(no subject)
So, following my last post of total paper and life anguish, I live. I live, and for the moment the desire to drop out of grad school and go and live in a box at the bottom of a hole under a rock and flagellate myself for a couple of years, after which I might consider myself fit to rejoin society at a level of intellectual responsibility more suited to my capabilites, ie., as a plumber, has abated.
I can't say my paper turned out well, mostly because I had to bring it to an abrupt close that was not part of my original plan at seven AM yesterday morning, after I worked on it all night, and realized that there was no way I was going to be able to talk about everything I wanted to. So it's a draft of the first fifteen pages of what threatens to be at least a thirty-page paper. I think there are some reasonably good ideas in it (I'm scared of them because I'm not 100% certain they're really mine, but I think they have potential and I want to explore them further), so hopefully the paper-critique session tomorrow and Monday won't be too crushing.
Also, reading some of the papers of those of my fellow medievalists who are working with narrative sources, I think my charters are much harder sources to work with. I can't say the same about the ones working on archaeology, but -- database! Also, while I wouldn't want to be an Anglo-Saxonist and have to deal with the horrifyingly vast and high-quality scholarship on Anglo-Saxon England, a lot of the scholarship I'm working on is written from an entirely different methodological standpoint and under some paradigms that Anglophone historians have seriously called into question. Or at least, so I will keep telling myself, because otherwise, the first-year medievalist's paper that I'm reading now might reactivate my desire to go and live in a box at the bottom of a hole.
But anyway, I'm now reading seminar papers for critique session tomorrow, and soon I will go in to campus and start working on my Kalamazoo paper.
Hopefully my computer will hold out through the next week, because after the squeaky noise I mentioned that it had started making again, it had two episodes of spontaneously shutting down and temporarily refusing to restart while I was in the throes of paper-writing on Thursday afternoon. I think it's an issue either with my power cable or power supply - I'm hoping power cable. It's been fine since. I borrowed L my office-mate's power cable Thursday evening, and it came through a hard night's work with no further problems or episodes of making funny noises, but I'm still worried. I went and talked to K the super-excellent department tech support guy about it yesterday afternoon (after I came home at 8:30 and slept until 1:00), and had the "are expensive repairs really worth it given the age of your computer?" talk, although he thought it was at least possible that the cable was the problem. He also made me a file on the university server where I can put another backup copy of things like my database - come to think of it, I think I should endeavor to find out his preferences in terms of cookies or some such and take him some!
Since yesterday, I've had a solid night of sleep, which was excellent. The only interruption was about ten firetrucks going up the street outside my window at 7:00 this morning. I got up to see what was going on and couldn't see evidence of an actual fire, but apparently there was one at the top of the street (where the street going up the hill meets the street going along the top of the hill and ends). There's now an arson investigation team there, according the the observation of roommate J's person of romantic interest T, who drove by to see. Eep!
But back to work.
I can't say my paper turned out well, mostly because I had to bring it to an abrupt close that was not part of my original plan at seven AM yesterday morning, after I worked on it all night, and realized that there was no way I was going to be able to talk about everything I wanted to. So it's a draft of the first fifteen pages of what threatens to be at least a thirty-page paper. I think there are some reasonably good ideas in it (I'm scared of them because I'm not 100% certain they're really mine, but I think they have potential and I want to explore them further), so hopefully the paper-critique session tomorrow and Monday won't be too crushing.
Also, reading some of the papers of those of my fellow medievalists who are working with narrative sources, I think my charters are much harder sources to work with. I can't say the same about the ones working on archaeology, but -- database! Also, while I wouldn't want to be an Anglo-Saxonist and have to deal with the horrifyingly vast and high-quality scholarship on Anglo-Saxon England, a lot of the scholarship I'm working on is written from an entirely different methodological standpoint and under some paradigms that Anglophone historians have seriously called into question. Or at least, so I will keep telling myself, because otherwise, the first-year medievalist's paper that I'm reading now might reactivate my desire to go and live in a box at the bottom of a hole.
But anyway, I'm now reading seminar papers for critique session tomorrow, and soon I will go in to campus and start working on my Kalamazoo paper.
Hopefully my computer will hold out through the next week, because after the squeaky noise I mentioned that it had started making again, it had two episodes of spontaneously shutting down and temporarily refusing to restart while I was in the throes of paper-writing on Thursday afternoon. I think it's an issue either with my power cable or power supply - I'm hoping power cable. It's been fine since. I borrowed L my office-mate's power cable Thursday evening, and it came through a hard night's work with no further problems or episodes of making funny noises, but I'm still worried. I went and talked to K the super-excellent department tech support guy about it yesterday afternoon (after I came home at 8:30 and slept until 1:00), and had the "are expensive repairs really worth it given the age of your computer?" talk, although he thought it was at least possible that the cable was the problem. He also made me a file on the university server where I can put another backup copy of things like my database - come to think of it, I think I should endeavor to find out his preferences in terms of cookies or some such and take him some!
Since yesterday, I've had a solid night of sleep, which was excellent. The only interruption was about ten firetrucks going up the street outside my window at 7:00 this morning. I got up to see what was going on and couldn't see evidence of an actual fire, but apparently there was one at the top of the street (where the street going up the hill meets the street going along the top of the hill and ends). There's now an arson investigation team there, according the the observation of roommate J's person of romantic interest T, who drove by to see. Eep!
But back to work.