Update on this post: The musical Sobreesdrújulas are playing the waiting game for their visas. Which is really frustrating because they are supposed to be here on Friday. I'm calling in all of the support I can manage on my end. Argh.
After six months of struggle in the greater L.A. area, my quest for informants was (I hope) solved by a five day trip to the Pacific Northwest. All hail the Sobreesdrújulas! Let the data collection begin! In April! I am praying to the visa gods that the group of transnational musicians that I have selfishly and naively claimed mine will get their papers and come to this fine land so that I might ruthlessly watch them speaking not-endangered language Z and acting out their various discursive practices.
When I am not spending excessive amounts of nonexistent cash on airline tickets to the Pacific Northwest, I am reading everything I can get my hands on about the Sobreesdrújulas and their relative uniqueness in country X. So I feel that I am finally making progress and thank God for that.
Thursday, March 29, 2007
Tuesday, March 13, 2007
HOW TO NOT WRITE A DISSERTATION IN TWO YEARS
1. First of all, do not apply for funding. Funding is for chumps. Your husband, Dr. Cuy, will provide you with all of the largesse you need. Plus you can teach but that won't really take up much time.
2. When your advisor tells you to spend your time reading, ignore him. Reading, like funding, is for chumps. You want to collect data. Like yesterday. Forge your own path, without having developed a background on your potential participants.
3. Take a teaching job. Preferably one in a subject you have never taught, have limited knowledge about, and makes you feel like a total impostor every time you stand in front of the class. Spend your time trying to make the students like you instead of working on, you know, that dissertation thing.
4. Try to find participants in one large, diverse and completely uncohesive metropolitan area, where you don't even live and have to commute to via snarly freeways, once a week, due to the fact that you teach three days a week and that has suddenly taken over your life. Repeat ad nauseum.
5. Bitch incessantly on your blog about how hard this dissertation thing is, boo hoo hoo.
6. Embarrass yourself in front of your proposal committee when they basically tear you a new asshole, pointing out most notably that you have not read the most important literature on your potential participants.
7. Spend a few months agonizing over your proposal revisions, which absolutely nobody in your proposal committee will comment on, perhaps because they already think you are a loser.
8. Give up on large, diverse and uncohesive metropolitan area. Start reading. Realize that reading is valuable and if you'd read something to begin with you wouldn't have wasted six months of your life in the useless metropolitan area. Weep copiously.
9. Start over. You now have one year and one quarter left. Hoo hoo hahahahaha!!!
2. When your advisor tells you to spend your time reading, ignore him. Reading, like funding, is for chumps. You want to collect data. Like yesterday. Forge your own path, without having developed a background on your potential participants.
3. Take a teaching job. Preferably one in a subject you have never taught, have limited knowledge about, and makes you feel like a total impostor every time you stand in front of the class. Spend your time trying to make the students like you instead of working on, you know, that dissertation thing.
4. Try to find participants in one large, diverse and completely uncohesive metropolitan area, where you don't even live and have to commute to via snarly freeways, once a week, due to the fact that you teach three days a week and that has suddenly taken over your life. Repeat ad nauseum.
5. Bitch incessantly on your blog about how hard this dissertation thing is, boo hoo hoo.
6. Embarrass yourself in front of your proposal committee when they basically tear you a new asshole, pointing out most notably that you have not read the most important literature on your potential participants.
7. Spend a few months agonizing over your proposal revisions, which absolutely nobody in your proposal committee will comment on, perhaps because they already think you are a loser.
8. Give up on large, diverse and uncohesive metropolitan area. Start reading. Realize that reading is valuable and if you'd read something to begin with you wouldn't have wasted six months of your life in the useless metropolitan area. Weep copiously.
9. Start over. You now have one year and one quarter left. Hoo hoo hahahahaha!!!
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