posted by ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
elanya at 06:36pm on 10/05/2013 under creative writing, dissertation, forsyth, phd, uart, work
elanya at 06:36pm on 10/05/2013 under creative writing, dissertation, forsyth, phd, uart, workI'm sure there must be people out there who wonder and don't know, right?
Well, I am officially defending my dissertation on May 29. I more or less printed out the committee copies and will distribute them on Monday. Then I just need to write the abstract and acknowledgments. Oh and the defense presentation, I suppose :p
After that... I'll have about a week or so before I start my new job! Wooh! I have a one year position at the Forsyth Gallery as a cataloger. The way I am thinking, this will give me a year to try and do things like get syllabi together, maybe get an article published, submit my dissertation for publication (maybe), and basically try and get everything I can ready to be more eligible for the academic job circuit. Everything except teach, anyway :p And this way I'll have some decent museums experience under my belt and can start looking at those sorts of positions as well, or at least have other options if I can't find a decent academic job or risk falling into the adjunct trap after a few years.
I think that is really all of the big news. I'm still living in the same place. The pets are well. I'm still writing little bits and pieces. Maybe this year I will also make more serious efforts to get some fiction published? I think I may try and revive some of my older works in progress as well, or at least see if I can't bring them to some kind of reasonable conclusion (mostly thinking about my Romulan fic). If I intersperse it with other things I'm working on I think that will help me keep momentum all around, and then I can be producing stuff that maybe someone will be more interested in reading than my other stories. I like to think I am a pretty good writer, I'm just terrible at writing to capture audiences - if only I would write things people actually want to read! :p But maybe that is just an excuse :p
Um... I think that's about it, really. Finishing the Diss should be a bigger deal, but it really doesn't feel it. There have been moments of adrenalin rush and anxiety, but mostly I am relaxed to indifferent. Maybe it just hasn't settled in? Maybe its because I never isolated myself socially as much as some people finishing up, so it doesn't feel like as much of a release? I feel like I should feel more accomplished, I suppose.
I think part of it is that I fear a similar reaction to my fiction writing, where I think it is good and interesting (I also don't hate my topic as much as I've been told I should at this point), but no one else is interested. I guess we'll see. I'm interested to hear comments from my committee, at least - I'm not completely disengaged, or anything, but it mostly feels like the end of an inevitable process rather than overcoming any kind of challenge. Maybe I just don't feel like I have been challenged enough - my chair's comments were almost entirely copy-editing notes (and they were not extensive). I don't have that much faith in my brilliance though. Enh.
I feel like I should reward myself for getting it printed out today, even if I didn't get it turned in. I thought about ordering pizza, but I have pulled pork in the crockpot. Maybe I'll just make Nutella popcorn again.
Well, I am officially defending my dissertation on May 29. I more or less printed out the committee copies and will distribute them on Monday. Then I just need to write the abstract and acknowledgments. Oh and the defense presentation, I suppose :p
After that... I'll have about a week or so before I start my new job! Wooh! I have a one year position at the Forsyth Gallery as a cataloger. The way I am thinking, this will give me a year to try and do things like get syllabi together, maybe get an article published, submit my dissertation for publication (maybe), and basically try and get everything I can ready to be more eligible for the academic job circuit. Everything except teach, anyway :p And this way I'll have some decent museums experience under my belt and can start looking at those sorts of positions as well, or at least have other options if I can't find a decent academic job or risk falling into the adjunct trap after a few years.
I think that is really all of the big news. I'm still living in the same place. The pets are well. I'm still writing little bits and pieces. Maybe this year I will also make more serious efforts to get some fiction published? I think I may try and revive some of my older works in progress as well, or at least see if I can't bring them to some kind of reasonable conclusion (mostly thinking about my Romulan fic). If I intersperse it with other things I'm working on I think that will help me keep momentum all around, and then I can be producing stuff that maybe someone will be more interested in reading than my other stories. I like to think I am a pretty good writer, I'm just terrible at writing to capture audiences - if only I would write things people actually want to read! :p But maybe that is just an excuse :p
Um... I think that's about it, really. Finishing the Diss should be a bigger deal, but it really doesn't feel it. There have been moments of adrenalin rush and anxiety, but mostly I am relaxed to indifferent. Maybe it just hasn't settled in? Maybe its because I never isolated myself socially as much as some people finishing up, so it doesn't feel like as much of a release? I feel like I should feel more accomplished, I suppose.
I think part of it is that I fear a similar reaction to my fiction writing, where I think it is good and interesting (I also don't hate my topic as much as I've been told I should at this point), but no one else is interested. I guess we'll see. I'm interested to hear comments from my committee, at least - I'm not completely disengaged, or anything, but it mostly feels like the end of an inevitable process rather than overcoming any kind of challenge. Maybe I just don't feel like I have been challenged enough - my chair's comments were almost entirely copy-editing notes (and they were not extensive). I don't have that much faith in my brilliance though. Enh.
I feel like I should reward myself for getting it printed out today, even if I didn't get it turned in. I thought about ordering pizza, but I have pulled pork in the crockpot. Maybe I'll just make Nutella popcorn again.
calm