Parts-n-Pieces

Remember (08/29/2005)

found via This Space for Rent

Is there anybody alive out there?

Sometimes, at 3:00 in the morning, there is nothing better than the sound of really loud guitars.  "I just want to hear your rhythm."

A New Deadline (9/19/08)

Today is the day I wanted to have my dissertation completed.  I didn't make it.  But I knew I wouldn't.  It was a really ambitious deadline.  But I got so much accomplished . . . more than I would have if I just kept up with dabbling at the work when I had time.  Out of six chapters, I have one to go.  This is an important chapter that will be extensive, I think, but the notes are there.  I just have to fashion those notes into something coherent.

Classes start for me on Monday, so with the teaching load amping up, I'm giving my self until September 19th to have this late bit done.  That's 4 weeks.  This deadline, I think, is manageable.  The countdown calendar starts anew:  Day #28.

Good Things (end of summer edition)

Since I am trying to save all my words for the dissertation, I haven't blogged in a bit.  And I'm not going to today, either.  Instead, a list of "good things."

• Being almost done with the dissertation.  You cannot know how good that feels.  Well, maybe you can.  I'm so very tired, but I feel accomplished, too.  It's  all good.

• Writing syllabi for the fall isn't normally a "good thing," but this time around it is.  I'm teaching a few classes I haven't taught in a long time, and I'm excited about that.

• Deciding on my graduation present . . . which, of course, I'm getting early:  a large (really large) flat screen television.  I can't wait to watch sports games on that baby.  (Given that every television in my house is broken, getting a new one is a good thing.)

• Having a fortuitous conclusion to my dissertation land in my lap today.  I can't say more than that, but having this "perspective" is helpful.  Really really helpful.

• Knowing that it's all going to be OK.  (I never doubted it.  Yea, well, whatever.)

• Having smart and generous friends.

• Being able to spend the weekend with the wonderful Bundle next weekend.  She'll be in the area with her soccer team, and I'll  travel to that city to watch her to do thang.  I'm excited!

• Being so ready to move on I can't stand it.

• Loving the way Remember the Milk, Jott, Twitter, Facebook, delicious, Linked In, FriendFeed, Flickr, Typepad, WordPress (class blogs), and Box.net can all "talk to" each other.  Simplifies my life to no end.  Now I need to get Outlook and Google Calendar to sync with each and with my Treo755p.

• Stumbling upon some really nifty websites during the past few weeks, websites that allow me to see the world and not read about it.

1. Sociological Images (Need fodder for class discussions?  You need sociological images.)
2. Shorpy Images (Need to see the way life was during the early 20th century?  You need Shorpy.  [Be sure and enlarge the images to full size.])
3. Ill Doctrine (Need explanations of Hip Hop culture?  You need Ill Doctrine.)
4. Photoshop Disasters (Teaching NewMedia?  You need PSD.)

A Little Political Humor (if you like LOL Cats...)

Original here, but found via Jezebel.

Good Things (after some dissertation whining)

Yes.  Yes, this graphic depicts my state of being at the moment.  (However, if this graphic were true to life, it would have a dress.  You know, to show that I'm female.)  But I've digressed. 

Headless.  I am headless.  My brain is mush.  My eyes are shot.  My back hurts from sitting at a computer for weeks on end.  I'm not thinking clearly in any sort of way.  I am spinning my wheels with the dissertation, reading and moving the same few paragraphs over and over and over.  None of it makes sense right now.

I have one chapter to finish (analysis) and two more to finalize (intro and conclusion).  Then I'm done.  I have 10 days, and while I don't want to psyche myself out, I'm not sure I'm going to make it.  As I noted before, this is a soft deadline, one I set for myself, so if I don't make that 8/22 deadline, the world won't come crashing down around me, but still.  I'll keep on with it.  One step in front of the next.   Eventually I'll get there.

But in the midst of this fatigue, a list of 10 good things:

• I truly can see the end of this project.  Last night, I started making mental plans for my home office when I throw away all the copied journal articles I have.  The space it'll open up!
• I know more about intercollegiate athletics (in Division I-A) than I ever hoped to know.
• I have saved money by not eating out.
• I feel smart.
• I see how my work can be generalized beyond the subgroup of student-athletes I am writing about.  This work can be useful with almost any marginalized student group.
• I have a healthy research agenda based on this dissertation (and all those things I could not include).
• I like my subject, and I like (very much) the students I had in this study.
• I appreciate the nexus of critical pedagogy with feminist pedagogy . . . relational pedagogy.
• I like that I have worked very hard on this project.  (No one else will probably ever read the whole thing, but I know what went into producing it.)
• I know the project is on "the tip of my tongue," and I like how that feels.
• I can't wait to get back to Project 365.  I miss the creative outlet photography gives me.

What happens to pool during the Olympics

Project 365 is on haitus while I finish the dissertation.  In the meantime, a photo of an empty 22-foot deep diving pool.  It freaks me out to see it without water.

15 more days of dissertation hell to go

When I took my comprehensive exams, I wrote almost 70 pages (double-spaced) in three days over my subject areas: critical pedagogy, literacy, and service-learning.  (In my program, we took three five-hour exams, MWF, no notes, no prior knowledge of questions, no knowledge of the types of questions, and our reading lists contained about 100 items per subject.)  At the end of each exam, I wasn't tired.  I was excited, actually.  I felt that I was able to produce very nice essays in a short amount of time.  I felt smart. However, as the afternoon turned to evening, I felt so very tired.  Drained, actually.  Mentally exhausted.

I'm feeling that way again with the dissertation.  In between tutorials and fire drills (no kidding), I'm writing.  I've stopped reading, and I'm only writing.  I don't think the writing is all that great, though.  It's choppy and fragmented.  But this is a draft, and I know I'll still have revisions to do when I'm finished with this draft.  When.  Yes, when I'm finished.  I can see the light, as they say.  I know that I'm coming in on being done with this dissertation, but this last push, this last hard push before school starts?  It's wearing me down.

You know how you can have a word on the "tip of your tongue"?  My dissertation rests there, on the tip of my tongue.  I know what I want to write-- I know it in my body, I know it-- it's right on the tip of my . . . of my what? consciousness, abilities, finger tips, something?  I see the end of this process because I see the entire scope of this work.  I feel smart.  Tired, but smart.

Cross-posted at Dissertation Bootcamp.

A Fortuitous Library Encounter

For three days last week, I worked in the library, and that allowed me a few chance encounters with former ICW students.  Football players were on campus, as their two-a-day practices start on Monday.   They were in the library using the computers.

One young man, I'll call him "B," will graduate from the university in December, and he's thinking about graduate school in a discipline he was unable to pursue while he played football.  While I think I'll always remember the students I had in ICW, "B" occupies a special place in my memories.  He was a member of the first ICW class.  I remember that first year-- we were all so new and green in that course-- and he never stopped smiling.  Ever.  He tried to answer each and every question I asked, even if it wasn't directed at him.  Most of the time, he was wrong in his answers, but that never stopped him, and it never took his smile away.  He continued to learn.  He always answered me with a "Yes, ma'am," or a "No, ma'am."  Always.  Even today.  His grandmother raised him right, he said.  He was happy, oh-so-happy to be a university student, to be wearing university colors and to be playing football.  He never played sports until mid-way through high school, but when he did, he found he was good at it.   Up to that point in his life, he had not been good at much, as he had not had opportunity find out if he'd be good at something.  Once he got to the university, he was grateful ... grateful for the opportunity to do something other than what he'd seen around him.