Chicken Soup For My Grad Student Soul

Rules for Grad Students: No Pens in the Bed

2011-02-16T20:50:00.004-05:00

Welcome to a new installment of Chicken Soup for my Grad Student Soul, where I lay down even more regulations than your student handbook.

Today's rule is one I break frequently.

No Pens in the Bed!

Pens in the bed cause daily disaster for me.

It's even worse because I prefer those rolling ball point pens. Can you even imagine what that does to pillowcases? And my face?

Meanwhile, one of my grad student friends reports that her significant other is so fed up with pens in the bed that he's one Bic away from going Samuel L. Jackson in Snakes on a Plane, except replace "snakes" with "pens" and "plane" with "bed".

This is one of those things that sounds like a good idea -- "oh, I'll fall asleep in a pile of my books and fade in and out of consciousness while notetaking!" -- that rapidly falls apart when you wake up too late to scrub the pen off and you have to go to school looking like a canvas for a four-year-old. Even worse if you are taking notes on your topsheet. Or your girlfriend.

Pens on the couch are still permissible, so if you must hibernate in a den of work, take all your pens there. You're less likely to mark up innocent bystanders there.

Grading Dinosaurs

2011-02-09T11:40:00.003-05:00

Utahraptor: surprisingly knowledgeable on Greek mythology. Well done.

T-Rex: conclusions might not be so far off base. Avoid informal language, and the phrase "super sexy". And I guess "sexed up" should be avoided too. But "cheezed" can stay.

Dromiceiomimus: that student who never speaks, but rather anxiously keeps their heads down to "be less noticeable". I see you there, Dromiceiomimus, and I'm calling on you as soon as I figure out how to pronounce dromiceiomimus.

Spring Semester Giveaway Results!

2011-02-06T11:44:00.002-05:00

Thanks to everyone who entered. I really enjoyed reading through your book lists, and you've given me a lot of ideas for my own endless list of books to read. But, the randomizer has spoken, and the winner is:

Amandawk!
"Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter", here you come!

And a Happy Spring Semester to all!

Last Chance for Some Books!

2011-02-05T10:16:00.002-05:00

Reminder, folks: Be sure to enter the Spring Semester Giveaway! I'll be choosing the winner tomorrow morning and posting the results on the blog. Just think about what $25.00 from Amazon could do for your book collection!

Spread the word to all your friends who might be tempted to go on a recession book-buying binge.

Stay tuned for the announcement tomorrow!

Punxsutawney Phil, You Lie

2011-02-02T23:01:00.003-05:00

Well, we got a Snow Day. This is extremely rare where I live, a place where people scoff at the term "Snow Emergency" as they fill up their bathtubs with water and get out the can opener to prepare to eat clam chowder cold. But the Snow Day was welcome! A chance to rest and do work and not spend an hour and a half of my day driving and parking at school!

Of course, that's not how it went. By 10 am I had pulled out the sewing machine, telling myself that I needed a new apron and I needed it NOW, and grading could wait until a day where we actually had school.

Do other people have this experience?

I guess my approach to the Snow Day is not unlike that of a grade-schooler. If someone had told 8-year-old me, "Hey, it's a Snow Day, there's no school, but go ahead and get out your math workbooks and do that for a couple hours" I would have actually laughed in their face. Math? No way! Time to get on the snowsuit and play outside in the sub-zero temperature!

And so today went. I read, I watched television, I sewed, I played with my pets, and yes, I put on the snowshoes and the snowpants and wandered around outside. Which is why I'm pulling the post-Snow Day All-Nighter. Blast!

Well, for any of you in deep-freeze places, I hope your Snow Days are more productive than mine!

Spring Semester Giveaway!

2011-01-30T11:25:00.003-05:00

Already buying a library's worth of books for the new semester? Here's some back-to-school support!

Chicken Soup for my Grad Student Soul Giveaway!

A $25.00 Amazon gift card!

Want it? Need it? Here's how to enter:

1) Is there a book you're dying to get? Leave the title in the comments (or, if you're like me, a list of potential titles!) and you're entered.

2) Followers are automatically entered, so if you're a follower and you leave a comment you'll have two entries.

3) I need some way of getting in contact with you if you win, so don't post anonymously!

4) Check back on Sunday, February 6, when I'll announce the winner on the blog! Then you can get me your contact information by emailing me (link is on my profile page).

In An Open Relationship with Monographs

2011-01-29T22:25:00.003-05:00

I like this. Perhaps more importantly, I feel this.

Except I'm pretty sure I'm married to Clio. Either that, or "Divorced" from "Reality".

Back to School: A Comparative Packing List

2011-01-27T19:37:00.002-05:00

First Grade:
-backpack large enough to fit art smock, soccer ball, and sticker book
-new Crayolas
-cookies to share with the class
-lunch in Lisa Frank unicorn lunchbox
-thermos of hot chocolate
-big puffy coat to keep warm at recess

Grad School:
-backpack large enough to fit 50 exams, manila folders, and textbook
-new red pens
-cookies to share with people in group office
-lunch in PolarTek insulated lunchbox
-thermos of hot coffee
-big puffy coat to keep warm during cross-campus hike from parking lot

So, actually, really not different.

Me, then and now.

These Aren't the Trusted Adults You're Looking For

2011-01-19T18:21:00.003-05:00

Well, I've recovered from the AHA. Good for me, because now I have new problems.

Look, I was raised in a time and place where "tell a trusted adult" was pretty much the response to anything that could possibly go wrong. Bullying? Tell a trusted adult. Creepy person approached you? Scream, then tell a trusted adult. You ate a battery? Tell a trusted adult, which may include a Poison Control worker. My school went to extremes with this, even parading in a bunch of friendly-looking police officers and firefighters to show examples of trusted adults. In my young mind, there were two kinds of adults: Strangers (Danger!) and Trusted.

Of course, it is never that simple. I used to work at a place where I was a mandated reporter, required to report certain things that people mentioned. Now I'm in the opposite place, trying to avoid being the recipient of misplaced personal information from students.

So, are we instructors trusted adults, or not?

There's a lot of evidence supporting the position of "we are". If kids were brought up to believe that teachers are the ultimate trusted adult, that assumption may extend to college lecturers, TAs, and professors. At large institutions, the TA might be the only instructor to know each student's name, or the only instructor students get any real face time with, which ratchets up the points on the Trusted Adult scale. I myself have said, and have heard others say, "Come see me as soon as you're having trouble with the material", which for me translates to "avoid giant problem" but often ends up as "let me tell you about a giant problem".

But there's evidence on the other side as well, including but not limited to actual mandates from various college offices instructing professors to avoid being drawn into the personal dilemmas of their students. Don't ask questions, don't make suggestions -- in many places a professor or TA can't advise a student to seek medical help or counseling. Nobody wants to enter lawsuit territory, so maybe "we aren't".

I struggle with this. I don't have answers. I wish I did, since next week the students will pour back into my classroom and onto campus and I know somewhere, somebody will be immediately dealing with these issues, and we'll all be hoping it isn't us. They will probably struggle silently, doubly afraid to get involved and admit any involvement at all to others. They probably won't have a trusted adult, either.

AHA: The Grad Student "Reception"

2011-01-14T15:57:00.000-05:00

The grad student mixer, also known as the Reception for Graduate Students, is truly a mixed bag. Sometimes you strike up a conversation immediately with interesting people who aren't antagonistic or otherwise problematic. But that's for lucky people. If you aren't a lucky person, you bumble around for 20 minutes, wondering if you should leave, attempting to make eye contact with people, hoping you bump into someone in the room who will make it worth your while, all the while praying you won't do or say anything to horribly embarrass yourself.

Here are other things that sometimes happen:
-Sometimes you experience the Surprise Encounter, someone you haven't seen for years until you almost knock them over in the food line. This can be either a positive or negative experience.

-Sometimes you're the only person in the circle who has no idea what's being discussed, but you have to pretend you do. That, like the first scenario, might have varying degrees of success.

-Sometimes you get into a fight over the last piece of chicken satay. It's really a lose-lose situation at that point.

-Sometimes, despite being completely sober, you are so addled from the grad student mixer experience that you are unable to locate your car in the parking garage and are forced to ask one of your new grad student mixer friends to help you look for it for over 20 minutes, thereby demonstrating epic incompetence. [True Story. I was in great form this year. Thanks, David! For more on this, see my post on why you need grad student friends to save you.]

-[REDACTED] There's a reason I like to call it Historian Speed Dating. The high tables, the lack of seating, the constant moving around the room, the three minute conversations of "SO, real quick, what do you study?". It's both fun and ridiculous, and by the end of it, you're not entirely sure what's happened. In keeping with theme, where this ends is somewhere on a spectrum between "well" and "so, so badly". Like prom.

Someone once asked me why, if there's a high possibility of an awkward situation, do I go to such events. The answer is, I like interesting people and I'm generally confident in my ability to suss them out. Granted, sometimes you end up with a guy who won't let go of your hair (like last year), but other times you end up meeting a bunch of new smart, fun people that you're likely to see again in the future. This year might be able to cancel out last year. Maybe.

AHA: Getting Started

2011-01-13T15:15:00.002-05:00

The feedback I've been getting from people who attended the Annual Meeting is that it can be quite intimidating. There are a few reasons for this. It involves travel, which requires planning and coordination. It is massive -- literally thousands of people, most of whom you don't know. It is tightly planned, with a huge number of panels, meetings, and sessions that overlap and you have to wade through the program and figure out what is most useful to you. It facilitates social and professional networking, which can be awkward and which some people just plain don't like.

I try to make the most out of the meeting, but have come to understand that there's a learning curve to these things. I think I did better than last year, in part because I did the following things:

1) Prioritize time. I figured out what was "high priority" and made sure I did all of those things. If there was time or energy left over for the rest of my itinerary, I went, but I at least tried not to burn out.

2) Understand that there's a bit of madness involved. No amount of pacing the paths between rooms and scouting the conference center would have prepared me for navigating the Annual Meeting. I made peace with it.

3) Force yourself to talk to at least one person per session. This is hard. This is awkward. But it can lead to all sorts of great stuff. Worst case scenario is the person isn't interested in talking and you move on quickly to someone else. Best case scenario, you end up having lunch with a bunch of people who like what you like.

These, my Annual Meeting New Year Resolutions if you will, made a big difference.

Do you have any helpful hints for making conferences and meetings productive? I'd love to hear them, I need new resolutions for next year!

AHA: Navigating in a Bubble

2011-01-13T12:02:00.002-05:00

Last year, you might recall from my posts, the Annual Meeting was held in San Diego, where every couple of hours you would leave one hotel for a lovely seaside stroll to the next. This year, it was in Boston, and in Boston on a weekend where there was a snowstorm. The upside to the planning was that the conference center and hotels were linked by a mall and skybridges. The downside to that is I went three days without going outside and wasn't even consciously aware of it.

Until the third day, when a fire alarm drove us from the building. It was truly an interesting experience. I was in the audience of a fascinating panel when the alarm went off. At first, no one was sure what was going on. Instead of the usual fire alarm, it was a beeping tone. Then we heard the WAH WAH WAH and it was clear we needed to get out.

Now, back in elementary school, we learned what to do in this instance. Before you even get to stop, drop, and roll, you 1) abandon all belongings, 2) walk single file, quickly, out of the building, and 3) do not get in elevators or on escalators or touch anything electronic. Still, when the alarm went off, we all hesitated. "Should we leave? Is it real? Could we just stay until we wrap up the third paper? We want to hear the comment!"

Eventually I sprung into action, having been well-trained by my first grade teacher in such matters. It was down the stairs, through the hall, around a wing of the mall, out the door to shiver and huddle together for warmth (not having to go outside = no coats) until the fire department gave approval for reentry.

The whole thing made me think about the set-up. I have to admit that I got lost in the mall. Several times. I managed to find my way around San Diego but I couldn't get from one building to another without accidentally ending up in The Gap. Historians rushing to sessions met crazed shoppers on their own turf. As one professor put it, "at this AHA, we get to have contact with civilians."

Fortunately for many, nothing was actually on fire, and things proceeded smoothly from there. Though it gets one thinking. If monthly fire drills for elementary school students, who are quick and spry and can easily escape out of windows, are a good thing, perhaps emergency-drilling at conference venues shouldn't be out of the question.

AHA: Academic Knock-Down Drag-Outs

2011-01-12T18:03:00.000-05:00

Have you ever given a presentation that just went wrong? Like nothing you said was what you meant to say, or everybody was misunderstanding you, and the whole thing was a dud from the first? This can happen at a conference, and then the audience and the panel is stuck there for a couple of hours trying to figure out how they're going to make it right.

I'm a generally congenial person. But those of you who might have experienced being in a course with me also know that I have an edge. An edge that likes to manifest in verbal brutality when one of the following happens:

1) someone is lying
2) someone is wasting everyone's time
3) someone is rude

When those things happen it's all I can do not to go off like a Roman candle and give them a piece of my mind! But I've gotten better at controlling those urges. Unfortunately one of the places my intellectual rage is welcome is at conferences, where two people going head to head on a specialized subject is among the best dreams an academic can experience. In that environment, a hastily-worded question can devolve a roundtable into a very hostile, very long mess.

Most panel discussions I've witnessed are pretty passive events. A few get a little heated. But rare is the panel that started off simmering and then sustains fire for hours. My tips for avoiding this in the future:

1) if things get bad, and you can get out, LEAVE
2) feel out the situation and keep your mouth shut once things start to really head downhill
3) decompress afterward, either with people who were part of the discussion who are as shell-shocked as you, or with people who weren't there
4) make a note of the people involved in the intellectual skirmish for future reference
5) anticipate the response to your question. I failed here, and in doing so, really failed everyone in the room by throwing my verbal brandy in the fire pail.

As it was, we emerged mostly unscathed, and toddled over to recover over coffee and donuts while just staring at each other, eyes wide. Now that I've had a few days to think about it, I am able to chalk it up as a learning experience entitled How Not to Run a Panel.

AHA: The Haps

2011-01-10T22:41:00.002-05:00

So I promised I'd be live-blogging from the AHA. Turns out, internet was shockingly difficult to come by. So instead, I'll be breaking with the historians' tradition and will be posting achronologically. My experience has been that conferences tend to be a collection of distinct adventures rather than one continuous event In that spirit, I'll be back-posting some of the highlights, after I attempt carefully to remove identifying information.

For those unaware, the annual conference is held in a number of hotels. They need a few because several thousand people register. The location is chosen years in advance, and so those thousands of people flock to a different city every year, yet always dressed remarkably the same. Once there, a variety of panels, meetings, round-tables, ceremonies, receptions, and presentations await people. After four days of this, all historians go to bed for several days.

And so, here we go! Check back in the next few days for the rundown! Or scroll through last year's accounts, posted last January.

Grad Students and Volunteering: A Retrospective

2011-01-06T00:01:00.003-05:00

One of last year's New Years Resolutions was "volunteer more". And volunteer more I did, but it wasn't always easy. Shockingly, one of the major hurdles I faced was finding appropriate organizations which could actually utilize my skills. There are several issues that graduate students face when it comes to getting involved with charities:

1) We're often broke. I can't give money. Some weeks it's like, "No, I can't put a dollar in your box, ringy-bell-Santa, because that dollar is going to feed me lunch today." So I have to rule out groups that need money more than manpower.

2) We're not always around. Things like school breaks, research trips, and conferences mean that I'm missing for chunks of the year. I have to scratch off orgs that need me to be there at 9 am sharp every week, no excuses.

3) We can be wary of taking on too much. I know I will get the flu next semester, and when that happens, I go into survival mode. I only go from my bed to school and then right back to bed, all the while sucking down Airborne and Saltines. Then there's exam periods, last-minute meetings, that student randomly showing up for help...

My conclusion is that often the best volunteering opportunities for graduate students are those where there's a big return for an hour of time. So I went off in search of high-impact-for-your-minute activities. A few things I tried last year:

-I took pictures of animals at an animal shelter for their website. In an hour I could take and process photos for about 12-15 animals, and the numbers show that web exposure increased adoption chances.

-I wrote holiday cards to troops abroad. In one hour I could write, address, and mail about 10 cards, and cost me only for the 42-cent stamps and the paper.

-I took part in a park clean-up. Nice weather, friendly people, they gave us water bottles, and after a few one-hour sessions the park looked great and free of horrible stuff.

-I volunteered to help out at the church Christmas pageant. In one hour I realized that it was going to be a mess, but the parents would like it anyway, and then I finished the wise man outfit.

My main advice for people looking to volunteer is to find organizations that are flexible. With the animal shelter, I came in as often as I could, but they didn't have a problem with me being gone for weeks at a time. The letters to the troops could be completed at home, on a plane, anywhere. Look for an organization that actually wants volunteers and knows how to coordinate them. Your school might have some kind of community service organization that can help with this. Finally, pick something you actually like, whether it's kids, soup kitchens, or web design. It's easier to stick with it and get something out of it that way.

And good luck generally as we formulate plans for taking on this year's resolutions!

Happy New Year!

2010-12-31T16:29:00.003-05:00

This year:

-I read more books than I believed imaginable. Thanks, comps prep!
-I did more traveling for research and conferences and have come to really enjoy it.
-I made friends outside my department
-I strengthened some friendships within my department
-I dealt with epic problems in some of my studies, but came out the other side
-I developed a better sense of which professors are interested in promoting my success
-I survived my first year of home ownership and my first semester of TA'ing

Next year:

-I resolve to get back in touch with old friends and acquaintances
-I will finish up classes and move on to the next step of my program
-I look forward to TA'ing and teaching a summer course
-I hope to read for fun more (now accepting suggestions!)
-I will do some more local sightseeing and enjoy the place I live while I'm here
-I will continue to stand up for the research I want to do

I hope everyone has had a good past year and is looking forward to 2011!

Do you have any academic resolutions? Hopes for the new year? Share below!

Christmas Creep

2010-12-22T23:54:00.004-05:00

Normally, I would consider the ability to pack up a bag and do my work from nearly anyplace to be an awesome job perk. I'm rarely "stuck in the office" until the pre-dawn hours of the morn, an experience my corporate friends report with great frequency. Sure I'm often up until 3, but I'm in my bed with my cat and access to my fridge and TV breaks. Or I'm reading for comps on the beach during a summer weekend trip. Even when I'm stuck at the airport or waiting for my car to be fixed, I can do work.

This perk really comes back to bite me at the holidays.

First of all, whenever I go to visit family during Christmas I inevitably show up with 2 bags: one with clothes, toiletries, the usual, and the other with books, papers, exams, binders, and highlighters. Then I have to beg off to go set up shop, try to get my computer to recognize their internet, and disappear for hours at a time. I hate it because it's rude and I miss out on social time, but it's necessary. The flip side of being able to do work anywhere is that there is rarely a true day off.

For me work has a way of creeping in at Christmas the most. I think it's a combination of Christmas being extremely busy and all the eggnog. We go snow tubing and when we're done I throw my snowsuit off and holler, "GOTTA GO READ!" before grabbing a cup of hot chocolate and retreating to a pocket of some room now dedicated to the giant pile of books I've brought in.

I've been fortunate that about 90% of people I spend holidays with are more amused than annoyed by my academic antics. My boyfriend's mother has taken to referring to the guest room as my "office" and this year lent me her amazing bed-chair device to use to finish writing the bazillion pages I had left. Also I've discovered that eggnog is a helpful writing aid and there was a steady supply of the stuff for the duration of writing.

But I'm proud of me -- I didn't work at all on Christmas Day, save for reading a book for half an hour while waiting for a reasonable hour to wake everyone up to open presents. This is an improvement over last year's post-Christmas dinner write-a-thon.

For those who celebrate Christmas, I hope you actually got to celebrate it instead of work through it. Right now I'm working on clearing my schedule enough to enjoy New Year's Eve!

Things on the Horizon: Holiday Insanity

2010-12-20T20:24:00.003-05:00

I FINISHED THE GRADES! Now on to bigger and better things that don't require coefficients and graphing calculators circa 1999.

It's time for Christmas. Due to divergent family and religious traditions, my partner and I celebrate two Christmases, at least. I do Christmas hymn-midnight service-lessons and carols-children dressed as wise men and shepherds Christmas first. Then we do Santa-sick from cookies and eggnog-open presents under the tree-watch Rudolph 18 times Christmas. There may also be early-January-with-friends Christmas and sometimes early-spring-Christmas with my family. There's usually also just-the-two-of-us-fighting-over-last-piece-of-pie Christmas.

Suffice to say, Christmas is big and lasts a long time. Then there's New Years. New Years is also huge. I make two tons of monkey food and a giant cheeseball and get dressed up (sometimes the only time that year) and ring in the New Year by beating on a pot with a metal spatula. Yes, you read that correctly. Then it's time for midnight kisses and resolutions and learning to write the correct year.

What else will happen before school begins again? A few exciting things:

Like last year, I will be live-blogging from the annual meeting. Last year all sorts of madness happened, so stay tuned in the beginning of January for that!

Also in late January there will be a giveaway. I am very excited about this and will require much creativity on your part, so get ready.

I'll be updating periodically between these two major projects. As always, feel free to send along great stuff to me. You might even get your own "corner".

What does the holiday break hold in store for you?

Allow Me to Introduce Myself

2010-12-20T08:50:00.004-05:00

Dear readers, please meet me:

I'm up to my ears in Blue Books. For every Blue Book, I have an email in my inbox inquiring about the grade. On the exam given at the end of last week. Bleghajfeiohrh!

One of my challenges this semester is in convincing my students that, while I am a conscientious instructor, I am not a human grading machine. This body is not a Scantron reader. This is part of a general effort to let my students know that I am a living, breathing person. Earlier this semester I encountered a student in the dining hall. Shocked to see me, he uttered out, "What are you doing here?". As if I didn't need sustenance or was somehow not supposed to be there.

When I was an undergrad, I frequently encountered professors at the gym. This was slightly awkward because we would be forced into polite conversation while wearing spandex and rolling around on exercise balls. If I can deal with getting my English professor un-stuck from a Thighmaster, these students can handle my lunchtime routine.

So, here are 5 things I wish students would understand about me. I'm thinking about getting it printed up on a tee shirt.

5. The reason you don't get your paper back the day after you turn it in is because I spend a lot of time on grading. I read thoroughly. I write comments that are designed to help you. This is better than me slapping a C- on it and calling it a day.

4. I am a friendly and approachable person. But this does not equate to sending me Facebook friend requests with the message, "Ha ha, found you, want 2 b frenz?

3. Contrary to popular belief, I don't live in my office. Showing up there at random times and leaving notes about my "unexpected absence" is futile. Also, don't eat my candy while lingering at my desk, complaining about said absence.

2. Review sessions. They are for you. They are most definitely not for me.

1. If you see me heading for the coffee cart, it is NOT the time to ask me a question. Stand back, let me take a few sips of caffeine, and then proceed.

Are you a grading grinch this year? Have you been at the mercy of one? What do you wish students knew about you? (that's it, we're making tee shirts for sure. and tote bags.)

\

Your Finals Survival Guide

2010-12-12T12:27:00.003-05:00

Way back in the day, my best friend and I went to a school with a bizarre scheduling policy for final exams. All normal classes were canceled and each day for three days you attended a smattering of final exams between 7:15 and 3:20. Of course this left huge chunks of the day when you were just sitting around the school, being told to be quiet and getting really bored. So my friend and I made each other survival packs which usually consisted of homemade, slightly offensive word searches, hand-drawn comics, and locker scavenger hunts that involved a bit of lock-picking.

Exams are not so different now. We proctor them, we wait around, we sit still and try to be productive but, much like Alvin and the Chipmunks' being good, it won't last. I could make you a word search, but for now I've turned to Cracked.com to find you some links that only get funnier the more tired and depressed you become. And I've tried to make it educational. Here's a few things we can learn.

1. The Past is a Strange Animal. This includes your own childhood.
Case in Point: Kids are simultaneously strangely perceptive and totally oblivious. As a youngster I was freakishly aware of the stereotypes of Native Americans and how they were wrong and bad. I also frequently danced about the house singing a song from The Great Mouse Detective that was about prostitution. Talk about not having a clue.
Here Cracked.com lists the 9 Most Racist Disney Characters. I'm a little surprised the Siamese cats from Lady and the Tramp didn't make it in, but that's only because there were so many other choices.

2. Writers of Good Books are Cracked.
Case in Point: Roald Dahl, creator of such characters as the Grand High Witch of the World, Matilda, and James of Giant Peach fame, was a freaking spy -- and he didn't get a spot on this list of 5 Authors More Bad-Ass than their Characters.

3. Saving Money is Only Good Up To a Point
Case in Point: I would save a lot of money if I didn't eat, but then again, I'd be dead in about 9-14 days after making that decision. It's cheap to only provide public education up until eighth grade, until you realize you're paying with your life when there's no doctors, dentists, or police officers in your state. Which is pretty much what's happening in these situations, the 7 Most Horrifying Cost-Cutting Decisions.

4. Badgers are the Chuck Norrises of the Animal World
Case in Point: It appears that most animals just want to get drunk and destroy things. Three cheers for evolution! Here are 6 examples of Animals That Just Don't [expletivetrailoff].

5. Death in Movies Can Be Equally Pointless as Real-Life Doom
Case in Point: It has always really bothered me that Harry Potter and the gang are so dependent on magic that they seem completely unable to improvise. I keep waiting for Harry to pull an Indiana Jones and just pull out a pistol and shoot Voldemort. I mean, why not? Or when Harry and Voldemort do that wand-connecty thing, Ron could just walk up and conk him on the head or something. Turns out, lots of movie deaths don't actually make much sense. Here's a few particularly amusing ones.

Christmas Shopping 101: A Cheat Sheet

2010-12-11T17:24:00.003-05:00

A few weeks ago I was thoroughly stumped over Christmas gifts. I was a day away from going to the Christmas Land kiosk and buying everyone penguin ornaments with their names written on them. Instead, I interrogated everyone in my group office on what they were hoping to get for Christmas and what they had bought for other people so I could steal their ideas. Now you, too, can steal their ideas. With these 5 hints, plus the ideas I mentioned last time including making 80 gajillion chocolate-covered pretzels, I am ready for the manic Christmas gift exchange.

ALERT: If you're related to me, stop reading now, unless you're like me and hate surprises.

1. I recently learned about the ridiculously amazing Groupon. Use it, live it, love it.

2. Here's a list of books some people think are good. My two notable books-as-gifts? For fiction, the well-written, twisted tale The Likeness by Tana French and for nonfiction, the profoundly sad but moving The Memory Chalet by the late Tony Judt.

3. Depending on where you live, holiday craft fairs may be in full swing. Hit them up -- you can buy gifts for everyone you know and sip on Swiss Miss Hot Cocoa in a school cafeteria, in the same afternoon. This year we stumbled across cool paper mache holiday ornaments and knocked out about a third of the Christmas list.

4. Don't count out Etsy and ArtFire!

5. Toys R Us has stepped up their game in offering variations on old favorite toys. Let's just say, someone is getting a blast from their past in the form of the Super-Deluxe Mr. Potato Head-Mrs. Potato Head Combo Pack.

Holiday Madness

2010-12-07T11:50:00.004-05:00

So I've been AWOL since Thanksgiving. It's not a coincidence. I'm kind of a Thanksgiving grinch. Frankly, when you study early American history, the "First Thanksgiving" story is kind of depressing. Also compounding my grinch-ness is my completely irrational but nonetheless militant hatred of pumpkin products other than jack-o-lanterns. The third and fatal factor is that everything, everything, is due around Thanksgiving. So the holiday turns into a turkey-eating fest that culminates in frantic grading and writing before fighting off some uncles for the last bit of stuffing.

But after Thanksgiving, we enter a distinct stage I've identified as pre-Christmas. Christmas preparation begins on Black Friday, when radio stations play Christmas music and otherwise sane people beat each other up over a My Walkin' Pup toy. Garland and mistletoe abound, kids freak out about Santa, and I busy myself making endless sugar cookies shaped like fat snowmen when I probably should be writing about 40 pages. Somehow the Christmas season supersedes other obligations while the Thanksgiving weekend just makes me panic, drink wine and watch football.

But Christmas is difficult, too. First of all, there's the travel. Then there's the gifts that get lost in the mail. Also, there's always one person you have no idea what to get. There's usually also one person you're not dying to see during the holiday gatherings. But no amount of bad Christmas sweaters, black ice, and crazy great-aunts will hold me back! Here's some things you might find helpful.

Coming up short on gift ideas? Check out Gifts.com. You can shop by demographic, topic, price, even general "personality".

Need super-cheap gifts and/or lots of goody bags? Try my favorite chocolate-covered pretzel recipe. You can make a whole bag in less than an hour and you don't even need a double-boiler. I put them in holiday-themed bags and they're always a huge hit.

Never leave home without a good supply of holiday jokes. I like this site, which features 'Twas the Night Before Finals.

Don't wear these: Epically Bad Christmas Sweaters

What was the worst Christmas present you ever got? Does it rival some of these?

An Offering to Those in Rough Draft Wasteland

2010-11-23T11:33:00.003-05:00

Given the truly shocking number of people who checked in when I posted "MIDNIGHT WRITERS' CLUB, SIGN IN!" as my Facebook status for the past TWO night, I feel like a little gift is in order. If you have the wherewithal to click an arrow a few times, you can enjoy more hilarity like this:

Here's a bunch more and they only get more funny/disturbing. To sum it up, just don't try to send your boss stuff on your iPhone.

Washed-Out Wednesday: Get Your Chicken

2010-11-17T14:12:00.003-05:00

I was hoping to have something profound to say about the article I posted yesterday. Unfortunately, today is Wednesday. It's a Wednesday after an all-nighter. After which I gave a lecture, graded a bajillion quizzes, and tried to do research before I realized that all I can really do today is laugh in that sort of constant creepy-chortle way.

So here's some Wednesday funny. Because there is something really funny about this, even if I'm too brain-dead to tell you what.

And, I suppose, strangely pertinent to the title of this blog.

You Should Never Open the Door. Or Split Up.

2010-11-15T23:10:00.002-05:00

This will scare TAs and faculty everywhere:

Holy Cheating, Batman!

Here's some instructions straight from paper comments -- read this for content, not style. I'm not particularly impressed with the author's quasi-sad explanation for his descent into this business. I'm truly shocked by pretty much everything else he has to say.

So I guess it's time to start worrying about cheating we can never detect or otherwise do anything about!

Cheap Things That Help My Life

2010-11-10T18:14:00.003-05:00

I should note, before I begin, that I've not been asked or otherwise compensated to endorse any of these products. I just like them and want to pass along things that make my life easier.

1. Goody Simple Styles Spin Pins

I keep two of these in my purse. They are great for those days when Mother Nature decides to screw you over with humidity/rain/hail/other assorted nastiness. They will fix any hair problem in 30 seconds. All you have to do is pile your hair atop your head, screw in these pins, and it somehow magically looks good. Definitely worth the $6 I paid at CVS for them.

2. Simply Asia Noodle Bowls

Much like the Cookie Monster now says about cookies, I will say this: instant noodles are a sometimes food. But sometimes, you have 7 minutes before an afternoon meeting and crackers aren't going to cut it. But if you can get 2 tablespoons of water and access to a microwave for 2 minutes, you can enjoy this delicious, economical lunch on occasion. I keep a stack of them in my desk and I doubt 8 of these a semester is going to kill me; it also beats the heck out of paying $8 for a wrap at the food court.

3. Netflix

I've heard plenty of discussion on this, but I'm still firmly on the pro-Netflix side of things. I like getting movies mailed to me after doing minimal work to arrange it, and I also like watching shows on streaming when I'm alone in the office and need a break. It's just easy and if the place you live is anything like my area, going to a single movie costs more than a month of Netflix. And if you fall asleep from sheer exhaustion during the movie, you just start it again without being out $12!

Any other cheap life-improving items? Leave them in the comments!

Ode to Patrick, or, Why You Need Grad Student Friends

2010-11-07T20:37:00.002-05:00

One of the complaints I hear from graduate students is that it is difficult to make good friends in the cohort. I have fortunately not experienced this. Both my MA and PhD programs were pretty much full of awesome people who were both intellectually stimulating and downright fun times. But I can imagine why this problem presents. Some programs are super-small, others are extremely competitive to the point of preventing friendships, and on occasion, some programs might just be full of awkward and/or boring people.

My advice this week is: do whatever you have to do to make grad student friends. In your department, in another department, it doesn't matter. You will need them!

Grad student friends are unique in the following ways. 1) They understand that "finals" might mean crying fits and eating an entire cake by yourself. 2) They know that graduate student work isn't 9 to 5. 3) They will check out books for you when your interlibrary loan account gets shut down.

They will also save your sorry grad student behind when catastrophe strikes.

EXAMPLE FROM REAL LIFE: Sometimes, your boiler breaks. And it is cold. And you don't have hot water or heat. And it is going to take the plumbers approximately a week to fix it. This is when you need a grad student friend to let you stay in their house for 7 days, let you eat all their spaghetti and tomato sauce, and drive you from their house to campus, all the while insisting that no, you aren't inconveniencing them and no, they can't imagine anything better than watching Family Guy with you late into the night for many, many nights in a row. (Thanks, Patrick.)

All kinds of friends are great. But only a grad student friend is going to have enough pasta to support two grown adults for over a week.

Application Advice: The Introspective Questions

2010-10-28T10:18:00.006-04:00

I've been softly avoiding giving out application advice. People interested in my own insane journey through the bowels of the admissions system are advised to go back through the 2009 posts. That said, in a recent conversation with a grad school applicant I came up with three questions that are worthwhile for determining which schools to apply to. Obviously there are an infinite number of questions to ask, but these three are a good place to start.

1) Would I actually move to the place where the school is located?

I flat-out ruled out some schools in places I didn't want to live. If you can't see yourself packing up and moving to New York City, why even apply to schools there? Location is more important to some than others, but do your research on the place, because you will occasionally leave campus. Think about where you'd be willing to move ahead of time.

A lot of applicants treat grad school admissions like undergraduate admissions -- send out a bunch of apps, then go on the prospective student visit and make a decision on the location. Bad plan! Don't waste money on applications for schools you'd never in a million years go to.

2) Is there someone, or multiple someones, to work with at the school?

Online faculty profiles are your friend. Email and phone contact with professors is even better. Sometimes faculty will be interested int the project but simply can't take on new students: they are going on leave, they have 82 students already, there's no room for a new student on the grant, etc. Find out this information before you apply.

My experience is that 95% of professors aren't bothered by a short, polite email inquiring about their graduate advising availability. So long as you aren't spamming them, this won't stymie your application in any way, and in some fields it can radically boost your admissions chances. If there's no professors around to take on your project, most schools won't admit you because there's no advising structure in place for you. Anticipate and take action to prevent this.

3) Is the program what I need, both in the next few years and for my career?

In this insane world of 12% acceptance rates, I understand the desire to gain acceptance to any program and enroll faster than you can say "is there funding?". That's because the regret of attending a school that doesn't have a solid program for your needs comes much later, like 4 years down the road when you realize your department specializes in research and you really want to teach. Whoopses!

This is 100% preventable. Do your research. Ask about placement. Ask about how the program works. Try to talk to graduate students there. If nothing they are saying appeals to you, don't apply.

The end result is this: if you only apply to schools you'd actually go to and do well at, you really only need the one acceptance to be on your way. The only general advice I can give is to try to remain sane long enough to figure out the answers to these questions. Don't worry, I'll have lots of advice on how to make the months pass as you're waiting to hear back!

My Future Career

2010-10-26T23:59:00.002-04:00

My students can attest to the fact that I enjoy adapting well-known songs to reflect important historical events. When it comes down to it, I don't mind if they're all reviewing my raps in their minds during the midterms as long as they can tell me who John Winthrop is and why he's up in Anne Hutchinson's grill.

This, however, takes everything up several notches:

My favorite part is when the wig spins off. This is historically accurate, by the way. Exactly what happened. 1776 represent.

If this academic job market doesn't creep back from the abyss, I'm just going to take to the YouTube channels.

Sneaky Hate Spiral: Taking Students Down, At Least Twice a Semester

2010-10-22T15:58:00.005-04:00

Thanks to grad student field correspondent Molly, I bring you the next installment in the "Midterms: Lose Your Mind" series.

Question for you. When you think about midterms, does it make you feel like this?

If yes, then you need to read this. Consider it required reading, but the kind you want to do right away instead of 8 minutes before class begins. You will need longer than that to recover from the hilarity.

Happy Friday!

Drop the Dope Beat, Dandies

2010-10-20T10:19:00.002-04:00

This just in: fainting has nothing to do with corsets, and everything to do with man-ringlets.

This is a good visual of why people are fascinated with the past. The past was weird! I spend hours explaining to students that they shouldn't identify with the American colonists because if they managed to time-travel to a 1770 Philadelphia tavern, they wouldn't even know what the heck was going on. And if they time-traveled to this fair scene, depending on gender they would either be passed out or wearing a seriously curly wig. See? Weird!

You Put the Lime in the Coconut, Grade it all Up

2010-10-18T19:36:00.000-04:00

"If you get your paper back on Monday with some sunscreen or sand on it," I announced to my class last week, "it's because I graded them on the beach in Florida!"

A look of shock crossed with envy appeared on 45 faces. Finally someone uttered, "Why are you going to Florida?"

"For vacation, of course. They do occasionally let us out of the archives, you know."

In this instance, I was visiting some family who happen to live near a beach. I decided to make use of a precious day off, The Three-Day Weekend, for sun and fun and fresh fish sandwiches and boiled peanuts. But I wasn't kidding the students either; I had 45 papers to grade and the red pen doesn't write that well against sand and shells.

I've never quite mastered the Short School Break Vacation. Long breaks, easy. At the end of each semester I would stumble home and stay up for 4 days doing take-home exams while slowly finishing off my family's entire stock of Goldfish crackers and, during Christmas vacation, pie. But then the exams would be done and I would get some quality time with friends and family and digest all the pie.

Not so with the short break, where you go from 0 to 60, then return to school and accelerate to 130. Grading on the plane, writing at the beach, reading at the pool, it all sounds nice until you're on mai tai number 4 and only one chapter into an enormous book on American liberalism, and you're sunburned.

The gist of it is that short breaks are extremely problematic. First of all, the timing can only be described as whack. Fall break falls in the middle of flu-times, and spring break happens weeks before spring is a viable description of what's going on outside. Secondly, the length of the break is just cruel. You have just enough time off to make a trip possible, but not enough time to actually relax.

But my biggest pet peeve of all regarding school breaks has not changed since first grade. Work should NOT be due on breaks, folkses! If there is no school, there should be no school-work. Now, I admit that I tend towards thinking there shouldn't be work if you're away, and some of these situations are dicey. (Brace yourself, Mom, because you're about to get exposed.) In elementary school my mom would always be the chaperon on the museum field trip, and she would do the "museum ditto" for the kids in my group so we could go be kids and stare at the T-Rex bones for hours instead of drawing what "sarcophagus" looks like in hieroglyphics. So I come from a tradition of bucking the extra work system.

Parents of young kids complain a lot about the amount of homework. I don't believe the amount has changed drastically; I think people finally woke up and realized that making kids do math packets instead of going to visit family for the holidays is plain wrong. What has changed is the amount of pressure on all kids to perform not only well, but exceptionally well. And that means making paper machier volcanoes and writing in iambic pentameter all the time, instead of just most of the time.

After thinking about this, I felt better about making my insane trip. I'm a student, but I'm somehow more free of the system that kept me doing summer reading. I can tell you that not a single one of my students will ever turn in an assignment on the 7 days we get off per year...unless the paper is late, then they better get it in before I deduct another third of a grade!

Early American History versus Space Quest

2010-10-12T13:30:00.004-04:00

First point: There's something just so hilarious about the idea of "Butterfingers" being the reason for the loss of important historical and cultural documents.

Second point: Is it bad that I think T-Rex might not be 100% wrong? Think, just think for a minute, about the titles of the academic books you read. They fall into one of two categories. Category A is boring as all get-out and might offer you something along the lines of Ancient Greece: a History. Who wants to read that? According to T-Rex, nobody.

Which brings us to Category B, better known as Gone-Ape Titles. This is where you get books called Booty Call: The Treacherous Tale of Treasure and the Scary Stories of Sea Dogs and Scalawags. Now T-Rex would argue that this book won't get tossed out, but it's still not the best idea if you want your book added to class reading lists.

I often struggle with titles. How much alliteration is okay before you cross into obnoxious territory? Should you leave out content for the sake of grabbing attention? Is it ever appropriate to use old-timey insults, like bumwad? (Right now my answers are a bit, no, and yes.)

Third point: The phrase "Meanwhile, in Tudor England" is vastly underused. English historians, get on this.

Application Advice?

2010-10-07T11:44:00.004-04:00

Someone asked me why I haven't posted any application advice, since apparently 'tis the season. Being the first fall in quite some time that I haven't personally been freaking out over 12-page biographical sketches, financial information, and listing 8-10 lifelong goals, I have not spent much time thinking about applications. But I'll come up with some good stuff in the next week or so. Side note: I'm always willing to pass along information, but it isn't like I'm an expert or anything. I'm not about to start an advice column to answer such questions as, "OMG I uploaded my app to Columbia on the Brown website what do I do now?!?!?!". It would almost certainly end in disaster for both the adviser and the advisee.

In the meantime, my advice is: don't spend all day looking at this here website full of cute cats or by the end of the day you'll be feeling like...

this:

Read for Banned Books Week!

2010-09-29T21:00:00.004-04:00

I'm a little late, but there's still plenty of time for us all to pick up some Challenged Books.

This, from the American Library Association Website:

Banned Books Week: Celebrating the Freedom to Read

September 25−October 2, 2010

Banned Books Week (BBW) is an annual event celebrating the freedom to read and the importance of the First Amendment. Held during the last week of September, Banned Books Week highlights the benefits of free and open access to information while drawing attention to the harms of censorship by spotlighting actual or attempted bannings of books across the United States.

You can read more about it here.

I perused the list of some of the top challenged or banned classics and this list of books challenged or censored in the past decade. Due to scholarly duties I decided to focus on one of my longtime favorites, To Kill a Mockingbird. The ALA reports that this book is most frequently challenged for racism, offensive language, and being inappropriate for the age group.

Remember yesterday how I said I try to rein myself in sometimes? Yeah, well, not today.

First off, I am absolutely against these challenges. I love books rather mightily, as you might have guessed from my photo. But often these challenges don't even make sense. One of the reasons people consider To Kill A Mockingbird an important piece of literature is because of Harper Lee's treatment of rabid racism and the various methods of defiance of the racist regime employed by the Finches. The "offensive language", namely the n-word, is absolutely in context and used purposefully. And it is only inappropriate for the age group if there is no guidance from adults. With a teacher in the classroom, this should not be a problem.

I think many of us in academia take freedom of reading and of book choice for granted, but clearly that is a mistake. If you decide to read or reread a book on this list, leave the title in the comments. I'm always looking for recommendations and these lists are as good a place as any to start.

What Nation-State Do You Live In?

2010-09-28T23:37:00.003-04:00

The two-a-day posts happen so rarely, but this is TOO GOOD to make you wait until tomorrow, folkses. Behold the Ultimate Map Quiz!

Double points to anyone from Ecuador actually living in "Equador".

Do I Have The Fear?

2010-09-28T22:22:00.004-04:00

I sometimes am asked somewhat serious questions about this blog, including "are you a real grad student?", which I hoped would be an obvious yes. Usually I tip-toe around them, as after spending my day answering roughly one million questions I'm seldom in the mood for more. But lately, several people have asked me if I'm concerned that writing this blog will come back to haunt me later. That during my interviews at the Job Center, one of my interviewers will hold up the picture of me in the Tilt-o-Whirl and say, "What do you have to say about this?".

This question I feel deserves an answer. Here's what I have to say about this.

There is a lot of information one can glean from my writings here. I'm a woman. I have lived in several parts of the country. I like to read academic tomes, old-timey fiction, and online comics. I have an insatiable appetite for gummy candy. I have broken many bones. I have pets. I like to attend academic conferences. I love Shark Week. All of this information, I wear on my sleeve, and it wouldn't take reading this blog for prospective employers to figure out.

Information about others, I guard closely. I always ask people if I can use their first names and if they say no, I make up a title for them. Insofar as I have a personal life outside of my studies, I keep it quite private. And I never mention any professors or students by name (and they're all named Alex anyway, so you wouldn't even know who I meant if I did!). So this blog will hardly create enemies for me or the people who contribute to it.

Occasionally I post things of a political nature, on topics like higher education reform. I do this to spark debate, not rag on anyone, and I try to obscure my political views. Oddly enough, the posts that are most likely to get me "in trouble" are those which describe what being a graduate student is like (for me, at least), that existence which to many is shrouded in mystery. Applications, requirements, and the day-to-day experience. Which usually involves Auto-Tune the News and XKCD.

Prospective employers who might read this blog will know that I love when song lyrics meet historical art:

They might also like to know that I think this is awesome:

Anything else they want to know, they'll have to go back through the older posts, or ask me, since I'll admit to all of this...except this little episode of utter mania. That wasn't me.

The Requirement File: Language Exams

2010-09-25T19:37:00.004-04:00

Let me begin today by stating the obvious: graduate programs have a lot of requirements. To put it simply, you have to do a lot of stuff before you can get a degree. And rightly so. But more requirements = more stress, which = more demand for me to find ways to make these things palatable, if not hilarious.

Other graduate students are often shocked to find out that many history graduate programs require proficiency in a language other than English. I once deployed this knowledge bomb on a pretentious freak who tried to tell me that by studying American history I was making myself more narrow-minded. He was then forced to eat his shoe when it was revealed that he could only read English and OH OH OH the history graduate student habla Español! Who's narrow-minded now?

...and, I'm back. Anyway, the way departments test this proficiency varies, but usually is accomplished through a little thing called The Language Exam, where you have to translate somewhere between a hundred and a bajillion words into English. Now when I think of the language exam, this comes to mind:

On any given day I remember the weirdest words in Portuguese ("lagarto" means lizard!) but not the words particularly useful for historical endeavors like, say, "century" or "old". This is the reason The Language Exam drums up such fear: because as children we spent years learning how to ask for a red tee-shirt or "where is the discoteque", but never did we learn what "the history of the fur trade is especially challenging due to the lack of preserved documents" might look like in French.

Nonetheless, languages are important to the study of history, and so we make new flash cards. No longer interested in the word for duck (pato!), we instead turn our attention to what I like to call "history words" -- author, argument, sources, American Revolution, demonstrate, and 'flesh out'.

So here's to everyone going through The Language Exam! Frankly, as long as you don't write "pregnant" when you mean "embarrassed", you're doing okay!

What do Cosmo and the Constitution Center have in Common?

2010-09-23T11:48:00.004-04:00

They both have quizzes that will tell you who you are.

NewsFeed procrastination strikes again! I saw this on grad student superwoman Sarah's wall and got so ridiculously excited, I obviously had to stop what I was doing to find out which founding father I would be! Much better than reading Cosmo to find out which shade of lipstick I should wear to attract the man who is my best astrological match.

Now...which founding father are YOU?

First Day of Fall, My Rumpus

2010-09-22T22:01:00.003-04:00

So, allegedly today is the first day of fall. I respectfully disagree.

"Fall" started for me when my email inbox was filled with "FALL SEMESTER" messages from the registrar ("fall semester registration, do it or we'll get you!"), students ("Dear Professor, I need to take your fall semester class..."), and business services ("fall semester bill, pay up now fool!"). Summer was usurped by the early coming of fake-school-induced fall.

And so summer gets its revenge. It is 85 degrees here. In New England. A few days ago I was swimming in a lake. Autumn in the northeast is the nice little period of time where you put on a sweater and drink hot cider while the leaves turn pretty colors, as opposed to winter when you wear 3 sweaters and a parka, drink numerous hot toddies in rapid succession and watch the snow turn from brown to black. I.e., not swimming times.

So either way, I'm challenging this fall thing. When I start seeing copious amounts of candy corn, pumpkins, and leaf peepers, I'll reconsider the issue.

Tricia's Corner

2010-09-21T15:20:00.002-04:00

Sometimes fellow graduate students dig up gems in such rapid succession that I give them their own sounding board here (I just don't tell them -- surprise!). This week, history grad student and dissertation sorceress Tricia delivers the goods!

If Historical Events Had Facebook Statuses

Three Books for Surviving Graduate School

Tricia also loves Married to the Sea, so here's a bonus entry that will speak to all you grad studenty types:

You Learn Something Every Day. Sometimes.

2010-09-01T15:30:00.003-04:00

Three things I've already learned from being a teaching assistant.

1. You begin to have a deep understanding of naming trends. 40% of the students in my sections are named Alex, split about 60-40 between boys and girls. The "power names" of the 80's, like Ashley, Christopher, and Kevin, are, as a grad student friend put it, "nowhere to be found". Instead I have more Kaylies, Gabbys, Dustins, and Aidens than I can keep track of, and I did not know a single person with any of those names before today.

2. You get really good at repeating yourself. I've mastered the trick of using many different phrases that mean the same thing. You must write two papers. Two papers are required. There will be two paper assignments. Por favor, dame dos papeles. Gracias.

3. You take on multiple identities. "Professor", "Hey you", and "Mrs. Teacher" all = me. I tried to explain to them that I am, in fact, not married, and not married to someone whose last name is Teacher, but they aren't having it.

College Move-In: Tales from the Windstar

2010-08-24T17:24:00.003-04:00

I was all ready for the mandatory pre-fall semester snarky posts, when someone sent me this New York Times article about how schools don't want parents hanging around for days/weeks/months. Fair enough, though I find myself hanging on, and utterly disagreeing, with one point: someone claims it takes several hours to move in a student.

This has most definitely not been my experience.

Shall we start at the beginning, then?

Picture it. 2004. A midwestern town. My mother, who swore her whole life she'd never drive a minivan, and I pack most of my belongings into a Windstar. We then drive eighteen hours east, during which time my mother manages to lose one of her shoes at a rest stop, the impulse-purchase IKEA chair bounces nonstop, and I consume an obscene number of Chicken McNuggets. By the time we arrive at the college we're exhausted, gross, stuffed full of fast food, and one of us is shoeless. A few hours, you say?

But of course that wouldn't be the end of it. My college had dreamed up a little pre-semester bonding for new students that involved 2.5 days of hiking. Which meant that while I geared up for the trek, my mother got to unload the van, set up my room, and try to recover before having to drive the van back. By the time I got back from the trip she was done, but it had taken days. We said our goodbyes and she drove the empty Windstar back for another eighteen hours.

My second year of college, we did manage to move in a couple of hours. But it nearly killed me. I was moving dorms and had a short amount of time to get my stuff out of the old dorm. My boyfriend was with me and he was moving like Speedy Gonzales on steroids, down the stairs, across the street, up the stairs, into the new room with a suitcase on his head and pulling three more behind him. We were tossing bedding down the stairs, carrying shoes in the hamper, dumping the contents of the dresser into garbage bags to carry Santa-style while we sprinted through campus. Then we slept for a few hours, unpacked, and used Icy-Hot for a couple of days. But I felt confident that my third year move-in could go something like that.

Third year would become known as the Year of the Broken Legs. Yes, two broken legs. At once. And of course, I was moving into a fourth-floor walk-up! In a bizarre twist of fate I managed to break my feet while I was at home, so my mother and I got to replicate our first-year drive, only she didn't lose a shoe and I was hopped up on painkillers. I don't think I even have to explain how long move-in took. And I don't remember exactly how most of it got done other than a steady stream of Good Samaritan friends.

Fourth year should have been a breeze after that. Wrong! My schedule was packed to high heaven with meetings and training and planning sessions for extracurricular activities. There was just no time to do anything. My "moving team" and I were just so glad it would be the last time that nothing else really mattered.

And then, of course, I decided to go to grad school. And we got movers.

Anyway, the point is that schools do need to recognize that this process is stressful. People are arriving after driving with a U-Haul trailer all night. People are emotional. People have to wait in line for an hour while trying to purchase towels at Target. People don't have to be "superinvolved" or "Velcro parents" to want more than a couple of hours to get their kid set up for the year. The helicopter parents will always find a way to sneak in through the gate as the rest of the crowd departs in a sea of Windstars.

Author's Note: I never realized how crazy this all was until I wrote it chronologically. I hope some of you have some college move-in horror stories, because now I'm concerned that it's just me...

Theme Vacations: Shamu versus Thomas Jefferson

2010-08-19T09:30:00.005-04:00

Apparently as a small child I was borderline obsessed with Shamu and begged to go to SeaWorld for every single family vacation. Some may call that crazy, I prefer "focused on my interests". So it comes as no surprise to me that now, I'm packing in as many history-related trips as possible.

One summer I spent a week in Charlottesville, Va., doing research, and also convincing/coercing my friend into driving all over the state to see Monticello, Ashlawn-Highland, a handful of plantations, and Colonial Williamsburg. I've been known to pull off the road at the sight of a brown marker. So when the opportunity presented itself to visit Philadelphia, it was like the mothership calling me home.

Fortunately my friend was extremely dedicated to showing me every. single. historical thing. We literally raced around from church to grave to Liberty Bell to any historical house still standing. Once we'd exhausted the history of Philadelphia, we drove west, stopping at the Daniel Boone homestead and the Reading Pagoda. We picked up another friend and went to watch the Windham Mountain Ranch Great American Frontier Show, which was entertaining and mildly horrifying. We then proceeded to the Ephrata Cloister before our legs and minds gave out.

This has got me thinking: do other grad students do this, or is this specific to history? Some places preserve more than others, but there is often an abundance of historical sites in a given area. And there are a lot of "history attractions" and Ben Franklin impersonators and places where you can dress up in revolutionary garb and fire a musket or roast a grouse. I like all these things. Architecture students have a lot to work with and some science students must have a never-ending supply of museums. But what are math grad students doing? Do they never take vacations? Or are they the ones who are actually making it to the beach?

Oh, wait. We did do one thing that wasn't historical:

Molly and the Owlettes

2010-08-18T22:26:00.002-04:00

Apparently I'm late to this party, but I was recently informed of an OwlCam placed inside an owl nest that will bring round-the-clock owl activities to you. The mother owl, Molly, has three owlettes, and allegedly the father occasionally makes an appearance. The best time to see them active is in the morning, making it perfect for those already pulling all-nighters. Take an owl-break!

Owls!

Note: the owlettes have not yet reached fluffy-cute-baby-bird stage. My friend who passed this along claims they look like Gonzo; I think that's not fair to Gonzo and they look more like those things from The Dark Crystal. Consider yourself warned!

College Graduation Rates. Where to Start?

2010-08-10T11:08:00.005-04:00

I believe the only beneficial part of Facebook's NewsFeed is that I can steal content my friends find and post it here. And that's what is happening today. Grad school survivor Jack posted this article about Obama's take on graduation rates. As with most things, I reacted with a mixture of excitement and fear.

Where this might go right: If financial aid reform increases access to universities by students who under the current system can't afford to enroll or finish a degree.

Where this might go wrong: If the burden falls onto the schools and professors to graduate out any and all students accepted and enrolled.

"The nation's education system", as the article calls it, does encompass a huge number of programs for preschool-age kiddies all the way to college and post-grad ed. I'm always shocked at the number of people who don't think that secondary and higher education are intertwined. Students gain acceptance to college based on their performance as reported by their secondary educational institution. If students aren't finishing degrees because they don't possess the necessary skills, it isn't enough to overhaul the college system.

Speaking very generally, I think a lot of college educators are tempted (even if they don't actually) to brush deficiencies in high school curricula off as not their problem. But when students enroll in your class, their problems are also your problems. I admit that I'm probably quite out of touch with what junior high and high school classes are like today. I was forced to admit this after learning that students in our classes might have been paddled by teachers. (The first quote in this article is fantastic, by the way, but the rest of it makes me sad.) What the heck else is going on in schools that I don't know about?

The bottom line is that I hope this call to increase graduation rates results in real changes and not quick fixes. Only time will tell. Also, I don't know whether to be concerned or relieved that my degree didn't make this list of college degrees that don't pay...

It's Baaaaaack

2010-08-05T23:51:00.003-04:00

The other day, it came.

The letter which says, "Hellooooo, I am Dean, and school is starting again!".

Blast!

I'm not so far gone that I can't remember the days of parents opening that letter. From the table you'd hear some exclamation (or expletive), followed by, "Tempera paints, again???". Then it was off to the store to stock up on: purple gym shorts, Crayolas, wide-ruled lined paper, 8 different colored folders, protractors, compasses, safety scissors, oil cloth, glue you can't sniff and die, smock, mandatory box of Kleenex as a donation to the classroom, 200-pencil pack and Lisa Frank erasers that look like Unicorns.

Nowadays "school supplies" are pretty limited to a 200-red pen pack and maybe some Excedrin. It's less about the stuff and more about the mental preparation. That's why we get the letter way ahead of time, so we can emotionally and intellectually buck up.

For this:

And this:

There's also going to be this:

We're back to school in three weeks!

Somebody Open Up A Window

2010-07-19T10:01:00.004-04:00

Where has this site been all my graduate student life? I love it because, if you study social history, most of history is decidedly in the non-LOL camp. But this is hilarious anachronism. Early American historians and 1776 enthusiasts, enjoy.

More evidence that Rhode Island was, indeed, using the necessary during all such proceedings. Also, North Carolina defers to South Carolina.

Monday Motivation

2010-07-19T00:20:00.002-04:00

It's Monday, 12:30, an all-nighter, during summer? I fear I am the kayaker when I'm aspiring to be the shark.

see more Very Demotivational

"Analyze Your Writing"...More?

2010-07-17T13:30:00.005-04:00

I stumbled across this I Write Like application thanks to UnlikelyGrad and deemed it perfect for 5-minute procrastination.

When I submitted a section of this blog, it said:

I write like
David Foster Wallace

I Write Like by Mémoires, Mac journal software. Analyze your writing!

I guess I do enjoy a dose of hysterical realism. However, my academic writing also yielded a result of David Foster Wallace. Research paper = parodic fiction.

So...who'd you get???

Random Advice

2010-07-15T23:27:00.003-04:00

Since the end of the semester, several of you have asked me what happened to Meta-Wednesday and when it is coming back.

Although the very nature of Meta-Wednesday is to float about in the ether, existing even though we don't know it exists, it is on probably-permanent hiatus. Meta-Wednesday was a coping mechanism for a very intense theoretical class I was taking in the spring semester. Replacing Meta-Wednesday, for now, is Random Advice, which allows me to eat as many fortune cookies as I want under the guise of amusing you.

But FailBlog beat me to this one! Couldn't have said it better myself. Here you go, dissertators:

"Best" Places to Live?

2010-07-12T22:18:00.004-04:00

This CNN Money list of "Best Places to Live" intrigues me. Of course, nobody will ever agree about these things. My New York City friends will have a conniption fit that these small towns and cities fill the top ten, and people in Montana will be pretty peeved to have been left off the list entirely. As someone whose grad student career could have taken me to either New York or Montana, I found that location was a critical deciding factor...but only after I had applied.

Because it took me awhile to come to this realization, my applications literally spanned the country. Major initial limitations were 1) could my boyfriend move there/visit regularly with reasonably low costs and annoyances, and 2) is there a good chance that I won't go absolutely insane living there (a little nuts was OK). Beyond that, I wanted to go to the best school possible. I'd love to believe that the fact that I ended up living in my favorite area of the country was simple coincidence, but that would be a lie big enough to set some pants on fire.

The best advice I got once in the thick of it was to choose the 3-5 most important things about location and see how the potential choices stacked up. Here's what I picked:

Proximity to People
After ten months of living in the south, I realized I wanted to be closer to most of my family and friends while I still had the choice of location. Even though I had wonderful cohort-friends in Va. and I miss them now, there were serious problems with the distance: it was impossible to get away for holidays, my nearest "emergency contact" was 6+ hours away, and I missed a lot of social events, including seeing a close friend visiting from another country who I won't be able to see again for a few years. Things just go more smoothly for me when I'm not two plane rides away from the majority of people close to me.

The Right Feel
I've been pretty spoiled: both my college and graduate school towns were very fun, adorable places to live that were fairly convenient for day-to-day life. I don't want to drive 30 minutes to the grocery, I like to have a pharmacy in town, and I don't want my domicile to be described as a "secluded homestead". The flip-side of the coin is that I don't want to live in a dangerous place, nor a place that is so bustling with activity that I'll never get any work done (or sleep, because I need quiet!). It also couldn't cost a bazillion dollars to live there. I like to go to the movies from time to time and I need to buy things like granola and toilet paper on a regular basis and not run through my stipend by January. So I devised this list of obvious questions and just started asking random locals and students:

1. What transportation, in town and out of town, is available? How will people get here to visit?
2. What is the cost of an apartment and utilities? Are necessary things expensive here?
3. What is there to do in the town for fun? How late are places open?
4. What types of stores (grocery, convenience, gas stations) does the town support?
5. Is this area safe? Has the town had crime problems or natural disasters in the past?

Climatic Compatibility
I don't do rain. I will contend with blizzards, tornadoes, hurricanes, ice storms, hail, wind shears, and Nor'easters but not perpetual rain. Oddly enough, though, I don't much like deserts either. So while friends desperately applied to southern schools to escape the northern cold, I ran screaming from much of the west, as well as any place that had every experienced a landslide, which is too scary for me at the current time.

The moral of the story is this (ooh, a teachable moment!): do as I say and not as I do, and try to think about these things way, way ahead of time. I'll admit that I didn't visit all of the potential places, because once you get that letter you often have a matter of weeks or potentially days to decide. I should have visited as many places ahead of time as possible instead of applying to some places that never would have worked out. As it is, I'm glad that things worked out in spite of my inability to consider basic geography, but for each person like me there's a Texan shivering in their parka in Madison, and I'm not sure what the Wisconsinite is doing about the Texas heat. Also, if this list motivates anyone to move to Fishers, Ind., I'd sure love to hear it.

Books and Their Movies: What Works, What Doesn’t?

2010-06-29T17:59:00.001-04:00

Summer movie season always brings out the same problem for me and my grad student (and non-grad student, book loving) friends: what the heck to do about movies-based-on-books. The general rule of thumb is that you should read the book first, right? Well, that’s all well and good when you don’t have 100 academic tomes beating down your door to be read. I find that I often cave and see the movie first, but it’s not an uncomplicated decision.

One problem: I’m running out of time to read the books and see the movies. I have not read the Harry Potter books. I know, I know! I’m culturally deprived. But…I’ve seen the movies borderline religiously. I’m not quite waiting in a pop-tent outside the ticket window, but I’m close. I figure, if I only have 25 hours in my life to devote to Harry Potter, I’m going to watch the movies. I do think I’ll eventually be talked into the books, but I find myself satisfied with the movies. But in the meantime, how do you sort the books that have to be read before the film from those that don't?

Another problem: There are books that I love, and I fear extreme disappointment from a film adaptation. I put off watching Little Women for a lot of years, but was pleasantly surprised (I guess a cast with Claire Danes, Kirsten Dunst, Winona Ryder, Susan Sarandon, Eric Stoltz, Christian Bale, and Gabriel Byrne helps). But when The Lovely Bones came around, also with an impressive cast, I froze. I adore The Lovely Bones and I can’t risk seeing it ruined. Even films that come out well can feel like a shell of the novel. I think White Oleander is a good movie, but the adaptation was so sanitized; the book is gritty and hard, while the film is sad. I have to force myself to try to evaluate the book and the film independently.

I might be onto something, in considering the book and its adaptation as separate entities. After all, if an outing to the movies is supposed to be a break, I don't want to have to do pre-reading! So I’m seeking guidance. Are there movies based on books worth seeing, with or without reading the books? Are there movies you think are better than the book? Should I just get on with it and get all the Harry Potter books from the library right now? The entire series would be a good tool in the procrastination kit...

Opp Choice: To Inflate, or Not to Inflate

2010-06-28T23:58:00.007-04:00

I was just going to skip June entirely, what with the Africa trip, the post-trip recovery session, and the pageant that is celebrating a birthday when friends and family are far-flung, but then a fellow grad student dropped this on my desk, which snapped me back to grad student reality.

Law School's Employment-Boosting Strategy: Grade Inflation

At first, I wasn't shocked, because I don't think this is particularly new, even leaving aside UofC's bucket of oddness. But then I thought about it again, because this article isn't just about grade inflation; it is about a variety of institutional coping mechanisms in the midst of rising debt and unemployment among recent graduates.

I'll tell you that I have never been ordered to raise or lower a grade based on an agreed-upon standard designed to boost students' post-education job opportunities. But I'll also tell you that I've seen graduate students, professors, and students themselves have radically different opinions on what a B paper looks like, let alone if any Ds or Fs should be handed out. We've all had instructors who love to give B-minuses on every assignment, and we've also probably had instructors who dole out the As for simply showing up and staying awake. Getting these instructors to agree on a grade scale based on the actual work would seem futile, but rallying them behind a "cause" to inflate might work.

I have to wonder if law schools have been doing this for awhile, and now the trend is just strong enough that more schools have to jump on the bandwagon just to keep up. I imagine that in law schools, where rankings are important and students often burden themselves with debt, managing expectations is important. In some academic positions where 6 spots open a year, a program can throw their hands up in the air and blame the hiring process, which is shrouded in much mystery. Law firm hiring may also be shrouded in mystery, but if you go to a school that will pay a firm to hire you, things might be a bit clearer.

Does this vary between programs, or between schools? Is grade inflation, at any level, becoming a problem? What do you think of some of these solutions to increased job competition? And, what will this mean for those of us who missed this mass inflation?

**For those waiting on an update on the trip, it will come after the 4th of July, once I can upload the billion pictures of elephants we took! Stay tuned.

How to Take a Vacation, Grad Student Style

2010-05-10T23:42:00.002-04:00

I will not be posted after this week until the first week of June because I am approaching a rare event in grad student life: a vacation!

And not just any vacation, but a vacation where there will be NO CONTACT with the outside world, no concept of deadlines, no Blackberries, no nothing. I will be on a safari truck moving westward from East Africa, and there's no laptops in Ishasha. Just the way I like it.

I figure that a vacation really ought to be a vacation, as opposed to checking your email in an exotic locale. Because once that email comes in, you know, the one with the "do this now" and "get this to me ASAP" and "what are you doing? write that paper!", the "vacation" becomes a "scribble furiously by the pool" exercise in non-rest-and-relaxation.

Here are some suggestions for vacations you can take where people won't expect you to be in constant contact:

1) Safaris

2) Scuba diving trip -- did this one in the spring of my senior year of college, and it worked great! I was underwater! Perfect for avoiding virtually all communication!

3) Spelunking

4) Ye Olde Cabin-in-the-Woods

5) Reenactment vacation/historical location a la PBS Pioneer House

6) Any country where people have an impression of lack of communication regardless of the actual technological situation

7) Rainforesty places

8) Giant mountains or, even better, volcanoes

9) Most non-Caribbean islands, except Japan and Australia

10) Mime Camp

Good luck with the end of the semester! I'll be back with excellent photos before you can even miss Meta-Wednesday.

Haiku Challenge Results!

2010-05-09T22:41:00.003-04:00

Thanks to everyone who submitted an entry for Haiku Challenge 2010! I had a lot of fun and chuckles reading through them. With no further delay...

The Winner receiving the "Sonic Special" graduate student survival kit is Courtney:

My nose senses fear:
The dreaded paper monster
is on the rampage.

And the Honorable Mention, from Elizabeth:

Thirty six papers
Number of footnotes: zero
A day in the life.

Yes, paper-themed haikus won the day here at Chicken Soup for my Grad Student Soul, and speaking of which, I hope this little exercise gave you relief from some, whether you're writing, grading, or both.

Haiku Challenge -- Penultimate Day Warning

2010-05-06T09:51:00.002-04:00

This is your last chance
Submit your wondrous haiku
To win the booty

Tomorrow, May 7, is the last day to submit the haiku! I must receive them by midnight, eastern time. The winner will be announced on Sunday night and their haiku posted in all its glory.

Remember, the topic is anything having to do with graduate school. Books, students, exams, stipends, sleeplessness -- all fair game. There's a lot of material, so put down those books and write a few. Good luck!

5 Minute Procrastination

2010-05-04T08:45:00.003-04:00

By now, I've learned to differentiate between what I like to call "long-term" procrastination and "short-term" procrastination. We all know that it is the long-term procrastination that is really dangerous -- the TV marathons, the movie theater screening all the Harry Potter films in a row, the decision to clean your entire apartment before starting work are all things that can potentially leave you thoroughly, entirely screwed over.

The short-term procrastination, however, is a different animal altogether. It is the lap cat to long-term procrastination's rogue man-eating tiger.

Everyone has their daily procrastination routine. I'm not going to publicly out those people who check Entertainment Weekly every day. Instead I'll out myself: I read police blotters religiously.

These things are hysterical. As evidence, I compiled a list of events which made the police blotter during one week in a town near where I live:

7:26 a.m. Investigated a report about someone who said they were going to kill a senator and discovered it was a mentally ill person from out of state.

9:37 a.m. Responded to Blue Heron Drive for a family feud.

10:59 a.m. Report taken about the theft of a $500 fuel tank caught on video.

11:13 a.m. An employer reported being assaulted by an employee who said, “I’m sick of you dissing me.” The employee apologized and said he wouldn’t return to the business.

11:33 a.m. Responded to Islington Street for a complaint about the theft of a 30-pack of beer.

12:43 p.m. — A theft was reported on the Route 1 Bypass northbound when an elderly person forgot to pay for gas.

3:12 p.m. A Woodbury Ave. store clerk told police someone came into a store with their own ticket gun and was re-pricing items.

4:22 p.m. Responded to Summer Street for a report of a sickly raccoon drinking from puddles and staggering.

4:35 p.m. Responded to an automotive business where employees were threatened after someone’s car failed an inspection.

4:52 p.m. While responding to a 911 hang-up call, a cruiser got stuck in the snow.

5:06 p.m. — Unable to locate what a resident reported was a "very large and possibly rabid raccoon" walking around the Lawrence Street neighborhood.

6:30 p.m. A Holiday Drive resident reported items stolen from his home which he left unlocked while away for three weeks.

6:41 p.m. Were unable to locate two teen girls who were reportedly running in and out of traffic “like they had a death wish.”

8:49 p.m. A caller reported an intoxicated man with a possible broken leg in some woods.

10:34 p.m. Investigated a report about someone who seemed to be breaking into a mailbox.

10:35 p.m. Shearwater Dive resident reported a skunk trying to get into her house.

The best part about the police blotters is that you don't even have to read your own town's for a honking good time. And they never take more than 5 minutes to read unless you go digging through the archives. Reading these always starts my day off right.

Police blotter: Breakfast of Champions.

Haiku Challenge Update

2010-04-30T07:18:00.003-04:00

Thanks to everyone who had already submitted. For those who haven't, you have until May 7, so one more week to get those haiku in tip top shape!

I've received some good and grad studenty questions about the challenge, so here are some clarifications. The simplified haiku version of the three line, 5-7-5 syllables is acceptable, as opposed to the complicated extended guidelines.

The haiku will be judged by a committee of me. So a high-performing haiku will have a little dash of whimsy alongside the essence of graduate school.

Keep sending those haiku, folks!

Meta-Wednesday

2010-04-28T05:12:00.002-04:00

This Meta-Wednesday requires reader participation, in part because I want to see what you come up with, and in part because I'm meta-exhausted.

Here's the game: It's Find a Comic Loosely Related to your Research Interests Day! Post links in the comments and I'll incorporate them into the post after I get some meta-sleep.

Here's mine, matey! Blow me down!

Interspecial Encouragement

2010-04-27T18:10:00.003-04:00

This, courtesy of grad student correspondent/icanhascheezburger phenom Maggie:

As long as "right" and "rite" are the same, we're good. Good luck to all who are taking finals, grading finals, and more luck to those doing both.

The 2010 Haiku Challenge!

2010-04-22T01:21:00.003-04:00

In order to make finals a little more fun, I'm running a contest which combines my two favorite things: haiku, and total madness.

Here's the game! Write a haiku which captures the graduate student experience. There's a reason that "kids are killing me" and "sleep deprivation" are both five syllable strings, and its because it is time to get your haiku on like there was a fellowship up for grabs.

While a fellowship is unlikely, I am prepared to offer a kick-bum prize to the winner. More details on the prize will be forthcoming.

In order to play, you must submit your entries by midnight on May 7, 2010. No extensions! You can either post in the comments and send a copy to me via message, or just send the message and not have the haiku posted (unless you win, of course)! Either way I'll need some way of contacting you if you're the winner.

Here are the Rules:
1) You don't have to be a graduate student to enter. Allies are also eligible to participate!
2) You can submit up to 5 haiku before petitioning me to accept more of your haiku brilliance.
3) In order to claim aforementioned kick-bum prize, you'll have to be willing to fork over a mailing address.
4) All work must be original. For details, see generic academic honesty policy. All work must also be a real haiku.

What could be better than taking a 15-minute procrastination break and possibly getting a prize?! I look forward to reading all these haiku instead of* all these articles.

*by instead of, I really mean "in addition to"

Life Beyond Ding Dong Day

2010-04-22T00:37:00.001-04:00

As most of you know, and many of you have obsessed over, April 15 is the deadline for responding to offers of admission. However, the story is far from over on April 15. Despite the increased waitlist activity and rapid-fire notifications that happen after the dreaded date, it is almost impossible to put that aside when you're waiting for offers to come in. Instead, you panic.

I handled my wait in a poor way: by hoarding and then eating tons of Ding Dongs. Even worse, I did this twice, once during my round of MA applications and then again for the PhD session. I cleared out the store's selection of Hostess snacks, then stacked the Ding Dong boxes in every available cabinet and moped around, talking about how when April 15 rolled around it would be Ding Dong Day and I could be released upon my processed treats like the Kraken.

So far I have only found one remedy for this sorry state of affairs, and that is "friends with a good sense of humor". My roommate once wrestled a Ding Dong out of my hands when I tried to eat one early in a fit of insanity. She also forced me to leave the apartment one day, took me to a park, and made me swing on a swingset until the wave of anxiety passed. She also, as you may recall, brought home a children's book about baby animals, which was both cute and the only thing I was capable of reading at the time. I remain grateful because even though I clearly needed an intervention, I wasn't aware of the depth of my obsession until I took a meaningful break to enjoy fresh air and look at adorable baby seals instead of my empty email inbox.

People, if you have a friend who has melted away during the application process, fear not. They can be brought back from the edge with a little concern and creativity. You might need to take initiative. Now is not the time to break out Schindler's List for a marathon evening of depression. Plan fun things and express support. Children's activities seem to work especially well: paint by numbers, play-doh, and jungle gyms were all things I enjoyed around Ding Dong Day.

And people who are waiting: take off the sweatpants, leave your house, stop sitting outside waiting for the mailman, and stop refreshing the page. For goodness sake, get off GradCafe. Two years in a row I missed early spring because I was reloading my email over and over. Learn from my mistakes.

Also, back away from the Ding Dongs.

Meta-Wednesday

2010-04-21T06:36:00.000-04:00

Clue #1 that a comic is suitable for Meta-Wednesday: having "complexity", "nuance", and "atomic level" less than a breath apart. Like this!

Don't forget about the subatomic today.

Getting Jig-y with It

2010-04-15T03:00:00.000-04:00

Hee hee!

This would have been a very visually excellent way to solve most problems in American history while simultaneously allowing for history-inspired ballets. "Tories v. Patriots: Dance Dance Revolution".

Meta-Wednesday

2010-04-14T03:01:00.000-04:00

This week's Meta-Wednesday is a fun little exercise in two of our favorite things: academics and ethics. We have ethics to thank for all those "I have not injured any invertebrates in the course of my research" forms, and ethics is also involved in a new study about cash incentives for learning.

You decide: Should kids be bribed to do well in school?

Were any of you overtly bribed, or is the scope of this a new thing? I remember being bribed a few times when bombing the test would have been catastrophic (like the CRT you had to take every year to keep moving up a grade), but the idea of being paid per book read is foreign to me. If only I could get that deal now!
Another question: is rewarding for attendance and behavior substantially different from gold stars? Obviously a gold star doesn't cost a dollar, but it always seemed odd to me that gold stars could motivate even the worst kid in class to stop pushing other kids' faces into the water fountain or hitting them with a clarinet. At least addiction to money is a national problem; addiction to stickers beyond a certain age is just bizarre.
Finally, what does this mean for higher education instructors? I expect that bribing is actually fairly widespread, but not consistent like Fryer's programs. I expect that a couple of weeks before the semester ends there is a lot of haggling and begging and promises of stuff if there are no C's. Here the most important part of the article might be on page 3, regarding the kids' inability to figure out how to simultaneously earn more money and achieve success.
Part of the conclusion is that younger kids tend to respond better to the incentive programs. I'd be interested to see how many of these kids maintain their higher books-per-annum numbers several years after leaving an incentive program. This could go one of two ways. The first is that the lack of cash is felt immediately, and reverses the trend. Or it could go like clicker-training, where the reward eventually switches from the food reward (in this case, money) to the clicker (or, a love of reading) being the only reward. For the love of textbooks and the future of our profession I hope it is the latter.

Academic News

2010-04-11T10:06:00.000-04:00

The good news: The Closest Thing to "Google History" We're Going to Get. Thanks, Britain!

The bad news: Lots of schools are seriously broke due to their endowment troubles. Here's a pictorial of the ones worst off.

The ugly news: You can buy your place off the waitlist at this school. For an explanation, see above link.

Meta-Wednesday

2010-04-07T13:06:00.000-04:00

This week we are learning about Freud. Unfortunately this post about Freud has turned into a dumping ground for all things weird. I think Freud would appreciate this little doozy, which came to me courtesy of Grad Student Extraordinaire Milly:

Women Try to Take Body on Plane

But it gets even weirder once you play the 1-minute clip interview with the women, who swear that a) the man was alive, b) he'd "been acting like that [dead]" for over a month, and c) they somehow know of eight people who can attest to the man being alive.

Perhaps a better strategy would have been to claim the man was never alive at all. This just in from a local police blotter:

April 2

3:09 p.m. — Checked on a caller's report of three unattended infants in a parked car near Market Basket on Woodbury Avenue and found three "very realistic dolls in the back with notes on them."

Freud would have a field day with this!!!

And while we're speaking of things that can kill you:

This is a little something called the psychology of history. It invades your dreams, causes transference of affection from people to books, has you trapped in the Dissertation Stage, and it's all your mom's fault.

April Fools -- That's Us!

2010-04-01T07:53:00.000-04:00

April Fools Day provides a good opportunity to have a little practical joking fun. It also provides the opportunity for awkward conversations like the one I overheard this morning.

Professor: You failed the midterm.
Student: Wait...is this April Fools?
Professor: ...No.

Now, I wish I could chalk the following list of bloopers to April Fools. I found them while googling "grad student jokes", which unfortunately appear to come from bad papers. Here's the full list, I've selected a random few since they're all so good.

____________________________________________________________________

The Bible is full of interesting caricatures. In the first book of the Bible, Guinessis, Adam and Eve were created from an apple tree. One of their children, Cain, asked, "Am I my brother's son?"

Solomom had three hundred wives and seven hundred porcupines.

Socrates was a famous Greek teacher who went around giving people advice. They killed him. Socrates died from an overdose of wedlock. After his death, his career suffered a dramatic decline.

Queen Elizabeth was the "Virgin Queen." As a queen she was a success. When she exposed herself before her troops they all shouted "hurrah."

Abraham Lincoln became America's greatest Precedent. Lincoln's mother died in infancy, and he was born in a log cabin which he built with his own hands. Abraham Lincoln freed the slaves by signing the Emasculation Proclamation. On the night of April 14, 1865, Lincoln went to the theater and got shot in his seat by one of the actors in a moving picture show. The believed assinator was John Wilkes Booth, a supposedly insane actor. This ruined Booth's career.

Julius Caesar extinguished himself on the battlefields of Gaul. The Ides of March murdered him because they thought he was going to be made king. Dying, he gasped out: "Tee hee, Brutus."
____________________________________________________________________

I think my favorite is the "Tee hee, Brutus". It is straight out of Monty Python. Which do you like? Also feel free to add any amusing anecdotes. Someone ought to be keeping a running list!

Happy April 1st!

Meta-Wednesday

2010-03-31T10:26:00.000-04:00

This week's topic: Women's History.

Please see below a potential example of "herstory".

Equal rights: A victim of pen fail.

Meta-Wednesday

2010-03-24T03:09:00.000-04:00

If Meta-Wednesday has taught us anything, it is that things need definitions, that those definitions are fluid, and that definitions will likely be the end of us. To try and prevent this, I have turned to one of the supreme authorities around to try to find a suitable definition of history. So begins the Epic Battle of Urban Dictionary Versus Sonic.

Let the games begin!

1) The tale of how many different nations, from all across the world, gained their independence from Great Britain.

Sonic Says: Close. No cigar.

2) A helpful course, usually taught in school, where students learn that Hitler was bad and jackshit else.

Sonic Says: Partial credit for being partially true.

3) Events that occured in the past.

Sonic Says: OR DID THEY??? See number 4.

4) What repeats itself over and over and over again.

Sonic Says: OH REALLY? See number 5.

5) Postmodernists say we don't really know what happened in the past, therefore we can't know if a) it really occurred in the past or b) if it is repeating itself over and over.

Sonic Says: This is why we can't wait for post-postmodernism. And post-post-postmodernism.

6) A pretty decent class where you can learn about anything ranging from the Egyptians to the Rennaissance to World War II, and much more.

Sonic Says: The "much more" really saved this one from the intellectual latrine.

7) Something the British created.

Sonic Says: What's with the freaking British???

8) A tale made up to explain to the wife why you came home drunk.

Sonic Says: No.

9) The way the dead torture the living.

Sonic Says: Yes.

10) [a list with examples!]

1 everything that happened in the past, more specially since humans learned to write.
2 everything that got written down and was accepted as "the history" by some elite or another.
3 the field of study of 1 and 2. Discusses all kinds of explanations of what happened.
4 a school subject devoted almost exclusively to 2.

1 Johnny Cash is history.
2 The history of the colonization of America has little to do with what actually happened.
3 An interesting question in history is whether guns, diseases or beliefs were more important factors in eliminating the Native Americans.
4 History is quite boring, especially if it's about your own country.

Sonic Says: This was looking good until the examples. Show me the historian that thinks beliefs 'eliminated' the Native Americans. Also, if the author things that question 3 is interesting, I really hope that they are not from America, as opposed to believing that Native American history is not, in fact, American history. Please also note Johnny Cash's appearance as an example of history.

11) What most people have a toally distorted view of due to being brainwashed by the government and indoctrinated in the government ran public school system.

Sonic Says: Caused by the British, no doubt.

12) A series of lies agreed upon by people who call them selves "historians".

Sonic Says: Oh dear.

To Preserve or Not to Preserve?

2010-03-22T11:02:00.001-04:00

Historians like to ask this question, I think, because the answer is what distinguishes historians from antiquarians. People might describe the difference in many ways, but historians usually demand an objective compelling reason for preserving something, save for the few on the fringe (like me) who say, "save it all now and let someone else figure out the reasons why later".

And believe me, someone will be trying to figure out why a bobblehead of Justice Scalia is hanging out with medieval tomes on law.

Justice Scalia-head isn't alone in the Yale rare book room. Let's go to the closeup on Rehnquist-head.

Christopher Capozziello for The New York Times

It is pretty adorable, yes. But what are these things? Why are they being stocked in Yale's rare book room? What are future historians and lawyers going to do with these?

To deal with the future implications of these Supreme Court dollies' inclusion in the rare book room, I've solicited the opinion of a Brave Historical Preservation Grad Student Correspondent. She gave a few suggestions of questions preservationists will surely ask upon discovering these little gems decades down the line. I attempted to answer them.

-My first reaction would be that I didn't know bobblehead dolls were an old enough art form to be historical. [Mine, too.]
-Then I would want to know what material they are made of, or what they are likely to be made of. [Looks like plastic, putting them in the Barbie section of the archives.]
- Are there any labels or notes with the items? [They all come with a book and a copy of the Constitution, but those are also plastic, and thus unreadable.]
- Does the box smell funky? This would indicate potential mold issues. [insert Clarence Thomas joke here]
- What kind of environment are they being repackaged in? If there are no mold problems then just an archival box would be fine. [So many justices, so little room in the box! Clearly there need to be two boxes, because the strict constructionists don't get along with the judicial activists.

The good news is, there's a dissertation in here somewhere for whoever wants to bridge legal and art history. The bad news is, now I kind of want a set of these. If they were widely available, I'll bet they'd sell better than the Hillary Clinton nutcracker.

Spring Break's Last Hurrah

2010-03-21T12:27:00.000-04:00

Time to reflect on all the times you've felt like this:

(Really, we're all getting degrees in wine. Or at least certificates.)

Grad Student Fashion Crisis: The Recruitment Visit

2010-03-15T19:55:00.000-04:00

I am on "spring break", but there's been such a hullabaloo over what to wear to these visit weekends that I figured I'd come out of hiding to give my two cents.

You need two types of outfits: the business casual, and the casual. The exception is if someone states that the event is either formal or totally casual. Business casual means button-down shirt or sweater, belt, nice pants and non-sneaker shoes for men, and slacks or skirt, nice shirt or sweater, and dressier shoes for women. Everyone I've ever seen at a recruitment weekend was wearing some combination of these items. The casual is in case they have a party or a dinner with students, or if you decide to go out with some prospective cohort members.

The ideal situation is to bring mix-and-match items. One visit I went on had the meetings with professors and the student party on the same day, so I just wore my sweater all day and put on jeans in the evening. You pick up on these sorts of things after the fifth visit. To save you from some trouble, I've compiled a short list of the biggies.

Some specific advice:

1) BRING A BACKUP: I once went on a visit where the weather was so humid, my linen pants re-wrinkled and, since I was staying in a dorm room, I had no way to iron them. So I wore my backup skirt instead. I have also seen people spill wine on their pants at the opening reception and then have to wear the winey pants the next day to the general meeting. You don't have to be that person.

2) LAYER: Schools in cold climates tend to be uncomfortably warm inside. You wouldn't think it, but schools in warm climates are also freakishly warm inside, because everyone there still thinks it is freezing. Bring a cardigan, sport coat, pashmina, whatever you've got so you aren't shivering through the meet and greet, and for goodness sake don't wear a huge sweater with nothing underneath.

3) BRING SENSIBLE SHOES: Planned or unplanned, there is always a campus tour, so this isn't the weekend to break out the new, unworn shoes or the stilettos. Also, whenever things run late you'll be expected to book it to the next event. Nursing a blister is not an option. I once ran full-speed through a building to arrive on-time to a meeting with a Big Wig, and I was never so appreciative of ballet flats.

4) DON'T GUESS: If you're still unconvinced, don't be afraid to ask the graduate coordinator. They have answered far stranger questions than "What is the dress code?".

Cohort Corner

2010-03-12T13:47:00.000-05:00

A member of my cohort wishes to share this. Fortunately it works if your break begins this weekend, or ends this weekend.

It is either seventy, or however many midterms you have to grade -- whichever is higher.

Happy Break!

Meta-Wednesday

2010-03-10T03:00:00.000-05:00

Here's a little something on historical approach, courtesy of The Onion.

Civil War Historians Posit 'You Had To Be There' Theory

October 23, 2002 | Issue 38•39

ATLANTA—After years of conflicting approaches to interpreting the Civil War, a coalition of historians on Tuesday posited the non-specific theory that "you had to be there" to fully understand the complexities of the war. "It's not just a matter of 'Were the Southern forces as confident and dedicated as their Northern counterparts?' or 'Was Gettysburg the turning point?'" said conference chairman Shelby Foote. "The whole gist of the war is just hard to really get unless, you know, you were there and saw it happen." The coalition also advanced a theory that the Great Migration, wherein one million African-Americans moved to northern cities between 1915 and 1920, was "a black thing."

Grad Students in the Mist

2010-03-09T02:24:00.001-05:00

Med student correspondent Laura provides "the Mid-Term Self-Portrait".

Midterm apes, hang in there. Just because you are locked in an unnatural habitat (the library), forgetting how to really use tools (like Word 2007), and feeling like you're on the brink of extinction, doesn't mean it is impossible to come out on the other side of this. Devolution takes longer than mid-term. Just back away from the nuts and berries.

Mid-term Check In

2010-03-07T22:16:00.000-05:00

Which are you currently experiencing?

This One's For Fall 2010 Applicants

2010-03-04T03:02:00.000-05:00

I'm linking a little blast from my past as a show of solidarity. Good luck to all of you, and may you all be Accepted Tangs soon! Also, get off the GradCafe Results page for at least one hour a day, from now until Ding-Dong Day.

A Tang Thang

Tang it out!

Who Let The Students Out?

2010-03-03T23:15:00.000-05:00

I'm a little concerned about this: The Case Against College Education

First, let me explain. I don't think college is appropriate for everyone. I also don't think a college degree should be required for every job; why a local ice cream shoppe is screening for college degrees, I do not know. I also fully support technical and vocational training, both as an alternative to and in addition to so-called "traditional" college.

Still, I have to question the author's choice of approach. Not only does he challenge the notion that people don't need four expensive years of college to be well-rounded (likely true, at least in theory), he claims that socially-mandated college is "tell[ing] millions of kids that their future depends on performing a task that only a minority of them can actually accomplish". Not that the kids shouldn't have to go, or don't want to go, but that they actually are unable to obtain a college degree.

Why, exactly, can "only a minority" obtain a degree? Do they lack the critical reading and writing skills to do well? If so, they certainly won't fare well in many professions, including the author's suggestion of journalism. Do they lack the direction and drive necessary for college? That could also be a serious impediment to success in "the real world".

I don't know about you all, but I had some bad teachers. I had a few bad professors too, but none of them were as educationally devastating as bad teachers. (The one coming to mind actually refused to learn our names, and instead addressed us by assigned number. She also had a penchant for ripping up homework assignments and then marking them incomplete. Talk about a wasted year.) I also had some amazing teachers, but they were bound by a lot of school district bunk. It basically meant that instead of learning to write effectively, we had to wait around until we'd learned everything that was going to be on the Prairie State Achievement Exam. Another wasted year, though less filled with fear. But when I graduated, I knew a lot about similes, metaphors, and quadratic equations and not a lot about artful communication, practical skills, or how to formulate and achieve long-term goals.

A lot of my best education, inside and out of the curriculum, came in college. I left college feeling like I had options. No matter if I decided to be a doctor or a puppeteer, I hadn't gone wrong. If I'd had to make my career choice when I was 17, I think I'd be in real deep doo-doo right now.

Fortunately for me and the future students I need to fill up my classes so I remain employed, some people aren't accepting this author's take on kids' inability to finish college, and are actually trying to do something about dismal graduation rates. I like to call it the Academic Bailout. The article makes it sound like they're throwing money at the problem, but at least they're looking for underlying reasons for why people aren't finishing their degrees. I'd always rather have answers than assertions.

Meta-Wednesday

2010-03-03T03:08:00.000-05:00

Here's your midweek justice.

Happy Monday!

2010-03-01T17:36:00.001-05:00

This is my mantra this week.

marriedtothesea.com

This is What is Going On

2010-02-26T20:58:00.000-05:00

see more Epic Fails

Meta-Wednesday

2010-02-24T23:03:00.000-05:00

Meta-Wednesday is once again brought to you by T-Rex! And I guess also by Aristotle. And a little help from Utahraptor.

Thanks to Aristotle for being so fun. I wonder, though, if he were sent back through time, what other theorist he might elect to brawl with. That would be fun...

Chaps or Face Paint? You decide!

2010-02-24T03:09:00.000-05:00

There are a lot of good things about the Olympics. For instance, the illusion of global cooperation, the traveling torch, and holding your breath while the crazy bobsledders risk their lives for national pride. Unfortunately ice dance costumes don't quite fall into this category of giving you that nice Olympic feeling. Take a look, courtesy of Go Fug Yourself.

Olympic Ice Dancing: Fab and Fabber

Apparently the theme of the ice dance costumes is offensive stereotypes, ironic for an Olympic Games which made obvious overtures to the native cultures of Canada. As a result, the Aboriginal-inspired getup seems especially inappropriate. I also completely fail to comprehend the "tacky American trucker" look worn by the representatives of Great Britain, as well as the Wild West chaps on the French pair.

The only possible explanation is that the ice dancers were forced to choose their theme based on what was available at the party store. One of them got Bad Luau, another got Cowboys, and that last pair got stuck being the piñata.

One last thought: Teams should break away from this strategy. Not only do they look ridiculous, but the only pair that looks acceptable is also the pair wearing the gold.

Weekend's Over!

2010-02-22T13:21:00.001-05:00

Here's your Monday dose of cuteness.

Great Things in History

2010-02-20T00:23:00.000-05:00

An event we are truly grateful for. (Grapeful?)

Thanks to marriedtothesea.com, and also to this clearly brilliant lady.

Another Point for Lincoln

2010-02-18T05:34:00.000-05:00

As a historian, I sometimes run up against the demand for this kind of historical interpretation.

"Whatever happened to the loser, Douglas?" is right up there with "Alexander Hamilton. How big a jerk was he?" and "Tell me about the time (x) got killed in a duel/a nasty early American disease/blown up by a cannon". True or not, these are the most popular parts of history. Someone recently referred to it as the "sex, drugs, and rock and roll" approach to making history appealing. Since rock and roll hadn't been invented yet, we're forced to leave it out (must. avoid. anachronism.). Fortunately we don't have to dig very deep to find great stories about famous Americans going nuts on opium, and we're also working with the ever-scandalous Peggy Eaton Affair. We have the goods in our knowledge arsenal.

Still. I sort of wish this had happened. Proof of the historical origins of "your mom" jokes would be revolutionary!

Meta-Wednesday

2010-02-17T03:08:00.000-05:00

Here's a new tradition at Chix Soup, going out to everyone who is buried in theory, hating metatextualism, and wondering what post-post-postmodernism is going to look like: Midweek Meta Madness.

Once weekly, on Wednesdays, I'll dig through my arsenal of madness to bring you the very best in brain-exploding, uselessly amusing theoretical commentary.

Here's a little sample of what you can expect (metaclick on it to expand).

Enjoy!

One More Thing

2010-02-16T15:17:00.001-05:00

Add this to the list of things I hope you didn't get on Valentine's Day.

Step Away from the Pajama-Gram

2010-02-10T01:09:00.000-05:00

If you're still in the market for a Valentine's Day gift...don't get any of these. Personally, from that list, I'd most like to receive the duct tape roses. "Would least like to receive" is a tie between any of the mentioned undergarments and that atrocious bear.

As a bonus, I would have included the animatronic gorillas that sing "Wild Thing" on the no-go list. I had an unfortunate encounter with said gorilla, so allow me to fill you in on the potential horrors of owning one of these buggers. What the little tag doesn't tell you is that eventually the control mechanism breaks and the gorilla just sings the song over and over and over. The only way to shut it up is to stuff it in a duffel bag full of pillows, or conk it on the head by swinging it ahead something metal. Neither really fill you with the "Valentine's Day spirit".

That said, if a bad Valentine's Day gift was to arrive at your workplace, a gorilla that sounds like a bad American Idol audition beats the hell out of Fundies.

This Iz How You Feelz

2010-01-31T15:38:00.000-05:00

This is going out to everyone who's back in school for another semester's grind and/or up against some looming deadline.

Perhaps you've heard this in the recent past:

see more Lolcats and funny pictures

You might also be looking a bit like this:

see more Lolcats and funny pictures

You might be harboring these sorts of feelings toward your project:

see more Lolcats and funny pictures

Your internal monologue sounds something like this:

see more Lolcats and funny pictures

You might be doing this right this moment:

see more Lolcats and funny pictures

Good luck with your LolThesiz.

Puppet "Masters" and Other Nutty Higher Education Ideas

2010-01-22T13:51:00.001-05:00

All right folkses. Disillusioned with your program of choice? Thinking that you might rather be a balloon animal artist than a physicist? I have some suggestions, by way of CNN and Mental Floss:

Funky Degrees! Here's a little sample:

_____________________

Wood & Paper Science, North Carolina State

North Carolina State University's College of Natural Resources offers a variety of masters and doctoral programs through its Department of Wood & Paper Science.

According to the program's Web site, students' coursework can included classes on such specific topics as wood-moisture relations and lumber drying, paper physics, and wood tool design, performance, and wear.

_____________________

Well, there you have it. Points to whoever figures out which of these programs I'd be enrolled in, if I weren't happily working away in archives.

Crazy Money-Saving Strategies: Shivering Your Way to Savings

2010-01-21T14:42:00.000-05:00

Here's a way to make your stipend stretch a little further -- just make like these people and turn off all the heat!

Interesting strategy, but I can't help but wonder if the woman who has the constantly-running toilet and perpetually-dripping faucets is recouping meaningful costs. Also, as an aside, I would like to do a post-doc at the Cyberpunk Apocalypse Writer’s Co-op.

Research Adventures, Part 2

2010-01-14T18:39:00.000-05:00

Daring guest blogger survived Day 2 and sends us this message:

Archives Day Two:

So remember when I said that I got yelled out for setting off the security alarm? Well, the guard who in her mind rolled her eyes at me about 4,000 times yesterday actually greeted me with a smile. It was probably because I wasn’t lugging a suitcase with me, but I will say that Day Two went way smoother.

I actually made it up to the Archives room today. Not without issue, of course. Around 11, when I knew my requests had been processed, I walked up the marble staircase to the second floor. People had mentioned all about the Archives being “upstairs” so I figured that those stairs would get me somewhere. But I ended up on the mezzanine where the twin staircases met. There was nothing but an Edwardian era elevator and doors with swipe-card access. The elevator opened and two men in suits asked me if I was lost. I said I was looking for the archives room. By this time we were headed up to the 5th floor and they instructed me to hit the big button labeled 2 which would get me there, and it did.

I then spent the rest of the day engrossed in ship’s logs from the 1850s that still held the smell of the sea in them. Or maybe it was mold. Still, it was way cool. Sailors who misbehaved in the early 1850s were flogged. Sailors in the later 1850s were put in irons. When sailors got too sick and had to be taken back to the United States, they were listed as “condemned”. Not a very promising outlook if you ask me.

It’s looking like most of my research is going to be on microfilm, which is a good thing, as it’s much easier to sort through. But there is something great about the smell of an old book. Maybe I’m just sniffing too much old glue.

Research Adventures!

2010-01-13T15:02:00.000-05:00

To give us a taste of what it is like to research in the Grand Poobah of archives, I've asked a daring guest blogger to report from the inside. Here is what she says of the start of her adventure:

National Archives in D.C.:

written by a Ph.D. student researching/writing/stressing over her dissertation.

Day One:

Things to know about the archive experience:

1) You get to go through the back door, which is cool.

2) Security is tighter than in airports. I highly advise you to bring as little as possible to the Archives since they will treat you like a moron, particularly if you really are the moron that brought your overnight bag with you.

3) If you are wearing your coat, do not remove it when passing through security. You will start to because it’s a million degrees and you know that your coat will set off the metal detector, but then they will yell at you to leave it on, then yell at you when you set off the alarm. Once you set off the metal detector, they will then use a wand and tell you that your coat set off the alarm.

4) Bring a quarter. You get to store all your stuff in huge lockers so at least if you are the moron who brings all her stuff, you can at least find a place to store it.

5) Visualize being a camel. You may not drink, eat, take off your sweater, bring a case for your computer or camera, or bring paper or writing implements into “Archive I”. Downstairs they are more relaxed, but do not even think about screwing up upstairs. More on these adventures tomorrow.

6) In all however, people are extremely helpful and just doing their job. Mr Johnson, a middle aged man wearing what looks like a Navy jacket, was particularly helpful. He determined that a big chunk of what I’m looking for is on microfilm which is great (I think) and helped me fill out the request form for the archives (see #7).

7) The archives contain enough paper that if places end to end would circle the earth 57 times. Or 57 million times. Or something like that. This is a big place and while some is organized, be prepared to spend a lot of time searching. And searching. They like their indexes in booklets placed in binders there. Preferably if the booklets were printed before 1957.

Stay tuned for more reports from the front lines of dissertating!

Days 4 and 5, the Rewind

2010-01-10T22:30:00.000-05:00

Day 4. Our main objectives were 1) to support fellow grad student Chris, who was presenting a paper, and 2) to attend a soiree thrown in honor of AHA president Laurel Thatcher Ulrich in the evening. We did achieve both, and managed to squeeze in a little pool time. And a margarita.

Day 5, we did zero conference-related stuff. We had still not made it out to the beach, so Sarah's very nice, also-grad-student friend Emily drove us to Mission Beach, where we had a delicious brunch and walked along the pier. I felt mildly guilty about skipping those panels, until I went skipping around in the surf of the Pacific ocean. Then I just felt great.

Now I'm at the airport, wearing a sweatshirt in anticipation of northeastern coldness. I think the conference, and the time spent in San Diego, was very successful. Once I recover from this late-night flight I'll be posting a series of supplementary articles, including "How to Spot an Academic" and "Socializing with Grad Students: A Field Guide".

Day 4, and 5: On the Way!

2010-01-10T11:50:00.000-05:00

The posts for Saturday and today, Sunday, will be uploaded tonight during my inevitable long wait at the airport. Right now, we're going to the beach! But don't worry, fun stories about historians at social events are coming soon.

Day 3: We're Totally Wrecked

2010-01-08T23:20:00.000-05:00

These multi-day conferences can destroy you.

So the conference is in beautiful San Diego. That's lovely, but we were still hustling this morning to get to our 9:30 panels. I went to the second session of "Slaving Paths", which turned out to be all about slaves in the British imperial structure. I was pleased with the outcome. After the panel Sarah, Jen, Jordan, and I enjoyed a delicious sushi lunch. We should have ordered sake, though, because my afternoon panel was a disaster. I was really looking forward to this panel on suffering and martyrdom in colonial North America, but it turned into an apology-filled ideology fest. I was sorely disappointed and trudged off to the Exhibition Hall.

The Exhibition Hall is every historian's dream, because it is chock-full of books AND boasts the only free liquor giveaway in the whole shebang. I bumped into Gil Kelly, my supervisor from the Omohundro Institute, and he took me on a tour of Institute authors, all of which were very impressive. It was nice to see the Institute staff outside of their natural habitat.

We finished up perusing the books and headed for Seaport Village for pizza, where we devoured a pie and a pitcher of beer while gazing out into the sunset over the water. We then hustled back to the conference for a graduate student social event, which I affectionately termed "The Graduate Student Friendliness Seminar". We met some nice people, made quick work of the chicken satay, and ran back to the hotel for a bit of rest.

Even though the conference continues until Sunday, I really think that tomorrow is something of the grand finale, so we shall have to see. Now it is time for a nap so we can reboot for ... more history!

Day 2, Part 2: Historians Look Like Debaters!

2010-01-08T02:13:00.000-05:00

I’m having some flashbacks here. "The entire Harvard history department is about to run a tight case, with tons of spec knowledge!".

Turns out the “Musical Encounters in the Early Atlantic” was literally just as it sounded (hee hee!). I think in my head I was picturing the worst-case scenario, some kind of historical interpretation of “The Little Mermaid”, where Triton = England. Instead it was all about how soundscape was an important part of Atlantic encounters. An interesting and lively way to wrap up the first day. Also, fun fact of the day: Karen Kupperman apparently once sang “Frere Jacque” on national television. See, I promised you historians some ridiculous gossip!

Tomorrow is an all-day conference adventure beginning at 9:30 am. We are hoping to get a quick sushi lunch in the hour we have off during the afternoon. Sadly the hot tub will have to wait until 9:00 pm.

More updates to follow. It is 2:15 am New Hampshire time and 11:15 here; either way, time for sleep!