I am so not writing my proposal. AGAIN.

My proposal hearing earlier this month resulted in a request for revisions! Yay! Which are totally valid but make me think, why am I revising a PROPOSAL? Isn't the point of the proposal to, well, propose something? And then you get feedback and then everyone moves on? Apparently not. Mentally this has made me slightly on strike but it is also the holidays and I know my institution of higher learning will not reconvene until late January, so why do anything now? Except go to the library and get a big stack of books so that it looks like I'm working on something?

Ethnographic fieldwork is a slow, slogging process and unless you are in with your group before the fact don't anyone tell you otherwise. Seriously, it's to the point where I'm considering switching my study to upper middle class mothers on antidepressants, even though it has nothing to do with language. Because I actually know a few of those. I don't know anyone who is a native speaker of Language Z (which is not even endangered, as I recently found out, which just shows how much of an idiot I am) and why should I? And why should they want to know me? And why do I have to spend so much time getting to know them when I'm 36 and want a career already and THIS IS ALL TAKING TOO LONG waah waah waah?

I could continue on in this highly discouraging vein, but I'm doing so well at procrastinating that I really don't need any extra help.

Help a fellow graduate student.

This guy is trying to measure the speed of memes, which apparently has something to do with blogging, although I'm not exactly sure what because I am technologically DUMB. Help him out by copying his link into your blog and pinging Technorati (via the link from his blog), so that the software program he's written can generate his results for him and he can present them to the MLA folks.

APPROVED!

My human subjects protocol was approved by the IRB at my university. This basically means that the powers that be believe that I will not be torturing or otherwise inflicting any unnecessary harm upon my respondents. Which I'm not.

So on with the biggest challenge of my dissertation: Find speakers of Endangered Language Z! A typical cold call goes like this (translated from language B, which I am much more fluent in than Language Z):

Me: Hi, are you Y?
Y: Yes
Me: I'm (insert my name here). I got your name from (insert random contact here, anything from actual human being to web site) I'm doing research on Endangered Language Z and wondered if you knew anyone who spoke it.
Y: Yes, there are people who speak it.
Me: Cool! Wanna meet with a total stranger and discuss this?
Y: (dead silence)
Me: Okay, I didn't really say that. Would you be interested in meeting and discussing this further?
Y: Sure
Me: Where do you live?
Y: (obscure town in Orange County)
Me: Oh, I don't know (obscure town in Orange County). Is there a Starbucks there?
Y: (with some condescension) There are Starbucks everywhere (moron).
Me: (typing away on Starbucks website) oh, there's one at such and such avenue. When's a good time for you?
Y: tomorrow
Me: (crap, I have a doctor's appointment for my son that I've been waiting months for)--No problem! See you there at one. (it should take me an hour to get there which means I really hope we're done with the doctor's appointment, crap crap crap)
Y: (who the hell are you?) okay, see you then.

Whether or not Contact Y will be able to lead me to speakers of Endangered Language Z remains to be seen, but this is how my life is going to go for the next month.

Oh and Contact G is going to Hawaii for two months.

And Contact F is out of the country until the end of January.

Looks like I'm going to be doing a lot more cold calls. And reading.

PROPOSAL DONE. NOW WHAT?

I submitted my proposal, finally, which was 78 pages long including back matter and bibliography because my adviser wanted me to flesh out about three chapters worth of reading material. So I have now foisted this upon my motley committee of five for their reading pleasure. Yippee!!! Once I am given the official blessing from both committee and Institutional Review Board alike, I can finally stop farting around and go find some people who speak or may have at one time in their lives spoken Endangered Language Z and figure out what the impact of transnationalism and additional language acquisition may have had on this.

It's been hard to find people. Especially since I am not looking right now since I was immersed in the proposal stage. That really makes it hard to find respondents, that not looking thing. You know? But now I am ready to go track down some wary indigenous people who, if they are in their right mind, will tell me to fuck off and go bug someone else. Although the people I have gotten in contact with have been very nice although by now they are probably completely confused because I haven't gotten in touch with them BECAUSE I HAVE BEEN WRITING A PROPOSAL. Which I present to the committee on December 8th.

The big question is not: do I do PowerPoint? because of course everyone does PowerPoint, but rather, should I include animation effects? Not the sounds, the sounds, they are oh so unprofessional. The flying letters thing, that would probably be stupid too. But maybe a few melting words would make this crazy project have so much more impact. Ya think?

Okay now I have to go to my other blog and write about my son.

A DREAM DENIED, OR, I GUESS I'LL HAVE TO WRITE MY DISSERTATION AFTER ALL.

Lately, thanks to a professor of mine, I've been flirting with the possibility of going on the job market a year early. Just to apply for one job that happens to be near where I live now (not so rare since I live in THE STATE WITH TOO MANY PEOPLE) and happens to be in my field (quite rare). After various emails between my adviser, this professor, and myself, and after my husband, a/k/a Dr. Cuy, gave me some hard-edged reality checks, I'm realizing this is probably not such a good idea. Number one, because I will never, ever finish my dissertation if I took this job. And it's not like this dissertation is as important as my child, but I do need to have one in order to work in this field. Number two, because if they offered me this job and I decided not to take it after all, that would make both me and my adviser look very bad.

It's tempting because I'm OLD and I'm tired of being a freaking graduate student, but I just have to hang in there and finish (hell, start!) this thing if I'm going to have any chance of getting a cool job in the future. Even though I have no idea what the job market will look like next year, I have to take that risk and for the first time in my life not jump at something just because it seems like a cool idea at the time because then what if I actually get it? (hello, Foreign Service! hello, teaching high school Spanish in violent and impoverished neighborhood!).

So, it's back to the drawing board, to get my proposal polished up for the viewing and butchering by my adviser, and to continue to apply for funding that I really hope I get next year because otherwise I am going to sit down and cry for about a year. And then I really won't get any work done.

Searching for participants, part 2

I continue my search for speakers of Endangered Language Z (which you can probably figure out if you look at the sidebar), wandering through the garment district of downtown Los Angeles, dodging pools of urine and $1 toys made in China. After numerous queries I find one person--or rather, I find her spouse, since she has decided to stay home that day. Which means I must haul my academic ass out on the Metrolink again the following day. I find her piled in shipments from Country X, but happy to dedicate forty-five minutes to talking to this strange white girl who comes on a recommendation from Don Consul (who has turned out to be an enthusiastic proponent of my little research project, despite his lateness during our first meeting). Alas, she is leaving the country next month until January. But, her mother is coming to hold down the fort and I'm welcome to go and talk to her.

Which brings up the question from Dr. Cuy; what is my definition of a resident for my study? This woman has been in the U.S. for only two months. I don't think I can put a time limit on my participants. First of all, because there don't seem to be that many of them. Second, it would be interesting to study (assuming I can find more of these folks) people with varying stays in the country, varying levels of English proficiency, etc.

After my conversation I picked my way through the drunks up to a place where people play music (how vague is that?) and found another person from Country X. When I asked him if he spoke Endangered Language Z he went into this long history about how his grandmother moved from the rural areas to the city because his grandfather was an alocholic and, alas, did not take her language with her. I'm not sure what grandfather's alcoholism had to do with that but it makes for an interesting story. And he gave me the name and number of someone who does speak E.L. Z and told me where I might find him. So the hunt continues and I'm optimistic, although I'm thinking now that 50 might be a very large number for the study. I feel like I have a sieve with big holes in it and just about everyone is falling through. I need the big rocks and I may have a couple, but it's mostly sand for now.

And having beaten that metaphor to death, I must go watch Gray's Anatomy.

HOW TO WRITE A DISSERTATION WITH NO MONEY

Right now I am preoccupied with funding, or rather, my husband Dr. Cuy is, since he does not want to be the Dr. Cuy Foundation for Research in Applied Linguistics, Specifically That Research Done by the Wife of Dr. Cuy. As is commonly the case with me, while I was in the full, churning throes of developing my research plan, I wasn't even thinking about how I was going to pay for it. And all of these trips to L.A., copies of the interview guide, taping, etc. etc. are going to cost money. Not as much money as the latest medical research, but it would be nice to have some. Especially if I'm going to go to Country X for a month or two to do some follow up on my participants.

I'm of the (admittedly pessimistic) assumption that there is no funding out there for domestic research in applied linguistics. Dr. Cuy suggests Homeland Security but I just can't stomach approaching them for money. Plus if I told my potential participants that I'm being funded by the Department for Homeland Security, that would pretty much be the end of my research.

So, my goal for the day: find a way to get a couple thousand bucks to do my thing, preferably from an agency that does not persecute undocumented workers.

THE SEARCH BEGINS.

Yesterday I went to the Consulate of Country X to attempt to find some contacts for my research. This required one and a half hours of negotiating LA-area freeways, overpriced parking, and an unfortunate realization that said consulate was housed in the same quarters as Larry Flynt publications. It was only after I saw a busty chick with a Hustler T-shirt that I realized this--I had been blissfully oblivious to the purple flag imprinted with "LFP" flying over the building.

Despite my having made an appointment with the General Consul of Country X, and reconfirmed this appointment via email (reconfirming being an essential component of any formal meeting to take place among members of Country X and other Latin American countries), the person at the window informed me that, lamentably, Sr. Consul was out of the office on a meeting and would I be so kind as to wait ten minutes?

The ten minutes stretched into an hour and a half, at which point I was ready to give up, go home, and fume over some literature. At this point Sr. Consul entered the building with profuse apologies and explanations about the traffic. After brushing me off for another half hour we finally spoke about my dissertation topic. To my great joy, he was interested in the linguistic behavior of indigenous peoples, having received some of these indigenous people in his office. "They are so--clean, so hardworking," he mused. He determined that he and I were going to go next week and track down some clean and hardworking indigenous people for my research. I inwardly winced at the possibility of bringing the Consul General on my first field research opportunity, but who knows, it may help.

Whatever the case, I intend to reconfirm and re-reconfirm with Sr. Consul. And have a plan B, which will involve tracking down indigenous people on my own, even if they are unkempt and enemies of honest labor. And, perhaps, take the Metrolink into town, since by the time I got back on the freeway it was 3:00 and I was forced to descend into the specific kind of hell known to L.A. residents as Rush Hour, which as far as I can tell lasts three hours in the afternoon and usually involves the shutting down of some major transportation artery due to a crash, or, in the case of yesterday, a gas leak and a man in an RV with explosives.

It's going to be a long couple of years.