bugsii

After a short day at ODE, I headed from downtown to campus on the bus.  It was time to pick up my printed and bound exams.  I slogged through the heat from the campus bus stop to Uniprint, paid for my box of exam booklets, and slogged my way to Ramseyer Hall to place all but one into my professors’ mailboxes.  The final copy I kept for myself, to read and reread and mark all of the places where I fear I will be dinged.  I got on the bus to head home and I opened up to my favorite question, the one I knew was beautiful.  But, before I got to the bottom of the page, I had already found a typo, and a really horrible one.  I used the wrong “right.”  It should have been “right,” but I had written “write.”  Woe is me.  I had such a visceral reaction that the few people on the bus looked up to stare at me.  I was the crazy bus person today.  Sigh.  Ah well.  I’m only human and I read these things so many times that I apparently stopped seeing mistakes like that.  Can you tell that I’m trying to convince myself to let it go?  It’s not working.

Today, my big plan was to complete the final revision on two of my exams.  First, I had to run 7.5 miles.  I did that (a little later than I planned), showered and got to work.  I was rereading on the porch and the sun was starting to get a little uncomfortable, so I came inside to sit on the couch and cool down.  I was about halfway finished with my reading of the first exam when I slowly slumped over, suddenly feeling every one of those 7.5 miles.  I reached up from my slumped position to grab the blanket from the back of the couch and wad it up for a pillow.  I took a nap.  When I woke up, I felt even further behind and also hoped that my drooping eyelids had nothing to do with how interesting my paper was/is (of course it couldn’t).  But after that nap, I felt pretty good and really got into the revisions.  So much so that I completely forgot that I was supposed to be on a webinar for ODE at 2.  I remembered this at 3.  Oof.  It wasn’t life or death or anything, but I felt like a flake regardless.  Anyway, after revising that first paper, I was feeling pretty impressed with myself.  Sure, there were corrections to make, but those block quotes that I was worrying about 5 weeks ago fit just as I’d hoped and didn’t seem to take up as much room as I once thought.  It even sounded nice.

I headed to a coffee shop for my second paper and that was a little less successful.  It required some more rethinking and I’m also not very happy with the flow.  It sort of has to do with the nature of the question, but the paper is dry and choppy.  It doesn’t sound lovely and I like papers to sound lovely if I can manage it.  An older guy at the coffee shop butted in during my (apparently obvious) struggle to ask if I was editing my own paper or someone else’s.  When I told him it was mine he said, “You sure are giving that a lot of thought.”  Ha.  I’m so transparent.  Anyway, I think I’ll be returning to that one again… maybe tonight.  These papers are sort of becoming my babies (giving them so much thought and all), and I’m starting to think that it will be hard not to be offended when I have to orally defend them.  Time will tell.

I kind of don’t want to say it out loud because it makes me too nervous… but, I guess I’m done with my exams.  I revised my final question today and I feel pretty good about it.  At this point, my advisor told me to take a couple weeks off and then revisit each question once more before sending it to the printers (literally, I have to bind all four questions and make four copies for my committee).  I don’t know.  I don’t feel excited yet.  Maybe it’s because I still have to do a final revision.  Maybe it’s because I don’t defend my questions to my committee until October 6.  Either way, I have around 20 pages for each question and I get a reprieve.  I was even able to spend some time this afternoon cleaning out my closet!  It was nice to do some manual labor for a change.  As I was doing it, I was dreaming of my days waiting tables at Menches.  I was a good waitress and running around a restaurant for 8 hours sounds kinda nice after spending 8 hours a day for the past four weeks on my butt hunched over in front of a computer screen.  Mom, are there any openings? 

I sat on the porch all morning today, reading.  I’ve been sitting on the porch so much that I’m starting to see the same people and they are starting to get friendly.  My writer neighbor and I now regularly say hello (although I still haven’t asked him what he writes).  Our groundskeeper Sonya is always doing something in the morning.  Usually, she’s moving around the sprinkler, but today, she was dragging a giant trashcan around picking up the litter that people like to throw from their windows on Summit.  She’s friendly (even though she was a person of interest in the Zoe case) and she always says hi.  There are also a few regular dog walkers that say hello.  And lately, I’ve been saying hello to a lady that walks pretty often while pushing her daughter in a stroller.  This morning, though, she said, “No laptop today, huh?!”  Which was true.  I was just reading today.  “Yep!” I said.  How observant.  Then on her way back she said, “How do you concentrate out here with all these cars driving by?!”  (She kind of yells).  And I said, “I like sitting out here, it keeps me awake.  I fall asleep reading inside.”  “Oh, I gotcha!”  she said back with a big smile and just kept walking.  I like people.  They’re funny.

Anyway, 21 pages down today on my final exam question!  Just revisions for the next two days and then a few weeks off until more revisions!  This is very anticlimactic, but it’s still good.

Today was a really good day.  I did some serious revising and I’m really liking the way that question 3 has shaped up.  I worked most of the morning on the porch until the heat drove me inside.  Then, this afternoon Dan and I walked to a coffee shop and finished up there.  The revising was tiring, so I didn’t make dinner, instead we rewarded ourselves with some Northstar burgers!  Yum.

Today was a much better day as far as work is concerned.  I finished the first complete draft of question 3 by noon and was able to work more on my AERA proposals and contract work with my professor.  Tomorrow, I will spend the day revising and, if there’s time, doing some extra reading.  But in the mean time, I feel like I have time to take a moment and really blog.

Yay!

I’ve been dying to share a picture of my new porch set-up that I got this weekend at Ikea in Cincinnati.  It’s been oh so lovely to eat breakfast and read out here in the morning.  In fact, I’m sitting here writing my blog this evening too.  And since my other porch chairs (and Zoe!) were stolen, I’ve been bringing them in at night, so don’t worry.

Speaking of sitting on my porch every morning and taking a moment to relax and enjoy the early morning hours, I swear I’ve been hearing what can only be described as a breathing tree.  I live on a pretty busy street, one that leads to a highway entrance ramp just a third of a mile or so down the road, which means that traffic is pretty busy our here around 7:30am, when I usually end up eating breakfast.  But, there’s also a traffic light just a little way down the road the other direction, so during the red lights, while the cars are waiting to make a break for the interstate, there’s a few minutes of peace.  In those few minutes of peace, I hear this whooshing sound that’s very soft and rhythmic.  It has the rhythm of someone breathing or ocean waves hitting the shore, but the exhale sounds like wind blowing through a tree.  At first I thought that’s what it was, just a light wind, but I’ve heard it every morning now and it has a tempo to it.  I’ve even gotten up to look up into the tree that’s just in front of my porch, but even when it’s still, I can hear the sound.  The same goes for the tree across the street in front of the Catholic school.  Then, I thought maybe it it was some contraption on the top of the school, but it just sounds too natural (?).  I don’t know, it’s a mystery for now, but either way, I kind of like it.

After listening to the breathing tree for a while this morning, I got to work at my desk.  I was very productive and finished 6 pages by noon, putting me at 21 pages and feeling really good.  As I took some time to think through what I was writing today, I also started to think how lucky I am that this is my work right now.  I’m being paid (sort of) to think, to read, to analyze, to try to make sense of a certain type of knowledge in a field I consider to be very important, education.  I felt like I was reveling in it, pausing to sift through some difficult concept, fancying myself a thinker, elbow on my knee, index finger on my chin, like Plato or Socrates (if Plato and Socrates studied learning in virtual environments ).  That is until I hit a tough spot, where I realized how little I know.  This is when I start to panic and then try to remember that it’s not about the finish line.  There is no finish line.  Enjoy the journey, I try to tell myself, think and read and write and sooner or later, something relatively coherent does come together and things work out.  There’s no rush.  This is against my adult nature (my kid nature was much more into joie de vivre), but I’m slowly getting the hang of it, of being able to do it and enjoy it.

I think this is part of why I’m having trouble writing journal articles right now.  I have gathered so much data and read so much literature and theory and it just hasn’t melded into something coherent yet, at least not as coherent as I would like.  It still feels like a jumble in my mind.  I have glimpses of coherence and I try to grab them and nail them down as fast as I can, but they are fleeting and often when I go back to reread them, I don’t think they are coherent anymore.  And so I walk away for a bit, return and struggle, and walk away again.  I just read a paper that Dr. Nespor wrote suggesting that keeping a research journal would help.  Of course, my head went straight to a blog, so I think I may start one, or start posting more of my thoughts here.  We’ll see.

I read a lot this afternoon, still searching the literature for question 3, trying to be sure that I’m covering all aspects of the topic thoroughly (enough).  In this one edited volume I was perusing, each chapter started with a pertinent quote.  They weren’t by famous academics or anything, just quotes that were relevant to the chapter from someone in that field.  And I really started wondering if someday someone would take a little snippet of what I had written and find it juicy enough to put at the beginning of their chapter.  Wouldn’t that be exciting?  A few lines of my own words, centered on the page and sounding oh so poignant, followed by my name in italics.  Sounds lovely.  Now, if I can just get something published…

Today was blah.  I worked all day long and could only manage 4.5 pages.  Then, I had to work on another AERA proposal in the evening.  I’ve been working for around 12 hours and I’m tired.  Hopefully tomorrow is better.

So begins week 3 of the exam process.  I had a really productive day today (I thank the rain).  I finished 10.5 pages, but it really took it out of me and I am exhausted.  I guess it didn’t help that Dan got some last minute tickets to a free screening of Inception, but we couldn’t pass it up!  It was a good flick!  Night!

And so ends week 2 of the exam process.  It rained all day today and I think it helped me work.  I have a tin roof and the sound was so nice, I just got in the zone and read for hours.  Now I’m all set to start writing question 3 on Monday.  This is good.

Tonight, Dan got home and we decided to go to Cincinnati for a visit.  Dan’s going to do some work with his Dad and I’m going to spend some time reading in a new location (and also visiting Ikea to find a cheap chair/table set for my porch that I won’t mind getting stolen).  Should be fun!

This morning I edited and revised like a mad woman.  Lunch was another round of eating lunch on my private-pretend beach (also known as the dog poop area of my apartment complex).  This afternoon, I met with a professor to work on a project.  And this evening, I spent time listening to music, looking up lyrics… and also, writing a stand-up routine.  Dan really shouldn’t leave me alone.