31 March 2010
30 March 2010
The Cardinal Rules of Thesis Writing
seem to be as follows:
1. YOU ARE ALWAYS WRONG.
2. Can you do a b c e d f h i k l j m n o p q and r? i think it will make your argument stronger.
3. Don't try to do anything else ever. You didn't have anything else to do today, did you?
a. you can either sleep or eat. Choose one!
b. oh wait you had other classes, right? Can you still pass them without doing any work whatsoever?
c. unless you live with them, you will not see them. And even then it is unlikely.
d. HINT: if nobody is in the library it is probably a Thursday, Friday or Saturday.
4. this picture.
1. YOU ARE ALWAYS WRONG.
2. Can you do a b c e d f h i k l j m n o p q and r? i think it will make your argument stronger.
3. Don't try to do anything else ever. You didn't have anything else to do today, did you?
a. you can either sleep or eat. Choose one!
b. oh wait you had other classes, right? Can you still pass them without doing any work whatsoever?
c. unless you live with them, you will not see them. And even then it is unlikely.
d. HINT: if nobody is in the library it is probably a Thursday, Friday or Saturday.
4. this picture.
29 March 2010
State of the Thesis 2.0
(yes, I have named my new thesis "Thesis 2.0". you love it.)
My weekend consisted of:
1 book called Productive Morphology
3 articles to embellish principles presented by the first book (including one which heavily featured "graphs", "math" and "logarithms", written by my thesis advisor)
(= one new thesis as of Saturday morning)
1 book about the philosophy of language and constructing meaning, Wittgenstien's The Blue and Brown Books and preliminary research on word-organization in the brain (thanks, friends) to further some ideas I have
plus a great many post-it notes, lots of coffee, not a lot of sleep and not eating very much = A PROTO-THESIS STATEMENT.
this is coming together nicely. let's hope it is deemed acceptable.
My weekend consisted of:
1 book called Productive Morphology
3 articles to embellish principles presented by the first book (including one which heavily featured "graphs", "math" and "logarithms", written by my thesis advisor)
(= one new thesis as of Saturday morning)
1 book about the philosophy of language and constructing meaning, Wittgenstien's The Blue and Brown Books and preliminary research on word-organization in the brain (thanks, friends) to further some ideas I have
plus a great many post-it notes, lots of coffee, not a lot of sleep and not eating very much = A PROTO-THESIS STATEMENT.
this is coming together nicely. let's hope it is deemed acceptable.
28 March 2010
26 March 2010
lunch has been cancelled due to lack of hustle
So remember that time that I was getting freaked out by my thesis? Here's a story for you.
I had a meeting with my advisor today. The meeting pretty much went like this:
Shelly: There's no thesis, no coherency, and you haven't proven anything yet. You're not going to, if you continue on as you have been. These are merely notes on your corpora research. Consider them a reference from now on. You need to find this book, read it, and come back in a week with at least three pages written... and it needs to have an actual thesis.
Heather: Okay.
Shelly: When are you presenting? April sometime right?
Heather: April 23rd.
Shelly: That gives us a month. Good luck.
Essentially all the work I have done in the past six weeks is nullified. Which leaves me with absolutely nothing written and A MONTH TO DO IT ALL. So basically I am never eating or sleeping again.
(Conveniently, today I also got a job calling people around dinnertime to have them take surveys. I had submitted an application to the survey center a while ago. This would have been helpful about almost three months ago, when I wasn't doing anything of especial importance. I mean, I was, kind of, but I had the time to be flexible and work on a regular schedule... which is why I put in an application at the beginning of the semester; I certainly wasn't expecting to suddenly have to REWRITE 23 pages/6 weeks of work. Also today I had scheduled a census field worker test, hoping to have a summer job between undergrad and grad school. Go figure - of course today would be the one day I needed to read and essentially know an entire book.)
I think the correct phrase here is "take your balls out of your purse", which is exactly what I did: I ran off to the library, hoping they would have this book (thankfully they did) and IMMEDIATELY start reading it. I only recently finished reading and annotating tonight; tomorrow I'm assembling my thoughts and re-reading parts of it in hopes of being able to start writing on Saturday.
my thoughts today while reading
But this is okay. The way I'm looking at it, everyone has their Thesis Disaster story -- this is mine. It's totally fine. It just means that Beverly, my old and crotchety computer, will not blow up as she has been threatening to do; my hard drive won't erase itself; nobody in my family will die while I write my thesis. Right? Knock on wood, for sure.
I had a meeting with my advisor today. The meeting pretty much went like this:
Shelly: There's no thesis, no coherency, and you haven't proven anything yet. You're not going to, if you continue on as you have been. These are merely notes on your corpora research. Consider them a reference from now on. You need to find this book, read it, and come back in a week with at least three pages written... and it needs to have an actual thesis.
Heather: Okay.
Shelly: When are you presenting? April sometime right?
Heather: April 23rd.
Shelly: That gives us a month. Good luck.
Essentially all the work I have done in the past six weeks is nullified. Which leaves me with absolutely nothing written and A MONTH TO DO IT ALL. So basically I am never eating or sleeping again.
(Conveniently, today I also got a job calling people around dinnertime to have them take surveys. I had submitted an application to the survey center a while ago. This would have been helpful about almost three months ago, when I wasn't doing anything of especial importance. I mean, I was, kind of, but I had the time to be flexible and work on a regular schedule... which is why I put in an application at the beginning of the semester; I certainly wasn't expecting to suddenly have to REWRITE 23 pages/6 weeks of work. Also today I had scheduled a census field worker test, hoping to have a summer job between undergrad and grad school. Go figure - of course today would be the one day I needed to read and essentially know an entire book.)
I think the correct phrase here is "take your balls out of your purse", which is exactly what I did: I ran off to the library, hoping they would have this book (thankfully they did) and IMMEDIATELY start reading it. I only recently finished reading and annotating tonight; tomorrow I'm assembling my thoughts and re-reading parts of it in hopes of being able to start writing on Saturday.
my thoughts today while reading
But this is okay. The way I'm looking at it, everyone has their Thesis Disaster story -- this is mine. It's totally fine. It just means that Beverly, my old and crotchety computer, will not blow up as she has been threatening to do; my hard drive won't erase itself; nobody in my family will die while I write my thesis. Right? Knock on wood, for sure.
23 March 2010
Free Things From Census 2010: A Collection
did you know people still use mousepads? i didn't.
and useful things!
KEEP WATCHING THIS SPACE
TO BE UPDATED ACCORDINGLY
22 March 2010
remember: be here now
I don't think I do enough drugs to fully appropriate Ram Dass' 1971 book Remember: Be Here Now. (Nor do I think I will ever get there.) I'm also not especially interested in meditation or yoga. But lately I've been re-reading this book and remembering to calm down; even though I feel like I'm running out of time and things are going way too fast, it's going to be okay.
15 March 2010
exercise science
wish you were here!
It is monsooning here in Southern MA which means that the basement of my parents' house is flooding. We live on top of a very large hill, which means we almost never lose power, but we are prone to flooding; I have lost power more often in college than I ever have at home. Carpeting was probably a poor choice.
FUN FACTS ABOUT SIX GALLONS OF WATER
1 gallon of water is about 8.35 lbs
6 gallons of water is about 50 lbs
It takes about 5 minutes to get 6 gallons of water into our wet/dry vac
which means that if i vacuum for 30 minutes i have effectively lifted 300 lbs of water.
Who needs weightlifting when you can wet vac!
I have blogged about cars way more than I ever anticipated
I drive a 2009 Toyota Corolla named Franz. Needless to say I have not felt very safe lately.
In case you have not been keeping up, Toyota has been going through a whole bunch of recalls on assorted parts in their 2009 and 2010 sedans, including a floor mat which was prone to getting stuck underneath the accelerator pedal, sticking accelerators, and the possibility of increased stopping distances in cold weather because the brake vacuum port could freeze. To translate: Your car could speed out of control... and then possibly not stop! And now there are reports of steering columns locking up! This is certainly safe.
I got Franz in late May. I had been driving him from my apartment to campus and back (plus around the greater Seacoast area) all summer when the floor mat recall occured. I had a new accelerator pedal by Thanksgiving. Shortly after returning to school - which I would like to note is in New Hampshire, a cold place - in January, all these other recall notifications started to come out.
I had noticed that Franz's brakes were prone to occasionally cutting out for seconds at a time. This is a scary thing, but I am also prone to stomping on my brakes (just like Dad!) and sort of assumed that this was a byproduct of stomping on my brakes... until Mom called me in a panic over the brake/accelerator recall. Explains everything! At least I didn't have accelerator problems, that would have been infinitely worse.
But today Franz is getting his brakes and second accelerator fixed. And ironically enough, 2010 Toyota Corolla and Scion xB Earn Insurance Institute for Highway Safety 'Top Safety Pick' Award. Awesome.
In case you have not been keeping up, Toyota has been going through a whole bunch of recalls on assorted parts in their 2009 and 2010 sedans, including a floor mat which was prone to getting stuck underneath the accelerator pedal, sticking accelerators, and the possibility of increased stopping distances in cold weather because the brake vacuum port could freeze. To translate: Your car could speed out of control... and then possibly not stop! And now there are reports of steering columns locking up! This is certainly safe.I got Franz in late May. I had been driving him from my apartment to campus and back (plus around the greater Seacoast area) all summer when the floor mat recall occured. I had a new accelerator pedal by Thanksgiving. Shortly after returning to school - which I would like to note is in New Hampshire, a cold place - in January, all these other recall notifications started to come out.
I had noticed that Franz's brakes were prone to occasionally cutting out for seconds at a time. This is a scary thing, but I am also prone to stomping on my brakes (just like Dad!) and sort of assumed that this was a byproduct of stomping on my brakes... until Mom called me in a panic over the brake/accelerator recall. Explains everything! At least I didn't have accelerator problems, that would have been infinitely worse.
But today Franz is getting his brakes and second accelerator fixed. And ironically enough, 2010 Toyota Corolla and Scion xB Earn Insurance Institute for Highway Safety 'Top Safety Pick' Award. Awesome.
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