I just had an impromptu meeting with Indiana. In this case, impromptu refers to: I e-mailed him about setting up an appointment to meet sometime next week and asked what I should prepare but he wrote back and asked me to come today. Being that it is spring break and I have no valid excuse not to be on campus, I naturally stopped by for an impromptu meeting.
Our meeting started out as a Where's Waldo exercise. I stopped in the main office to check my mailbox (I even had mail that someone actually placed a stamp on and hand addressed to me!) and a voice from down the hall asked me if I was stopping by. How'd he do that? Indiana's rarely on my floor and whenever he is, he doesn't talk to me (unless nodding in my direction is considered talking to me). The voice said, "I'll be in my office in 5 minutes waiting for you." I ran to the bank and arrived at his office 8 minutes later. No Indiana. I ran back downstairs. No Indiana. I walked into the department office and asked around. No Indiana. I started to run up the stairs again. My department secretary yelled into the stairwell at me, "Hey Kelsie, he's in his office waiting for you. He just called to ask where you are." *sigh*
The meeting went fine. I showed off my database, received helpful feedback, and then the tennis match of question and answer began. I don't play tennis, but anyone listening in on our conversation would have had to move his head from side to side as we debated back and forth about what exactly I'm supposed to be doing next. My current interpretation of Geraldine is that she will be much smaller than I have been anticipating. My department specifies 200-pages as a general guideline for dissertation sizes. When I mentioned this to Indiana, he asked me for my source of this guideline. I pointed out that this is specified on the department webpage (which, for everyone else's knowledge, Indiana maintains, thus he typed that information at some point or another and he is the one who made this information available to me). His response is that page numbers don't matter, I just need to focus on my data. I need to focus on my data. Ugh. He tells me this every time we meet, but when I try to talk about my data, he tells me to save it for my dissertation. My response is as follows: ???????????????!!!!!!!!!??????????????
At first, I walked away from this meeting feeling confident, but the more time I have to think about it, the less secure I feel. There have been a lot of differences between earning my MA and PhD and today reminds me of these. My MA program was established over 30 years ago. There was a form for everything, a student handbook, as well as a coordinator and two office managers that could explain everything. I never had to ask "what do I do next" because everything was transparent. On top of that, I served as a student rep in every official meeting, I received meeting minutes, there were meetings for students and a department social at the beginning of every semester. Everyone knew what they were suppose to do next.
Then I started my PhD in a department where everything is clear as mud. My program is 1.5 years old. I will be one of the first students to receive a degree from it. For the most part, there are no forms. There are no meetings. There are no socials organized by the department. There is no 'student rep' position and no one here really knows what is going on. This year is a lot better than last year, but it's still a confusing place to be. I'm free to ask questions, but deciding whose answer is best should be a dissertation of its own. Rather than respond with "oh, I don't know the answer to that. I'll make sure I add that to this month's meeting minutes" every professor in this department makes up an answer, and the answer changes with each student. This results in a lot of gossip, a lot of confusion, and a lot of uncertainty.
Having written this, I realize that I have no frustrations with Indiana today. I have frustrations with my department. As to conclusions from today's meetings, they are as follows:
1) I am suppose to focus on my data. (check)
2) I am suppose to have a meeting again with Indiana and Dumbeldore sometime this semester. (check)
3) I will write a prospectus sometime. (check?)
4) My dissertation will write itself after I write and defend my prospectus. (check?)
5) I will need to analyze my data before I write my prospectus so that I can argue for what I'm going to analyze in my dissertation. (huh?)
6) Indiana's interpretation of my prospectus sounds very similar to a 2nd or 3rd draft of a dissertation minus the interpretation and conclusion chapters.
7) I am not suppose to be doing anything with my life right now other than work on my dissertation-- no conferences, no publications, no colloquia, nothing.
8) I am, however, suppose to take a break every Friday night to "get trashed." (Apparently Indiana doesn't know that I don't exactly drink alcohol anymore and I am already a really big dork without a social life)
9) I have officially become a doctoral student that has no idea what to do next (other than focus on my data, whatever that means...).
So, according to the PhD comics I receive in my e-mail inbox, I'm right on track and no one should be worrying about me or Geraldine. I guess...
No comments:
Post a Comment