Time out of joint

There is supposed to be an order to the graduate student career. One comes in as a naive new student and spends the first semester feeling overwhelmed. A few semesters later, one gets used to being overwhelmed. After a year or two, one takes an exam or series of exams that allow one to progress. In some programs, one writes a masters thesis. One day, one finally finishes classes. Then one starts The Dissertation. This involves getting a committee, then writing a proposal, then getting the proposal passed. After some indeterminate amount of time, involving collecting data and writing things, one successfully defends the dissertation. The final step happens when one goes to graduation and realizes, "Damn! I should have gone somewhere where the regalia includes a sword!"

Somehow my chronology has become discombobulated. It's not really the delay in passing comps; I'm on schedule to defend a proposal when I had planned to. It's just that right now I'm working on all this stuff that feels like it ought to happen after the proposal. I'm applying for a grant (and I applied for another one last fall) for the dissertation. I'm filing an IRB form for my data collection.

And at this point, I don't have anything technically approved. Theoretically, my committee could say to me, "No, we don't like the direction you're going in. We'd like to see more of a focus on the role of the lemur in promoting intertextuality in antebellum Georgia." They won't, mind you: I've discussed the project with all of them and they're on board. That's a good thing, because I know precious little about lemurs.

And the word is:

I passed my comps!

Beaman Park hike

Beaman Park trailhead
Originally uploaded by TheTurducken

This is one of the two trailheads at Beaman Park, northwest of town, in the late afternoon. The weather today was in the high 40s, after a week of 20s and 30s. It was perfect weather for a hike.

Boring side of research

Friday, per my advisor, is supposed to be "my writing" day, which apparently doesn't actually have to involve writing per se - simply devoting it to my research rather than class and whatnot. So I intended to spend a good chunk of the day working on this IRB application. IRB forms are a pain unless you have done a lot of them. They're hard to get into a state of flow with, too - just as you get into writing the 250-word abstract, it's over. Then you have to figure out what they mean by "performance sites."

I tried to work on it this morning but wasn't getting anywhere. I'd stop to check the internet, think maybe I should do homework instead, find I was missing the first page of an article, go back to the IRB, give up ... Finally I decided I needed to eliminate as many distractions as possible, so I took my laptop to the coffeeshop. I still had email access but couldn't get distracted by my readings or the realization that I need to clean the bathroom. I made progress. Eventually, though, I decided I could only do so much IRB-ing in one day.

A little bit a day and I can get it done.

Sugar

I am disappointed with this bag of candy hearts. It must be old or something, because it doesn't have any of the new hearts in it. (And yet I keep eating, as if the next one will surprise me.)