One of the best conversation starters I've learned in graduate school is to ask people how they chose their career paths. Contrary to my previous assumptions, most people don't grow up knowing exactly what they want to be when they grow up. As I've asked people about what shaped their decisions to study their particular fields, very few people have answered "I just always wanted to be an X." Instead, I hear about people who played an important role in decision making, life circumstances, convenience and the discovery of an unknown interest. When consulting with most academics on this topic, I don't think I've ever heard anyone say "I became a professor because it was convenient." Certainly earning a doctorate is not convenient. The convinience response tends to come more from my students who are coming back to school to switch careers or from people who stuck with their college jobs after graduation and didn't persue finding work related to their major.
Most days I am still surprised at myself for becoming a linguist and earning a PhD. I never wanted to go to college. I have clear memories of my classmates talking about their future college plans while dressing for gym class in middle school. Someone eventually asked me where I wanted to go to college and I said "I'm not going to college." I think everyone in the locker room stopped putting deoderant on and stared at me. I took all honors classes with the same group of girls. Not going to college? What are you going to do? Apparently I was the only person in my class who thought the normal thing to do was graduate from high school and then get married. Clearly it was far more acceptable to go to college and choose a career, or at least that was the message in my early 90s gym class preparations that day.
I must have kept my mouth shut about my aspirations to become a housewife throughout the rest of my teenage years. I remember the topic of future careers coming up now and then in high school. Once I told a classmate that I was thinking about becoming a physical therapist. She laughed at me and said I wasn't smart enough to do that. As my classmates started applying for colleges, I tried to figure out how to leave the country. Eventually my mom told me I had to either get a job or go to college. I tried to get a job, but when that failed, I enrolled in the automotive program at my local community college. I liked working on cars and had completed 2 years' worth of training. (I had also just won a state competition for my automotive skills and was on my way to compete at nationals) One of the only things holding me back was my autoshop teacher. He told everyone to become a mechanic except me. He told me, "Kelsie, I don't know what you're supposed to become, but it's not a mechanic." That hurt me even though I knew he thought I was a good mechanic. Apparently he thought that if I became a mechanic I would be wasting all of my other skills.
When I started taking college classes, I decided to take general education courses before the mechanic classes. I took math, English composition and psychology that term. I think I got a C in psychology. I wasn't sure I wanted to go to college anymore, but I'd paid for a parking pass that was good for the whole year. I decided to stay for another quarter and figure it out. Eventually, someone approached me about taking an independent study course for German and then I gave up my mechanic plans.
Sunday, February 17, 2013
Tuesday, February 12, 2013
On writing notes to myself
I tend to work on a lot of different tasks at the same time. On any given day, it's not unusual for me to be in the middle of 5 books, have 4 different knitting projects started, or a big to-do list for the day. In some ways, this helps me have something interesting to do (or a good excuse for a distraction) at any moment. On the other hand, it makes me seem incredibly scatter-brained. To help me remember what I'm supposed to do next, I often leave myself notes.
I use a lot of sticky notes. I leave myself notes on my computer monitor, on the walls surrounding my desk, in my notebooks for the classes I teach and in my mail box. I also send myself e-mails so that I don't forget to do something really important. It's not that I'm forgetful, I'm just easily distracted by things like bunnies, cake and a good conversation.
In working on Geraldine, I've found that I tend to write myself a lot of notes in the drafts of each of my chapters. It would be easy to use the comment feature of Word for leaving myself notes, but it requires me to click too many things and messes up my margins (which messes up my page count and the satisfaction that comes with writing another paragraph, page, or section). Instead, I write myself messages in bold throughout my chapter. What kinds of notes do I write to myself?
Things like:
- add more data here
- this sounds like crap, fix it later
- add an example from the green sticky note on my office wall here
- citation?
- dude, are you mental? That's not convincing...
- year?
- check spelling
- did that make any sense?
- do I need this?
Whenever I take a break from working on a chapter, the notes to myself are usually a big help. I also tend to leave myself an outline of what to work on next, such as explain x, y, and z. Sometimes my notes are very sarcastic, and they make me laugh. Other times, they require me to do more work than I feel like doing and they stick around for a long time. Since I put everything in bold, it's easy to find my notes and delete them before I give a copy to anyone for review.
With the exception of a few notes to myself, such as add a crap load of data from crazy Irish finger names here, I am finally done with chapter 5: Indo-European historical data. It`s been a pain to write, but I finally have a full draft to send off to Indy. THANK GOD! I also wrote the intro chapter. I hope Indy likes Valentine`s Day, because he`s about to receive an e-mail with a ton of files, including a complete draft of chapters 1-5. Perhaps the next note to myself should be: eat a cupcake.
I use a lot of sticky notes. I leave myself notes on my computer monitor, on the walls surrounding my desk, in my notebooks for the classes I teach and in my mail box. I also send myself e-mails so that I don't forget to do something really important. It's not that I'm forgetful, I'm just easily distracted by things like bunnies, cake and a good conversation.
In working on Geraldine, I've found that I tend to write myself a lot of notes in the drafts of each of my chapters. It would be easy to use the comment feature of Word for leaving myself notes, but it requires me to click too many things and messes up my margins (which messes up my page count and the satisfaction that comes with writing another paragraph, page, or section). Instead, I write myself messages in bold throughout my chapter. What kinds of notes do I write to myself?
Things like:
- add more data here
- this sounds like crap, fix it later
- add an example from the green sticky note on my office wall here
- citation?
- dude, are you mental? That's not convincing...
- year?
- check spelling
- did that make any sense?
- do I need this?
Whenever I take a break from working on a chapter, the notes to myself are usually a big help. I also tend to leave myself an outline of what to work on next, such as explain x, y, and z. Sometimes my notes are very sarcastic, and they make me laugh. Other times, they require me to do more work than I feel like doing and they stick around for a long time. Since I put everything in bold, it's easy to find my notes and delete them before I give a copy to anyone for review.
With the exception of a few notes to myself, such as add a crap load of data from crazy Irish finger names here, I am finally done with chapter 5: Indo-European historical data. It`s been a pain to write, but I finally have a full draft to send off to Indy. THANK GOD! I also wrote the intro chapter. I hope Indy likes Valentine`s Day, because he`s about to receive an e-mail with a ton of files, including a complete draft of chapters 1-5. Perhaps the next note to myself should be: eat a cupcake.
Thursday, February 7, 2013
On the light at the end of the tunnel
Ugh, 23 pages later and I finally have the majority of the data needed for my chapter on Indo-European historical developments completed. I have two more sections to write and a lot of editing, but the end is in sight and I am starting to feel relieved. I should be able to complete the rest of the chapter tomorrow and have a clean, clear chapter to send to Indy by Monday. Phew! To celebrate, I think I'm going to write my introduction chapter and get it out of the way.
Depending on how things go this weekend, I should have 5 of 8 chapter completed as of Monday. Who knew the best Valentine's Day gift this year would be completing more than half of the dissertation?
January was a rough month for me and February hasn't been that much better. It's already the end of the 3rd week of the semester and I am about a month behind where I wanted to be. A lot has been happening in my personal life over the last month and it has placed working on my dissertation at the bottom of my to-do list. I know that this is bad for my progress toward becoming Dr. Kelsie, but my mental and physical health during the last month have prevented me from sitting at the computer for hours on end. Once I got over the overwhelming urge to hide in bed for the whole day, I finally started to talk to my committee members about my progress (or lack there of). So far, everyone has been very supportive and helpful. One of my committee members, who studied under a famous guy named Krashen, told me that since "binge writing" (Krashen's term) is no longer working for me, try to add a few lines each day. It won't produce the same satisfaction of accomplishing tons of work, but it will complete my dissertation. I'm finding that if I start working first thing in the morning, I can manage to work for about 2 hours before my body decides it is time to stop for the day.
Surprisingly, Indy's support has been the best. He has been incredibly friendly and encouraging and my last conversations with him relieved a lot of my anxiety. The goal is still to graduate this semester, but if that doesn't happen, we'll work it out.
I applied for graduation last week and still hope that I'll have a complete rough draft by the end of spring break. If I finish my historical chapter and intro this weekend, I'll have 6 weeks to write 3 more chapters (including the conclusion, which should only take a day to write). Keep your fingers crossed that I can do it!
Depending on how things go this weekend, I should have 5 of 8 chapter completed as of Monday. Who knew the best Valentine's Day gift this year would be completing more than half of the dissertation?
January was a rough month for me and February hasn't been that much better. It's already the end of the 3rd week of the semester and I am about a month behind where I wanted to be. A lot has been happening in my personal life over the last month and it has placed working on my dissertation at the bottom of my to-do list. I know that this is bad for my progress toward becoming Dr. Kelsie, but my mental and physical health during the last month have prevented me from sitting at the computer for hours on end. Once I got over the overwhelming urge to hide in bed for the whole day, I finally started to talk to my committee members about my progress (or lack there of). So far, everyone has been very supportive and helpful. One of my committee members, who studied under a famous guy named Krashen, told me that since "binge writing" (Krashen's term) is no longer working for me, try to add a few lines each day. It won't produce the same satisfaction of accomplishing tons of work, but it will complete my dissertation. I'm finding that if I start working first thing in the morning, I can manage to work for about 2 hours before my body decides it is time to stop for the day.
Surprisingly, Indy's support has been the best. He has been incredibly friendly and encouraging and my last conversations with him relieved a lot of my anxiety. The goal is still to graduate this semester, but if that doesn't happen, we'll work it out.
I applied for graduation last week and still hope that I'll have a complete rough draft by the end of spring break. If I finish my historical chapter and intro this weekend, I'll have 6 weeks to write 3 more chapters (including the conclusion, which should only take a day to write). Keep your fingers crossed that I can do it!
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