I would like it to not be 55 degrees and foggy anymore.
But I guess starting in like, 19 days, it won't be! So that's weird.
Speaking of that, I realized this morning that I need to start making phone calls to get my utilities turned on in State College. So that's pretty weird too.
Also, thank you all for the encouragement. My background chapter still has a ways to go, but it is totally shaping up, and I actually kind of like it. This thing might turn out okay after all.
I'm just not really going to get much sleep for the next two weeks. :-P But then I'll be done!!
Wednesday, July 31, 2013
Sunday, July 28, 2013
*sigh*
Man, it so comes in spurts. I wrote a difficult section of my background chapter this morning, and now I just don't want to do it anymore. I finally broke out of the guilt-anxiety-avoidance spiral a little bit - that horrible limbo where you can't make yourself start working on something because it just feels overwhelming and like you can't do it - so it was going relatively well. But now I just have more difficult sections to write, and I just plain don't wanna do it.
Times like these are when I have to find non-difficult sections to write, like just summarizing other people's studies, because that at least keeps the juices flowing and helps me feel productive. Confidence building sections, really. So I guess I should find some more studies to summarize, and maybe that will help me feel better and get back into it.
I also have this problem currently where I keep rationalizing the amount of time I have left. I was going to try to have this chapter done by tonight, but that's looking less and less likely. So now... if I can just get it done sometime this week, I can spend all of next weekend revising my three existing chapters. I think I can do revisions on one chapter per day, if I really buckle down. And that leaves me about a week to write my discussion chapter...
TIME IS DISAPPEARING. And I kind of don't like it one bit, because AAAAACK I HAVE TO FILE THIS THING IN 18 DAYS, but at the same time, there is a weird sense of relief beginning to creep up on me, just the tiniest tiniest bit. I am so in the home stretch. In 19 measly days I will be done. I am so close, and yet so far away...
Times like these are when I have to find non-difficult sections to write, like just summarizing other people's studies, because that at least keeps the juices flowing and helps me feel productive. Confidence building sections, really. So I guess I should find some more studies to summarize, and maybe that will help me feel better and get back into it.
I also have this problem currently where I keep rationalizing the amount of time I have left. I was going to try to have this chapter done by tonight, but that's looking less and less likely. So now... if I can just get it done sometime this week, I can spend all of next weekend revising my three existing chapters. I think I can do revisions on one chapter per day, if I really buckle down. And that leaves me about a week to write my discussion chapter...
TIME IS DISAPPEARING. And I kind of don't like it one bit, because AAAAACK I HAVE TO FILE THIS THING IN 18 DAYS, but at the same time, there is a weird sense of relief beginning to creep up on me, just the tiniest tiniest bit. I am so in the home stretch. In 19 measly days I will be done. I am so close, and yet so far away...
Wednesday, July 24, 2013
fast forward button plz thx
You know the part where I'm done with this dissertation, and with teaching this class, and with packing my stuff, and with moving in to my new place that's 3,000 miles away?
And I don't have to worry about how all that stuff is going to get done in the next, oh, three weeks?
Yeah, can we just skip to that part now?
On the bright side, I have the greatest advisors ever. I got comments back from both of them on my last chapter, and I finally got brave enough to read them (it's scary looking at comments, because what if they have no idea what you were trying to say, or there's some huge fundamental flaw that you completely missed because you were too busy getting the stupid statistical model to work, etc. etc.) and they're just the. greatest. So encouraging and understanding and helpful. Basically along the lines of, "This is a good idea, and I can tell it's not quite there yet, but it's good, so you should do the best you can with it for now, and then keep working on it." And also they keep saying things like, "I'm looking forward to continuing this conversation with you once you're Dr. Fricke." So basically, the best possible way to talk a tired and frustrated grad student down off the ledge!
Oof. I need to get back to work.
And I don't have to worry about how all that stuff is going to get done in the next, oh, three weeks?
Yeah, can we just skip to that part now?
On the bright side, I have the greatest advisors ever. I got comments back from both of them on my last chapter, and I finally got brave enough to read them (it's scary looking at comments, because what if they have no idea what you were trying to say, or there's some huge fundamental flaw that you completely missed because you were too busy getting the stupid statistical model to work, etc. etc.) and they're just the. greatest. So encouraging and understanding and helpful. Basically along the lines of, "This is a good idea, and I can tell it's not quite there yet, but it's good, so you should do the best you can with it for now, and then keep working on it." And also they keep saying things like, "I'm looking forward to continuing this conversation with you once you're Dr. Fricke." So basically, the best possible way to talk a tired and frustrated grad student down off the ledge!
Oof. I need to get back to work.
Sunday, July 14, 2013
weird weekend, weird blog post
I wanted to write a funny post about what a Berkeley weekend I've had, but only parts of it are funny, so I'm not sure how to write it up. On Friday night, I went to my friend G's house, and we brewed up some beer. G has been brewing for something like 2 years now, and I've really appreciated that he's let me sort of glom on to the process and learn a little bit about it. I'm going to start brewing when I move. I would've started earlier, except that I don't have much room in my place, and also each batch makes something like 50 beers, and having two people regularly producing 50 beers within a relatively small friend group is just too much beer.
Anyway, on Friday night, a small group of us were brewing up some raspberry ale (it's raspberry season right now, and the raspberries are plentiful, cheap, and delicious). We were standing in the kitchen, being generally extremely nerdy and philosophical by turns. One friend in particular was talking about how he'd like to re-do the U.S. government. He had some really, really interesting ideas (I think), like adding lobbyists as a fourth branch of government. The thing is, they are the fourth branch of government right now. They're just invisible and unregulated, and it's totally screwing a lot of things up. So we were talking about how to regulate that and bring it out into the open; what you'd have to do to really make the "lobby" an official branch of government.
Then another friend pointed out that this was probably someone's worst nightmare: five Berkeley grad students brewing beer in a kitchen in Oakland, talking about how to restructure the government. (Actually, it's probably my dad's worst nightmare. Love you, Dad.)
But I loved it. It was so fun and interesting. I love thought experiments, and this was a really good one.
Then yesterday, I read an article about a movie that just got released this weekend, Fruitvale Station. The article said you should go see it if for no other reason than the fact that it's by a black director and stars a mostly black cast of really talented actors, and it represents a unique and important point of view that basically never gets portrayed on the big screen. And the article said that the movie was under a limited release this weekend, and that if it did well, it might be released more widely.
Besides that, the only thing I knew about this movie is that it was about Oscar Grant. Oscar Grant was shot in the back by a BART police officer on New Year's Eve the first year I lived in Berkeley. It was a huge deal out here. He was unarmed, and he died a few hours later, and the whole thing resulted in protests and looting in Oakland.
So I knew going in that it had something to do with the incident, which is the story of a black man getting shot and killed by a white police officer, and that it was by a black director (apparently originally from Oakland, although I learned that later) and was starring black actors. That's all I knew.
I felt really weird about the movie. It was indisputably a very good movie. What felt weird about it was that I knew Oscar Grant was going to die. That was kind of the point of the movie. Well, no, the point of the movie was to portray a (fictionalized?) version of the last day of Oscar Grant's life. It's his mom's birthday, he stops by the grocery store to pick up some crab so his grandma can make her famous gumbo for everybody. He takes his daughter to preschool, he drops her off at her cousins' so he can go out with his girlfriend for New Year's Eve. On the one hand, it's just a normal day in the life of a flawed but well-meaning human being. But the movie really felt like it was at pains to make you like Oscar Grant. It felt a little too heavy handed at points, like the scene where a dog gets hit by a car, and he runs out into the street and holds the dog in his arms as it slips away. It's a short, very painful scene, and it's completely obvious that the only point of it is to make us see what a loving person Oscar Grant is. It doesn't connect with any other aspects of the plot. And come to think of it, it's in stark contrast to the scene immediately following it, where Oscar drives out to a parking lot to make a drug deal. I guess that's the point, but it just felt like it was trying too hard sometimes.
It's hard to know how I would have felt about the movie if I didn't know anything about the whole situation. What's interesting is that even though I felt the heavy handedness of it at points, and even though I knew what was going to happen, I was still absolutely horrified when he was shot. That's why I have to say that it was a very good movie. Even though I could feel the mechanics of it a little bit too much - like I could feel it working on me - the reality is that it did work on me, and it's hard to argue with that.
The big takeaway for me was that even if everything leading up to the scene where he gets shot was completely fictionalized, I came away hurting for Oscar Grant and his family, because the point is that he was a person, and even if he was flawed, he certainly didn't deserve to die. And my personal opinion is that even if the guy who shot him did do it completely on accident (which seems somewhat likely, although admittedly it's not like I know that much about it), he should have done longer than 11 months of jail time.
So we came out of the movie, and we decided to go for a beer. It was pretty intense, and we wanted to decompress rather than head straight home by ourselves. We walked around the block, and our normal spot was totally packed and too noisy, so we decided to try Saturn Cafe. Saturn Cafe started in Santa Cruz, and it's a vegetarian and vegan retro-themed diner. Kind of like Steak 'n Shake if it had started in Santa Cruz. Apparently they normally have beer from Bison Brewery, this place in Berkeley that's supposed to do some interesting stuff. So we're looking at the menu, and our waiter comes over, and he's this really cute, skinny, kind of femme little guy, with big plugs in his ears and big black glasses, and a very emphatic way of speaking. We tell him we just saw Fruitvale Station and we want some beer to decompress, and he says, "Well... unfortunately all we have left tonight is PBR." He sees the expressions on our faces and quickly adds, "But we have other alcohol! We have... mimosas." And we all start laughing. And he adds, increasingly awkwardly, "And... champagne. And... Bloody Mary's." So we've just seen a movie about the Oscar Grant fiasco, in a theater full of locals who were here when the whole thing went down, and now we're in a vegetarian diner being offered champagne by a cute little gay boy. What a night.
We ended up "taking a minute to think about it" and then sneaking back outside, then going to Beta Lounge and drinking real beer instead. We talked about the movie a little bit, and lots of other things, and then eventually I came home and went to sleep.
This morning, I heard the verdict from the Trayvon Martin trial, and I'm just feeling really weird about things. It is strange (but important) to realize how much your life is shaped by the color of your skin. I hate it, and it hurts, but it's important to think about it, and to realize how different your entire life would be if you were a different color. Far, far too often it affects the way people look at you, and the way people relate to you, and especially the snap judgments people make of you. When you're white, you don't notice it, because the snap judgments are generally good or neutral ones. But when you're black and there's a gun involved, it damn well seems like you're not going to get the benefit of the doubt.
So there were parts of this weekend that were really fun, but also a lot of it makes me feel a little sick if I really think about it. And now I have to compartmentalize all that stuff and do some work.
Anyway, on Friday night, a small group of us were brewing up some raspberry ale (it's raspberry season right now, and the raspberries are plentiful, cheap, and delicious). We were standing in the kitchen, being generally extremely nerdy and philosophical by turns. One friend in particular was talking about how he'd like to re-do the U.S. government. He had some really, really interesting ideas (I think), like adding lobbyists as a fourth branch of government. The thing is, they are the fourth branch of government right now. They're just invisible and unregulated, and it's totally screwing a lot of things up. So we were talking about how to regulate that and bring it out into the open; what you'd have to do to really make the "lobby" an official branch of government.
Then another friend pointed out that this was probably someone's worst nightmare: five Berkeley grad students brewing beer in a kitchen in Oakland, talking about how to restructure the government. (Actually, it's probably my dad's worst nightmare. Love you, Dad.)
But I loved it. It was so fun and interesting. I love thought experiments, and this was a really good one.
Then yesterday, I read an article about a movie that just got released this weekend, Fruitvale Station. The article said you should go see it if for no other reason than the fact that it's by a black director and stars a mostly black cast of really talented actors, and it represents a unique and important point of view that basically never gets portrayed on the big screen. And the article said that the movie was under a limited release this weekend, and that if it did well, it might be released more widely.
Besides that, the only thing I knew about this movie is that it was about Oscar Grant. Oscar Grant was shot in the back by a BART police officer on New Year's Eve the first year I lived in Berkeley. It was a huge deal out here. He was unarmed, and he died a few hours later, and the whole thing resulted in protests and looting in Oakland.
So I knew going in that it had something to do with the incident, which is the story of a black man getting shot and killed by a white police officer, and that it was by a black director (apparently originally from Oakland, although I learned that later) and was starring black actors. That's all I knew.
I felt really weird about the movie. It was indisputably a very good movie. What felt weird about it was that I knew Oscar Grant was going to die. That was kind of the point of the movie. Well, no, the point of the movie was to portray a (fictionalized?) version of the last day of Oscar Grant's life. It's his mom's birthday, he stops by the grocery store to pick up some crab so his grandma can make her famous gumbo for everybody. He takes his daughter to preschool, he drops her off at her cousins' so he can go out with his girlfriend for New Year's Eve. On the one hand, it's just a normal day in the life of a flawed but well-meaning human being. But the movie really felt like it was at pains to make you like Oscar Grant. It felt a little too heavy handed at points, like the scene where a dog gets hit by a car, and he runs out into the street and holds the dog in his arms as it slips away. It's a short, very painful scene, and it's completely obvious that the only point of it is to make us see what a loving person Oscar Grant is. It doesn't connect with any other aspects of the plot. And come to think of it, it's in stark contrast to the scene immediately following it, where Oscar drives out to a parking lot to make a drug deal. I guess that's the point, but it just felt like it was trying too hard sometimes.
It's hard to know how I would have felt about the movie if I didn't know anything about the whole situation. What's interesting is that even though I felt the heavy handedness of it at points, and even though I knew what was going to happen, I was still absolutely horrified when he was shot. That's why I have to say that it was a very good movie. Even though I could feel the mechanics of it a little bit too much - like I could feel it working on me - the reality is that it did work on me, and it's hard to argue with that.
The big takeaway for me was that even if everything leading up to the scene where he gets shot was completely fictionalized, I came away hurting for Oscar Grant and his family, because the point is that he was a person, and even if he was flawed, he certainly didn't deserve to die. And my personal opinion is that even if the guy who shot him did do it completely on accident (which seems somewhat likely, although admittedly it's not like I know that much about it), he should have done longer than 11 months of jail time.
So we came out of the movie, and we decided to go for a beer. It was pretty intense, and we wanted to decompress rather than head straight home by ourselves. We walked around the block, and our normal spot was totally packed and too noisy, so we decided to try Saturn Cafe. Saturn Cafe started in Santa Cruz, and it's a vegetarian and vegan retro-themed diner. Kind of like Steak 'n Shake if it had started in Santa Cruz. Apparently they normally have beer from Bison Brewery, this place in Berkeley that's supposed to do some interesting stuff. So we're looking at the menu, and our waiter comes over, and he's this really cute, skinny, kind of femme little guy, with big plugs in his ears and big black glasses, and a very emphatic way of speaking. We tell him we just saw Fruitvale Station and we want some beer to decompress, and he says, "Well... unfortunately all we have left tonight is PBR." He sees the expressions on our faces and quickly adds, "But we have other alcohol! We have... mimosas." And we all start laughing. And he adds, increasingly awkwardly, "And... champagne. And... Bloody Mary's." So we've just seen a movie about the Oscar Grant fiasco, in a theater full of locals who were here when the whole thing went down, and now we're in a vegetarian diner being offered champagne by a cute little gay boy. What a night.
We ended up "taking a minute to think about it" and then sneaking back outside, then going to Beta Lounge and drinking real beer instead. We talked about the movie a little bit, and lots of other things, and then eventually I came home and went to sleep.
This morning, I heard the verdict from the Trayvon Martin trial, and I'm just feeling really weird about things. It is strange (but important) to realize how much your life is shaped by the color of your skin. I hate it, and it hurts, but it's important to think about it, and to realize how different your entire life would be if you were a different color. Far, far too often it affects the way people look at you, and the way people relate to you, and especially the snap judgments people make of you. When you're white, you don't notice it, because the snap judgments are generally good or neutral ones. But when you're black and there's a gun involved, it damn well seems like you're not going to get the benefit of the doubt.
So there were parts of this weekend that were really fun, but also a lot of it makes me feel a little sick if I really think about it. And now I have to compartmentalize all that stuff and do some work.
Wednesday, July 3, 2013
I think this chapter is done!!?!??!?!!1!
I seriously need a walk, but I think this chapter is as done as it's going to be for now. I decided to not even bother with the introduction, because I'd rather hurry up and get it to my advisors so they can tell me if it makes any sense before I worry about writing a decent introduction.
So! We are sitting at 103 pages, friends, and this chapter clocks in at 23. Considering that that's minus the as-yet non-existent introduction, but includes 9 pages of the best discussion section I've written yet - it was like pulling teeth, probably because I came up with my own theory of how speech production works that seems to actually account for my own findings and a small slew of findings in the literature - it is a very significant 23 pages for me. I now know exactly what I'm arguing, and I now have to go back and make the rest of this thing jive with what I'm arguing.
Allow me to continue tooting my own horn for a moment, and say that I analyzed all of the data for this chapter and wrote the entire thing in exactly 3 weeks. That is progress. And even if I'm a little behind where I would have liked to be by now, I really think this thing is shaping up, and I might even end up being somewhat happy with it.
Now... let's see what the advisors say. :-P Gonna go for a walk, re-read the whole thing, and then send it off.
THREE DOWN, TWO TO GO. I GOT THIS.
So! We are sitting at 103 pages, friends, and this chapter clocks in at 23. Considering that that's minus the as-yet non-existent introduction, but includes 9 pages of the best discussion section I've written yet - it was like pulling teeth, probably because I came up with my own theory of how speech production works that seems to actually account for my own findings and a small slew of findings in the literature - it is a very significant 23 pages for me. I now know exactly what I'm arguing, and I now have to go back and make the rest of this thing jive with what I'm arguing.
Allow me to continue tooting my own horn for a moment, and say that I analyzed all of the data for this chapter and wrote the entire thing in exactly 3 weeks. That is progress. And even if I'm a little behind where I would have liked to be by now, I really think this thing is shaping up, and I might even end up being somewhat happy with it.
Now... let's see what the advisors say. :-P Gonna go for a walk, re-read the whole thing, and then send it off.
THREE DOWN, TWO TO GO. I GOT THIS.
Monday, July 1, 2013
horseshoes, hand grenades, and dissertations?
Almost. Almost! I almost made it to the 100 page mark today. I really, really wanted to make it, but it's 7:05 and it's time to head over to G's and bottle the beer we started brewing a few weeks ago. I'm about done for the day mentally, anyway.
But that means that tomorrow, I'm going to break the 100 page mark! More importantly, though, it also means that I added 8 pages to the ol' diss today (no small feat), and also that I am closing in on the end of this chapter. Just need to finish up the discussion section and write most of the introduction, which I can do in about a day and a half if I really put my mind to it.
I cannot wait to be done with this chapter. Then I'll have a little over a month to edit, fix, and tie things together, but the bulk of it will be done. Don't worry, you will get a triumphant update when I wrap this one up, probably on Wednesday of this week.
Chugga chugga chugga chugga...
But that means that tomorrow, I'm going to break the 100 page mark! More importantly, though, it also means that I added 8 pages to the ol' diss today (no small feat), and also that I am closing in on the end of this chapter. Just need to finish up the discussion section and write most of the introduction, which I can do in about a day and a half if I really put my mind to it.
I cannot wait to be done with this chapter. Then I'll have a little over a month to edit, fix, and tie things together, but the bulk of it will be done. Don't worry, you will get a triumphant update when I wrap this one up, probably on Wednesday of this week.
Chugga chugga chugga chugga...
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