Despair not...

To all of you dissertators and anybody else struggling with anything for a while now...some words of inspiration and perhaps inspire your courage anew...it certainly helped me gather the determination I lost last week to finish:

"People usually fail when they are on the verge of success. So give as much care to the end as to the beginning."
– Lao-Tzu

Onwards and forwards!

A Quiz & A Dissertating Thought

It's been a while since I did one of those fun, short, silly online quizzes that always make me feel they'll tell me something I didn't quite know about myself or had thought about consciously. Who am I kidding? It's a fun way to kill time at the laptop while taking a dissertating break. Why don't I just get up and walk away? Umm...trust me when I say it's tough to want to ABC it (ABC = Apply Butt to Chair) willingly most of the time. I can stay there and get myself going on the writing but it's the getting there part that is always the toughest. Now that little tid-bit makes this post officially about dissertating as well. The one stone, two birds thing never happened to me before.

Here's the quiz with my results...given that I've been considering getting a layered bob and doing away with my 70s meets 2000s do this is a tad spooky:

Your Ideal Hairstyle:

Layered Bob

What Women's Hairstyle Is Right For You?

Now I need to go get a little more writing in before calling it a day.

July 18 & July 19, 2007

So I completely forgot to post something yesterday. When I remembered it was 11:30 and I had no desire to get up from in front of the TV and log on. So this post combines yesterday's and today's dissertation edition.

July 18: 'Religion' is deployed on both sides but the terms in which it is interpreted and deployed clarify how it organizes the worlds inhabited by the agents on each side.

July 19: This strand of scholarship tells us that religion is important but ignores the scripts that actors seem to follow in claiming their actions as authentically "X". Taking the former approach we can tell that identity is important but how it matters exactly gets lost in the fray.

July 17, 2007

I hope I'm not jinxing myself by throwing this out there but I think I see an overall argument shaping up for the dissertation - one that I hadn't seen before but that now seems not only self-evident but that also holds the promise of the quintessential "the end is the beginning". In other words, heading down this path will likely provide me the option of developing the dissertation into an interesting, full-fledged dissertation project. Insert happy dance here folks! Why? I've been told on more than one occasion by professors with whom I've worked and respect a great deal that a dissertation is a piece of research that will define one's scholarly life for some years to come so the best thing to come out of all of this is a defended dissertation that raises questions to shape a book manuscript. So knock on wood, Mashallah, fingers crossed, throwing some salt over my shoulder for good luck...I think I've found my way there. Yayyyy!

July 16, 2007

All better now and back to working on the dissertation project in full swing. I started with editing the chapter I was working on last week....just to get myself back into the rhythm of it all. In order to fill a gap in this draft I took a look at an earlier iteration - a pre-draft of this chapter really in that it was a class-cum-conference-paper I wrote in fall 2003 even before I wrote my dissertation prospectus. And boy have I come a long way! Rather my argument has. Well okay both really to be perfectly honest :-). I liked feeling that way. The passion and enthusiasm are still there but are now tempered by a certain crispness, consistency, and clarity that was missing earlier. Yay me! Well I can't take all the credit...there are too many others but most pivotal of them all in helping me along this journey is my chair. So, in that spirit, I'm signing off with a "Thankus Maxiumus, Chair....especially for staying engaged and keeping me engaged as well!"

Under the weather

And that's why I haven't been posting. Thanks for the e-mails asking about blog updates. Getting better but still not 100% so expect regular posting - favorite sentence and/or dissertating thoughts - to resume Monday, if not later this week.

July 3, 2007

A piece of advice my accounts teacher gave us in high school a few months before our Senior Cambridge exams was to adhere to the 8x3 model in organizing our time. I might have mentioned this in an earlier post but just in case I didn't - he suggested sleeping for 8 hours, studying for 8 hours, and devoting the other 8 as we liked to play, fun, etc.

Sounds neat IMHO. I've never been quite able to implement it...or perhaps not when I try to do so consciously.

Today was a slightly different story. I ended up implementing the 8x3 more or less. So I slept for about 7 hours and took in an afternoon nap...okay I understand 2 hours is hardly a nap but you know what I mean! Devoted 9 or so hours towards non-sleep-or-dissertating-activities such as preparing for a 4th of July lunch which included cleaning up and dessert (I'm taking care of desserts only because a full-fledged meal is something I'm not confident enough to handle unless it's really close friends and family who won't let me live down a disaster but at least I won't feel too awful just in case it happens; on the record I've only had one disaster so far since I've been cooking and it was scrambled eggs.), an AM workout, groceries, a late lunch at a restaurant with my parents who closed down early today, etc. And, yes....dissertating took up about 6 hours which included planning the remainder of the current chapter (I'd been floundering a bit) and writing up a decent chunk. It wasn't 6 hours straight but that's what it amounted to. That I didn't realize it until I started writing this post made for a very pleasant surprise.

In other words, yay today (Mashallah, knock on wood, throwing a pinch of salt over my shoulder) except for some mild annoyances on the personal front!

I'm taking the day off tomorrow for the most part but July 5th is when I'm going to aim for an encore. Well sans the major cleaning bonanza. Stay tuned for that update....I'm rooting for me pulling off the 8x3 consciously this time.

Okay off to work on the pineapple semifreddo that I'm making for tomorrow...yes I know it's past 11:30 pm but it's supposed to stay in the freezer for at least 8 hours and there is no way I'm waking up super early in the morning to make it so that it's ready in time.

July 2, 2007

Dissertating thought: IMHO one of the biggest hurdles I face everyday when it comes to working on The Dissertation Project is sitting down to write. Heck...it's a challenge after taking a break for lunch. It's gorgeous and sunny outside and I can think of a million other things that would provide me with nothing less than instant gratification and that would be less painful than pressing my brain to think a thought through all the way instead of stopping when my head begins to hurt. Fellow dissertators and writers will be more than familiar with this - it's not really a headache but more of an "Oh my God am I overwhelmed and see this developing into a billion directions but don't quite know how the dots connect or which dots to put in to connect in the first place" feeling. But I digress. Point being that it's so difficult to do and having done it repeatedly (which is putting it mildly) doesn't quite make it easier. Possibly because there is no clear-defined end in sight. In that every productive writing day means finding the will and ability to repeat it endlessly. And you don't quite switch off unlike some other kind of work which has a relatively short-term duration with a defined beginning and end. In other words, tough as nails. Some days are good, some days are bad, others rock in terms of output but every single day means waking up and finding it in your self to face a blank screen that must be filled up. Hmm....or is this just me and my id? Sure hope not.

I also wonder if it's akin to giving birth like everyone says....the process of active labor is rarely fun but you look upon your offspring with pride and joy. Granted my "little bundle of joy" won't have that nice baby smell nor will it have the smile that makes all the sleepless nights and heartache pale in comparison. But hopefully there will be something about this, as others say, that will feel at least somewhat magical at the end. Check back with me in a couple of months and I'll have my answer to that one (Inshallah).

Ciao for now!