Thursday, July 14, 2011
"Thirty years...a nice round number"
Well, here we are again, dear readers. Once again, the earth has whirled around the sun to the precise position where, not too long ago on a cosmic scale, the creator of this blog was born. Perusing the archives (I am training to be a historian, after all...) reveals that the first time I compiled a blog post for my birthday was in the summer of 2004, as I was recovering from my first year of teaching at Underwood High. That first post set a pattern which has been repeated six more times of setting aside this day to reflect on the passage of time, my personal growth over the intervening year, and prospects for the future. The tone has varied sharply over the years, from the optimism of 2005 ("I'm twenty-five years young and I'm not perfect. But who is? I've still got plenty of time to work out the kinks."), to the fatalism of 2009 ("'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."), to the "cleverness for the sake of being clever" of 2005 (No single quote will really do this one justice. Just check the archives.).
So what about this year? If these birthday posts constitute a de facto "State of the Ben" address, how are things shaping up for the remainder of 2011? The short answer is: busy.
To clarify: Over the past few months, I have been devoting the majority of time to my dissertation. There have been other activities, including the perennial summer favorites of softball and pub quiz, but many other parts of my life have been put on hold, including this blog, as I enter the final stretch of my thesis-writing process. Yes, you read that correctly: "the final stretch." If all goes according to plan then a little over three months from now, I will have defended my dissertation and earned my doctorate. Considering that this is the goal towards which I have been striving for the past five years, you would think that I would be excited...and I am, but there are some significant obstacles in the way.
Before I get into those, I should clarify that until a few months ago, I did not anticipate completing my thesis until 2012. I had guaranteed funding for the next academic year and figured I would bide my time revising chapters and teaching undergraduates while preparing to enter the academic job market. By the time I defended, presumably sometime next spring, my dissertation would be clean and polished and my job prospects secured. That was the plan.
Of course, as someone wise once noted, the true test of a plan's strength is how well it survives an encounter with the enemy. In this case, the seeds to my plan's downfall were sewn by none other than yours truly when I, in a reckless flash of confidence, decided to apply for a postdoctoral fellowship related to the history of innovation scheduled to begin this September. My research was peripheral to the overall thrust of the program, which wished to emphasize themes like environmental sustainability, but it was being hosted at the same institution where I worked last year and I figured there was nothing to be lost by submitting a project proposal. Even if I didn't get a position---and given that my dissertation was (and is!) incomplete, that seemed quite probable---it would good practice to go through the process of compiling an application.
So I contacted the fellowship coordinator with a cover letter, CV, and a two-page project proposal and waited for my presumed rejection...only to receive a phone call last Tuesday that I had been earned the position. Suddenly the timeframe for completing my dissertation had been dramatically compressed. Instead of having the better part of a year to finish my introduction, conclusion, and chapter revisions, I now had two months. Two months in which to compile a dissertation, assemble a committee of professors for my defense, and prepare to move to a new apartment, ideally while retaining some vestige of sanity. Assuming all of this somehow comes together, then I'm aiming to submit my thesis to my committee by September, around the time my fellowship starts, and then defend sometime in mid-October. By Halloween, I'll be in possession of the most frightening costume of all: a doctor of philosophy!
All of which is a roundabout way of saying that my thoughts as I enter my thirtieth year are tinged with a strange mixture of excitement and confusion, as I gear up for the final phase of my graduate school career and the beginnings of my life as...what, exactly? A professional academic? A teacher? A part-time quiz host? I don't know. Perhaps this uncertainty is symptomatic of arrival at middle age, as one's earlier conceptions of the future run smack into the reality that the future is already here. There's no use talking about what I want to do in those far off days "once I grow up," because those days are here now, and my life is taking shape, not according to some carefully arranged plan, but on the basis of sudden, unpredictable decisions whose consequences cannot be fully understood until well after the fact. That doesn't mean it isn't worthwhile to set ambitious goals and take methodical steps towards achieving them, but perhaps it would best to revel more in the uncertainty of life, because as hokey (and/or pokey) as it might seem, that's what it's all about...
One certainty I can foresee, however, is that blogging will to be sporadic at best over the next few months as I work to get my dissertation into shape. Given how little I've written here during the first half of the year, there shouldn't be much of a difference to the casual reader, but I felt that you, my loyal readers, deserved an explanation.
Well, what do you know. Despite my early attempts to embrace postmodernity alongside middle age, through my introductory deconstruction of the birthday post tradition, it appears that I have once again verged into mawkish sentimentality and faux profundity. (And now even a little bit of pretentious academic jargon!) All of which suggests that it's time to wrap up this post by wishing you all a happy Bastille Day! Hopefully, I'll see you all here again the same time next year.
(1) comments
Well, here we are again, dear readers. Once again, the earth has whirled around the sun to the precise position where, not too long ago on a cosmic scale, the creator of this blog was born. Perusing the archives (I am training to be a historian, after all...) reveals that the first time I compiled a blog post for my birthday was in the summer of 2004, as I was recovering from my first year of teaching at Underwood High. That first post set a pattern which has been repeated six more times of setting aside this day to reflect on the passage of time, my personal growth over the intervening year, and prospects for the future. The tone has varied sharply over the years, from the optimism of 2005 ("I'm twenty-five years young and I'm not perfect. But who is? I've still got plenty of time to work out the kinks."), to the fatalism of 2009 ("'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."), to the "cleverness for the sake of being clever" of 2005 (No single quote will really do this one justice. Just check the archives.).
So what about this year? If these birthday posts constitute a de facto "State of the Ben" address, how are things shaping up for the remainder of 2011? The short answer is: busy.
To clarify: Over the past few months, I have been devoting the majority of time to my dissertation. There have been other activities, including the perennial summer favorites of softball and pub quiz, but many other parts of my life have been put on hold, including this blog, as I enter the final stretch of my thesis-writing process. Yes, you read that correctly: "the final stretch." If all goes according to plan then a little over three months from now, I will have defended my dissertation and earned my doctorate. Considering that this is the goal towards which I have been striving for the past five years, you would think that I would be excited...and I am, but there are some significant obstacles in the way.
Before I get into those, I should clarify that until a few months ago, I did not anticipate completing my thesis until 2012. I had guaranteed funding for the next academic year and figured I would bide my time revising chapters and teaching undergraduates while preparing to enter the academic job market. By the time I defended, presumably sometime next spring, my dissertation would be clean and polished and my job prospects secured. That was the plan.
Of course, as someone wise once noted, the true test of a plan's strength is how well it survives an encounter with the enemy. In this case, the seeds to my plan's downfall were sewn by none other than yours truly when I, in a reckless flash of confidence, decided to apply for a postdoctoral fellowship related to the history of innovation scheduled to begin this September. My research was peripheral to the overall thrust of the program, which wished to emphasize themes like environmental sustainability, but it was being hosted at the same institution where I worked last year and I figured there was nothing to be lost by submitting a project proposal. Even if I didn't get a position---and given that my dissertation was (and is!) incomplete, that seemed quite probable---it would good practice to go through the process of compiling an application.
So I contacted the fellowship coordinator with a cover letter, CV, and a two-page project proposal and waited for my presumed rejection...only to receive a phone call last Tuesday that I had been earned the position. Suddenly the timeframe for completing my dissertation had been dramatically compressed. Instead of having the better part of a year to finish my introduction, conclusion, and chapter revisions, I now had two months. Two months in which to compile a dissertation, assemble a committee of professors for my defense, and prepare to move to a new apartment, ideally while retaining some vestige of sanity. Assuming all of this somehow comes together, then I'm aiming to submit my thesis to my committee by September, around the time my fellowship starts, and then defend sometime in mid-October. By Halloween, I'll be in possession of the most frightening costume of all: a doctor of philosophy!
All of which is a roundabout way of saying that my thoughts as I enter my thirtieth year are tinged with a strange mixture of excitement and confusion, as I gear up for the final phase of my graduate school career and the beginnings of my life as...what, exactly? A professional academic? A teacher? A part-time quiz host? I don't know. Perhaps this uncertainty is symptomatic of arrival at middle age, as one's earlier conceptions of the future run smack into the reality that the future is already here. There's no use talking about what I want to do in those far off days "once I grow up," because those days are here now, and my life is taking shape, not according to some carefully arranged plan, but on the basis of sudden, unpredictable decisions whose consequences cannot be fully understood until well after the fact. That doesn't mean it isn't worthwhile to set ambitious goals and take methodical steps towards achieving them, but perhaps it would best to revel more in the uncertainty of life, because as hokey (and/or pokey) as it might seem, that's what it's all about...
One certainty I can foresee, however, is that blogging will to be sporadic at best over the next few months as I work to get my dissertation into shape. Given how little I've written here during the first half of the year, there shouldn't be much of a difference to the casual reader, but I felt that you, my loyal readers, deserved an explanation.
Well, what do you know. Despite my early attempts to embrace postmodernity alongside middle age, through my introductory deconstruction of the birthday post tradition, it appears that I have once again verged into mawkish sentimentality and faux profundity. (And now even a little bit of pretentious academic jargon!) All of which suggests that it's time to wrap up this post by wishing you all a happy Bastille Day! Hopefully, I'll see you all here again the same time next year.
