Tuesday, July 14, 2009
Uncertain Future
Bastille Day is here once again, and so it once more falls upon me to continue the longstanding tradition of a rumination on the anniversary of the French Revolution, the death of Billy the Kid, and the birth of the Internet's seventeenth least read blogger...which is to say, yours truly.
Last year around this time, in the wake of a good friend's wedding (Happy belated anniversary, Sevensor!), I jotted down some thoughts about what I felt the upcoming year, the one that just passed, might hold, both for myself and for my friends. Looking back now, these comments seem vaguely prophetic:
"This year, I will have to start work on my dissertation and will be moving to a new apartment. It is entirely possible that this combination of factors will tend to isolate me further from my friends, both old and new."
At that point, on the basis of recent events, I expressed a hope that somehow a balance might be struck somehow between my work and my personal life and that I would be able to make time for my friends and family. This year, despite the realities of a half-hour commute to where the majority of my friends and colleagues are located, I have done the best I could to fulfill that goal. It has not always been easy, but I still host pub quiz twice a month and have been a regular (if not particularly impressive) member of the history department softball team (B Division).
But at the same time, my work has grown more and more consuming as my archive's closure grows more imminent. I spent today, my birthday, doing the same thing I've been doing for the past few weeks...photographing laboratory notebooks pretty much non-stop from 9 AM to 6 PM. (OK, there was a brief lunch break in there, but you get the idea). I made no mention of the occasion to my archivist or anyone else. It was just another day. No fancy plans. No exciting dinner. Nothing. And my evening plans? Well, after finishing this blog entry there are still a few more notebooks left for me to organize and then I get to pack for my research trip to Ohio. Nothing like a nice evening of work, alone in the Invisible Suburb!
As I said in my previous post, this is my life. It is not a very exciting,one, but it is the one I have right now. Whether or not it will continue into next year, I can not say. In contrast to last year, the only prediction I have for the coming year is that big changes are on the horizon. My dissertation will remain, but I'll be working on it as a dissertation fellow at a prestigious external institution, which means that except for pub quiz, it will be farewell to Old Ivy for the academic year. For the first time in my life, I'll be living in the very heart of a major city, so that should be exciting, albeit a little more intense. I don't know how my social life will be once I move, because although I know some folks in the area, it's not like it was in high school when you could always count on friends setting up something on a weekend evening, confident that you would be called.
All appears uncertain. On the one hand, this is quite liberating. There is no hard and fast prophecy that dooms me to any particular life choice. On the other, it is intimidating, because nothing is as frightful as the unknown. The frustrating thing is, I don't think there is any way to resolve the issue except to live and see what happens. Open the box and see if the cat lives or dies, as it were.
"Live and do the best you can with what happens" is not an uplifting birthday message, I confess. Nevertheless, it's the only one I have.
Except the e-mails and notes that a few of you have sent along and for which I thank you.
Happy Bastille Day, all. I'm going to get back to work now...
(0) comments
Bastille Day is here once again, and so it once more falls upon me to continue the longstanding tradition of a rumination on the anniversary of the French Revolution, the death of Billy the Kid, and the birth of the Internet's seventeenth least read blogger...which is to say, yours truly.
Last year around this time, in the wake of a good friend's wedding (Happy belated anniversary, Sevensor!), I jotted down some thoughts about what I felt the upcoming year, the one that just passed, might hold, both for myself and for my friends. Looking back now, these comments seem vaguely prophetic:
"This year, I will have to start work on my dissertation and will be moving to a new apartment. It is entirely possible that this combination of factors will tend to isolate me further from my friends, both old and new."
At that point, on the basis of recent events, I expressed a hope that somehow a balance might be struck somehow between my work and my personal life and that I would be able to make time for my friends and family. This year, despite the realities of a half-hour commute to where the majority of my friends and colleagues are located, I have done the best I could to fulfill that goal. It has not always been easy, but I still host pub quiz twice a month and have been a regular (if not particularly impressive) member of the history department softball team (B Division).
But at the same time, my work has grown more and more consuming as my archive's closure grows more imminent. I spent today, my birthday, doing the same thing I've been doing for the past few weeks...photographing laboratory notebooks pretty much non-stop from 9 AM to 6 PM. (OK, there was a brief lunch break in there, but you get the idea). I made no mention of the occasion to my archivist or anyone else. It was just another day. No fancy plans. No exciting dinner. Nothing. And my evening plans? Well, after finishing this blog entry there are still a few more notebooks left for me to organize and then I get to pack for my research trip to Ohio. Nothing like a nice evening of work, alone in the Invisible Suburb!
As I said in my previous post, this is my life. It is not a very exciting,one, but it is the one I have right now. Whether or not it will continue into next year, I can not say. In contrast to last year, the only prediction I have for the coming year is that big changes are on the horizon. My dissertation will remain, but I'll be working on it as a dissertation fellow at a prestigious external institution, which means that except for pub quiz, it will be farewell to Old Ivy for the academic year. For the first time in my life, I'll be living in the very heart of a major city, so that should be exciting, albeit a little more intense. I don't know how my social life will be once I move, because although I know some folks in the area, it's not like it was in high school when you could always count on friends setting up something on a weekend evening, confident that you would be called.
All appears uncertain. On the one hand, this is quite liberating. There is no hard and fast prophecy that dooms me to any particular life choice. On the other, it is intimidating, because nothing is as frightful as the unknown. The frustrating thing is, I don't think there is any way to resolve the issue except to live and see what happens. Open the box and see if the cat lives or dies, as it were.
"Live and do the best you can with what happens" is not an uplifting birthday message, I confess. Nevertheless, it's the only one I have.
Except the e-mails and notes that a few of you have sent along and for which I thank you.
Happy Bastille Day, all. I'm going to get back to work now...
Wednesday, July 08, 2009
Infinite Regress
Time is running out for my summer...and more importantly for my summer research at the archive. The long and short of it is that my archive is likely to start packing up its materials by August, which means that any thing I want to get out of there had better be done soon because who knows when I'll get the chance to see it again.
So I've been going to the archive from 9 to 6 most days of the week and photographing approximately 1000 pages of material a day, backing it up onto an external hard drive for perusal later. Most of this consists of laboratory notebooks from people involved in the research project that is the center of my dissertation. The problem is that the more I photograph, the more I realize how much more I should be photographing.
Consider the following:
1. In this industrial lab, every page of your notebook was supposed to be witnessed in the event of intellectual property claims.
2. Even people who were not directly involved in a project could serve as witnesses.
3. These people also kept notebooks and may have written down things that were relevant to my research. Possibly. I don't know. Some people liked writing down things like "Had meeting with X where we discussed Y. And oh yeah Z showed me something awesome...and relevant to Ben's dissertation project. Who's Ben? Oh he's a future graduate student who in 40 years will be trying to figure out the complexities of a project well beyond his technical acumen."
4. The only way to know this, however, is to photograph more notebooks. The project just keeps expanding.
It's like this when I interview people too. Every person I interview mentions two more people whose perspectives may be relevant and/or alive. When does it end? Can it ever end? I mean it's finite...eventually I'll reach the limit of everyone who was involved, but how far down do I go? How can I write anything when I can't collect everything?!?
When do I get to stop? I feel like if I don't do everything I can than I'm basically just leaving myself open to criticism from my advisor, my dissertation committee, whatever readers I find among friends and colleagues, and because they're still alive, my historical actors! I have to read everything. I have to take notes on everything. I have to talk to everyone...except the dead, in which case I still may have to contact their families. And I can't waste time because the archive is closing, the people are getting older and dying, and I'm about to move and start a fellowship where they expect me to know what I'm talking about even though I've only scratched the surface of my subject.
Despite my best efforts to pick a contained research project, one limited to a single company and and a single project, everything about my dissertation keeps getting bigger and more overwhelming. When is it OK to draw a line and start writing? How will I know I'm ready?
Oh crap, I didn't even think about the secondary literature. You know, the stuff that other historians have written about related topics to mine? The stuff that my advisor said I should be reading when I get home from the archive each day? I have barely touched the list of over 150 books and articles that I made in the spring! When the hell do I get to read that? How closely do I have to read? I'm supposed to be the new expert. I need to know everything...but I'm not sure I can.
I want to do this right. I want to earn my Ph.D. and become a professor so that I can teach undergraduates about a subject I like. I want to make my family and my colleagues proud. I want to make sure that the important story I'm researching gets told and told well. But this dissertation process is beginning to hurt, and from the look of things I don't think it's going to get any easier anytime soon.
Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to try to transcribe a 15 minute interview from 1970 that I borrowed from a library in North Dakota that may have valuable information for my work.
No, that's not a joke.
It's my life now.
Get it?
(0) comments
Time is running out for my summer...and more importantly for my summer research at the archive. The long and short of it is that my archive is likely to start packing up its materials by August, which means that any thing I want to get out of there had better be done soon because who knows when I'll get the chance to see it again.
So I've been going to the archive from 9 to 6 most days of the week and photographing approximately 1000 pages of material a day, backing it up onto an external hard drive for perusal later. Most of this consists of laboratory notebooks from people involved in the research project that is the center of my dissertation. The problem is that the more I photograph, the more I realize how much more I should be photographing.
Consider the following:
1. In this industrial lab, every page of your notebook was supposed to be witnessed in the event of intellectual property claims.
2. Even people who were not directly involved in a project could serve as witnesses.
3. These people also kept notebooks and may have written down things that were relevant to my research. Possibly. I don't know. Some people liked writing down things like "Had meeting with X where we discussed Y. And oh yeah Z showed me something awesome...and relevant to Ben's dissertation project. Who's Ben? Oh he's a future graduate student who in 40 years will be trying to figure out the complexities of a project well beyond his technical acumen."
4. The only way to know this, however, is to photograph more notebooks. The project just keeps expanding.
It's like this when I interview people too. Every person I interview mentions two more people whose perspectives may be relevant and/or alive. When does it end? Can it ever end? I mean it's finite...eventually I'll reach the limit of everyone who was involved, but how far down do I go? How can I write anything when I can't collect everything?!?
When do I get to stop? I feel like if I don't do everything I can than I'm basically just leaving myself open to criticism from my advisor, my dissertation committee, whatever readers I find among friends and colleagues, and because they're still alive, my historical actors! I have to read everything. I have to take notes on everything. I have to talk to everyone...except the dead, in which case I still may have to contact their families. And I can't waste time because the archive is closing, the people are getting older and dying, and I'm about to move and start a fellowship where they expect me to know what I'm talking about even though I've only scratched the surface of my subject.
Despite my best efforts to pick a contained research project, one limited to a single company and and a single project, everything about my dissertation keeps getting bigger and more overwhelming. When is it OK to draw a line and start writing? How will I know I'm ready?
Oh crap, I didn't even think about the secondary literature. You know, the stuff that other historians have written about related topics to mine? The stuff that my advisor said I should be reading when I get home from the archive each day? I have barely touched the list of over 150 books and articles that I made in the spring! When the hell do I get to read that? How closely do I have to read? I'm supposed to be the new expert. I need to know everything...but I'm not sure I can.
I want to do this right. I want to earn my Ph.D. and become a professor so that I can teach undergraduates about a subject I like. I want to make my family and my colleagues proud. I want to make sure that the important story I'm researching gets told and told well. But this dissertation process is beginning to hurt, and from the look of things I don't think it's going to get any easier anytime soon.
Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to try to transcribe a 15 minute interview from 1970 that I borrowed from a library in North Dakota that may have valuable information for my work.
No, that's not a joke.
It's my life now.
Get it?
Sunday, July 05, 2009
Now my car can turn invisible?
Another month passes and again, I have been remiss in the blogging. The normal routine of going to the archives, photographing laboratory notebooks, and occasionally interviewing their authors still fails to cross the threshold of excitement necessary to provoke a solid blog post. And while I would love to write extended commentaries on the history department's softball season thus far, almost no one from said department knows that this blog exists and no one outside of it would care about our epic battles against Mechanical Engineering or Plasma Physics.
So given all that, what has provoked me into blogging once more, besides the extra time afforded by a holiday weekend? Why a car accident, of course!
Because as we learned a few years back, nothing makes for a fine blog post like the collision of two moving vehicles, right? OK, almost right. In this case, only one of the vehicles in question was moving. And fortunately for my insurance rates, it wasn't mine.
Here's the story, in a nutshell. I have been scurrying around all summer trying to interview scientists and engineers for my dissertation before they pass away (as one did just a few weeks ago) or I move out of the area (as I will in late August). One of these lives approximately 20 minutes from the archive and agreed to meet with me at his home office on Thursday afternoon. I arrived a few minutes early and seeing cars parked on the right side of a residential street felt little concern about leaving my car there as well. In hindsight, perhaps I should have pulled into the driveway, but this was about as suburban and tranquil as one could get, and again, there were other cars parked down the street on the right side, near the curb. No signs saying anything to the contrary. All in all, a nice, legal parking spot for a midsummer interview.
I walked up the steps to my interview subject's home, rang the doorbell, and was greeted by his wife. After a brief welcome, I clambered up the stairs with my standard bag of graduate student materials--laptop, notebook, voice recorder, hefty collected volume of Electronics magazine from the late 1960s--you know, the usual. We started flipping through the last of these to find an article that my subject had authored and were discussing the magazine's cover artwork when the doorbell rang.
Fortunately, I hadn't started recording the interview at this point.
My interviewee's wife called up the stairs asking if I drove a little red car. I responded to the affirmative. (It is, as you may recall, technically sangria red, but that's neither here nor there.) I foolishly asked, why that might be a concern and noted that I didn't intend to block anybody in their driveway. But apparently it was too late for that. When I got down the stairs, I received a better explanation from the neighbor across the street.
Apparently in her haste, said neighbor had backed her car out of the driveway, pulled it all the way across the street and hit my car which was parked on the other side of the street.
Again: she had backed her car out of the driveway, rolled ALL THE WAY ACROSS THE STREET, and hit my car which she claimed not to have seen.
Now my powers of invisibility are well known. On the frisbee field, you can see right through me if you're not careful. (And let's not even get into my luck with the ladies!) But I've never been able to extend it to a car before, much less when I am not even in the car. I suppose I should count myself lucky that the other driver admitted her mistake and even more lucky that no one was in the car or hurt at the time.
Nevertheless, it put a bit of a damper on the whole interview process. My driver's side door was dented in severely and the driver's side mirror was hanging off by a couple of wires like a seven year old's first loose tooth. We called the police and the officer confirmed that I was legally parked and that it was pretty much entirely the other driver's fault so my insurance should not be affected. I apologized to my interview subject, promised to reschedule once everything had been fixed up, and called my insurance company to figure out where to go to get an appraisal and repairs.
Thankfully, my insurance company was very understanding and my car is now in the shop waiting to be repaired. In the meantime, I'm driving a nice rental car, call it the Benmobile 3.1, with features that my regular car can only dream of: automatic locks and windows, a truck opening remote, and satellite radio. Yes, I'm part of the next wave of electromagnetic communication...at least for the next week.
I do miss my regular car and wish that none of this had happened, but if you have to get into an accident, best to get into a minor one where no one is hurt and you are obviously not at fault. Words to live by.
_______________________
Also, a quick update on the Invisible Ben's autumnal itinerary.
It has now been confirmed that I will be participating in two European conferences this September, one right after the next. The first will be in Brittany (i.e. France) from the 14th to the 18th, and the second will be in London from the 20th through the 22nd. It is also possible that I will take advantage of the time in Europe to visit another former engineer who is working as a professor in Berlin. This means that, as Ann noted in her comment, I will need to brush up on my French somewhat, though thankfully, the conference languages in both cases will be English. Right now, I'm more concerned about making sure my German grammar is up to snuff for the letter I plan to write the aforementioned potential interviewee in Berlin.
More news to come, as events merit.
(1) comments
Another month passes and again, I have been remiss in the blogging. The normal routine of going to the archives, photographing laboratory notebooks, and occasionally interviewing their authors still fails to cross the threshold of excitement necessary to provoke a solid blog post. And while I would love to write extended commentaries on the history department's softball season thus far, almost no one from said department knows that this blog exists and no one outside of it would care about our epic battles against Mechanical Engineering or Plasma Physics.
So given all that, what has provoked me into blogging once more, besides the extra time afforded by a holiday weekend? Why a car accident, of course!
Because as we learned a few years back, nothing makes for a fine blog post like the collision of two moving vehicles, right? OK, almost right. In this case, only one of the vehicles in question was moving. And fortunately for my insurance rates, it wasn't mine.
Here's the story, in a nutshell. I have been scurrying around all summer trying to interview scientists and engineers for my dissertation before they pass away (as one did just a few weeks ago) or I move out of the area (as I will in late August). One of these lives approximately 20 minutes from the archive and agreed to meet with me at his home office on Thursday afternoon. I arrived a few minutes early and seeing cars parked on the right side of a residential street felt little concern about leaving my car there as well. In hindsight, perhaps I should have pulled into the driveway, but this was about as suburban and tranquil as one could get, and again, there were other cars parked down the street on the right side, near the curb. No signs saying anything to the contrary. All in all, a nice, legal parking spot for a midsummer interview.
I walked up the steps to my interview subject's home, rang the doorbell, and was greeted by his wife. After a brief welcome, I clambered up the stairs with my standard bag of graduate student materials--laptop, notebook, voice recorder, hefty collected volume of Electronics magazine from the late 1960s--you know, the usual. We started flipping through the last of these to find an article that my subject had authored and were discussing the magazine's cover artwork when the doorbell rang.
Fortunately, I hadn't started recording the interview at this point.
My interviewee's wife called up the stairs asking if I drove a little red car. I responded to the affirmative. (It is, as you may recall, technically sangria red, but that's neither here nor there.) I foolishly asked, why that might be a concern and noted that I didn't intend to block anybody in their driveway. But apparently it was too late for that. When I got down the stairs, I received a better explanation from the neighbor across the street.
Apparently in her haste, said neighbor had backed her car out of the driveway, pulled it all the way across the street and hit my car which was parked on the other side of the street.
Again: she had backed her car out of the driveway, rolled ALL THE WAY ACROSS THE STREET, and hit my car which she claimed not to have seen.
Now my powers of invisibility are well known. On the frisbee field, you can see right through me if you're not careful. (And let's not even get into my luck with the ladies!) But I've never been able to extend it to a car before, much less when I am not even in the car. I suppose I should count myself lucky that the other driver admitted her mistake and even more lucky that no one was in the car or hurt at the time.
Nevertheless, it put a bit of a damper on the whole interview process. My driver's side door was dented in severely and the driver's side mirror was hanging off by a couple of wires like a seven year old's first loose tooth. We called the police and the officer confirmed that I was legally parked and that it was pretty much entirely the other driver's fault so my insurance should not be affected. I apologized to my interview subject, promised to reschedule once everything had been fixed up, and called my insurance company to figure out where to go to get an appraisal and repairs.
Thankfully, my insurance company was very understanding and my car is now in the shop waiting to be repaired. In the meantime, I'm driving a nice rental car, call it the Benmobile 3.1, with features that my regular car can only dream of: automatic locks and windows, a truck opening remote, and satellite radio. Yes, I'm part of the next wave of electromagnetic communication...at least for the next week.
I do miss my regular car and wish that none of this had happened, but if you have to get into an accident, best to get into a minor one where no one is hurt and you are obviously not at fault. Words to live by.
_______________________
Also, a quick update on the Invisible Ben's autumnal itinerary.
It has now been confirmed that I will be participating in two European conferences this September, one right after the next. The first will be in Brittany (i.e. France) from the 14th to the 18th, and the second will be in London from the 20th through the 22nd. It is also possible that I will take advantage of the time in Europe to visit another former engineer who is working as a professor in Berlin. This means that, as Ann noted in her comment, I will need to brush up on my French somewhat, though thankfully, the conference languages in both cases will be English. Right now, I'm more concerned about making sure my German grammar is up to snuff for the letter I plan to write the aforementioned potential interviewee in Berlin.
More news to come, as events merit.
