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A new summer job and assorted busy-ness
Things have been pretty busy for me lately! Andy and I made our big move from Providence to New Haven (note to self: I am now too old to not hire movers), my laptop died at about the same time, and a few days later I took off to Victoria for a week to attend…
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Academic travel survival guide
Over the years, I’ve done a lot of traveling for school. I’ve hit the road for conferences and to do research, and I’ve gone to Chicago, Cleveland, D.C., Boston, New York, Dallas, and Philadelphia. No matter where I go, there’s one inviolable constant: I’m always broke.
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A dustyard of graves
I’ve been reading Geoff Dyer’s Out of Sheer Rage: Wrestling with D.H. Lawrence, which is a truly bad-humored memoir about procrastination and D.H. Lawrence and depression and some other things. There seems to be something awesome on every page. I was so delighted by some of the passages that I wanted to share. This, on…
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The best-laid plans …
I’ve been working hard to get the second chapter of my dissertation finished before the end of the month. I wouldn’t say I’m panicking, exactly, but I’m definitely feeling a heightened sense of urgency. It’s been funny to watch all my carefully designed notetaking and citation plans get shoved out the window now that I…
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New York Times contributor: End the university as we know it
Mark Taylor, the chairman of Columbia’s religion department, has published a New York Times opinion piece that’s sure to cause a splash. “End the University as We Know It” argues that the university’s current incarnation is obsolete and irrelevant. Taylor advocates getting rid of the “division of labor” model of academic departments, in favor of…
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Spring rejection season
It’s springtime! Which is great, except it’s also the season of rejections: fellowships, jobs, postdocs, conference presentations. You don’t hear about other people’s rejections, but they’re as much a part of academic life as coffee and procrastination. For all of us in rejection mode, here is something that will help.