State of the Diss for 2014

The conclusion/introduction is the hardest part to write? We'll see. First draft of Chapter 5 is away, including the rather ingenious reference to Shel Silverstein's "The Little Boy and Old Man". I hope I can keep that bit. Chapters 1-3 need minor revisions, and Chapter 4 probably needs one more overhaul. I'm hoping one last bootcamp in the library will take care of most everything here. Once that's all done, then I just need to compile some appendices and submit the whole thing one (I hope) last time. Fingers crossed....

Hard Lesson and a Rant

I think one of the hardest lessons there is to learn as a student is that sometimes it is good-necessary to make major cuts in a paper. As I continue to revise (Chapter 1 down, 2-4 to go), I am reminded of how hard this really is. I think that this lesson didn't really hit home until graduate school, and several years into it at that (I'm currently in year 8-wince). With Chapter 1, there was a lot of cutting this time around, but I had plenty to fill it in with. The chapter is now more focused and hopefully sets up the rest of the dissertation much better. Starting with Chapter 2, I am faced with the possibility of cutting out 5 pages with several possibilities for replacement. The problem is that the best of these options would need to be researched and drafted from scratch. We shall see what happens with that.

This morning I was reminded of that someone needs to write a handbook of coffee shop etiquette which would become required reading for anyone who wishes to bring a laptop with them and work on it. A project for after the dissertation is completed perhaps. In my considerable experience in Milwaukee coffee shops, Anodyne is one of the best places to go for just about any reason (caffeine, write-read, hanging out...). One major reason for this preference is that the people who tend to patronize this place understand the as of yet unwritten rules of decent coffee shop behaviour. That said, the jerk who blasted loud music without headphones for almost five minutes while apologizing but doing nothing to lower the volume was an unpleasant reminder that a lot of people lack manners and-or common sense in public situations. If he was going to do that, he should have known he'd be less annoying at the Colectivo down the road (it's a much bigger establishment, so it wouldn't have been so obvious). I know that sometimes the sound comes on louder than anticipated, but what's the point in apologizing for an extended period of time while doing nothing to correct the problem

Aftermath of Chapter 4 1st draft

You'd think that it would be a relief that I got a rough draft of the final full chapter done. But all I can do now is try to work out how long it's going to take me to revise chapter 1 (answer: quite a while), outline the conclusion (aka Chapter 5), and revise chapter 4 when I get it back from readers.  Will this never end?

I remember being told as an undergrad (or maybe was it high school?) that writing the introduction to a paper was the hard part. Not so with Chapter 4. The conclusion was the trouble spot. I think part of the problem is that I was getting tired and I didn't want to just cut-paste-and-thesuarus the introductory paragraphs of the chapter. I justified walking away from it by telling myself that the arguments might change a little bit in editing and revising, so it's ok to leave it for now.

I was reminded how dreadful it can be to go back and look at something that I wrote but haven't looked at in almost a year. Chapter 1 = ouch. I knew it was going to change significantly once 2-4 were mostly done, but still. I should have known from the scare I seem to have given my final reader with the amount of summarizing and periodic sentences used. I'll be happy if I get that all fixed up by Christmas.

With a Chapter 1 rewrite and the likely 2+ rounds of revision on Chapter 4 looming, my holiday season is once again going to be spent behind a computer and/or buried behind piles of library books. And this is the shortest holiday season that's possible. I'm defining 'holiday season' as Thanksgiving week-New Year's. As has been pointed out by newspeople, the time between Thanksgiving and Christmas aka holiday shopping season is as short as it can be this year. At least most of my shopping was done by Oct.8, my last day in the UK.

Now to figure out when to draft and-or cut-paste that cofnerence paper together...

Back Home

Most people know this, but I've finally made it back to Milwaukee. Today and tomorrow will be spent getting myself back in order, and on Monday it'll be back to Marquette to continue getting myself back together. One of the major things I need to do is re-gather my library books. This time though I'm going to try to stick to only the ones I'm currently working with. We shall see how that goes.

It's hard to believe that I've been gone nearly half of the semester. It feels like I've missed out on so many things going on on campus, and around town in general.  For example, I walked into Anodyne this morning (one of my favorite places to read-write) and it looks half empty because they have moved the roaster and equipment over to the new store already. I knew this was going on, but it looks so different. Likewise, when I got back to my apartment yesterday, I discovered that the management had redecorated the entryway with new carpet and a new color on the walls. It took me a minute to realize why things looked different. This I did not know was going to be done while I was away.

Don't get me wrong, I had a great time in the UK, and it was a once in a lifetime opportunity to be able to spend that time in the manuscript libraries. However, back in the real world, I'm going to have to spend time doing paperwork, catching up on meetings, putting together a conference paper, going back to the gym (any bets on if I can still walk on Tuesday?), and finding out what everyone's been up to in my absence. Then there's the real work of trying to come up with an argument out of the 100s of photos and entire notebooks of notes, not to mention researching any ideas that come from said notes and pictures. 

Now for a few random observations generally regarding culture shock:

1) I have no idea when the last time was that I have gone 5 weeks without tv. There was a physical tv in my London studio, but as previously mentioned the only station it got was "security camera in stairwell and hallway". I have missed several episodes of shows that I like, and now I have to figure out how to catch up. On the other hand, I might still have to follow the YouTube channel I discovered staring Sylvester the Talking Cat.  I recommend it (not for kids though, since the kitty likes to curse). A time or two on the drive home yesterday, when about to be stuck in traffic or behind stupid drivers, I caught myself thinking in Sylvester's voice "Fuuuu**!". And yes, I do tend to curse in my head, a lot more than I do out loud.

2) Food. I had none in the fridge. This was intentional; I cleaned out the fridge before I left. Now though, I have to restock, and the realization that I now have access to some things I missed (most anything by Morning Star Farms for example), and I will be missing things that I could get there (Irn-Bru for example).

3) Computer stuff. I used Mom's computer while in London (Thanks Mom!). It had a European keyboard, so now I have to re-remember where the @ is, and that spell-check now needs to be payed slightly more attention. On the other hand, I no longer have to deal with Windows 8. That revision of the Windows platform is extremely irritating for a non-mobile device user. I have a smart-phone, but even so, I do not like Windows 8 on a computer, and I bet I wouldn't like it on its intended devices either.

This post is getting long, so I will conclude for now with this final note: I will  continue to chronicle scholarly and other endeavours here.  So once again, to be continued....

Last Post from the UK

Tomorrow morning I will be heading to the airport, and I should be back in the US mid-afternoon (local time). Yesterday (Tuesday) was the last day of research. I was back at the British Library Monday and yesterday to recheck a few things for some ideas I came up with. It's interesting that I was able to see everything on my list the first time I was at the library, but now one of them has a super special permission tag on it. It's possible that this particular book is undergoing repair or is being put into a display, but I wonder...

There was one time early on when I went to the desk to get a book, and the person who handed it over to me looked at the request slip and said that it was a little strange that the real book was out when there was a microfilm, but then they looked at the slip again and apparently the microfilm had gone missing. If someone found that microfilm, then I must have gotten really lucky because being able to see a manuscript that's been reproduced is far more difficult than getting to see one that hasn't, and microfilm is no fun to work with. This is especially true when the manuscript in question has unique qualities which this one does. It has some large and really creepy-interesting illustrations, and all the texts seem to concentrate on death.

Today I did some last touristy things. I went to the National Portrait Gallery to which I have never been, found the main BBC building (they have a life-sized TARDIS in there- pictures were taken), went to my favorite bubble tea place one last time, agonized over the weight of my suitcase and trying to get things to fit into my carry on (I really hope the cute felt hat I got doesn't get too squished), and of course one last dinner traditional British dinner at the local Kebabish. Fried food at its best-worst, depending on how you look at it. 

 

Short random thoughts that have little to do with scholarship

I saw these in a coffee shop in London:

I don't know about the 'new big thing' part. I would have tried them too, except that I am unwilling to pay approximately $7 for glorified pastry.

Instead, I ended up going to this place:

Random observation 1: I remember not liking Wine Gums candy last time I tried it. I must have been around 14 or so. I remember thinking they had a weird bitter aftertaste. I decided to try them again last week. They are in fact quite tasty, although they do not taste, as the name might suggest, like wine.

Random observation 2: Grown-up scholars are every bit as bad as students when it comes to habitual seats. In the reading rooms I was in multiple times, everyone seemed to take the same locker (mine were BL 575 and Oxford 10) and sit in roughly the place.

Cambridge and more

Today marked the last new library of the trip, Trinity College Library, Cambridge.

Cambridge in general is not particularly easy to navigate. It feels more canyon/maze-like than Oxford. I think the problem for me was that a lot of streets were only labeled on one end, and usually not the end which was where I was needing to access them.

I ended up going the wrong way a lot, and retracing steps a lot. If I hadn't been trying to make an appointment, it wouldn't have been too bad. For example, I went by here by mistake:

King's College

Finding the college library was harder than finding the university one though.

Here's the Cambridge University Library:

This is the path that leads to the CUL. Note that there is no signage. It is pretty though.

Also on the way to the CUL, and also not labeled.

I must have gone through and around the Trinity College area twice before a helpful stray kitty showed me that there was in fact a second square of the college, which was where the entrance to the library is. It was a very friendly kitty, possibly Siamese if there's a variety of the breed with all dark fur(?). Then I had to ask a person which of the various unlabeled doors was the library, since the sign that said 'Library' and pointed did not say which door, just which general direction to to head around the square. I finally made it half an hour after the library opened. The cool thing about the Wren Library (that's the Trinity College library) is that it still uses the classic old reading room for manuscript study. If I did have a picture of this, I wouldn't post it because it would have been illictly obtained. You can photograph manuscripts with permission, but there are signs outside the room saying 'No Photography'. It's possible this refers to tourists and not scholars, but still...

A final observation about Cambridge. This place has much more of a large town feel with a university off to one side, as opposed to Oxford which feels like it was a university first, then the town was built around it. For example, I never saw anything like this kind of vandalism at Oxford:

  

It's hard to tell in the photo, but the road sign says "Bat  man Road". If you look closely at the sign you can see that there was an 'e' that someone decided was not required.

Also present at Cambridge was a main street that did not run through the university. I think this most of all made Cambridge feel like less of a medieval university town, for which I forgive it exclusively on the basis of that main street containing:

That is not a coffee shop. Instead, it is the Ooshi Bubble Tea shop. One of the best so far in fact. It might even have an edge on Up...T in London because Ooshi had little bowls of flavored mochi on the tables (yes, this one actually has seating unlike many of the other bubble tea places).

Cambridge also has coffee shops. Here is the best one I tried:

It should not be overlooked simply because it shares a building with the Tourist Info office. It it actually quite good.

Tomorrow it will be back to an old haunt, the British Library, where I will review some things that I wasn't able to get to before. It's hard to believe there's less than a week left before I'll be home.

 

The non-academic side of Oxford week

 A week ago Thursday, the building handy guy came in to check on the freezer, which has not been functional since I got here. He fixed that. Celebratory purchase was as follows:

Seriously, these are possibly one of the best things sold in the UK and Ireland.

Anyways, back to the handy guy. One of the other people in the building was having trouble with her heat, so he 'fixed' ours too. Meaning that he turned it on high, and left, saying he'd be back tomorrow. He did not return (to my knowledge) until this past Wednesday. In the intervening week, the heat was on full blast, and it was in the upper 60s and lower 70s most of time. This was not pleasant. At all.

Moving on, today (Saturday) was another 'requisite tourist stuff day'.

A big museum. The British Museum, which contains (among other things),

this really big rock with writing on it.  AKA the Rosetta Stone.

 

and this Egyptian statue of a kitty. Because there had to be a kitty picture.

Next,

 This is a large clock, and to prove I was there as well, me with said big clock.

Nearby, there is a large wheel:

I'm pretty sure there's some kind of unwritten law that when you come to London, you must take a picture of-with this big statue:

Trafalgar

This next one I didn't plan on, but since I passed it:

This next series I also did not plan. I will preface it by saying that what follows did clear up my confusion as to why a group of people around the corner from this 'street festival' were wearing MN Viking apparel:

Interestingly, I saw no Steelers apparel until I found this main area. Vikings fans however seemed to have found some of the local pubs.

And here I though I was only going to get (American) football stuff on Facebook. Silly me.

End of week at Oxford

Things I learned while working with the Oxford Bodleian collection:

1) Temporary locations are not fun. The basement of the science library was freezing as one might expect from a science building and a basement. I fought it for 4 days, but I finally caught a cold. I blame the temporary reading room for this.
I did get to go to the old Duke Humphries Special Collections Reading Room, at least to look inside.It's a good thing this had to wait until Friday. This place is so cool looking, but of course they don't allow photography in there. Knowing that not too long ago, I could have actually worked in there would have really put me off researching in the basement of the science library (which I should mention is actually called the 'Radcliffe' not 'Ratcliff' as I may have called it previously).

If you want to know what this incredible library looks like, go watch (or rewatch) Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, and pay attention to the scene in which Harry and co. invade the Hogwarts library 'Restricted Section' with the Invisibility cloak. Guess where that was filmed.

2) Being able to use a camera really changes the way you work with the manuscripts. My notes aren't nearly as extensive as the ones for the British Library. The possible problem (which I dearly hope I have avoided) would then be that you can't figure out which picture refers to which part of the notes. Every evening I went through the pictures from the day and labeled them by manuscript and page reference.

3) Technology will always be problematic. Case in point: my camera decided that it felt its battery was dead, when in fact it was at approximately 45%. I had just finished photographing the last set of pages, but still had some of other parts of the last manuscript I wanted to record when the camera shut down on me. I took more notes anyways, and when I got home to charge it, discovered that the camera still had charge. Maybe it was sick of taking pictures of old books. I maintain that technology is developing some degree of sentience.

While in Oxford, I made sure to explore a little.

Part 1: The coffee shops. I like to work in coffee shops. As such I wanted to try as many of the local ones as I could.

The best coffee shop in Oxford:

Not 'probably', 'really'.

The second best:

The third best is a little cart near one of the really old little buildings near the end of Broad Street. I didn't get a picture, and I don't remember the name. My bad,

The fourth best:

Wishful thinking.

And the last (in part due to the higher price and later opening time, neither of which please me):

As these last two places might suggest, Oxford is quite proud of its history. I should have expected this but towards the end of the week, there were people running around in academic robes as everyday-wear. Just for reference, the official Oxford term doesn't start for another two weeks, so I'm guessing these people are post-graduates (ie- graduate) students back early to get a  start on their own stuff.

I also saw a couple of little kids (maybe around 10 or so) running down the street just outside of the university wearing similar robes. They appeared to be trying to avoid being tardy to their school, and I really wish I hadn't been on a bus going in the opposite direction at the time, because that would have made an adorable picture.

And now, because I could (and clearly did):

In case you can't read the building's name, this is the Oxford University Press building (part of it anyways, the complex actually takes up most of the block).

And last but not least, some obligatory tourist photography:

Next week, it's on to Cambridge. But before that, two final pictures. One a bookstore, and two one of the more awesome things it sells.