Today's Procrastination (Happy Halloween)

I could spend hours making silly e-cards with different people's photos. Check out the click-or-treat. You can put in pics of people you know, then change their costumes. Be sure to preview the card before sending it to parents because each of the costumed characters does different things in the card (some of which you may not want your parents to see).

Good discussion section

This quarter of TA'ing is shaping up to be much better than those in the past. Yesterday, I felt good about my section. We had to review for the midterm (which always seems to wake people up). A lot of people asked good questions and the atmosphere in the room was more community-like than I've seen in a long time. For the second half, we talked about a paper proposal they have due in a week. I was proud of myself for thinking of a good exercise to get them thinking and writing about their topics. I had them freewrite on their topic for 5 minutes. Then, they read what they'd written and underlined anywhere they made some sort of argument (i.e. a place to start thinking about a thesis statement). Then, I had them look for three examples or pieces of evidence they wrote about that related to their argument. It worked really well and a few people shared their thesis statements. I reiterated that their papers will be based on those arguments. Hopefully this structured approach to writing a thesis will help their papers to be more clear. Stay tuned for more on that...

Overall, I'm spending much less time planning sections this quarter. I used to fret for days about what we'd do or discuss, but this quarter, I'm more "go with the flow" about things. If an idea (like the freewriting exercise) pops in my head, then great. If not, we'll look closely at the readings and go from there. I think the students sense my relaxation with section and it helps them to relax and talk more freely.

Today's Grad Gravy: Sometimes you have to stop planning.

Off and....stalling

I had a really great meeting with my advisor today. He helped me get back on track with my projects and I left feeling new optimism for my paper and my presentation. So, I ran home, opened my laptop and...checked my email. Then I remembered my promise for an enlightening blog post, so here I am. It's not procrastination, I swear....

Okay, maybe a little procrastination. As I think more about why I can't just go with the new ideas, I realize that my procrastination has to do with fear of failure. Not failure in the sense that it will all be for naught in the end, but in the sense that all of my advisor's help seems so great until I start working on it. That's when I see that I still can't get to the end of the paper without help. Thus, I'm afraid that I'll get to work and immediately run into another road block.

Pep talk to self: You have to get in the car, spark the ignition and drive forward in order to find the block. Your advisor is like the construction worker standing next to the blocked off lane with the "Slow/Stop" sign. Even if you reach that point and the sign is turned to stop, it will eventually turn to slow. Drive carefully through the cones, wave at the person holding the sign at the other end, and be happy that you made it through the road work and now you're on the way to your destination.

Today's Grad Gravy: Get in the car.

Busy, busy, busy

This weekend has been full of anything but school work. We're hosting a Halloween party, so we had to get our decorations for that squared away. Also, I realized that I had nothing to wear to the conference I'm going to in a few weeks, so I had to shop for a decent/professional outfit (really, I'd rather not spend my Sunday afternoon in the mall). To top it all off, the World Series took over the television (and of course I had to watch that!). I promise to be back on track tomorrow with some sort of insightful end enlightening post.

Only in California

Today, I took a break. No work, lunch with a friend, and retreat into a novel I bought at the used bookstore down the street. As I sat on my balcony watching the cars run the stop sign that no one in this town seems to realize exists, I heard two women talking to each other across the intersection: both long-haired blonds with California sized sunglasses on top of their heads. One woman crossed the street away from the other who had just approached her shiny black car parked parallel to the curb. She yelled goodbye to her friend and proceeded to pull a handheld dust mop with a plastic purple handle from her trunk. At first, I thought it was a yoga mat because of the purple, but then she proceeded to dust off her car. I kid you not. It was already "just came from the car wash" sparkling clean, but she spent a good five minutes dusting every inch, making sure to get the license plates and hub caps, and picking out the leaves unfortunate enough to become tangled in the mop. When she finished, she packed the mop back into the trunk, slid behind the wheel, and drove away. Now that, my friends, is why I could never live permanently in this strange state.

Today's Procrastination

Rationalize away the procrastination!

Stand-still

Everything I'm working on needs input from my adviser. The problem was that I felt motivated to do something. So, instead, I read a book I've been meaning to read that might have some bearing on the area I'll research for my dissertation. I found myself really into the book (so much so that I sat down to read for half and hour and then all of the sudden it was an hour), which was exciting since I haven't read an intriguing academic book in a while. Tomorrow I hope to find some piece of my projects that I can make headway on without advice.

Today's Grad Gravy: Pick up that book at the bottom of the stack.

Lit reviews

I have a perpetual problem with the lit review portion of papers. Since that's where I am in my qualifying paper, I've hit a wall. My advisor pushes me to lead the reader into a story. Thus, the lit review shouldn't just be an overview of every study ever conducted that relates in any way to the paper. It has to be a story that leads logically to my data. That's all well and good, but this sounds a lot easier than it is. As I've thought more about this in the last few days, I realized that this always happens for two reasons. First, I don't exactly know what audience I'm speaking to. Without having a clear audience, I don't know which literature to pull from. Second, the link from my research to the proverbial "big picture" doesn't jump out at me. In research methods classes, they stress a certain order of operations: you have an interest that leads to a question that leads to a particular method. News flash: it doesn't work that way.

Here's the genesis of my paper: I'm interested in Soc of Law and Criminology, particularly, fear of crime. So, I'm looking online one day and see a new book on the topic. So, I read it. Meanwhile, I've been doing this other fear of crime stuff. As I'm reading this book, I see a theoretical argument that I could test with the data I've already found for the other project. So, I say to myself, "I could test his hypothesis and use that for my QP." My advisor agreed and off I went to write a brilliant paper. Except that the brilliant paper is quite a mess at the moment. I guess my point is that I don't have a "big picture." Writing a paper without that is like splashing green paint on a canvas in any random pattern and calling it art. (oops, I think I did see that displayed in a gallery once for $1,000.)

Today's Grad Gravy: What's your big picture?

Linking fiction and science

As you know by now, I'm a fiction writer. I've often thought of fiction writing as my life's work and Sociology as a fun hobby on the side (although right now I spend much more time on Sociology). Last year, for my field methods class I wrote an ethnography of my field work in the form of a fiction short story. In the paper I discussed how fictional accounts of research can be useful for many reasons (not the least to reach a broader audience). So, imagine my surprise when I opened this month's issue of Wired to see an interview with Jonah Lehrer, the author of a new book called Proust was a Neuroscientist. As I read the interview, I couldn't help but smile. Lehrer believes that writers have articulated "truths" that are only later studied by science. One example he gives is the fallibility of memory. As I writer, I often try to base my stories on some fundamental truth of the human experience. These truths are what connect diverse readers to timeless stories. Lehrer is disdainful of the break we've made between science and art because the two can inform each other. Let's stop taking ourselves so seriously and resort to some imaginative play time!

Today's Grad Gravy: Stuck? Try some artistic expression.

Today's Procrastination

Don't try this at home (but spend lots of time watching the videos!).

Reaffirming my interests

As I fidgeted my way through Domhoff's Who Rules America?, another good reason for reading outside of your interest area popped into my head. The subject of the book is corporate power and the ruling elite. While it's well-written, I just couldn't get into it enough to stop checking how many pages I had left to read. If I didn't have to read it for the class I TA for, I would have ditched it. Of course, as a sociologist, issues of power and class are interesting to me, but studies of organizational power just don't make me dance on the chair. So, I realized that while I sometimes question if the sociology of law and criminology are really where I should focus my energy, learning more about these two subjects is never like pulling teeth.

Today's Grad Gravy: Reading outside your research area can reaffirm your interests.

Pizza and a Movie: Memoirs of a Geisha ***

The book was amazing, so I sat down with my tomato-spinach-green pepper pizza and popped in the DVD. Imagine my surprise when the first character spoke in English. Memoirs of a Geisha, set in 1920's Japan, disappoints as much as it appeals. I wanted to get a feel for the rhythm of the Japanese language, but the characters spoke English, killing that vibe. I reveled in the exotic feel of the movie: beautiful silk kimonos, carefully applied make up, and thin screen walls set upon tatami mats. Aside from those aesthetics, I was pulled along by the longing of a geisha to finally let herself follow her emotions into the arms of a man she'd met as a girl. But, when the moment came, I wasn't swallowing tears like I usually do. Instead, I nodded my head because I knew it'd happen eventually. Something about the timing and tension just didn't come together for that ultimate happiness kind of moment. All in all, it's worth a watch, but not one of those I'd gush on and on about.

Tune in next Saturday for Croupier.

Relationships

I've heard many stories about relationships (particularly those you come in to school with) while in grad school. For me, having a partner who is not in academia is grounding. He reminds me that there is a "real" world out there and that not everyone cares about debating the merits of one research approach over another. However, I know this can cause tension for some, especially if the significant other just doesn't understand what it means to be a grad student. On the other hand, with two academics in the house, the problems seem just as daunting: how do you know when to turn off the work brain?

Overall, I think the problems I've heard about come from the personal changes we experience while in school. I've learned a lot about who I am while being here, and I know I've changed. It can be hard to prepare a significant other for such life transformations (especially if your partner isn't also going through some sort of change). Moreover, if you're embarking on a path toward a career and your significant other isn't secure in his or her current life path, your moves forward can become fodder for resentment. I guess this rant is just meant to get you thinking about how we change as we grow into our professional lives, and how those changes may affect those we love.

Today's Grad Gravy: Grad school is a major life transformation.

Hobbies

I've just returned from my fiction writer's group and I'm reminded of how important it is to have hobbies outside of school. Two aspects of my hobbies help me through school. First, I talk with people outside of academics who have worldviews different than those I hear all the time in the bubble we call Sociology. Second, my imagination stretches to escape the confines of social science writing. This is especially important because it helps me think in new ways about issues I'm dealing with both as a student and as I conduct my own research.

Today's Grad Gravy: School is only one aspect of your life; don't let the others fall by the wayside.

A good day

Today was another productive day made even better by a good discussion section. I read somewhere that working on projects for an hour at a time helps with motivation, so that's what I tried today. I split my time into one-hour intervals, working on a paper, then my presentation, then reading, and so on. It worked well and I feel like I got a lot accomplished which motivates me to do more. I think when I feel good about my day and I go into section, my students can sense my good mood and they are more interactive because of it. Or maybe it's just selective perception: when I'm in a good mood, I think the students are more engaged because I overlook the "bad" stuff (like the silent room after I ask a question).

Today's Grad Gravy: Do a lot of little tasks because they'll add up to success in the end.

Today's Procrastination

So, do you think Steven Colbert is really running for president? Should we start a Colbert-Stewart campaign?

Fixed link

Hey all, in case you thought I was crazy for the link to the Consumerist blog (on the lower right of the page in the My Favorite Blogs section), it's fixed now so that it goes to the real blog and not some weird corporate web site.

Why am I in school?

The meaning of life question hits me every once in a while, and today it's at the top of my brain. This time it's different though because I'm not questioning if I should be doing some other kind of work. I'm trying to set down some sort of idea for myself as to what I hope to accomplish while I'm here.

So, with that in mind, I'm in school to:

Learn how to write tight, informative scholarly papers
Learn how to manage my time with multiple ideas in the works
Get some sort of scholarly reputation while I'm still backed by the university
Publish and present my work so that I can get a good job after
Use the resources of my mentors and advisers while it's still their job
Develop intriguing research ideas and follow through with at least some of them
Become the sort of scholar who can eventually have some impact on the world outside of academia

Of course, this is how I feel today and tomorrow the list would probably look very different. So, my fellow grad students, why are you in school?

Today's Grad Gravy: Why are you doing what you're doing?

Being productive

Today I moved from working on my presentation to writing the next draft of my qualifying paper. After not thinking about the paper for over a month, I had to spend 45 minutes remembering my train of thought when I'd left it. I was proud of myself for forcing the concentration to plow through and get going on this again, but I promised that I'd never let something fall that far away from my brain. I need to figure out how to better manage multiple projects, especially if I want to get published before I'm done with school. Looking to other aspects of my life, I realized that in my creative writing (fiction) I work for an hour a day no matter what. It's part of my morning ritual. This has allowed me to complete 127 pages of my novel just chipping away a few pages at a time. If I had that same devotion to my school projects, I'd be done much quicker. So, my new plan is to schedule time every single day for working on my various projects. You might think that a grad student would do this anyway, but as I mentioned in an earlier post, I have a condition that tells me I've done good with even one small accomplishment in a day. I think this change of heart came from this post that I read on a grad school forum. There are lots of things I can do now that will help my career later on and I don't want to regret not doing more in grad school.

Today's Grad Gravy: Your actions now will shape your future.

I hate economics

My eyes hurt, the brain is full, and I'm not sure I could reiterate the point of the last twenty or so pages I read, but I finished. Yes, you guessed it: I just sat through the torture of three hours of reading on a subject that bores me to tears. The class I'm TA'ing for is based in economic and Marxist theory. The Marx stuff I can deal with, even though it's not quite up my alley, but the economics just makes me want to cry, or scream, or burn it. I'm not against all economics, and some aspects of the subject intrigue me, but too much of the stuff and my brain starts to revolt partly because of the dry manner in which the particular book I'm reading is written.

And now, on to the bright side. I'm learning a bit more about a subfield of sociology that I would never read about if it weren't for this class.

Today's Grad Gravy: Think about reading assignments irrelevant to your particular research as exposing you to an area of the discipline you'd never explore on your own.

Today's Procrastination

Check this out. I don't really know about the left brain/right brain interpretation, but see if you can make the picture turn the other way (it is possible).

(No) Pizza and a movie: Timecode **

Tonight on ESPN the CU Buffaloes play Kansas State, so instead of watching our movie on pizza night, we had to do a Friday night movie instead. So, last night we sat down sans pizza and watched Timecode. The synopsis sounds promising: a split-screen movie shot in real time. The movie begins with the screen splitting into quarters. To get us used to such a format, the screens fill up individually, so that by the time the last section is showing a scene, the viewer is already interested in the first three plot lines. Each screen follows a different character, although it turns out that all the characters are related somehow (like a six degrees of separation thing). The plot was lacking in intensity and turned melodramatic in the end (think blood, guns, and tears). It's not as challenging to watch as it sounds. The director did a good job of directing attention to one section or another with the use of sound and motion. However, the acting could definitely use some work. It wasn't until the end of the movie that I realized that the acting was semi-improv, with a basic structure but not fully scripted. Overall, I give the movie two stars, but only because I like the creative approach.

A week of progress

Now that it's Friday, I'm taking a step back to assess my week. I started on Monday with a goal of finishing the draft of the presentation and writing an outline of a chapter I'm writing with my advisor. Just after noon today, I emailed the drafted outline along with a potential first paragraph. I've been more diligent about my work this week than I have been in a long time. I worked every day for at least two hours on those slides. One night (Tuesday? Wednesday?) I worked until 9:30. That kind of motivation is unusual for me, but when I finally shut down the computer I thought that this is what I figured grad school would be like. I think now that I'm not taking classes and everything I'm working on depends on my dedication (rather than strict deadlines), I might have more of those long weeks and late nights. The nice thing about it is that I feel like I can take some time for myself this weekend.

Today's Grad Gravy: Three cheers for motivation.

Today's Procrastination

I've just spent half an hour with a sort of math problem, so I thought I'd post it here to see if any of my dear readers can figure it out. I use Google Analytics to track visits to my blog. So, I go into the report today and they tell me I have had 14 absolute unique visitors and 44 visits in the date range I selected. Then, I look at visitor loyalty and they give me a table that looks like this:

Number of Visits Visits Percentage of Vistors
1 time 17 38.64%
2 times 6 13.64%

and so on. So, here's what I can't figure. I have 44 visits, so 17 out of those 44 visits=38.64%. I get that far and then I'm stumped. 17 of the 44 visits to my site have visited only one time? That can't be right because here's the last row of the table: 15-25 times, 4, 9.09%. If 4 visits have been from people who came to the site 15 times, then the least number of visits I could have would be 60. I've scoured the help pages and I'm coming up short. Any ideas?

Facilitating discussion

After my mediocre discussion section on Monday, I was searching around the net for tips on facilitating discussion and found this site from Princeton that has some great pointers and examples of how to facilitate, rather than kill, discussion.

Today's Procrastination

Talk about the ultimate procrastination. You'd have to be seriously procrastinating to create this internet video.

Less really is more

I've realized that when I have less time and more things to do, I get more accomplished than when I have unlimited time. I think that when we have a short amount of time to complete a task, it makes us focus all our effort on that one activity, so that the "noise" of everyday life is filtered out. While working on this presentation, I've found myself using those stray thirty minute or one hour breaks to complete a small piece of the whole. On any other day, I'd just take a break from work and wait until I had a good chunk of time to work on a project.

Today's Grad Gravy: Productivity reaches its peak when you set firm deadlines for completion.

Identities

I was talking with a student today about identities and it made me think of all the identities we take on as grad students. In my day-to-day life, I am a student: I wear "student" clothes (jeans and t-shirts), I carry a backpack, I read, write, and think. Yet, I am also a teacher. When I am in my TA role, I have to be more careful about what I say because they listen and take notes based on my words. But the TA and student identities are somewhat connected in that I don't have to be completely different in one or the other. The biggest challenge is negotiating the identity of a social scientist. I confront this when I look into my closet and wonder what impression I will give when I stand up in front of other criminologists to present my work. When I came to grad school, I ditched the dress pants and collared shirts for my (more comfortable) student attire. But this will be the first presentation of my career, so I want to look professional, but not too overdone. There's a fine line between stuffy business suit and dress casual. In the end, I ask myself: What makes me feel most like me? People can spot a fraud a mile away, but which "me" should I be?

Today's Grad Gravy: Everyone fits their identity to the situation at hand.

Pizza and a movie: Harold and Maude

I know it's an old movie, but it's one of those that's been on my list forever and I just never remember to rent it. That's one of the reasons I love Netflix (there's none of this: "What movie should we get tonight?" "I don't know. What do we keep saying we need to see?" "I can't remember."). You'll notice that I didn't assign a rating to the movie like I did last week. To be honest, I didn't think it fair to rate a movie that I fell asleep watching. You might be thinking Well, if you fell asleep, that must mean you didn't like it. In reality, I have movie narcolepsy. Usually my condition doesn't affect the Saturday night movie because the pizza keeps me awake. But last night, the zucchini-spinach-red pepper pizza came before the movie and by the time the movie started I was already in the first stages of food coma.

Here are my thoughts on the movie from what I saw (about the first 45 minutes). I wasn't intrigued by Harold's strange demeanor. His irritating habit of not speaking paralleled his mother's obnoxious lack of mothering. In my own fiction writing, I've often thought of creating a character who loves to go to funerals, so that piece of Harold drew me in. I found it fitting that he'd meet someone (Maude) who shared his interest, but contrasted his dark outlook. Perhaps if I'd stayed awake long enough, Harold's character would have become more clear to me. However, from what I saw, the movie plodded along without a real plot to drive it. When done well, I like to follow a character to see how he or she changes in the end, but Harold wasn't enough to pull me with him.

Isolation

I've heard that grad school becomes more isolating as we progress into our own research, and I think this is happening to my cohort. Last night was our welcome back/welcome first-years department party. It got me thinking about how much has changed since my first year. In the beginning, our cohort hung out together quite a bit. Last year (my second year) we drifted apart as we took fewer classes as a cohort. This year, I find that we're scattered. Part of me laments this "break-up" because we had fun together, but another part of me is glad we're branching out. Every year, the department parties have become less awkward and more fun as I realize that I know more people and feel more comfortable talking to those outside of my acquaintances. It's like these parties are benchmarks for measuring change since that first awkward party when many people introduced themselves and I couldn't even begin to remember everyone's name or the advice they imparted. As I watched this year's first-years, I remembered how it felt to be in their shoes and hoped that I could stave off the isolation for another year.

Today's Grad Gravy: As the years progress, maintain ties to your peers.

Working in a dynamic field

I did a search on Amazon today with the keyword "fear of crime." I don't know what I was thinking. This is the subject of my presentation in November, so really I shouldn't ask for trouble by looking up more sources on the topic. Alas, the search returned many results (as I knew it would) and at the top of the list was a book just published this year that I need to at least skim before the presentation.

At this point, my need for optimism kicked in and I thought of two reasons why finding this book can be good. First, it tells me that the topic is still relevant. Second, I sometimes feel that social sciences is a glacial discipline only changing every few hundred years. Finding this book reminds me that the small pieces of progress add up to larger discipline shifts. Without these steps, large-scale change wouldn't be possible. So, while I've made more work for myself, reading the book will add to my knowledge of the subject. Of course, there is a caveat. If the book replicated my research, I'd be ranting away because I'm not sure I could find a bright side to that!

Today's Grad Gravy: Sometimes you have to shift your sights to the small picture.

How much should I accomplish in one day?

I met with my advisor this morning. We had a good discussion about my presentation, and I know what my next steps are. Now, at 4:00, I find myself with an hour before I have to teach section and as hard as I try, I cannot get motivated to think about anything school related. I think I have this door in my brain that closes when I have accomplished something academic. It's like I can't take more than one progressive step in a day. I need to get over this because it will make my projects go by that much faster. Meanwhile, does anyone know a good locksmith so that I can break into that productive portion of my brain?

Today's Grad Gravy: Blogs are the ultimate procrastination tool.

Influencing our students

Today I got absolutely nothing done except a visit to the dentist, office hours, and class. While I sat in the lower division intro class I TA for I started to think about how I will teach when I have my own class. It's tough to balance being interesting with getting across all the information a lecture is supposed to impart. I always compare lectures to my first sociology class as an undergrad with Dr. Mileti at CU-Boulder. It was one of those huge lectures, but the professor seemed to draw me to the edge of my seat every time. He couldn't stay still, so he raced around the front of the room, writing on the chalkboard so much that by the end of class it resembled abstract art. This was in the days before Powerpoint was the norm (see my rant about Powerpoint). I want to be that professor: so full of enthusiasm that I can't stand still and I bring my students into the subject so thoroughly that they go on to pursue graduate education in Sociology. As I write that, I realize that Dr. Mileti has no idea that he opened my eyes to the world of Sociology because I never spoke to him in person. It gives me hope that even though my students look at me with blank stares sometimes, I could be the influence that makes them see the world differently.

Today's Grad Gravy: Teaching is full of hidden rewards.

First TA section of the quarter

Being a TA means teaching two discussion sections per quarter. I honestly cannot remember one discussion section I had as an undergrad that I found even remotely useful. Generally, they were classes I dreaded attending and didn't bother going to at least half of the time because inevitably the TA would ask an inane question and we'd all stare back either because the answer was completely obvious, or because the question was so over our heads that we didn't know how to begin formulating an answer.

So, today I went into my discussion section with high hopes. I'd get students engaged and we'd have lively debates in each class period. After introductions and name memorizing, I asked them about their own experiences with sections. At first, no one said anything (even though more than two-thirds of them had admitted to having sections in the past). But I made a joke out of their silence and a few students finally spoke up. Hopefully, I got the point across that I expected discussion and not complete silence.

After being an RA for a year, I'm ready to teach, so I'm crossing my fingers for the rest of the quarter when we actually have readings to discuss. I remember feeling this same optimism in my first quarter ever TA'ing, and then being disappointed at the apathetic reactions of students to the readings. At least for now I can keep the expectations high and maybe my dream of the perfect section will come true.

Today's Grad Gravy: Cling to your naive first-year expectations so that they can keep you afloat when you're feeling pessimistic.