8 PM Thursday: After the infuriating failure of telecollaboration tech, euziere kindly agrees to drive up to the co-op to see my practice talk. I felt like I'd worked hard, polished things up, and would be able to nail the rehearsal and get to bed early. But as I give the talk I watch her grimace over and over, and I keep hitting parts I can't ( Read more... )

Well, here I am. On Tuesday afternoon I defend my dissertation. The defense presentation is about halfway done, and there are some papers I should review in preparation for the grilling I expect to get from Phoebe, but mostly I feel like things are under control. The diss is not a polished work and I honestly expect some harsh comments on my ( Read more... )

My advisor is not going to be able to come to town for my defense. When we did my prospectus meeting, I tried to patch two members in via telephone conferencing, and getting it set up was a half-hour nightmare (even after I'd tested all the equipment the week before). Plus, voice-only sucks. This time I want to get skype set up at the very least ( Read more... )

My dissertation defense will be open to the public. Everyone is welcome to come for the talk and / or the victory parade afterwards! We will process to the graduate school to turn in the dissertation paperwork, and then I'll buy drinks and confectionery for all ( Read more... )

Yesterday I ground through the remaining gristly bits of the grid paper, pulled together an introduction, and mailed it out to the committee. Today I finished drafting the bookend pieces of the disertation and sent them off to Barb. I was a little nervous, actually. This is the first time I've really taken ownership of some of our work, and I'm ( Read more... )

I keep forgetting that I'm supposed to write a dissertation prospectus!! It's due by May 31st, and that means I need to have it drafted, then set up a committee meeting, and then make changes all by that date! And the last week of May is taken up by the conference! Right now what I have is an outline. 500 whole bytes. Aargh.

This is the worst it' ( Read more... )

Current projects at work ( Read more... )

Spent an extremely successful day working with Barb -- 9 hours straight of stats and collaborative writing, with a good beginning on our paper to show for it! None of the emotional, psychological, or physical ailments that often interfere with my work made so much as a peep ( Read more... )

I looked at some apartments for rent in subdivided houses in Ypsilanti. The rates are amazingly low... I could end up paying $100-200 less per month than I'd pay at the co-op. Add that to the co-op's $500 fall-only fee, and the cost of taking a September-April lease would be only $1000-2000 higher than a September-December lease at the co-op! This ( Read more... )

The graduate school requires that our dissertation committee have a cognate member. This is someone outside our home field, who is intended to provide a non-expert's evaluation of our work and help us think about its broader implications. Why, then, are the requirements for who can serve as cognate the most *restrictive* of those for any member? ( Read more... )