit of wilderness in the middle of farmland, and if you don't know it's there and turn into the parking lot, you'd never even see it. But once you get to the top of the canyon, quite a vista opens up.


I don't know what I found more fascinating - the contrast of green and sand.


Or the detailed formations.


And textures.

I also bought a second hand backcountry pack, so if I can find someone who wants to go overnighting it, I'm ready!

It's the sideshow that's the most interesting

I've been half-heartedly following the Stanley Cup playoffs. It's not that I've lost interest in hockey, it's just that I can't get excited by either the Ducks or the Senators.

By far the best part of last night's game was the commentary after the second period. Commentators expected it to be interesting, and it turned out to be amusing, though Don Cherry was certainly not up to his usual flamboyance - either verbally or in haberdashery.

Mmmmm... coffee

Understanding Coffee People. I think I recognize a bit of myself in two of these coffee types. Maybe I'm transitioning between the two...

Finishing touches

We're putting the finishing touches on our two work projects that will be launched next week. It's very exciting to see a project that I began right through to the finish!

I gotta say, I'm pretty impressed with what our team put together - it's a good feeling.