The End

I've spent a fair amount of the past few months thinking about this blog and my status as a blogger. As most of my friends would tell you, I've been a routine blogger for...years and years. Before there was this blog, I blogged for two years on a friend's site, then dismantled that to go anonymous when I started grad school.

I kept it anonymous for the first year or two, then outed myself because the whole anonymity thing on a public forum wasn't really me. And I've tried for the past year or two to maintain a twice-weekly posting schedule - sometimes successfully, sometimes not. The point is, I almost can't remember a time when I wasn't blogging in some way.

I've long said that I thought blogging would be a good way to chronicle my grad school experience - and it has been. It's simply not something I have time or energy to do in a public space anymore. I'll continue to chronicle my grad school life in more private forums, but it's time to let this site go. I feel like closing this down is a major change for me (given all these years of blogging), but it's also something I feel appropriate at this time.

I've personally felt for years that a blog should have regular postings. While I read plenty of bloggers who post perhaps two or three times a month (or less), I've always felt that if I committed to blogging, I'd commit all the way and give readers something to read on a regular basis. I can no longer do this - or rather, I can do this, but I no longer have the time or energy to be engaging like I'd like to be.

I've reached a point in my professional life where part of me would love to be able to use a blog as a site for discussing, well, the things I study. But I'm not quite ready for that. To write the sort of posts I admire on sites like Historiann or Tenured Radical - that would take the time and energy that I need to devote to my dissertation right now. Someday, I may reapproach blogging as a historian, with a focus on historical topics and all that. Today is not that day.

I'm not getting rid of my online presence. I'm a huge twitter fan, and you can always find me there as @tanya_roth. In coming weeks, I'll dismantle this site. Thanks for reading!

Getting Things Done Day

My dog is at the vet's all day today for a regular checkup, plus teeth cleaning and stuff like that. This means I have all day to myself....something that's kind of a treat. While I absolutely (absolutely!) adore my dog, sometimes the solitude is nice.

Of course, what I'm really just loving is the fact that it's a non-campus day once again. And, I'm hopeful that I'll be able to maintain my Tuesday-Thursday non-campus days for the rest of the semester. Maybe I'll have to go in once or twice to meet with students, but now my Tuesday-Thursday obligations should finally be over, and that research trip is done.

Today's agenda involves work on fellowship applications. I actually can't do *much* today, because on Monday we have a grantwriting roundtable where I'll get some good feedback on my application. However, with two applications due in November, I want to get all my ducks in a row. I also need to review some midterm grades and handle some housework.

Tomorrow afternoon, the grad students in my department descend upon me for our monthly dissertation writers workshop. More accurately, of course, they descend upon my chapter, which they got earlier this week. I'm looking forward to the event, despite the fact that I had TWO DREAMS in which both my advisor AND all the graduate students told me it was the worst thing they'd ever read.

If I can survive those "premonitions," I'm sure I'll be fine tomorrow. For all its faults, I know this chapter won't be the WORST thing they've ever read. Right?

Note to self

Dear Self,

Remember, there's a reason why you try to keep weekends free after a major trip: it's catch-up-on-everything time. When you don't allow for this, you snowball for several days.

And mix up your schedule. See:

Exhibit A: family and recreational events this weekend meant no time to address grant application in progress for impending grant-writing workshop. Also, no time to finish laundry or plan menus or go grocery shopping.

Exhibit B: Realize on Monday that you misread the grant-writing workshop date - it's NEXT week, which means the half-hour you spent frantically revising that application this morning was almost pointless.

Exhibit C: Forget you have a virtual office hour until four minutes before it's supposed to start. Fortunately, remembered before actually getting in the car....

- - -

I'm more harried than I'd like to be right now, but really, this is all doable. I just prefer to reorient myself to my regularly-scheduled life on more of a laid-back schedule. Not this hectic schedule in which I nearly forget who I am.

THAT, of course, would be particularly bad.

The Last of the Archival Trips (for the diss)

When I go out of town for research (or “on business,” as I call it), I like to have tidy little to-do lists to get things accomplished in the evening. First priority every night is to sort and PDF my photos from the day at the archive. IE: I process everything before I even leave the research city. This makes my life much easier when I get home, because the only thing left to do is actually review the files and make notes. Since that’s a pretty intensive process in itself, it helps to have the initial processing done.

Then, of course, I usually turn to online things. I catch up with the world, I look for things to do or places to eat in the research city, and otherwise occupy myself and catch up on various things that need to be done. While I don’t require internet access for much of that, I have to admit that being online is something I rely on when I’m out of town. I have a GPS system and I have a smartphone, but I truly rely on my wireless connection to help me out (for instance: the night before my first research day, I’ll pull up a map to the archive and remind myself how to get there – something I’ll have already done, but I like to double check because that’s how I work).

So if you haven’t guessed by now, my routine’s been majorly disrupted by the fact that I selected a hotel that was supposed to have free WiFi….but doesn’t. Their service has been down since I arrived on Monday night. I’m not thrilled about it. The upshot is that it’s a budget chain, so the price is right – but if I’d known that the internet would be out and that the staff wouldn’t seem to give a darn about fixing it? Well, I probably would’ve paid more elsewhere.

Yesterday was my first day at the archive, and it was a typical first day of getting my bearings – not to mention actually getting access to the base. I’m in Montgomery to do my last bit of archival research for the dissertation. Specifically, I’m spending the week at the Air Force Historical Research Agency, where the folks are really nice and accommodating (important, since I tend to request a bazillion things and move through them very, very quickly) – I really appreciate their help this week. A LOT. But Maxwell AFB is a closed base, which means you have to be “sponsored” on to base by a staff member. I got on base, but it took an extra phone call yesterday to get it set up – and on my first day in an archive, unexpected detours tend to throw me off track a bit.

But I made it, and I’m happily settled in for research. They have a really fantastic online search engine that enabled me to find much of the things I’d want. Once I got here and figured out the system yesterday, it made it easy for me to sit down last night, go through my pre-trip searches, and create a MASTER PLAN of things to get. I’m waiting on a request right now, probably the last request of the day. Tomorrow I have five more requests – so I fully expect this to take me through most of Friday (although, if I can get out of here earlier on Friday, trust me, I will!).

Also, I’ve figured out the internet situation. While I’m not usually one to go find a café just for WiFi, that’s what I’m doing this week. Last night I ventured out for dinner and then to a popular café that has free wifi. Today I plan to go straight there after I finish my day at the archive: this way, I can settle in, do my online stuff that needs to be done, and get dinner. I’ll repeat the process tomorrow, of course, so for 3 days, it’s not a big deal. It’s not as relaxing as it might be in the hotel room, but it’s probably good for me to get the online stuff done and then stay off the computer for the rest of the evening.

After all, tonight’s GLEE! And the plus side of moving through my materials so quickly today, while having to kill time in between material pulls? Well, the plus side is that all my materials for the day are already processed, which means I have one less thing to do tonight….and that makes me very, very happy. Lack of internet access be damned.

That Mid-Semester....Panicky Thing

Next week I'll be out of town for my final archival research trip. I chose that week because we have "fall break"* and the course midterm, so missing one lecture is really very tiny in the scheme of things. Plus, grading can happen when I return.

This means that when I come back, there will be two weeks left of October. This is the point where I start to think, Oh CRAP! The semester is half-done and I haven't done ANYTHING yet! This means it's also a good time to remind myself what I've accomplished. Since August, I have done the following items related to my own work:

1. Created a first draft of a dissertation chapter (August)
2. Drafted, revised, and finalized a paper for a book submission (August/September; this went through probably 8 drafts. Got rejected, but I may have use for it elsewhere.)
3. Drafted, revised, and finalized a paper for a talk (August/September; this will likely become the foundation of the 5th chapter in my dissertation)
4. Returned to that dissertation chapter and worked fervently to finalize it (DONE!)
5. Drafted a grant application "template" and got feedback from advisor.
6. Drafted a dissertation abstract and outline.

Plus, of course, there were all the teaching things. And having another research trip is always something productive. So really, I've done well and should stop thinking otherwise.

But when I get back, it will be time to jump into a few more things. Namely,:

-2 grant applications due in November.
-pursue some oral history opportunities
-finish reviewing my research files

I'd love to get another chapter draft by December 31, and this is perfectly doable. I think it just needs to take a far-back-seat behind the grant applications and the research and oral histories for now, though. If I keep that in mind, then yep, I think this is perfectly doable to me. Panicky? NO MORE!


*"Fall Break" at my institution is a long-standing joke. It's an official, on-the-calendar thing, but it really just means that they cancel classes for Friday.

The Spirit of the Olympics

When the IOC announced Rio de Janiero as the 2016 Olympics host city, I was pretty thrilled. Normally, I don't care much for the Olympics - I mean, I watch bits and pieces of them, they're pretty fun, etc., but I don't usually put too much stake in worrying about who's hosting them.

This semester, though, I found the news really intriguing. In September one of the readings for the World History course I TA looked at the (canceled) 1940 Olympics in Tokyo. The article talked about the importance of a non-western city being selected as the Olympic games site. It was really a way to show the "universality" of the Olympic games, and the international aspect of it. After all, everyone in the world is supposed to be able to be part of the Olympics phenomenon, whether you're athlete or spectator. It's supposed to build an international, positive community through sporting.

Now, we all know that there are shortcomings to that goal. Year after year, there always seem to be debates over whether one country is using athletes that are too young, or pumping their athletes full of steroids or other drugs - it's always something. But still, that elusive goal of universality, international cooperation, etc. - it's all there.

So, it was exciting to see the games go to a continent that's never hosted before. I'm not upset at all that Chicago lost. This country has held many Olympic games, and I'm sure we'll hold many more. Now, if we could just have a games somewhere in Africa, that would be pretty neat.

Determination, and a little less Procrastination

I'm determined to make really good progress on this dissertation chapter today.

Last August, I drafted this chapter. Now, this chapter is an expansion and revision of a conference paper I gave last March, so a lot of the really hard work was already done for me. Not that it made the drafting SUBSTANTIALLY easier - but it helped. I expanded my argument, added some sections, and took a very large chunk of the conference paper as-is to form a large part of the chapter body.

And then I was unhappy with it. On top of that, I had two other large writing projects, so I set this chapter aside. I told myself I'd return to it in mid-September when I finished the other projects.

Then, of course, I didn't much feel like working on that chapter. I thought I'd dive back into research, but I was asked to do a dissertation writers' workshop in our department for late October and thought, "What the heck. At least this way the chapter will get done!"

This week, however, is the first week in more than a month where I've actually been able to have two open work days (Tuesday and Thursday). Last week I worked through some of my sources a little more, then did an outline of what I think the chapter needed to do, based on my current thinking and my prior experience with this chapter.

I really like the outline. And I really like that on Tuesday, I revised the introduction, edited the second section, and basically made it through the first ten pages of the chapter - 10 pages out of 35-40? That's solid. That's almost a third of what I need to have done by the end of next week.

In short: it was an auspicious start. But I put it away on Tuesday because the section I'd started work on was problematic. Today, though, that's not going to happen. Today I'm going to tackle that section AND keep moving through the paper. In the next six hours, I think I can do Many Good Things - with a bit of determination, and a little less procrastination.