Clearly I have not poured my heart and soul into this InaDWriMo thing. Shocking, I know. The sad thing is, the concept is truly a great motivator and under different circumstances I might have been more successful.
Between the job market, grading, the holiday, and now being sick, I don’t even have the energy to feel guilty about not reaching my goal. Tomorrow will be more productive, hopefully. At this point, though, I’d rather chew off my own arm than sit down to write. That sounds overly dramatic, but it is true. One lesson to be learned, though, is that there are good writing days and bad writing days, so when I have a bad writing day (or week…) I can rest assured that a good day will come along soon. This process is all about baby steps.
I will post tomorrow about the final word count, so goodnight and sweet dreams to you all. I have a date with a hot bath and some NyQuil.
Well, I have been writing. I can say that at least. My time has been interrupted and I haven’t been meeting most of my daily goals, but small steps are better than no steps, right?
My goal is to write 10,000 words of the dissertation during the month of December. Right now I am working on: 1) adding additional material to Chapter 1, 2) writing all of Chapter 4, and 3) inserting miscellaneous sections into the introduction and conclusion. Here’s my progress so far:
Introduction: 82 additional words
Chapter 1: 2,507 additional words (this chapter is now mostly done)
Chapter 4: 889 total words (I had none prior to this month)
We’ll see how the rest of the month pans out. I am completely behind on grading, but making progress on my dissertation is keeping me motivated to keep pluggin’ through this semester. Thank God it is now mid-November!
One of the perks of signing up for an account with Academia.edu is that I receive email notices whenever someone has googled my name. These have increased since I started submitting applications for academic positions. Since I am on the market I’ve been checking my Google results to see what pages are being clicked on the most, and I’ve made some interesting observations.
1. Most of these Google hits must be coming from history colleagues or search committees, because the pages that have risen to the top of the list are my professional profiles on sites like Academia.edu. The first few pages are entirely about me, which is a change from the last few years, when another person with my name usually had entries interspersed with mine.
2. Whoever is searching for me is also clicking on my course websites that I created on a blogging platform because I detest Blackboard. Maybe search committees are getting even better insight into my teaching than I thought? Of course, it could just be that my students haven’t bookmarked the site and just find it through Google. Who knows.
3. There are some personal things popping up as well, at the very top of the second page. Nothing bad, but my parent’s wedding anniversary announcement from this year is really high on the list, and it includes their very cute wedding photo. Now search committees will find out about how my parents looked in the 1970s! Oh, the wonders of the internet.
4. My Rate My Professors profile has moved up, which thankfully only says good things. I sincerely hope that search committees don’t put too much credence in those, though.
5. A book review that I published is showing up on Encyclopedia Britannica, which really struck me as odd. Since when did they start reprinting book reviews from academic journals?
ETA: Actually, there are few “not” me’s that do show up on the first page with Twitter accounts and the like. I’m still pretty pleased, though, that my online profile is presenting a solidly useful cross section of my academic life.
I had Chinese food yesterday, and both of my fortune cookies had excellent pieces of advice for dissertation writers. Fancy that!
“Achievement is one percent aspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration.” What a perfect description of the dissertation process!
“If you wait too long for the perfect moment, the perfect moment will pass you by.” Procrastinating because you don’t feel inspired to write is a trap many dissertators–including myself–fall into. But there’s no perfect time to write, especially when we lead such hectic lives.
I have decided to join in InaDWriMo, or International Academic Writing Month. According to last year’s host, Dr. Brazen Hussy, this is how it works:
International acaDemic Writing Month is the academic’s answer to NaNoWriMo, National Novel Writing Month. It was originally created by StyleyGeek as International Dissertation Writing Month, but because so many of us who had already finished our degrees were interested in a little challenge, the D was loosely interpreted as acaDemic. This means that you can write your dissertation, a book chapter, an article, a grant proposal – anything goes, as long as it is academic. I hosted InaDWriMo 2007, and it was great fun, and it seems that you crazy kids want to do it again. So here we go!
The rules:
- You decide how much you want to write, and how you will keep track of it. I encourage you to make this goal challenging but not so unobtainable that you depress yourself.
- You can decide if you want to include revisions in your word count.
- Keep track on your blog, maybe using a writing meter like this one or this one.
She has generously volunteered to host the 2009 edition. My goal is to write 10,000 words of my dissertation, either revising Chapter 1 or completing Chapter 4. Ideally I would complete both (with a total of around 15,000 words), but I don’t want to set myself up for failure. I have a terrific spreadsheet that records all the necessary data.
I won’t be posting daily updates, but I will be doing so at least once a week so you can keep me accountable and kick me in the tush if I fall behind. Wish me luck!
Today has just been wonderful so far, and I only hope that blogging about my good fortune doesn’t jinx the rest of the day. I’m crossing my fingers.
Sooooo…I have a job interview at one of my dream jobs, I just got a package in the mail with new snow boots, I sent off a publication, and the soundtrack from my favorite TV show is on a one-day sale for only $3.99. Today must just be my lucky day!
This is not me, but she sure captures how I've felt the last few weeks!
As you’ve most likely noticed, life here at the home of History Enthusiast (and her puppy Elle) has been incredibly hectic. Be assured, blog friends, that I have been reading your posts on my RSS feed even if I have been neglectful about commenting.
Anywho, my stress level has decreased slightly now that our mid-semester break is over. My semester has been flip flopped: the first half was incredibly, INSANELY busy, but now things are hopefully slowing down. Part of my stress comes from the fact that suddenly I am a popular person to invite as a guest speaker. In addition to a conference presentation (which was entirely my own doing), my advisor recommended me as a speaker for a public lecture series that runs during early 2010. Then, someone at a local state university learned about my dissertation project and invited me to come speak to their colloquium for “young scholars” (i.e. Ph.D. candidates and very new t-t faculty members). These lectures are an excellent addition to my CV, and I am thrilled that my work generates so much interest, but these kind of presentations stress me out more than conference presentations. Not sure why that is. I really just need to suck it up and get over my imposter syndrome. Heavens, I will have my history Ph.D. in six months! Surely that makes me qualified to talk about…you know…historical topics.
As for the dissertation? I don’t even want to talk about it. Same goes for teaching.
On the job market front, I am finishing up two applications today (yay!) and that makes my number of submissions a grand total of five. That number isn’t too impressive, but there are really only 10 tenure-track jobs that I can apply for (unless I try for a couple of the open Ivy league positions, but that would be setting my sights too high). That’s about all I’m going to say about applications, but generally my spirits are good.
Thank you, dear readers, for sticking with me as I get through this trying semester. Best of luck to all of you, and may your October end on a high note!
This past month has been particularly grueling, and October doesn’t look like it is going to be any better. My intention was to do a better job of blogging this month, but don’t hold me to that promise. This is what I am up to this semester, by the numbers.
Academic presentations/conferences: 3
Plane fare to one such conference: $319
Cost of rental car: $180 (no public transportation/shuttle available)
Pages written for dissertation (so far this semester): 7
Pages that must be written for dissertation: 50
Individual meetings with committee members: 6
Job applications: 9 (1 is completed and sent off!)
Hours spent online looking for ads or researching schools: a bazillion
Committees/service responsibilities: 4
Publications in the works: 2
Average hours of sleep per night: 6 (which actually ain’t bad!)
Library books checked out: 34
Number of students: 60
Number of students who’ve taken the time to come to my office hours: 1
Number of students who complain that I don’t make myself more available, even though they’ve never actually emailed me to set up an appointment: 10
Cases of plagiarism: 1
Students who have claimed to have swine flu: 4
The History Enthusiast is alive, but feeling a bit overwhelmed right now. I have taken on more committee work, plus writing the dissertation, teaching, applying for jobs, writing a conference paper, planning a seminar presentation, working on a publication (possibly two publications), plus other personal things. It is a bit stressful trying to juggle everything, so if posting is light for the rest of September, you now know why.
On the academic job market? Historiann has compiled some excellent posts directed at both job seekers and search committees. Part of me wants to say: “Woo hoo! I’m on the market!” The other part of me wants to say: “Crap…what have I gotten myself into?” No doubt many Ph.D. candidates and recent Ph.D.s are equally ambivalent.
