Productivity! In one form or another.

We've finally got clear, if not warm, weather after about two weeks straight of truly demoralising rain. It has been absolutely miserable, and I want spring/summer to come back posthaste. I have had quite enough of wearing flat boots! I wish to wear dresses and pumps now please, thank you.

I am slowly getting better at paperwork, which is quite an achievement, considering my dislike of it. My gripe is not so much the actual doing of it as the utter paranoia I'm struck with just before sending it out, which means that I have to reopen and check the file at least five times before either printing or emailing for fear that something has happened to it while I wasn't looking directly at it. My neuroses, they grow by the day.

Anyway, in addition to finishing my marking for last term, I assembled my first grant application, albeit with most of the work already done for me by the rest of the NENC. We've gotten money from the British Society for Literature and Science to hold a symposium in the fall, but needed just a bit more to make it feasible, so we've gotten some from Newcastle and I was in charge of applying to Durham. Hopefully Durham will come through as well, because then we will be flush to make it happen! I have never been on an organising committee before, 'tis very exciting.

I've also applied for teaching next year, and am very sad that they aren't running the Victorian module for second years. Thus, I'm hoping for a few groups of Intro to the Novel, and maybe a second-level module on the Romantics if I'm lucky. Department money is tight, as per usual, so fingers crossed.

In other news, I think I have finally solidified a system of research that works for me, which has taken more than long enough, thanks very much. Apparently, I really need to handwrite my notes, then type them up, then have a cut-and-paste extravaganza in order to form an outline, and then write a chapter. I'm sure this is just thrilling to hear about, but I'm kind of relieved to be able to say that I have a method now, so I figure I'd announce it. I was almost ready to resort to index cards for a while, it was getting so chaotic. This is far more compact. And I'm utilising Scrivener's split-screen mode so that I can reference my outline and my chapter all at the same time, all from the same document, woohoo! Technology, I like it.

And on the other end of the spectrum this method also means that I get to use my fountain pens a lot, which I appreciate.

So yes, I have to type like mad tomorrow and then Monday I'm assembling my outline to hand in, and then I'm taking a break from Shelley to write my paper for the 'Transforming Objects' conference, which should be fun. Far more general than the stuff I'm doing now, and a nice break from long-form work.

I think that's all! I must try and get to bed early tonight so I'm not shattered for choir tomorrow. I've been accidentally nocturnal the past week, so here's hoping for a hard reset.


P.S.: The Avengers movie is AMAZING! AHAHA the UK gets to see it a week before the US does and I saw it on opening night and I have so many feelings about it, oh my god. Oh superhero movies, you will always be my favourites, but this one especially is fantastic and just legitimately good as well as fun. I'm probably going to see it again...soon.

Easter vacation is not actually vacation

It is, in fact, an opportunity for me to spend lots of time in the postgrad study rooms when they are really empty. I have a stack of books to get through, and they must be gotten through by the end of the month! I've had a couple of skype meetings with Simon, so it looks like I can leave Goethe behind for a while, so now it's all Shelley all the time. Primarily, I'll be looking at Frankenstein, but Percy's Prometheus Unbound will probably play a significant role as well, once I actually read it and its surrounding material. Reading about the Shelleys is super entertaining, as well--so much scandalous living! The only drawback is that their letters and things aren't archived online, as far as I know, so it's a bit more work to have to read through massive compilations rather than search by key words. Clearly I was meant in this round of research to kick it old school, so that I can gain further appreciation for how much easier my life is with the help of the internet.

Speaking of more books, just before the end of Epiphany Term there was a massive book sale held at one of the college libraries, so I have managed to add to my personal library in unexpected and awesome ways. They were trying to get rid of a whole bunch of stuff, so every book was 50p, so my housemate and I spent a lot of time combing through the chaos to find interesting things. I now have some old editions of the first volume of Carlyle's The French Revolution, and H.G. Wells' The Dream, which I have never read, as well as critical books on industrial culture and structuralism and various other things. My best find was definitely Landes' The Unbound Prometheus, which is an well-respected commentary on technological change, and a must-read for me.

I am already dreading having to move house to wherever I'm going after finishing my degree.

In other news, I have been generously invited to be part of the central organising group of NENC, so I will be blogging there a bit more as well as helping out with organisation of events and things. I'll post here with links about my contributions when they appear. Nicole and I will be talking about our first tentative steps into teaching, and I'm going to do a short essay at some point on an aspect of my research that I haven't decided on yet.

So, many things afoot, though I have to get over my disappointment at the weather going back to rainy and cold after a glorious couple of weeks of nice weather. Grar, hazards of the northeast.