If you can't sound good...

Conference flight is one week away and the paper needs to be presented a couple more days after that.  Which means I need to prepare.

So what did I do today?

Went shopping.  Gotta look good after all...!

Actually I lucked out at my (new) favorite clothing retailer.  I found several items on the clearance rack that were then discounted an additional 50%.  A pair of jeans, 3 pairs of pants, a skirt, sweater, two shirts, cami and belt came to just over $80 with the tax.

How cool is that?

What's even better than nice new clothes, are nice new clothes that fit much better than some of the old stuff I am still hanging on to.  Although my weight hasn't changed much, my body shape has (shifting the plump around, I guess?!), so I've been finding some of my clothes less comfortable than in the past.

So I'll be rockin a couple of new outfits without having broken the bank.  I like that.

Metadissertating: Product and Process

Having finished a full draft of the dissertation, I've started thinking a lot more about the process of getting to this point.

I've been contemplating the relationship between process and product.

To earn the PhD, I need to finish the product - the dissertation. Doing so demonstrates competency and the earns me the title of Doctor of Philosophy.

Of course getting to the point of writing a dissertation means that you've jumped through several other hoops. In my program those consisted of:

• a set of preliminary comprehensive exams
• two language tests
• two years worth of coursework
• the comprehensive exam process
• approval of a dissertation prospectus

When you write it all down, it really does seem like the dissertation is just one small thing at the end of that list. But as anyone who has ever attempted to write one knows, "small" rarely seems the appropriate word for the undertaking.

The difference between the way the dissertation looks as just one of a list of tasks to complete, and the experience of writing it is a nice way of distinguishing between product and process. The product - the dissertation - is just one of many tasks to complete, but the process of creating it - the research and writing - is a major, no, the major, task of the PhD.

Particularly as I start to figure out where to begin my editing, I'm realizing that the person/writer/scholar I was when I began the project is a very different person from who I am now. When I look at that first chapter, I can see how much more mature and developed my thinking on the topic is compared to when I began. (I suppose if I looked at early drafts of the prospectus, the difference would be even more apparent. Though it might also be a bit embarassing to see how rough and simplistic my thoughts were then.)

The process of producing the dissertation, while not really counting for anything in the end, is what actually makes the final product worthwhile. If I had not spent the last three and a half years (okay, I'm fudging a bit...) working with the same topics, the same texts, the same material, I would not have been able to produce the dissertation that I have (in draft form anyway).

And I haven't gotten there yet. All the process to this point will mean nothing if I cannot finish editing and defend my work. If I walked away now (not likely!), I would be someone with a M.A. The work over the last seven years would count for nothing, at least as far as my cv and the world are concerned.

I have a good friend who has expressed the opinion that all the effort should count for something - that I've "worked hard". I won't deny I've worked hard. Sometimes I think I've worked harder than others in my position, but that's only because I'm a little thick at times and have to do things wrong before I see the right way! But just working hard doesn't count. My committee doesn't care about what my life has been like while writing this; they just care about what I've produced.

And after all, I need to practice what I preach. I tell my students it doesn't matter how many hours they worked on a writing task, or how much harder it was than anything else they've been working on. If they don't do it, they don't do it. Doesn't matter how hard you work. If you can't produce what's needed, then it's pretty much the same as if you didn't do it at all.

I won't be PhD till the product is acceptable. No matter how many hours I've put in, it won't count until I get those signatures of approval and file that bundle of paper with the university library. The process of creating that product has been a valuable and necessary process. But it won't count for a hill of beans in the real world unless it amounts to a finished product.

The dissertation is a strange interrelationship between the process and the product. You really can't have one without the other!

RBOC: Haven't blogged in a while version

Those of my readers who work in post-secondary institutions know the peculiar kind of intensity that arises around this point in the semester. If you don't, take it from me, from mid-March on, the students tend to get a little frazzled, as do the instructors!

• Been busy this week holding extra office hours for students before handing in their second draft of the mondo-report they're doing this term. I was surprised by how many of them got the date or time wrong. Have they not heard about daytimers? Or is that too old-fashioned?!
• Also wrapped up final content development on our latest project. Completing two full elearning programs from scratch in three months is definitely too fast. There were a lot of places where I felt rushed, and although I think we still turned out a useful product that the client will be happy with, there were things I would've done differently had we the usual time frame to work in.
• The above two bullets mean I now have to work through the weekend to even hope of catching up. All those second drafts need marking, and I have a conference paper to deliver in less than 10 days which needs to be more than the notes it currently is!
• The conference paper is on the movie Fido, which I've blogged about before. Yes, it's a zombie flick. But the fact that the zombies are zombies is incidental to the plot - they could be represented by another class of "people". In fact, this is what my argument will be - that zombies replace other oppressed classes in the alternative history within the film. The fact that they are zombies emphasizes their sub/un-human nature, which clearly demonstrates how oppressed classes are dehumanized.
• Or something like that. Like I said, it's just notes right now!
  
• I'm getting pretty tired of winter. March here has been characterized by one or two 'teaser' spring days followed by blasts of winter. Our road hasn't actually ever gotten clear of the snow. The ice/snow begins to melt, then just as it's about to disappear, it snows again. I'm really hoping April is more springlike!
• Even if April isn't nicer, I can't complain that I get to escape to a much warmer city for that upcoming conference. And I'll get to see two grad school friends who I haven't seen in a long time (since the last conference!), as well as all my usual conference-related friends. The paper line-up looks pretty interesting too!
  

There's some other stuff going on, but I'm having difficulty working through it because I have conflicting emotions about it. You'll also notice there's no mention of the dissertation. Not that it isn't on my mind, but now that I've finished drafting, I'm not sure where I want to start with editing. I also don't feel guilty about taking a bit of a break - I've earned it. Perhaps a reward is in order too?... hmmmm.

Getting more cynical? Or just smarter?

There is a general truism that people become more cynical the older they get. This bit of common wisdom seems to make sense to us because it seems rational to think that the older you get, the more disappointments you suffer, the more experienced you become. These disappointments would then add up to make one more cynical about those experiences.

William Blake did oppose Innocence to Experience after all.

This month, in the course of preparing some material for one of our elearning clients, I had the opportunity to take a form of the Myers-Briggs personality type test. The test gauges people along four dimensions:

introvert - extrovert
iNtuition - sensing
thinking - feeling
judging - perceiving

The first division is self-evident. The second, the difference between intuition and sensing represents the way that the person receives information. Those who score on the intuition range, tend to accept abstract or theoretical information, and tend to focus on how the information might be used in the future while those on the sensing end want to see concrete results and tend to be more focused on the present.






Thinking and feeling describe decision-making functions. Obviously thinking personalities rationalize decisions while those who score on the feeling end base decisions more often on emotion.

Judging and perceiving are a kind of meta-comment on the particular combination of the other three variables. What it does is define the strength of relation between the other three variables.

About a decade ago I took the Myers-Briggs type test and scored as INTJ. This shouldn't surprise anyone who knows me. But when I took the test this month, I scored as ISTJ. Now the 'S' percentage was low, which meant that I barely fit into the category. But the fact that my personality had shifted at all is fascinating.

I attribute the change to one of two things:
1) I have gotten more cynical and less future oriented (perhaps less optimistic/idealistic about the future?) over the last decade.
2) The ten years of continuing post-secondary studies led me to overthink the questions, giving an incorrect picture of my personality.

Either possibility is interesting. Either way, things have changed in my life, and I've obviously integrated those things into my life, including the way I take these kinds of silly tests!

Two milestones

The snow made it easy to stay home and do the work I'd planned for today. I didn't even miss my workout since the snow shovelling took a good hour and a half!

Although I slightly misjudged the numbers, so that my dissertation meter reads 98% instead of 100%, I have finished the draft of the final chapter! Yay for me!

There's much editing to do of course, and one of the things that you come to realize after several years of working on a single project is the stuff you wrote two years ago no longer matches to the stuff you've just been writing. But the good news is that the whole structure has been laid out. Now I just have to make it look pretty!

Oh, and apparently this is my 1000th post. So cool on that milestone too!

Bad timing

The subject line on the email from my local grocery store read:

Who says you can't BBQ in March?

Ummm, the view out my window this morning?

Lunch in the stairwell

Today I found myself feeling overworked while sitting in my office and decided that I needed to get out of it. So I took my lunch and started looking for a different place to eat it. I thought of going to the faculty club, but along the way, noticed a seat built into one of the large stairwells near the library.

So I sat in the stairwell to eat lunch.

Perhaps it's a bit strange to put seating arrangements in a stairwell, but that's the way it is. I picked a spot in a large stairwell with a seating nook that faced out so that I could see the traffic on both the first and second floor. Since the stairwell was L-shaped and at the corner of two hallways, so I could see a lot of people as they went by.

As I sat there, I began to think about the space I was sitting in. Stairwells are really just nether spaces. When you think of a stairwell, you don't think of a space to spend time in. It's a space that you move through. After all, when was the last time you stopped and sat in a stairwell?

Watching everyone go by, the liminality of the stairwell was reinforced by the way in which everyone moved. Everyone seemed very intent on navigating their way through the space, and certainly, no one else stopped. The stairwell was just a place to move through.

Space fascinates me. I don't mean the outer space kind. I mean the way that the people and spaces interact. I find space so interesting that I proposed an independent study on space during my coursework and ended up with a reading list that was about three times as long as the standard graduate course. There were over 20 books and another 20 articles and films, which meant that I read far more than anyone who might have taken a more standard course. But what it did was instill in me a continuing fascination with space.

The layout of a space affects how people feel about it and move through it. I've lived in old spaces that depress me, and small spaces that frustrate me, and beautiful spaces that inspire me (not so many of those last ones, but the older I get, the better I'm able to find those comfortable or beautiful spaces).

Spaces also are created by the people who move through them. Michel deCerteau talks about how pathways through a city for example, are actually created by the people using them. This happens regardless of their original design. Space is a construction that is created by the way in which people actually use those spaces.

People also make spaces work for them, even if the space isn't ideal. If you live in any place where more than a handful of people have come together to live in proximity, you've found spaces that don't work the same way that they were obviously designed. Some spaces make me wonder what the architect was thinking - they just seem awkward, like ill-fitting clothes. At the same time, people take those kind of awkward spaces and adapt them for uses that suit their purposes, regardless of what the architect may have desired.

Despite my reminisces and letting my mind wander through the implications of space, lunch was over too quickly. I returned to my corner of a shared office without a window...

Class scheduling and classroom dynamics

Our campus is rapidly growing, which means we have growing pains. Even though our department is housed in a brand new building (it wasn't there when I left this city six years ago), we're being squeezed for space.

The squeeze makes itself felt in scheduling. I've had difficulty getting a lab classroom for the one day this term we need lab access, and we were told last week that there will be more 8am class slots in the future. Which got me thinking about my early morning classes and how they've been fundamentally different from my afternoon classes this year.

For the last two terms, I've had a morning section and an afternoon section of the same class, and I'm finding it a bit eerie how the dynamics of each classroom have unfolded.

In the first meeting of the semester, both semesters, my morning classes seemed like they were filled with excited, engaged students. Right from the first couple of days, students seemed interested in asking engaged questions about the content, and not at all shy about talking to each other.

Meanwhile, in both semesters, the first meeting with the afternoon class was filled with questions about grading policies and whether I accepted late papers, as well as asking how harsh a grader I was, and how much work they could expect.

In each semester, I found myself worn out by the drilling I got the first day from the afternoon class, but energized and excited about the morning class. For the record, I'm not a morning person, so I would think that the morning class would be more exhausting just because I'm not as alert, wouldn't it?

Over the term, each class seemed to morph though. The afternoon class settled down, got to work, and started producing good work, while the morning class started slacking off, and attendance dropped rapidly. Now, I can understand the low attendance for the 8am morning class, but last semester, my morning class didn't start till 10am, so one would think that the early start wouldn't necessarily be the problem.

Of course I recognize that each classroom's dynamics is going to be different and that it would be foolish of me to expect that each class will come together in the same way as another. So I don't expect each classroom dynamic to look the same and I work hard at making sure I don't let what happens in the early class colour the responses I expect from the second class. I don't expect the class discussions to go at all the same (except for the points that I know I'm going to work in), but I am nonetheless baffled by the collective behaviour difference between the morning and afternoon sections in each of these terms.

The most challenging part has been planning daily activities. I know if the activities I undertake in the morning class take up all of the class period that I will be pressed for time fitting all of it into the afternoon class because they ask far more questions and contribute far more to class discussions. Part of this is sheer numbers - although both classes have the same enrollment, there are at least 40% more students attending every afternoon class.

But it's leaving me with a dilemma. Either I let the morning class go a little early every day and keep the afternoon class for the full time, or I keep the morning class for the full time and go overtime in the afternoon class (or rush through material - don't know which is worse). I suppose the other option is to tailor what we do to each class, but that doesn't seem right because I would have to have "more" activities for the morning class. Besides, that would require maybe not two preps, but at least one and a half. Work I don't really feel I have time to undertake.

The symmetry between my afternoon classes both semesters and my morning classes both semesters is the oddest thing though. I realize it may just be coincidence, and I've never seen this before in my teaching, but it has me wondering (and now I'm wondering aloud blog-style).

Today I did the second Q&A of the semester. This is where I pass out a cue card and require each student to write an anonymous question (or questions) about the class that I then answer. It's not as intimidating as it sounds, since a lot of students seem to ask the same question everytime I do this. Today's afternoon class got personal though, and wanted to know about my education, family, and "what I thought of this class" The first two were easy, but the last one was a bit odd. I wasn't sure what they wanted, though I expect the question writer secretly wanted to be told the class was wonderful.

But I didn't feel that would be honest to say that.

This is the class that practically mutinied when no one got an A on the first assignment, which certainly did not endear me to them, and the fact that one of the questions was less of a question than a challenge: "I work hard so why can't I get an A in this class?" didn't help dispose me to telling them they were wonderful.

I did tell them that I like teaching this particular kind of class because the work they do is relevant to real life and I know they'll use the skills they develop in the class. And I did tell them that I have enjoyed reading the drafts of their research papers because they have all found different, interesting things to write about. But I stopped short of telling them that I like them as a class.

It's not that I don't like them. Now that they've settled down to work and we've lost some of the slackers after the final withdrawal date, they are a likeable group. But I don't think they need to hear that from me. I said I liked their work. But that's all I said. I couldn't quite bring myself to say I liked them.

I don't know. Maybe I sold them short? What would happen to the class dynamics if I said they were a great group? Would they think they had me in their pocket and slack off? Or would they be so delighted they'd work harder? Given what's happened in the class, I suspect the former, but maybe I'm being too harsh. What do you think?

btw: It will be interesting to see course evals for this one. Not only did they start the semester hating me, but the evaluator came in just after I finished answering that question about what I thought of them.

What timing!

Stuck

I've got a million and one things to do (including finishing grading), about seven unfinished drafts of blog posts, and yet I can't seem to finish a single one of them today.

What's wrong?

The life/love of the mind

Over at the Chronicle there is an interesting follow-up essay by Thomas Benton about why professors should be discouraging graduate students from entering the profession. Some of his arguments makes sense, especially this one:

Some reasonably conscientious advisers tell students that they should go to graduate school only if they "could not consider doing anything else," but the students haven't tried anything else — and neither have most of the professors. Given professors' lack of information, students' naïve trust, and the overall ambiguity of the future, the easiest thing to do is fall back on our faith in doing what you "love."

I heard that advice myself when I was considering graduate school. But Benton's point that the advice only is effective if students know what they DON'T want to do is a corollary that I think should be tacked on more often.

Part of the reason I even went back to school as an undergrad was because I'd had other jobs, and didn't like any of them. It wasn't that I was just stuck in service either - I'd worked as a photographer, a glass installer, a daycare worker and even in management. Didn't like any of them. So I went back to school. Since then, I've held jobs that I could've made a career at - non-profit management, human resources, even the elearning gig I have right now.

But none of them satisfy me like the research and teaching (even if teaching nothing but composition is getting a little tiring). So, I can't say I can't imagine myself doing anything else, because I have. But I can say I can't imagine myself being as satisfied doing anything else.*

When you put it that way, I feel inspired and invigorated about my work, and I'm eager to find a full-time job in a career that satisfies me so fully! Will this mean that I will be incredibly disappointed if I don't get one? Sure. But I know I can do those other kinds of jobs - it's not like I'd starve if I couldn't be a professor. But I know which career is going make me happy because I know which ones won't. I think that's a nice thing to keep in mind for this coming year.

*this is not to say that I think everyone who wants to become a professor needs to go slog it out in the trenches first in order to be fully prepared. I think some people are better than I at knowing exactly what they want without putting themselves through the pain of horrible jobs that I did. I'm just a little dense, and needed that pain to figure it out!

Medieval Vampires

New Scientist is reporting a medieval vampire skeleton found. Of course they're not claiming the woman was actually a vampire, just that gravediggers thought she was one.

Still an interesting read.

And according to this mathematician, vampires are a mathematical impossibility. Dr. Efthimiou calculated that if once a month, a vampire fed off a human, turning that human into a vampire, the world's population would've all been turned by now. True. But very few contemporary vampire stories propose that all who are bit are turned. Most create a vampire who feeds without turning people (symbiotic relationships) or a vampire who feeds and kills. Lots of dead humans, but only rarely is one turned into a vampire.

Just in case you were curious...

A missed opportunity

Yesterday, my office mate at work overheard me trying to contact the international student office at my home institution to update my file there. So he asked where I was studying and that led to asking what I was writing the dissertation on.

Turns out his partner is writing on many of the same writers, and some similar themes, but her dissertation is organized around a quite different (but fascinating) set of questions. She even has a chapter coming out in the next few months on one of the novels that I'm writing about!

As I'm having this conversation, I'm thinking, "How grand! I would love to speak to this person, and share ideas." My office mate tells me his partner is like me - writing a dissertation from a distance. I get even more excited when I realize that this might be the academic connection that I've been trying to make in this town since we got here two and a half years ago! Here's someone else who not only is as academically isolated as me (and presumably would love more connection), but is also working in my area!

Then my office mate tells me his partner's flying out tomorrow to her home institution for the next 5 to 6 months.

Damn.

Another way elearning content development is like academic writing

"Quality assurance" is a bit like editing.

You've spent hours and hours with the content, shaping it, going over it, again and again.

And then you have to do it. one. more. time.

Renovating the ivory tower

You know what the problem is with the ivory tower?

It's a tower.

One of those big honkin' tall things, that spreads a dark (but thin!) shadow across the land surrounding it. But the biggest problem is that sometimes, the thing is so tall, that looking out of it, the other people of the world look like little ants, scurrying around the base.

One of the things I appreciate the most about working for the elearning company is that it reminds me that my world is not the only world. It reminds me that there are worlds out there that I only have fleeting glimpses of, whose areas of activity have just as many issues, and hierarchies, and struggles as mine.

They have their own iconic images, their own in-jokes, their own associations, their own traditions, their own rivalries, and all of them seem just as important as mine do to me.

There are times that I wonder whether I should continue the elearning work. I could use those hours to do more writing, or perhaps even more relaxing! But then I turn to a part of the project that is new and different from the kind of work I do when I write or teach, and I realize I'm not ready to give that up just yet. Even when those other worlds start to get boring, and I realize why I don't belong to those worlds, I still value them because they remind me that the ivory tower might better serve us if it was an ivory bungalow, or ranch-style abode.

RBOC

Things have been strange around here - an odd combination of novelty and routine, that have kept me busy but also surprisingly unable to describe these events in a coherent way. So here go the bullets

• I know everyone hates doing their taxes. But there is something soothing about organizing everything and accounting for everything. Because I use my vehicle part of the time to earn money, I also now know that I spent $461 on fuel last year. Not bad. I don't drive everyday, but even with that, I'm delighted that the number was that low. Of course that was also diesel fuel, which for most of the year was cheaper than gas.


• I've had really good conversations with my committee members lately, so I'm feeling good about the dissertation. This unfortunately is coinciding with a huge amount of other work that takes me away from it however.


• Even though I'm teaching two sections of the same course, there are vastly different dynamics developing in each classroom. This makes it hard to deliver the same content to these two very different classes.


• I've requested spring teaching, but am ambivalent about it. I like the idea of teaching (and of course the bit of money this brings) but also have a lot of writing that needs to get done. Perhaps I wouldn't be so ambivalent if I felt like I had a bit more time available for working on the dissertation and other writing projects.


• We're planning on doing some home improvements over the next several months. I know it's a recession, but we've been talking of these things since we moved in, and the announced tax credit for house renos has made those conversations take on a more pragmatic tone. At the same time, I'm a bit reluctant to commit to them. So we'll see.


• I will have to clear out the library/playstation room downstairs sometime over the next few weeks. Say, that could be the punchline to a joke. What do you get when a geek marries one of the cool kids? A playstation/library!
  


• I feel weirdly disconnected from the things going on around me. I don't know if it's some kind of strange after-effect of being sick this last week, or a more garden-variety ennui, but it's really messing with my planning. It's hard to put together a plan for the day, or the week, or the project, when you don't feel like any of it is relevant.
  

I suppose that last bullet is why I'm having problems writing as well. "Strange" is definitely the watchword for this week, that's for sure.