Succotash Sunday

A bit of everything's on my mind today. It's all up there mashed together, like a neuron stew. So let's pop the top and dig in, Indiana-Jones-and-the-Temple-Doom style.

Diss. stuff is going okay, I suppose. I recieved comments back from my director. We had a small chat, and I realized that I really don't know very much about how these things are generally structured. At least, I know the basics, but when you get right down to it, I'm not really sure what's going on, totally. Were I back in IL, I'd be able to sit in the department lounge and pull out 6 or 7 dissertations at random to see what they look like. However, I'm not there, which makes my job just a little more difficult.

And so when I talked to my director he had to sit down with me and say things like, chapter one sets up your problem; chapter two is a review of literature; chapter three is your methodology; etc. You have to admit that this information is some basic stuff that I should've known. And so the drafts that I sent over were not doing the jobs that they should have. They were more of a hodge podge of ideas, things that should have been given a little more direction and should have been split up into more than two chapters.

I do have a plan now for my next submissions. And of course that's a good thing. Next step, I guess, is to work on it. I should have a pretty big block of time next weekend. We're going to a volleyball tournament in Bellevue (over by Seattle). That means a quiet hotel room and nothing to do for like 5 or 6 hours. Plus, the 'burbs means decent bookstores, where I might find some helpful stuff. Besides your used bookstore chock full of Daniel Steele, Stephen King, James Patterson and the works, all we have here is a Hastings, a store where the "religion" section carries 90-95 percent Christian books, Bibles, etc. with the Koran and the Torah thrown in for good measure and the "philosophy" section contains books on Buddhism, Taoism, Confucianism, and so on. I find that just a little wierd, as if Christianity is "Religion" all of these other things are "just philosophies."

Found out today that my little bro., Alex, set a date for his wedding. Did I tell you all that he was engaged? It happened over Christmas. Cute story, actually, though I'm not going to tell it. Don't know if you remember him; pretty much my twin but three years younger. He's getting married on Sept. 27 to an absolute cutie-pie sweetheart. And I'm the best man. I was really happy to hear that. I'm really hoping that Jen and I are back in the Midwest by then, but we haven't heard anything definitive.

Been interviewing, with a few prospects, but nothing has panned out. A colleague of mine says that she's surprised. I am too, a little. She's kind of summed up my thinking on the matter, when she says that I have the experience and the education, that I'm pleasant to get along with, and that for these reasons I should be a competetive candidate. It just makes me wonder if I'm doing something wrong in the way that I'm presenting myself. It's very a frustrating and humbling process--especially when you apply for a position that seems perfect for you and you don't even receive a response, not even a rejection letter. What are these places looking for? Who is getting these jobs? What's going on in the mind of search committees when they look at my application materials?

I'm also a little worried about my mom, who slipped and fell on a cruise back in January and is still undergoing physical therapy. It looks like it's going to take quite a bit more time too. She tore her ACL, and she's had some other complications related to her treatment. It's been almost two months, and she's still immobilized. Jen and I are really wondering why and are a little annoyed at how the whole situation is being handled by her doctors. It's pretty frustrating, especially being out here, where it takes 5 hours and just under a grand for us to travel home, which is pretty much the reason that we're looking to move back. So my mom is worried that she won't be able to do much at Al's wedding; she pictures herself going down the aisle in a kneebrace and a walker, which shouldn't even be an issue based on her injury because of how far away the wedding is, but it is an issue because of how it's being handled and so it's just a big mess. Sigh. What are you going to do, though, right? Grin and bear it? Get angry? None of it does any good anyway.

Working with a student who plagiarized last quarter... I'm letting her rewrite the essay she plagiarized. I'm pretty sure it was unintentional plagiarism, and this will be a learning opportunity for her, hopefully. She doesn't get it. Thinks it's about adding in a few quotation marks here and there. Got angry when she saw her final grade. Well, maybe if she came to class she'd understand. It probably came as quite a shock to her when she came to my office to make arrangements for rewriting the essay, and I told her that she needed to come up with her own idea for the essay, that her thesis for the essay was someone else's idea. We'll see how things turn out.

Well, that was thoroughly depressing. :) But in a good way, I suppose.