So...
...my dissertation is done. WOO!
Fifty-six pages, including titles and bibliography. I'm pretty stoked about it. It's at the point where the things that I see wrong with it are things that I'm not really sure how to fix yet, so I think it's done to the best of my present abilities, and everything else will be a matter of what I have to learn next to be a better scholar.
So that's the good news.
On the flip side, everything else today was completely dysfunctional.
Firstly, the entire university apparently decided that one bank holiday wasn't enough, and that they should have another one. So in addition to being closed down with the rest of England on Monday, they were also completely closed down today. Without telling anyone.
No announcements or warnings, just signs on the doors and posted up online if you actually take the time to look not on the main website, but the library websites. Grar.
I've been kind of irritated with them lately anyway, just because it seems like every convenient computer lab has been closed or under construction this summer, which meant that even if I could find one open with a printer, scanning was out. So today was sort of the icing on the cake, and there may have been some very thorough cursing on my part.
And I was one of the lucky ones, because some of the postgrad deadlines are tomorrow, and not a week from now like mine.
So, after lugging all the books I have to return to the library there and then back to my flat, I managed to track down an independent printing and binding company down the road that does great work and doesn't run on the university's schedule. I ended up queuing with all of the business and communications postgrads who have everything due on the 1st. It took about an hour, but in the end my dissertation was printed and bound and looking very tidy and professional. But, since the university is completely shut up, I can't hand it in until tomorrow.
After that I ran errands like changing my address at the bank, but then I return home to find that my inkwell has, after months of hanging out in my bag with my fountain pen and behaving itself, mysteriously exploded in my bag. Luckily it didn't do much to my dissertation beyond a small smudge on one cover, but I definitely can't use the pocket it was in until the ink dries, and my hand looks like it belongs to a medieval scribe, considering how stained it is.
So yeah, it's been a special day. I had planned on getting everything out of the way today in terms of wrapping things up here, but clearly that was just far too tidy. Hopefully tomorrow will be a bit more together, because along with tonight it is going to be crazy packing madness. And then I am off to Durham! Hurrah!
Showing posts with label rant. Show all posts
Showing posts with label rant. Show all posts
Tuesday, August 31, 2010
Saturday, May 29, 2010
I have been productive, and I don't like PowerPoint.
It's official! My Dickens and Carlyle section is done! I'm pretty pleased with it. I'm sure it will change once my advisor gets a hold of it, but I think it's a solid start, and I definitely worked hard on it. As it turns out, my thesis seems to be transforming into a study of rhetoric, and how machines were used not only for their relevance to society, but because the language and metaphor that they engendered enabled authors to express themselves and their political views. They can symbolize coldness, inhumanity, consumption, industry, and all the Marxist horrors we first think of, but since they also can be, or at least seem alive, they can symbolize animation and galvanism. They are, in a word, malleable, which is what makes them such an appealing rhetorical tool.
Anyway, that's at least what this 4000 words was about. Who knows where the Frankenstein/Bleak House section will take me, but hopefully it will be somewhere useful. My goal is to read the entirety of Bleak House this weekend, and then I can reread Frankenstein before starting in on the nitty-gritty analytical stuff. I'm cutting it a little bit close, but the MA conference that I'm using this latter section for is more geared towards works in progress, so I'm less concerned about all my ideas being totally polished there than I am for the Arts conference.
Speaking of which, I am reacquainting myself with PowerPoint in an effort to make some headway into said Arts presentation. It's been...interesting. I've read in BoingBoing.net and a number of other places different attitudes towards PowerPoint, and I tend to come down on the Edward Tufte end of the spectrum--namely, I dislike it. However, Tufte's stance is that PowerPoint is Evil for reasons deriving from cognitive science and how PowerPoint basically turns your learning process into a shallow, depraved shadow of its former self. I've somewhat circumvented his concerns because I don't want my presentation to be entirely derived from the slide show--mostly it will hold the occasional photograph or direct quote from Dickens or Carlyle, and the real meat of the presentation will be what I have to say. But I tend to agree with Tufte nonetheless not from the cognitive science point of view, but simply because PowerPoint is cramping my style big time.
Trying to format and stylize in PowerPoint has so far been an exercise in frustration. Text doesn't format the way I want it to, because the program believes that the only text I would ever want would be in bullet form. It appears to struggle with the idea that I don't want my text in Arial font, ever, or use its suggested color scheme for a given background image. Or that I'd like to start with a blank slide, and add elements as I see fit, rather than having to decide off the bat that I want a photo on the left, text on the right, and a title. And what if I don't want a title? Well, that's just too bad, you'll have to delete that manually and then push everything else up so you don't have a glaring blank space at the top of the slide.
I get this same problem with all of the free website building things out there. This is partially due to my lack of know-how--I strongly suspect that there are functions on Wordpress and other places that would let me build what I want, or at least get closer to what I want. But ever since learning Dreamweaver, I really just want to upload my handcrafted html files rather than deal with all of the construction through templates within my browser. If I can find a way to do that without buying a domain name and storage space, then I could have a personal website up and running in two days, because it's not like I have a ton of stuff to put up there. I just want it to look and function the way I originally conceived it, and the services that are free tend to be the ones directed at people who want everything done for them with little regard for how and in what style.
This has actually caused me to rethink my position on my top-down, bottom-up discussion with my Dad. We've basically agreed that I'm a Mac user because I'm a top-down type of person--I don't really care what's going on under the hood, so long as the car runs to my specifications and doesn't misbehave. Dad is far more of a bottom-up type; he wants to know everything about what he's using and be able to configure from the nuts and bolts onwards. I still think I'm very much a top-down person for a lot of things, computers in particular. I have no interest in programming, and very little interest in configuration beyond what I can do by poking around in my Preferences window. However, when it comes to stylistic and artistic work, I am clearly a control freak.
Anyway, the point of this whole long rant is that PowerPoint is stifling my creativity, and I am frustrated with it. But I also want to have shiny things to keep people's attention while I talk at them for 20 minutes. I may just end up making lots of picture files and then running a manual slide show instead of using PowerPoint to show them. At least then things will look exactly how I want them to all the time. Bah!
Anyway, that's at least what this 4000 words was about. Who knows where the Frankenstein/Bleak House section will take me, but hopefully it will be somewhere useful. My goal is to read the entirety of Bleak House this weekend, and then I can reread Frankenstein before starting in on the nitty-gritty analytical stuff. I'm cutting it a little bit close, but the MA conference that I'm using this latter section for is more geared towards works in progress, so I'm less concerned about all my ideas being totally polished there than I am for the Arts conference.
Speaking of which, I am reacquainting myself with PowerPoint in an effort to make some headway into said Arts presentation. It's been...interesting. I've read in BoingBoing.net and a number of other places different attitudes towards PowerPoint, and I tend to come down on the Edward Tufte end of the spectrum--namely, I dislike it. However, Tufte's stance is that PowerPoint is Evil for reasons deriving from cognitive science and how PowerPoint basically turns your learning process into a shallow, depraved shadow of its former self. I've somewhat circumvented his concerns because I don't want my presentation to be entirely derived from the slide show--mostly it will hold the occasional photograph or direct quote from Dickens or Carlyle, and the real meat of the presentation will be what I have to say. But I tend to agree with Tufte nonetheless not from the cognitive science point of view, but simply because PowerPoint is cramping my style big time.
Trying to format and stylize in PowerPoint has so far been an exercise in frustration. Text doesn't format the way I want it to, because the program believes that the only text I would ever want would be in bullet form. It appears to struggle with the idea that I don't want my text in Arial font, ever, or use its suggested color scheme for a given background image. Or that I'd like to start with a blank slide, and add elements as I see fit, rather than having to decide off the bat that I want a photo on the left, text on the right, and a title. And what if I don't want a title? Well, that's just too bad, you'll have to delete that manually and then push everything else up so you don't have a glaring blank space at the top of the slide.
I get this same problem with all of the free website building things out there. This is partially due to my lack of know-how--I strongly suspect that there are functions on Wordpress and other places that would let me build what I want, or at least get closer to what I want. But ever since learning Dreamweaver, I really just want to upload my handcrafted html files rather than deal with all of the construction through templates within my browser. If I can find a way to do that without buying a domain name and storage space, then I could have a personal website up and running in two days, because it's not like I have a ton of stuff to put up there. I just want it to look and function the way I originally conceived it, and the services that are free tend to be the ones directed at people who want everything done for them with little regard for how and in what style.
This has actually caused me to rethink my position on my top-down, bottom-up discussion with my Dad. We've basically agreed that I'm a Mac user because I'm a top-down type of person--I don't really care what's going on under the hood, so long as the car runs to my specifications and doesn't misbehave. Dad is far more of a bottom-up type; he wants to know everything about what he's using and be able to configure from the nuts and bolts onwards. I still think I'm very much a top-down person for a lot of things, computers in particular. I have no interest in programming, and very little interest in configuration beyond what I can do by poking around in my Preferences window. However, when it comes to stylistic and artistic work, I am clearly a control freak.
Anyway, the point of this whole long rant is that PowerPoint is stifling my creativity, and I am frustrated with it. But I also want to have shiny things to keep people's attention while I talk at them for 20 minutes. I may just end up making lots of picture files and then running a manual slide show instead of using PowerPoint to show them. At least then things will look exactly how I want them to all the time. Bah!
Monday, December 7, 2009
Grammar rant, ahoy!
Last week of classes! I'm reading Gaskell's biography of Charlotte Bronte, and Haggard's King Solomon's Mines, which looks like a ton of fun. Apparently he wrote it on a bet with his brother that he could write a better book than Treasure Island. I don't know whether he succeeds or not yet, but I am always up for adventure novels a la Stevenson.
I've also set up a meeting with Dr. Salmon on Friday, which I have to prepare for, so there's much reading to do this week. I also ought to decide what my final paper for my Victorian module should be on--I'm leaning towards A Tale of Two Cities, but it might also be useful to look at the working class poetry in relation to Marx. The latter could probably serve as some preliminary research towards my dissertation, so perhaps I should do that. Then again, there are elements to A Tale of Two Cities that could also be mined for dissertation stuff, so...I'm torn. Time to go and download some critical articles or something.
In other news, I ended up having to help Erin grade some freshman papers because some of her fellow classics scholars bailed on her, and all I have to say is: Who is teaching these people before they get here?? The lack of grammatical coherence in a frightening number of those papers was just reprehensible. With some I couldn't even tell what they were trying to say enough to know what was wrong with it. And just to check that I wasn't being overly judgmental, I went home straight after and reread some of my essays from high school, and while that was a fairly shaming experience, I definitely could at least structure my thoughts more coherently at that point than what I was reading from Erin's kids. Run-on sentences, lack of basic things like apostrophes and even a semblance of effort towards proper citation...I could go on. It was rather distressing, to say the least. I think I liked maybe three out of the ten or so I ended up grading.
Luckily, while I felt like screaming by the time we were done, I also had an overwhelming urge to become a tutor just to prevent these types of things from happening. So, I guess I'm entering into the right profession. Man, I really didn't think I was much of a grammar nazi, because I know I make lots of mistakes myself and do grammar entirely by ear and not by rule. And I'm definitely not picky when it comes to proper formatting and bibliographies, because I know just as everyone else does that getting those things right is a pain, but...jeez. It was out of control. Be prepared to endure further yelling when you actually see me in person.
I've also set up a meeting with Dr. Salmon on Friday, which I have to prepare for, so there's much reading to do this week. I also ought to decide what my final paper for my Victorian module should be on--I'm leaning towards A Tale of Two Cities, but it might also be useful to look at the working class poetry in relation to Marx. The latter could probably serve as some preliminary research towards my dissertation, so perhaps I should do that. Then again, there are elements to A Tale of Two Cities that could also be mined for dissertation stuff, so...I'm torn. Time to go and download some critical articles or something.
In other news, I ended up having to help Erin grade some freshman papers because some of her fellow classics scholars bailed on her, and all I have to say is: Who is teaching these people before they get here?? The lack of grammatical coherence in a frightening number of those papers was just reprehensible. With some I couldn't even tell what they were trying to say enough to know what was wrong with it. And just to check that I wasn't being overly judgmental, I went home straight after and reread some of my essays from high school, and while that was a fairly shaming experience, I definitely could at least structure my thoughts more coherently at that point than what I was reading from Erin's kids. Run-on sentences, lack of basic things like apostrophes and even a semblance of effort towards proper citation...I could go on. It was rather distressing, to say the least. I think I liked maybe three out of the ten or so I ended up grading.
Luckily, while I felt like screaming by the time we were done, I also had an overwhelming urge to become a tutor just to prevent these types of things from happening. So, I guess I'm entering into the right profession. Man, I really didn't think I was much of a grammar nazi, because I know I make lots of mistakes myself and do grammar entirely by ear and not by rule. And I'm definitely not picky when it comes to proper formatting and bibliographies, because I know just as everyone else does that getting those things right is a pain, but...jeez. It was out of control. Be prepared to endure further yelling when you actually see me in person.
Tuesday, November 10, 2009
Nothing's happened. I am just compelled to entertain.
It's reading week! And I am reading. Mostly articles for my dissertation--and you know, I'm not actually finding all that much about my topic. At least, not in any specific capacity. Do you know what this means? It means I've found a niche! An unexplored niche! SO. EXCITED. This also means, however, that finding 10-12 sources for my bibliography may be a bit of a challenge. But it's okay! Excited anyway.
Also I just need to get it out there that I got sidetracked into reading a critique of Frederic Jameson, which was rather interesting until the critic decided to noun-ify the word "problematic", and now I cannot take anything else he says seriously. Noun-ifying adjectives is all very well and good when in the service of comical neologisms and/or Calvin and Hobbes, and I can sort of sense that there may be a precedent for it in this particular case, but I do not like when the resulting sentence sounds like the author just forgot a word at the end and slapped a period on anyway. It's stupid, and could easily be avoided. Is "problem" too simple a word? Maybe I should be relieved he didn't go for the even more superfluous "problematical". Grrr.
Can you tell that I had really strong coffee this morning? Because I did. I'm bad at measuring precisely how much instant needs to be put in the mug. Thus, I sort of overdid it. And now want to do about twelve things at once. Thus, the blogging in addition to looking for sources online and in the library catalogue. I'll go over there once I've accumulated a list of stuff to pick up, and then I'm going to Marta's to help her edit an essay and then grab some dinner. Productivity all around!
This was a totally pointless entry. I'm posting it anyway because people should share in my overcaffeinated madness. Also, the whole noun-ifying incident needed to be expressed, and I don't think my flatmates would appreciate me yelling about grammar. So yeah. I'll go back to work now.
Also I just need to get it out there that I got sidetracked into reading a critique of Frederic Jameson, which was rather interesting until the critic decided to noun-ify the word "problematic", and now I cannot take anything else he says seriously. Noun-ifying adjectives is all very well and good when in the service of comical neologisms and/or Calvin and Hobbes, and I can sort of sense that there may be a precedent for it in this particular case, but I do not like when the resulting sentence sounds like the author just forgot a word at the end and slapped a period on anyway. It's stupid, and could easily be avoided. Is "problem" too simple a word? Maybe I should be relieved he didn't go for the even more superfluous "problematical". Grrr.
Can you tell that I had really strong coffee this morning? Because I did. I'm bad at measuring precisely how much instant needs to be put in the mug. Thus, I sort of overdid it. And now want to do about twelve things at once. Thus, the blogging in addition to looking for sources online and in the library catalogue. I'll go over there once I've accumulated a list of stuff to pick up, and then I'm going to Marta's to help her edit an essay and then grab some dinner. Productivity all around!
This was a totally pointless entry. I'm posting it anyway because people should share in my overcaffeinated madness. Also, the whole noun-ifying incident needed to be expressed, and I don't think my flatmates would appreciate me yelling about grammar. So yeah. I'll go back to work now.
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