elanya

Megan the Cruel, a.k.a. tethys123, asked me to talk about job searching and my feeling on it.

I haven't really been actively pursuing my jobsearch since I landed the position I have now. This is a little foolish of me, since this position ends in June. Probably. I mean maybe they will get more money and want to keep me? But there is absolutely no certainty in that regard, and I am really not counting on it.

While I haven't been *searching*, I have heard of a few jobs that I could be applying for, and I have been doing a very minimal amount of work towards preparing to do so. I should be doing more.

There are reasons for this, as follows (this is the feels part):

I really like my living situation, on the whole. While I wish I had better access to my things, and I especially wish we could manage better pet integration because I miss having Maze around all the time, I love living with my family, I love being so close to naryrising (Oh and forthright, him too ;), and I like the town I'm living in. My sister and BiL may complain it is Montreal, but it is also no College Station, and in a good way ;p I am reluctant to hurry away fro that towards a career I feel ambivalent about. Especially when I can feel ambivalent about my career right here ;p

The other thing is that one of the jobs I mentioned is academic. I have a lot of ~feelings~ about my degree, the value of my education, my ability to perform in that kind of environment, and if I am being completely honest with myself, my desire to do so. I think I could do it an do well at it, but I feel very ambivalent about some aspects of it. Some of if is probably just impostor syndrome. But I don't think that's it entirely. I think there were actually serious flaws with my education :p There are aspects that are very appealing. It would be a good cool job in a location that is in some regards extremely appealing. Less in others :p Part of me is really excited and part of me wants to just hide forever. I will definitely apply, but even then I think it will be fairly competitive, so we'll see.

And the other job is at the sister institution to my current job, with a lot more responsibility (but maybe also a lot more power, I dunno), but farther away from everyone, so I dunno. I probably have a leg up there, at this point...

Ambivalent. That is my feels. I don't know how to get over my issues surrounding my degree, but if I could figure that out I think it would help a lot :p

Mostly ups, I have to admit.

Like... My dad is visiting! I haven't seen him since like... Christmas 2011 or 2010? So that's pretty cool. We haven't been doing a whole lot - he came to see me, not to See All the Things, though we have seen some of the things (like Red II, and I took him to the galleries today, and found out the hard way that Cushing is closed on the weekends (no GRRM exhibit, alas!). And tonight we feasted on Sodalaks! Really, dad being here means that I have eaten lots of tasty things I haven't had the ways or means to get to in a while.

Also, I graduated! I am officially a doctor of Anthropology now, though I do not at all feel qualified at the moment. I haven't cracked a book of any kind in months and I doubt I could carry on an intelligent conversation on anything related to my field -_- I need to get on that.
The people I'm dogsitting for will be home tomorrow. That's not really a good or a bad thing, just a Thing. It will be nice not to have to split my time between houses anymore, but I will miss the animals, and they have some things here that I don't have at home.

And the big low - one of those things is a working fridge. Cleaning out the freezer today was really really gross, and sad making. And gross. it smelled foul, and there was a lot of...leaky...things...in bags. Also stuff that my old roommate kept for her animals. Ugh. But a new one will hopefully be sorted out pretty quick, at least. what will really suck is having to restock all my fridge and freezer things from scratch :/ At least I didn't *really* lose that much though.

Anyway! I'm a doctor! I have my diploma and it is framed and everything! I got hooded on stage and hugged by my department head!

...The Night Vale fangirl in me likes to point out that I am now *officially* a Hooded Figure. Whether or not I am mysterious... who can say >.>

( picture! )

I passed! Yaaaay! And I got an adorable art commission, and some gorgeous handspun yarn and a pirate snake, and chocolate covered strawberries :D

Now I am drinking cider and then I am going to catch up on sleep. Thanks everyone for your support and encouragement :D

Defending tomorrow! Last minute room change! No one I know can come, wheee! Or at least if they can they haven't told me about it ;p

It will be fine. I feel ready. I am going to bake muffins tonight, and I am geeting a lift in the morning from my chair and his wife (this is at least partly because they want my dog ;p). I will get coffee made and get the room set up. There will be snacks, but not too many because I really don't think there will be that many people there. I have practiced the crap out of my powerpoint and gotten some further excellent advice on how to improve it. One (well, at least one) of my committee members was only reading Chapter II this afternoon when I talked to him. I have no idea what will happen after the presentation is over and my throngs of supporters are booted out. Wheee!

Is next week! /o\

I put it on the grad list and on FB, soI may as well put it here too:

I would like to welcome everyone interested to attend the public segment of my dissertation defense next Wednesday, May 29th, in Glasscock 300 at 9:00 AM! The topic of the talk will be "Harbour Island: The Comparative Archaeology of a Maritime Community."

Thank you!


...I'm just starting to feel a little stressed about it now. I'd feel better if I had my presentation more together, but I am procrastinating pretty hard on it. But I have all weekend, right? D: I do have it started.... Why is it so hard to sort out the history bits?

I'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.

I finished writing the conclusion to my dissertation today, and have outlined my introduction. I'm sort of flailing about how to start, but right now, my opening lines is: "The ocean is awesome."

Maybe if I can keep going, I can even finish this off this weekend? Then I just need to make sure all my references are in place, and put my figures in to chapter 5. Then I need a table of contents, at least, and I'll be happy to send the bulk of it to Kevin and start getting my appendices in shape.

ETA: So, here is my opening paragraph, then! (*tweak tweak*)

The ocean is awesome. It is difficult to imagine living close to it, relying on it for food, communication, work, and travel, without it impacting one's understanding of the world and one's own place in it. Individuals who are part of maritime communities share the experience of this influential presence in their lives. The ocean provides a basis for contextualizing not only their identities as individuals but as members of a coherent group. The identification of a community with the maritime environment is maritimity, and this identification is evident in the archaeological record.

I finally handed in my prospectus today!

And then I have been sitting around doing nothing on the internet all afternoon. Better get at that data entry...

How are all of you? :D

Have some soothing pirate tunes while you think about your answers.

<3!

No monster truck rallies, alas ;p

I have two (maybe three >.>) sections to finish for this last chapter. The one I started yesterday should go pretty fast once I get in to it, and if I can keep focuses I may even get most of it done today! If I do, I will then look more seriously at adding a fifth comparative site (I want something more northern, and more urban, which shouldn't be too hard, I hope... The trick is that people working in, say, Boston, were more critical of South's work, and I need something pre-categorized).

Other than that, I need to clean the cat box at some point today, and eventually I need to go to the pet store and pick up more litter and some canned food to start Maze's and my canned kitty food adventures! The vet has recommended wet food for managing his weight, and I have been doing some reading in to that, and it is time to give it a shot.

I'm also having exciting shower adventures! Merc got us a new shower head while she was here (yay!) and I'm working on getting that installed. The trickier part is the new (taller!!!) shower arm, which is proving difficult to dettach. I'm trying some WD-40 on it now though, so hopefully that will do the trick!

Anyway, time for writing now, to get as much done on that as possible before I have game late this afternoon.

Whee!

How is neither 'ocean' nor 'water' in the top 1000 words, but 'mumble,' 'expression,' and 'interrupt' are? It think that's telling in and of itself, but these are apparently words from the contemporary fiction frequency list. In any case... my Upgoer-Five Elevator Speech:

I am writing about how the living around water makes people think about themselves and the people they live with. Do people who don't live around water think different things about who they are than people who do not live around water?

Things people had and used in the past can tell us how people thought about themselves. I want to get things that people left in the ground when they lived in places near water in the past. I want to look at these old things and see if they are different from the things that people who didn't live near water had. This will help me know if these two groups of people were thinking about who they were in different ways.

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IN other news, I had a good few days of writing early this week, and am doing meeedium at keeping up that momentum. The next few days are going to be odd, because Merc is coming down to sort out some house things before I get a new roommate (another friend of mine displaced by Life Issues). So that will take some adjusting.

However I think I can get done by August. I need to write an email to my committee and figure out when I can wrangle them all and start setting some dates. I will try and do that this weekend. Next week, I am going to get my proposal all squared away and start bombarding at least parts of my committee with chapters :p