So I just checked my e-mail and my third reader for my thesis (the one from outside the department) might have to back out. She has a job interview and can't make the thesis defense. She wanted to move it to a week earlier. My advisor went to bat for me in a major way. She sent this lengthy letter telling her how hard I'd been working and how I was aiming to graduate on time. The letter was super terse and direct. I was so happy she was being such a strong advocate on my behalf. Then she sent me a note telling me not to worry and just to keep working.
After yesterday's meeting with her, I was pretty discouraged about my writing until she sent an e-mail to me (after the one to the third reader). Here's a bit of it:
"I hope you weren't too dismayed after our meeting yesterday. There was lots of purple [reference to her notations], but that wasn't necessarily a "bad" thing. I think you're on the right track, and the content of your mytho-poetic chapter was good and appropriate for your purpose. In case you haven't already figured it out (which you probably have), one of my goals is to help a very good writer become an extremely polished writer--and to help you write something which ten years from now you will be proud of."
I needed to hear those words. Now I've just got to finish the damned thing. Thanks to you all for your support as well!
Showing posts with label Thesis. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Thesis. Show all posts
Thursday, March 10, 2005
Thursday, March 03, 2005
Half way there!
I met with my advisor yesterday regarding my thesis. I handed her my review of literature chapter (24 pages), my Mytho-Poetic chapter (14 pages), my works cited (4 pages), and an outline of my biographical framework. Only about twenty more pages to go, and then I'll be done. I'm actually enjoying my research, but it is still much more fun to talk about than to write about. I'm going to use the last two lines of the following poem in my title. I thought it appropriate as my thesis is about the ambiguity of "Goblin Market." Here's the poem (this is one of my favorite of her works):
Winter: My Secret
Christina Georgina Rossetti
I tell my secret? No indeed, not I:
Perhaps some day, who knows?
But not today; it froze, and blows and snows,
And you're too curious: fie!
You want to hear it? well:
Only, my secret's mine, and I won't tell.
Or, after all, perhaps there's none:
Suppose there is no secret after all,
But only just my fun.
Today's a nipping day, a biting day;
In which one wants a shawl,
A veil, a cloak, and other wraps:
I cannot ope to everyone who taps,
And let the draughts come whistling thro' my hall;
Come bounding and surrounding me,
Come buffeting, astounding me,
Nipping and clipping thro' my wraps and all.
I wear my mask for warmth: who ever shows
His nose to Russian snows
To be pecked at by every wind that blows?
You would not peck? I thank you for good will,
Believe, but leave the truth untested still.
Spring's an expansive time: yet I don't trust
March with its peck of dust,
Nor April with its rainbow-crowned brief showers,
Nor even May, whose flowers
One frost may wither thro' the sunless hours.
Perhaps some languid summer day,
WHen drowsy birds sing less and less,
And golden fruit is ripening to excess,
If there's not too much sun nor too much cloud,
And the warm wind is neither still nor loud,
Perhaps my secret I may say,
Or you may guess.
Winter: My Secret
Christina Georgina Rossetti
I tell my secret? No indeed, not I:
Perhaps some day, who knows?
But not today; it froze, and blows and snows,
And you're too curious: fie!
You want to hear it? well:
Only, my secret's mine, and I won't tell.
Or, after all, perhaps there's none:
Suppose there is no secret after all,
But only just my fun.
Today's a nipping day, a biting day;
In which one wants a shawl,
A veil, a cloak, and other wraps:
I cannot ope to everyone who taps,
And let the draughts come whistling thro' my hall;
Come bounding and surrounding me,
Come buffeting, astounding me,
Nipping and clipping thro' my wraps and all.
I wear my mask for warmth: who ever shows
His nose to Russian snows
To be pecked at by every wind that blows?
You would not peck? I thank you for good will,
Believe, but leave the truth untested still.
Spring's an expansive time: yet I don't trust
March with its peck of dust,
Nor April with its rainbow-crowned brief showers,
Nor even May, whose flowers
One frost may wither thro' the sunless hours.
Perhaps some languid summer day,
WHen drowsy birds sing less and less,
And golden fruit is ripening to excess,
If there's not too much sun nor too much cloud,
And the warm wind is neither still nor loud,
Perhaps my secret I may say,
Or you may guess.
Thursday, February 24, 2005
Big Mouth Hungry! EAT SMURFS!
You are sitting in your office waiting for one of your students to come to her conference with you. She's the only no show so far - well, you could count the student who told you yesterday that conferences would not be conveneint for him as he was going to the cities and could you please log on to D2L so that you can meet with him online to discuss his paper that he'll probably send as a microsoftworks document, so you can't read it anyway, but wait, he never sent it to begin with, and he wasn't terribly disturbed by the low grade on his first paper, so you don't even consider him. You are glad she didn't show up because it means you can work on your thesis revision and that chapter you haven't finished on your thesis. You are still a little anxious after the meeting you had with your advisor yesterday - you know you are behind and it bothers you; you just don't want her to call that to your attention. You want to be done with the damned thing, but that bout of chronic fatigue syndrome hits you every time you sit down to your computer to work. You can talk forever about CGR. You love to talk forever about CGR. "Goblin Market" is probably the one poem you really get. But when you sit down to your thesis, all the interest and energy flows out of you. You forget how to write a paper. No. Forget about forgetting how to write a paper; you forget how to write. You are still scarred (you almost wrote scared, but either works) after your experience writing papers for American lit last semester. You can still string together words, but suddenly people tell you you are illogical, that you make no sense. You know what you mean, but that counts for shit.
You remember reading the first part of a biography on Leonard Bernstein (you never got past the first six chapters because you have trouble finishing things). You remember how he attended some latin school for brilliant children of brilliant parents. You remember the story of how he wrote a brilliant paper the night before it was due, and how his teachers gushed at how innovative he was and how he took such an unorthodox approach to the assignment, that he received high marks. You wish you could sit at the piano and play the way he was playing at 10.
You think of your friend in New York who seems to live some sort of charmed life. Who can live on three hours of sleep a night and accomplishes more in five hours than you do in two weeks. Who writes cookbooks and caters meals for Oprah, and had a lion and a peacock for a pet when he was a child.
You are always tired. You don't get any exercise. You don't always get your work done. You always have an excuse. You fall asleep at your computer. You get a sore throat (You make sure to cough and sniffle when you tell your advisor this to add verisimilitude to your story. The story IS true, but you still feel bad for using the excuse). You had much more fun writing your paper for world novel this week. You parodied Jamaica Kincaid's writing style, writing in second person. As you write in the same mode now, you feel like a counterfeit. You enjoy this mode more, because it feels lazy. When you read your paper in class two nights ago, one person applauded you for it. Another said "funny." You were proud. You felt deflated when the professor questioned your emotional response to the book you parodied. You felt suddenly like you got the answer wrong, that your sense of well-being hinged on getting the right response. But you've always felt that way. You get tired of that, and always resolve not to care so much, but you still do. You feel more that your thesis is being written for your advisor's benefit than for yours. You realize of course that this is a problem, because how can you write with conviction about something when its written under the pressure of needing to do it for someone else? You try and convince yourself that your knowledge of this will be the thing that pushes you through it, and it will eventually. But you're not buying it right now.
Then your 4:00 appointment arrives - the student from Macedonia - and as you read through his paper (which should be a drudge because you are marking grammatical errors every three words, but isn't because his communication is clearer than most of your other students' - heck, it's clearer than your thesis) you begin to get lost his story of his father teaching him how to repair a gold ring. You are caught up in his story and can see this student's father sitting with him at a work bench teaching him how to solder, file, and polish. This student represents something for you, but you don't completely know what it is. You are glad you didn't send him packing to 101 for non-natives. Maybe he represents your desire for independence as well as connection (but the minute you write that, you don't believe it). Maybe you just wish you had a cool accent and not the non-accent you tried so hard to have so that you didn't have a Minnesotan one.
You think about a record your parents had when you were a child that described the ministry of the apostle Paul from the book of Acts(you feel embarrassed that you just admitted to something so churchy, but then you don't really care either). You remember the actor speaking for Paul recounting a vision he had one night where he saw a man standing there saying: "Come over to Macedonia and help us." You remember the meaning of the vision, but for some reason it registers differently now. Every time you see your student, you think of this dream of Paul's.
You wish you were in Macedonia.
You remember reading the first part of a biography on Leonard Bernstein (you never got past the first six chapters because you have trouble finishing things). You remember how he attended some latin school for brilliant children of brilliant parents. You remember the story of how he wrote a brilliant paper the night before it was due, and how his teachers gushed at how innovative he was and how he took such an unorthodox approach to the assignment, that he received high marks. You wish you could sit at the piano and play the way he was playing at 10.
You think of your friend in New York who seems to live some sort of charmed life. Who can live on three hours of sleep a night and accomplishes more in five hours than you do in two weeks. Who writes cookbooks and caters meals for Oprah, and had a lion and a peacock for a pet when he was a child.
You are always tired. You don't get any exercise. You don't always get your work done. You always have an excuse. You fall asleep at your computer. You get a sore throat (You make sure to cough and sniffle when you tell your advisor this to add verisimilitude to your story. The story IS true, but you still feel bad for using the excuse). You had much more fun writing your paper for world novel this week. You parodied Jamaica Kincaid's writing style, writing in second person. As you write in the same mode now, you feel like a counterfeit. You enjoy this mode more, because it feels lazy. When you read your paper in class two nights ago, one person applauded you for it. Another said "funny." You were proud. You felt deflated when the professor questioned your emotional response to the book you parodied. You felt suddenly like you got the answer wrong, that your sense of well-being hinged on getting the right response. But you've always felt that way. You get tired of that, and always resolve not to care so much, but you still do. You feel more that your thesis is being written for your advisor's benefit than for yours. You realize of course that this is a problem, because how can you write with conviction about something when its written under the pressure of needing to do it for someone else? You try and convince yourself that your knowledge of this will be the thing that pushes you through it, and it will eventually. But you're not buying it right now.
Then your 4:00 appointment arrives - the student from Macedonia - and as you read through his paper (which should be a drudge because you are marking grammatical errors every three words, but isn't because his communication is clearer than most of your other students' - heck, it's clearer than your thesis) you begin to get lost his story of his father teaching him how to repair a gold ring. You are caught up in his story and can see this student's father sitting with him at a work bench teaching him how to solder, file, and polish. This student represents something for you, but you don't completely know what it is. You are glad you didn't send him packing to 101 for non-natives. Maybe he represents your desire for independence as well as connection (but the minute you write that, you don't believe it). Maybe you just wish you had a cool accent and not the non-accent you tried so hard to have so that you didn't have a Minnesotan one.
You think about a record your parents had when you were a child that described the ministry of the apostle Paul from the book of Acts(you feel embarrassed that you just admitted to something so churchy, but then you don't really care either). You remember the actor speaking for Paul recounting a vision he had one night where he saw a man standing there saying: "Come over to Macedonia and help us." You remember the meaning of the vision, but for some reason it registers differently now. Every time you see your student, you think of this dream of Paul's.
You wish you were in Macedonia.
Thursday, February 10, 2005
I'm not sure why.
Every time I click on New Post here on blogger lately, my mind goes completely blank. And nothing seems important enough to write about. Oh, wait! I just thought of something. Last night after meeting with JoAnna about my thesis (which is about 1/4th of the way done!!!!!) I drove up to the city and met my sister Becky at Cafe Con Amore Coffee Shop in St. Paul. I'd read that the local chapter of Amnesty International was having their bi-weekly meeting there, so we attended. They were an interesting bunch to say the least - very nice people (one real cutie too named Margaret-she kept Beck and me in the loop). This group has adopted two prisoners of conscience from Algeria who've been arrested, had their trial dates postponed, and now have simply disappeared. They're working to get these prisoners a fair trial as well as fair treatment in the prison that they're in. We were supposed to have the coordinator for the St. Paul chapter talk about what's happening in the Sudan (http://www.amnestyusa.org/countries/sudan/index.do), but he also announced that he'd been offered a job in Seattle, so the group had to make some administrative decisions. I'd like to see what the Minneapolis chapter (which looks a bit larger) is like.
If you want to hear what's going on in Nepal (another hot spot at the moment), just ask Sween (isn't it your student, Katy?) to tell you about her comp. student who has no way to contact her parents because the king has shut down the country. She can't get back to see them, and they can't fly out of the country to see her. Troubling. Very troubling.
In other news, I stayed over night in Kato Tuesday to work on my Review of Literature chapter of my thesis (Note to Chad: Thanks for letting me crash on your couch Tuesday night - it was far more comfortable than my office floor would have been). After showering, I still felt like a skank in my sweaty tee-shirt and old socks. I was unshaven and a complete mess. So I went to Target and bought some toiletries so I could feel somewhat more human before teaching that afternoon. As I didn't want to make a fool of myself shaving, brushing my teeth, and putting on deodorant in Armstrong's smelly bathrooms, I decided to get ready at Target's WC. I felt (and must have looked) like a homeless man lathering up my neck in the bathroom - it was a new low for me. Next I went to Old Navy to buy a shirt so I could ditch the stanky tee-shirt and sweater. I bought a yellow short sleeve number that shouts "think spring." It looks even better now that I have a sticker on the pocket from Jess - it's a Hello Kitty! inspired seal holding up a yellow card with the number ten. At the bottom in red it says, "Perfect 10" See? I knew there was a reason I loved Jess. Jess, will you bear my children?
What's everybody doing Saturday? What? What? The bloggers are getting together in the cities to sing karaoke at Laura's bar? I thought so.
If you want to hear what's going on in Nepal (another hot spot at the moment), just ask Sween (isn't it your student, Katy?) to tell you about her comp. student who has no way to contact her parents because the king has shut down the country. She can't get back to see them, and they can't fly out of the country to see her. Troubling. Very troubling.
In other news, I stayed over night in Kato Tuesday to work on my Review of Literature chapter of my thesis (Note to Chad: Thanks for letting me crash on your couch Tuesday night - it was far more comfortable than my office floor would have been). After showering, I still felt like a skank in my sweaty tee-shirt and old socks. I was unshaven and a complete mess. So I went to Target and bought some toiletries so I could feel somewhat more human before teaching that afternoon. As I didn't want to make a fool of myself shaving, brushing my teeth, and putting on deodorant in Armstrong's smelly bathrooms, I decided to get ready at Target's WC. I felt (and must have looked) like a homeless man lathering up my neck in the bathroom - it was a new low for me. Next I went to Old Navy to buy a shirt so I could ditch the stanky tee-shirt and sweater. I bought a yellow short sleeve number that shouts "think spring." It looks even better now that I have a sticker on the pocket from Jess - it's a Hello Kitty! inspired seal holding up a yellow card with the number ten. At the bottom in red it says, "Perfect 10" See? I knew there was a reason I loved Jess. Jess, will you bear my children?
What's everybody doing Saturday? What? What? The bloggers are getting together in the cities to sing karaoke at Laura's bar? I thought so.
Wednesday, January 12, 2005
"Too, too funny"
Sorry I haven't posted in a few days. I'd like to say it was because I was diligently working on my thesis, but unfortunately I can't. Note to all MA lit. people out there: "Do NOT follow my example. I am quite possibly one of the worst students in the history of academia. I'm the hackiest of the hacks."
So last night I was watching Run Lola Run ("Bitte Manni, bitte.") instead of reading the millionth essay on consumer power and "Goblin Market." During the opening I was reminded that Lola's boyfriend Manni is played by actor Moritz Bleibtreu. This reminded me of a dream I once had:
I was in Europe (who knows what country? Probably Germany), at a bar with some friends. Well, we're sitting there having a good time when in walks Gwyneth Paltrow wearing a man's black leather jacket (in which she looks very sexy). She asks me if I want to hang out with her and some of her friends. So I go to another bar with her. We're laughing and joking and drinking and talking. Then Gwyneth looks across the table at me. She laughs, smiles, pats my hand with hers and says (in that pretentious, prep school accent she used in The Talented Mr. Ripley), "Oh, Moritz! You're too, too funny."
I then woke up laughing, and was called Moritz by my friends for weeks.
Okay, now back to Consumer Power and the Utopia of Desire in Rosetti's "Goblin Market"
So last night I was watching Run Lola Run ("Bitte Manni, bitte.") instead of reading the millionth essay on consumer power and "Goblin Market." During the opening I was reminded that Lola's boyfriend Manni is played by actor Moritz Bleibtreu. This reminded me of a dream I once had:
I was in Europe (who knows what country? Probably Germany), at a bar with some friends. Well, we're sitting there having a good time when in walks Gwyneth Paltrow wearing a man's black leather jacket (in which she looks very sexy). She asks me if I want to hang out with her and some of her friends. So I go to another bar with her. We're laughing and joking and drinking and talking. Then Gwyneth looks across the table at me. She laughs, smiles, pats my hand with hers and says (in that pretentious, prep school accent she used in The Talented Mr. Ripley), "Oh, Moritz! You're too, too funny."
I then woke up laughing, and was called Moritz by my friends for weeks.
Okay, now back to Consumer Power and the Utopia of Desire in Rosetti's "Goblin Market"
Wednesday, December 15, 2004
The Beginnings of Things
The first words I heard out of anyone's mouth this morning were, "Peachy keen, Jelly Bean!" I put it in pink so you could get an idea of the way in which it was delivered. It was said by the Kwik Trip girl behind the counter. I was buying my breakfast burrito, a mini 2% milk, and a small egg nog (my seasonal indulgence). I asked this woman how she was doing, and that was her perky response. I just stared at her. Then I asked if I could have a bag. She looked at me and said "No." Then she giggled and said "Just Kidding!" Why do I talk to people? Anyway, this blog is dedicated to her, because Lord love anyone who can work a crap job like that and still manage a spring in their step and a song in their ever-loving heart.
I'm finished with everything for the semester, but now the heavy stuff is starting. You may be quoting me in pink in your blogs as I immerse myself in a sea of poetry by Christina Rossetti next semester. Katy has already expressed her opinion to me when she said: "When ever you mention Christina Rossetti, your eyes light up, and you talk on and on forever and it's really boring....But it's cute."
I love Katy.
At any rate, these are the two Christinas in my life this year:
and 
(Notice the obvious similarity between the two).
Christmas Break (Sorry, Donna - I'm not very PC) assignment for Christina (Rossetti) Olson:
I want you to look at a copy of "Goblin Market" and write a parody of this epic poem.
I'm finished with everything for the semester, but now the heavy stuff is starting. You may be quoting me in pink in your blogs as I immerse myself in a sea of poetry by Christina Rossetti next semester. Katy has already expressed her opinion to me when she said: "When ever you mention Christina Rossetti, your eyes light up, and you talk on and on forever and it's really boring....But it's cute."
I love Katy.
At any rate, these are the two Christinas in my life this year:
and (Notice the obvious similarity between the two).
Christmas Break (Sorry, Donna - I'm not very PC) assignment for Christina (Rossetti) Olson:
I want you to look at a copy of "Goblin Market" and write a parody of this epic poem.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
