just when murphy has you by the balls
i don't know why i bother. two of my professors essentially just gave me the "meh, get it in whenever" response when i begged them to turn in the assignment late. so now i have until friday for my language and identity assignment, the other two are in and one of those i know for sure is accepted and fine. still waiting on my syntax assignment, but it's done, and i'm happy with it. but now...i'm just feeling vaguely foolish and hella relieved. it's about time something went right, and today appears to be my day.
anyway. still to do: studying for semantics final test (wednesday), much of which will be speech acts, which is shit i've done before. never thought i'd be thanking adam goldstein for anything, but that dweeb at least picked good readings for philosophy of language.
i'm actually excited to get back to drew, get started at CNS, and get moving on my thesis. when i finish my L&I assignment, i'm gonna email jim hala about setting up a cubicle where i can set up shop for my thesis, and run my preliminary ideas past him. caitrin lynch gave me a shitload of "well.....maybe" about doing work with grad students, but considering i've seen honors colloquium presentations doing fairly simple projects with drew students, i think a decent ethnography with theo students shouldn't be a problem, provided i cover my ass with sufficient legal-beagle paperwork shit.
so. i need to get the lit research started, see what's been written about the community/language, see where i need to narrow, what's not been inked about much.
topic as of now = identity creation and maintenance among (korean?) adult theo students and their families. possible narrowing to language maintainence, proficiency, use, or code-switching in the community. role of the church (duh, theo school) in constructing community life, variation in church involvement, etc.
possibly a language diary approach? (if i really need to narrow) i could talk to donna starks about that.
research problems = finding a site/multi-sited ethnography, getting off my ass, my own language proficiency (as a functionally monolingual participant, my presence will be an interesting rich point)
need to: clear it with jim, get contacts in the grad/theo schools, clear it with them, and start contacting those students to see how they feel about me hanging around and tape-recording them.
sigh. i've got my work cut out for me. but at least i'm starting to hack away at something real this time, and not another goddamn phantom ambition. the more i write down about this, the more real it gets, and the more i think i can do this.
i think my problem the past couple of weeks was that there was nothing real i could get my hands on and work out; i hadn't sat down and roped my fucking ideas into shape on *any* of my assignments, so they were just abstract deadlines that i hadn't even started hammering into shape yet. i know damn well that's what happened to my collection project for peek last year, but it's something i always end up doing. i just always forget how easy it is to keep saying "yeah, i can write that in five hours tomorrow" and always find something more important to do, something that it's easier to start wrapping my mind around it.
because yeah, i can write a paper in five hours if i need to. but not if it's still a fucking ghost of an idea. not if it's just...smoke.
anyway. still to do: studying for semantics final test (wednesday), much of which will be speech acts, which is shit i've done before. never thought i'd be thanking adam goldstein for anything, but that dweeb at least picked good readings for philosophy of language.
i'm actually excited to get back to drew, get started at CNS, and get moving on my thesis. when i finish my L&I assignment, i'm gonna email jim hala about setting up a cubicle where i can set up shop for my thesis, and run my preliminary ideas past him. caitrin lynch gave me a shitload of "well.....maybe" about doing work with grad students, but considering i've seen honors colloquium presentations doing fairly simple projects with drew students, i think a decent ethnography with theo students shouldn't be a problem, provided i cover my ass with sufficient legal-beagle paperwork shit.
so. i need to get the lit research started, see what's been written about the community/language, see where i need to narrow, what's not been inked about much.
topic as of now = identity creation and maintenance among (korean?) adult theo students and their families. possible narrowing to language maintainence, proficiency, use, or code-switching in the community. role of the church (duh, theo school) in constructing community life, variation in church involvement, etc.
possibly a language diary approach? (if i really need to narrow) i could talk to donna starks about that.
research problems = finding a site/multi-sited ethnography, getting off my ass, my own language proficiency (as a functionally monolingual participant, my presence will be an interesting rich point)
need to: clear it with jim, get contacts in the grad/theo schools, clear it with them, and start contacting those students to see how they feel about me hanging around and tape-recording them.
sigh. i've got my work cut out for me. but at least i'm starting to hack away at something real this time, and not another goddamn phantom ambition. the more i write down about this, the more real it gets, and the more i think i can do this.
i think my problem the past couple of weeks was that there was nothing real i could get my hands on and work out; i hadn't sat down and roped my fucking ideas into shape on *any* of my assignments, so they were just abstract deadlines that i hadn't even started hammering into shape yet. i know damn well that's what happened to my collection project for peek last year, but it's something i always end up doing. i just always forget how easy it is to keep saying "yeah, i can write that in five hours tomorrow" and always find something more important to do, something that it's easier to start wrapping my mind around it.
because yeah, i can write a paper in five hours if i need to. but not if it's still a fucking ghost of an idea. not if it's just...smoke.