Category Archives: PhuD

More like the two weeks that were, actually. Two days after my defense, we headed out to house-hunt in Syracuse. We made a road trip out of it, of course, and stopped at the RV/MH Hall of Fame in Elkart, … Continue reading →

I defended the dissertation this afternoon. It was an unexpectedly satisfying exercise, and I’m lucky to have worked with this particular committee. I’m not quite sure what else to say about the experience at the moment. I can tell you, … Continue reading →

Or, what tends to happen when people who never take on small projects need to distract themselves*. Bodybuilding Figure competition Weekly triathloning Marathoning Weeks-long wilderness expeditions with only a knife and a kayak Daily gourmet cooking 100% local food sourcing … Continue reading →

One nice thing about writing these blogging-and-professionalization posts is the correspondence it’s sparked. One smart MA student at NIU asked a few questions that reminded me of some posts I wrote back in early 2005. That semester, I was taking … Continue reading →

I’m never sure if anyone reads these posts on grad student-y things, since they’re rarely commented on, but I just got two wonderfully encouraging emails, which indicates that people do. One of those asked what the market looked like this … Continue reading →

I’m still pondering the benefits and perils of blogging as a grad student, aside from the mentoring offered by other bloggers. Conferences are one of the arenas graduate students learn to operate in as we move toward entering the profession, … Continue reading →

I started the earliest incarnation of this blog, Areté, at the beginning of my second semester of Master’s coursework in January 2003. So to some extent, it’s become a (selective) record of what progress through advanced degrees in Rhetoric, Scientific, … Continue reading →

Since I began this degree, I’ve followed the annual flurry of job market posts and articles with great interest. I also read whatever applicable books I could find (see Getting What You Came For, Surviving Your Academic Job Hunt, and … Continue reading →

Our first night in San Francisco, we met up with a former-professor-turned-friend for dinner. In her usual unflinching way, she turned to me and said, “So, your blog stopped being about anything right about the time the market opened.” I … Continue reading →

Being on the market has pushed me into thinking more than usual about what constitutes ‘success’ and what the necessary conditions for such a thing might be. And that’s likely all I’ll say about this for the next few months, … Continue reading →