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Mar. 23rd, 2004
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to do list
Mar. 23rd, 2004 10:50 amDid a Tarot spread this morning. The cards say I'm an idiot, but stubborn enough to finish this Ph.D. Also that I am fortunate in my marriage, which is true.
Round of applause for Mirrorthaw, people. He deserves it.
TO DO (Mar. 23)
1. Email program assistant to get important deadline-type information.
[ETA 11:53 a.m.: reply from program assistant. The degree deadline for this semester is May 14, with the "window" (the time during which one can deposit for a degree which will be awarded the following semester but without one's having to pay tuition for same) being from May 17 through June 11. For the summer term, the dates are August 20 and August 23-27.]
2. Email committee members and ask them who wanted to read which revisions.
[ETA 11:53 a.m.: have heard from 1 committee member; 4 to go.]
[ETA: 4:41 p.m.: 2nd committee member has weighed in. Things are looking up.]
3. Finish reading Kristeva.
[ETA 2:35 p.m.: the last 60-odd pages of Kristeva are about Céline, a French novelist whom I have not read--nor indeed heard of until today. Ergo, I'm done with Kristeva rather earlier than anticipated. Huzzah!]
4. Get Kristeva into introd.
[ETA 3:18 p.m.: the French psychoanalytic feminist is more or less where she belongs.]
5. Write an actual opening paragraph for introd. with thesis statment and everything.
[ETA 4:41 p.m.: #5? Is totally kicking my ass.]
6. Email dissertation director to reschedule appointment cancelled due to virus.
7. Go through 6 chapters and conclusion of Albatross and hack the "dialogue with other critics" into the correct shape.
I figured out, btw, what was wrong with my approach to the secondary reading, and I'm going to note it here, both for myself and for anyone else who may need it. Because no one ever told me otherwise (until my defense, when it was all but too late, and thank you very fucking much for that), I treated secondary texts exactly the same way I treated primary texts. This is incorrect. Apparently one is not supposed to engage with the secondary texts, one is merely supposed to gut them, stuff them, and mount them on the walls of one's own argument.
Okay, maybe that metaphor went somewhere it ought not to have gone.
But my natural inclination to pick apart what I read and focus on the details is exactly and diametrically opposed to what I'm supposed to be doing, which can be summed up neatly in the paradigmatic sentence, "X thinks Y, but I think Z." I think this is a profoundly wasteful use of other people's intellectual energy, but it does emphasize with cruel irony just how completely academic publishing is a massive, self-delusional, conspiratorial circle-jerk.
*ahem*
Okay, enough venom from me. Maybe I'll actually get some work done for a change.
Round of applause for Mirrorthaw, people. He deserves it.
TO DO (Mar. 23)
[ETA 11:53 a.m.: reply from program assistant. The degree deadline for this semester is May 14, with the "window" (the time during which one can deposit for a degree which will be awarded the following semester but without one's having to pay tuition for same) being from May 17 through June 11. For the summer term, the dates are August 20 and August 23-27.]
[ETA 11:53 a.m.: have heard from 1 committee member; 4 to go.]
[ETA: 4:41 p.m.: 2nd committee member has weighed in. Things are looking up.]
[ETA 2:35 p.m.: the last 60-odd pages of Kristeva are about Céline, a French novelist whom I have not read--nor indeed heard of until today. Ergo, I'm done with Kristeva rather earlier than anticipated. Huzzah!]
[ETA 3:18 p.m.: the French psychoanalytic feminist is more or less where she belongs.]
5. Write an actual opening paragraph for introd. with thesis statment and everything.
[ETA 4:41 p.m.: #5? Is totally kicking my ass.]
6. Email dissertation director to reschedule appointment cancelled due to virus.
7. Go through 6 chapters and conclusion of Albatross and hack the "dialogue with other critics" into the correct shape.
I figured out, btw, what was wrong with my approach to the secondary reading, and I'm going to note it here, both for myself and for anyone else who may need it. Because no one ever told me otherwise (until my defense, when it was all but too late, and thank you very fucking much for that), I treated secondary texts exactly the same way I treated primary texts. This is incorrect. Apparently one is not supposed to engage with the secondary texts, one is merely supposed to gut them, stuff them, and mount them on the walls of one's own argument.
Okay, maybe that metaphor went somewhere it ought not to have gone.
But my natural inclination to pick apart what I read and focus on the details is exactly and diametrically opposed to what I'm supposed to be doing, which can be summed up neatly in the paradigmatic sentence, "X thinks Y, but I think Z." I think this is a profoundly wasteful use of other people's intellectual energy, but it does emphasize with cruel irony just how completely academic publishing is a massive, self-delusional, conspiratorial circle-jerk.
*ahem*
Okay, enough venom from me. Maybe I'll actually get some work done for a change.
