Happy New Year Dissertators!

Happy New Year, fellow Dissertators! Here is wishing us a healthy and happy, focused and fruitful, content and clear new year. We can regroup and regain our mojo and move forward. I look forward to working with you all again in this space.

Commitments

Hello all. I know we're all recommitting here, but I need to hold off on that a bit. I'm off to Chicago the day after tomorrow (as I believe a few of us are) and my attention is currently on interviews, not my dissertation. When I get back I'll give myself a day or two off to recover, then I'm hoping to write like mad for two weeks. I didn't hit my 10,000 word goal. I only made it to 7,000 or so. But the job market is more immediately pressing. Still, post Chicago I'll need to get back to the dissertation, because a job won't work so well if I don't have that diss done.

So somewhere around January 2nd or 3rd, I'm recommitting. Wish me luck and best of luck to all of you. And best of luck to those of us on the job market. Here's to new jobs in the new year.

And, of course, Happy Holidays to all.

Draft a chapter on ecology and matieral???

Okay, since others are recommitting I guess I'll give it a go too.

Though I'm not sure how long it will last, I'm feeling somewhat rejuvenated after an earlier convo with my adviser. Based on the convo I feel I might even be able to draft a chapter of the "ecology" of my field site - a descriptive chapter of the material conditions as well as the structural and institutional dynamics that impact the literacy practices and habits of my subjects and other students. It sounds like a simple enough task. Maybe I'll give myself a deadline of January 14th...

I probably won't hold myself to it. You all are welcome to, though.

Checking in (again) and a Recommitment

Hi, everyone. Sorry I've been MIA, more or less, these past couple of months. I could list a bunch of excuses why, but they are just excuses. I have, though, made some decisions the past few days that have severely refocused my goals. A much needed refocusing, I would say. (Just as Abby noted in an earlier message, I, too, have been avoiding this space because I felt guilty that I wasn't producing anything.)

That said, I'm (re)committing to checking in here again each week, and outlining my progress on the dissertation. I can't go into it right now, but I have about six months to finish this work. OK, that sounds really dire. My life isn't in danger if I don't finish, and there are no hit men [or women] after me if I don't get it done right away or anything. But trust me: I need to get it done.) Last summer, I took three weeks of vacation and just cranked out **a lot** of writing. I am going to be on "vacation" the next two weeks and while I have to work the first week of January, there's not much to do. I will, then, commit the next three weeks to the diss and see what I can produce. That's the plan.

Anyway, I hope you will all continue to jump in and leave comments -- or more importantly -- chart your own progress.

So, to date:

• Chapter 3: The methodology chapter is 98% finished (a few citation clarifications needed)
• Chapter 4: The first case study is done; the second case study is 75% complete; the third case study is 50% complete.
• Chapter 5: Alternative Programs and Pedagogies (outlined and short narratives started)

Over the next few days (after final grades are submitted tomorrow afternoon), I will finish the case study #2. I'm giving myself a deadline for Monday.

Extension

So sometimes in graduate school, you need to ask for an extension. I didn't make my 10,000 words in November, but I'm taking a one week extension. Anybody with me? I want 10,000 words by midnight on Sunday, December 9th.

Goal! Sort of.

Well, if I count my two footnotes, I'm at 5,000 words. If I don't count those footnotes (and Word isn't counting them), I'm at 4902. My goal for the day was 5,000 but I hit a natural stopping point and, to be honest, my back HURTS, so I'm done for the day. But I think I'll hit my 10,000 word goal by the end of the month and will, then, have if not a full chapter draft, at least something very close to it. That puts me at three out of four major chapters drafted. Not too shabby.

How're the rest of you doing?

Avoidance

Truth time: I've been avoiding this blog because I haven't been writing. In my defense, I've been reading (slowly), and thinking, and job searching, but not writing. Today, though, I hit nearly 3,000 words. I wanted to keep pushing just to hit 3,000 (I'm at 2938 or something), but I need to reread a section of Burke before I can go on. So it was pointless. At this rate, I'll hit my target by the end of the month, but I'll need to make sure I push. If I can do another 2,000 words tomorrow, which I think is possible, then I'll be half way there. I have a lot more to say in this chapter, so that's no problem, but organizing and writing is.

I'm working right now off two Don Murray lines. The first is pretty much synonymous with Don Murray, at least at UNH: Never a day without a line. I'm trying to stick to that. The other was taped to the top of his monitor: Let it be shit.

Good advice from the man in the red suspenders.

InaDWriMo Checkin

After my conference weekend, I'm starting up diss month. I'm not actively writing anything new, but I'm pledging to revise three chapters this month (out of four!), making me basically done with revisions. This week, I've been working on Chapter 4; I'm about halfway through at the moment. Ch 3 and then 1 will follow. I finished one of my jobs so I'm only working part-time this month, though the job applications don't quit. This is all complicated, though, by the month of November itself. Since it's the anniversary of my mom's death this week, I'm anticipating being pretty unproductive on the diss front. Then it's my birthday, too, in a fortnight. So I'll do what I can.

Looking at the InaDWriMo acronym more critically, I realize that it can be read as 'in-a-dream-o,' which I will take as a challenge rather than discouragement. How are you all doing?

Following Billie's lead with InaDWriMo 2007

I have to say that November began with a bang. A short bang. And I wrote lots of words on Nov. 1. But, almost nothing since then. Not only is revising, and revising, and revising the revisions hard, but, how do you count words at this point? lol. I had to turn my attentions to job applications, and will for a lot of the week, and I'm sending yet another revision to to the full committee this week. And I caught a cold, and with it, some self-pity. That sounds especially pathetic to be complaining to a group where everyone's in the same boat, and maybe even busier than I am. But I'm back on the wagon today.

On the other hand, I'm finding the idea of InaDWriMo 2007 really wonderful in terms of motivation and community. Knowing that there are lots of others busily writing to meet goals is wonderful, and while I'm not really a competetive person, trying to reach a goal I set in terms of words is cool. I've added a second counter to my blog that goes towards the overall dissertation--100,000 words.

Here's my question though, my dissertation is about multimodality, and includes multimodal components, I wonder how the intellectual equivalent to words could be calculated. (This is a similar conversation going on in my English dept. among writing instructors.)

Back to the salt mines. Hope everyone is making good intellectual progress--even if there aren't word count equivalents. :-)

Checking in with InaDWriMo 2007

I've been writing, but the writing has been slow. So far, I've written about 3,000 words . . . I know that's not bad, but it's painful writing. I wish that InaDWriMo counted TIME as well as WORDS. For example, I spent three hours working out the statistics in a table yesterday, a table that still isn't finished (I'm not much of a math person . . . and this is simple math, percentages, but this is a whole other post). But that table only has about 250 words. It's all good, though, right?

How are you coming along?