fell down a research rabbit hole

[katekat]

I've had on my To Do List this thing... this thing where I have to create a bibliography of the works I'm going to need for my dissertation. And since I am rewriting my proposal from the ground up, most of the works on my qualifying exams list aren't really helpful or necessary anymore. Oh, sure, like 20 or 30 of them will come over, but I've needed to actually go start to outline the works I *will* need since last year.

Well today I finally got started on it! And found a bunch of dissertations that I am aching to read, including a monograph on one of the authors I would like to write about in my later chapters on feminist writers! It was very exciting!!

But I totally looked up and it was like an hour later and I have 10 citations. Which is good! Dont' get me wrong! But I'd meant to only sit down with the database for like 20 minutes, which is just laughable. Resaerch is awesome.

That's my life. Except that I totally read scarimonious's giggling and saw that entrenous88 had done a review of Sleepy Hollow and it sounded kind of hilarious, so, yeah, two episodes in I think I've adopted a new TV show. Not that I need anymore! But accents! Awesome cops! Headless Horsemen!!!

(yes, i know, this post has a lot of exclamation points. i think i'm feeling less sick finally, and it shows in the punctuation!)

Comments

[scarimonious]

Sleepy Hollow is just the right mix of delightfully ridiculous and EPIC NOPE. My skin finally stopped crawling at creepy John Cho being the snarkiest demonic buttmonkey. I really hope it's not cancelled after one season.

[katekat]

OMG John Cho is SOOOO AWESOME!! and super duper creeptastic. So far, beyond accent and cop-lady snark he is my favorite character in total. I'm so so so glad he wasn't brought lo by a simple neck snapping! (of course in retrospect i feel like i should have realized that on this show it's just a little neck snap, and most characters of the dark aren't gonna let that get them down. And why would they, if death himself can come back from a little behedding?!)

[littleotter73]

I watched the pilot episode of Sleepy Hollow because people were recommending it. I think it looks like great fun. Definitely want to watch the second episode. I usually give shows I am interested in four episodes to improve on the pilot if the pilot is crap or go down the toilet from there.

Good luck with the research and all. Sounds like you have things under control and what not. Why are you rewriting your proposal? Wasn't it accepted earlier?

[katekat]

Yeah, I do the same thing with the 4 episodes! I figure pilots are always a little crazy info-dumpy (which they were) but this had enough stuff i liked to try for more! fingers crossed that it remains interesting for both of us.

and oh gods, control? barely. not really. but i pretend well right? i'm rewriting because i got some feedback from a professor not on my committee who said there were two fissures in my original proposal, which totally confirmed what i knew, and also because the scope of my original proposal was TOO BIG for one project. so i'm doing two out of the three parts now, but considering my original proposal was kind of a massive brain dump of information in a word soup, i'm starting over so i can make it clean and actually sort of logical (i hope). espec. since proposals become the basis of grant proposals, conference proposals, etc.

oh, and I thought it was when i did the draft for my qualifying exams, but then the chair of the department told me I had to write something *else* while i was in Japan. and i sort of said 'fuck that' and worked on it halfheartedly and then the above happened.

[biodamped]

Oh god, can you explain to me how your program is structured? Because it's obviously so different from mine that I can't keep track of where you are in it. And DO I HEAR YOU on research. xD I lose whole days to it, how does it happen?

Glad you're feeling better honey. ♥

[katekat]

lol, i don't think it's that dissimilar, it's just me that's having problems.

so, in general a Liberal Arts Phd is/was supposed to be a 5 year plan. However, most Asian Studies PhDs are 6 year plans because they involve a year of language learning that goes like this:
Year 1: general research w/coursework & language
Year 2: develop ideas for dissertation areas with gen coursework & language
Year 3: language year in Japan
Year 4: final coursework (if any),
develop qualifying exam committee,
develop qualifying exam lists (in our program it's three subject areas w/ about 25-40 books on each)
write research proposal for Dissertation
take & Pass Qualifying Exams (both written and oral)
Year 5: Research year for Dissertation (possibly in Japan),
Present at conferences
Work out papers for publication
Begin writing Dissertation
Year 6: Complete Dissertation,
Defend Dissertation,
Apply for jobs

MY schedule is/was a little fucked up, because I effectively swapped Year 3 & Year 4 (so I took my qualifying exams before I did my year of language learning)

It may get even more fucked up if I go back to Japan to do more research. I have a lot of the primary texts I want to use, but getting ahold of all the secondary sources and working with a Japanese University Professor (which is usually encouraged but not always required) are things I have yet to do.

Additionally, while my draft prospectus was provisionally approved by my Qualifying Exams committee, they told me I needed to write another document when I was leaving for Japan, and I basically wrote something while there that is sort of idea/word soup. So I'm rewriting it now, with a completion target of Oct 31, so that I can get onto the actual RESEARCH that I should be doing by the end of the semester.

and if that all actually made sense to you, you're doing better than me :D

[biodamped]

Woah. That's... massively different. Mine's a phd by research, and I know some of our universities offer phd by publication, but I don't think any of them involve coursework at all. All I'm expected to do is read, research and write for three years. (Technically four, actually, but the scholarship only lasts three, and I'm trying to submit by the end date). I pick a panel of six prospective readers, three of whom will read my final thesis and mark it as either a pass without no changes, pass conditional on some changes, or non-pass with major reworking needed. I don't need to defend it to anyone, there are no exams, and as far as I know, publications aren't a requirement, they're an optional extra you can do if you have time and there are conferences for your area. I'd normally wonder if language phd's differ, but Reuben (my co-tutor for the course I'm running this semester) is doing a Greek language phd and he has no exam either.