Ghia Pet

This is an orange Karmann Ghia convertible. A '68, I think. This is the kind of car my parents drove when they had me. I don't know if you can tell, but it's a two-seater. What did they do with the baby, you ask? Family legend has it that they mounted a small chair between the two front seats. This meant that baby's head was pressed against the windshield as the little Ghia sped through traffic. I was a little Ghia pet, ha ha.

I can't vouch for this legend, for I don't remember much about the Ghia. I only mention it because the baby-with-head-on-windshield metaphor fits my current situation pretty well. Events are hurtling along, and I feel like I'm watching everything come straight at me from a very uncomfortable vantage point. Right now I ought to be (1) finishing a seminar application, (2) finishing a comment on a faculty member's paper that's going to be presented Tuesday, (3) reading three articles by a hotshot postcolonial scholar whom I'm meeting tomorrow, (4) reading another prof's paper to give them feedback.

Run-of-the-mill stuff, I know. But I haven't worked this hard since I started writing my dissertation. Here's hoping that the little Ghia doesn't run out of gas and baby's head doesn't go through the windshield.

To All of My Friends Struggling With Grant Applications

As the deadlines approach, I send you my heartiest, cheeriest, best wishes as well as this blast from the past, YSA's personal statement to end all personal statements.

May you take heart, and be inspired.

Wrap Me Up and Take Me Home

I have time for one last post before I leave to get on the train. I'd call this trip a qualified success. It was disappointing in that I used my grant money to find stuff I already knew was there. But I also ventured into another library on the same campus where they have tons of relevant documents collected by the woman I am studying. I still have some grant money left, and I want to come back to use it at the second library. But that doesn't seem right.

My brown bag talk went well. I'd worried so much about what I could possibly say and figured I'd have to do an air-guitar solo in order to distract them from my failure to find much at their library. But I spent most of my time reading from some of the documents I did find, which they thought were really interesting. They asked a few questions and that was it.

My one big extracurricular activity was a trip to the Marimekko store, where I splurged on a jacket. When I say "splurged" I mean "spent more money on one garment than I ever have before." I was in doubt about the fit. It's a size 38, which nowadays is usually too small for me, but it was a little roomy in the shoulders. I asked if it was possible to get it tailored and sadly because of the way it's lined it would be impossible. Also, it's a cotton jacket, meaning it's totally out of season, and I won't be able to wear it until May, maybe. But it was so, so cute! I mean overwhelmingly cute. Hopefully they will get its Finnish style back in Cheeseville.

OK, it's time to go. Hopefully the train won't take an extra three hours this time.

Wishful Thinking

When I wrote my awesome dissertation proposal, I started in with a juicy anecdote. This, as most students of history know, is a tried (tired?) and true method of drawing readers in and making them think that what they're about to read will be just as interesting. Yes, it's the old academic bait and switch routine. We all love narrative, but we don't trust it because it's not analytical enough.

I digress. I discovered something important yesterday as I retraced my research steps from two summers ago. That symphonic anecdote that anchored my dissertation prospectus was, dare I say, completely false. What happened was that I wasn't allowed to write down anyone's name or correct initials in this protected set of documents. I looked at one institutional report on a girl—let's call her Mildred. Now, pretty much no one today would name their kid Mildred. So it must have been true of the 1920s too, right? Wrong! Oh, so wrong. The Social Security people say Mildred was the ninth most popular name of the 1920s! But as I was reading along last year, I saw "Mildred" on the report. Then, several boxes later, I saw "Mildred" on two letters. I thought they must be the same person. If I had been allowed to write down people's names or make photocopies of these documents, it's likely that I wouldn't have made such a boneheaded mistake.

So far, so excusable (maybe). But how to explain the composition I thought was also written by "Mildred" when it had another person's name written on it? And, OK, the love letter I was sure "Mildred" had written? It was signed with a man's name. A man's name! Last time around, I was totally sure it was the boy name "Mildred" adopted for herself. Wishful motherfucking thinking.

And now I succumb to the throes of panic about what else I might have messed up in my peripatetic research gambols. Remember, I haven't been able to photocopy or photograph most of my evidence. On the bright side, no one on my committee's seen this stuff, so if I am completely wrong, they won't be able to tell.

Thirty Minutes of Funk

Here I am on another research jaunt. I got a grant to come here. But the fact of the matter is that I've already been here. Yes, in the academy you get grants to go to places you've already been. And it's turning out that I maybe didn't even need all that extra money—I thought I'd just scratched the surface of these collections, but I picked through five or so pretty effectively the last time I was here.

I can hear you saying: Well, good on you, CheeseQuest! Take that money and go spend it on the fair-trade yoga clothes on offer at every other store on Main Street here. And have a $4 cup of coffee (also fair trade) while you're at it. Put that grant on your CV and ride into the sunset.

Of course, it's not that easy. I have to give a brown-bag talk on Friday. At first I thought it was no big deal, since I've done enough in-class presentations in grad school. Then I heard it should be thirty minutes long. Did you hear that? Thirty minutes long. I have no idea what I'm going to say. "Thanks for the opportunity to come here. I love your library, especially how each table is equipped with outlets for laptops. It's pretty here. Your call slips are easy to fill out. You get me my boxes real fast-like. I wish I had gotten into your graduate school." That will take up one minute...and then what?

I know, a twenty-nine-minute funk breakdown!

I'm Flying! Flying! Flying! Flying!

Recently, I had a conversation with someone on my committee about how to organize my dissertation so I could get unstuck. This person—we'll call them Professor Brilliance—had an idea: organize the dissertation by type of evidence. This puzzled me, for it would have meant one chapter based on five letters, one chapter based on twenty-five pages of a child study group's meeting minutes, one chapter based on memoirs I haven't read yet, and two chapters based on a phone-book–size stack of psychosexual case histories. Professor B. gave me an "assignment": write up some questions I could answer based on the evidence I have. Now, you may wonder, as I did, if it would be possible to write one fifty-page chapter based on, say, five letters. If you do so wonder, perhaps you can comprehend the despair I felt upon leaving Professor B.'s office.

Frustrated, I complained to the Facebook masses. And the masses responded! Or, at any rate, CBAM and AD did. When in doubt, go with chronology, advised CBAM. But I have no chronological development! I wailed. AD then suggested using one case history to lead into each chapter—a "collective biography," as he put it. CBAM concurred. And just like that, the clouds parted and tongues of fire descended. Dissertation Pentecost! I'm babbling away, and I'm coming to preach the truth: accept Facebook as your personal savior now! Make no decisions without consulting Facebook!

I'll finish my "assignment," all right, but won't Professor B. be surprised.

Conference Call

Instead of making arrangements to get coffee, brownies, and chopped honeydew for a meeting I'm supposedly organizing in a week, I spent the whole day at a conference kinda sorta related to my dissertation topic. "Kinda sorta," because although scholars in this field have pioneered new approaches to some of the issues I'm writing about, pretty much no one working on traditional twentieth-century U.S. history cares what these people have to say. I hasten to add that I had heard of two of the four presenters, one of them mind-scramblingly famous, but I am apparently unusual. So I went. And I learned a thing or two: new books I should read, pictures I would never have seen otherwise, and who used to sleep with a famous lesbian novelist.

Sometimes I think being a grad student going to a conference with famous people is like being in an X Men comic book or movie, meaning a bunch of mutants (like me) with weird powers they can't really control gathering to hear a possibly crackpot professor guy talk. Then we're supposed to go out and save the planet, slay the dragon, get tenure, whatever.

Well-attended panels can get really weird. During the Q&A at the end of one today, some guy asked a question and three famous professors all of a sudden started crabbing about the question among themselves. Seriously, they started talking to each other, and a big roomful of people were left to listen to this troika of fame hash out the finer points of one particular school of demography. This was my cue that shit was getting irrelevant for me. I doodled in a notebook for a while. When I looked up again, the celebrity trio was still going at it. I glanced around the room and saw someone who taught one of my grad seminars gesturing wildly to the moderator to please, for the love of god, take another question! This finally happened, but by now I was in orbit in some mental galaxy far, far away. Finally, the session ended. We all clapped, then rushed out to the reception area for some coffee, brownies, and chopped honeydew.

I was going to call it a day before the last session, but I decided to stick around. On the way back in, Professor Wink-a-Lot (who seriously winks, like, a lot) winked at me and said, "When are you going to ask your question, CheeseQuest?" I can never think of witty rejoinders to Professor W.a.L., so I mumbled something about how all my questions were answered at least halfway. "I'm kidding!" Professor W.a.L. said. I should have known from all the winking going on.

The last presenter was interesting, but by the time he finished I was packed up and ready to go. No more Q&A's for me. I thought of hanging around until they unveiled the food at the big reception afterward, but the thought of trying to make sparkling conversation while standing up with a plate in my hand and a bunch of food in my mouth just didn't appeal. So I hoofed it back home and ordered in. The end.

Stuck in the Mud (and Other Metaphors That Will Never Make It Into My Dissertation [So Why Am I Writing Them {Waaa!}?])

Getting bogged down in the Land of Dissertationia: everyone tells me this is normal. (Oh, sorry, normative.) I've resisted hand-wringing and whining on this blog for a long time, if only to keep myself buoyed and somewhat confident, as if I were in one of those cults that told you that if you think you can breathe underwater, you can breathe underwater. In fact, if the whole breathing-underwater thing doesn't work out for you, you're not believing in yourself hard enough. So...where is this metaphor going? I forget.

You see my problem.

I've been having fun, free-ranging discussions with a faculty member who's not really in my field but with whom I share a number of intellectual interests. We're trying to untie the same epistemological knots. (Mom, that basically means that we know we know something but we don't know exactly what it is. [Insert George W. Bush joke here.]) During one particularly free-ranging discussion of writing, I mentioned that I'd been "experimenting with aphorisms on Facebook." With that remark, this professor's face fell like a bowling ball chucked off a skyscraper. "My official advice to you," he said, "is to write your dissertation."

Friends, it was the voice of G-d telling me to sacrifice my favorite child. (Sorry for all the metaphors in this post.) I went home and opened up all the rambling Word documents I've created over the past year or so. There were about nineteen, most of them over four single-spaced pages. I couldn't find a definitive thesis in any of them. I opened up my proposal, which my committee had praised to no end last year. No thesis there either! How did they ever pass me? I am an impostor. I have been imposting for more than a year now. Toujours j'imposte. Etc.

I keep pinching myself: I am normal—sorry, normative. Today I will write like the dickens. I will. If I believe hard enough, I can breathe underwater. Where's the pool?

A, B, C, D, E, F, Google

You know how if you start typing something into Google, it'll predict what you're searching for? I wondered what would come up if I typed only a single letter in that oblong box. Here are the ABC's according to Google.

Amazon
Best Buy
Craigslist
Dictionary
Ebay
Facebook
Gmail
Hotmail
Imdb
Jet Blue
Kohls
Lowes
Mapquest
Netflix
Old Navy
Pandora
Quote
Realtor.com
Southwest Airlines
Target
USPS
Verizon Wireless
Walmart
XM Radio
YouTube
Zillow

What does this tell us about the Internets?

Fame and Charisma: Not the Same

This afternoon I went to a lecture given by an extremely famous professor. We're talking someone who has shaped the field. Whose writing is dynamic. Who has ideas that at first blush seem simply curious but upon closer inspection open up new worlds of inquiry. It was strongly suggested that we "familiarize ourselves" with this professor's recent book of essays in order to prepare for the lecture. I suppose the people who organized Professor Famous's visit were worried lest Cheeseville U.'s faculty and students come off looking stupid during the Q&A.

Well, those people needn't have worried.

Professor Famous gave a Powerpoint and basically talked into his computer. He almost never looked up. He talked in a low voice and stopped and started a lot. And it took him ten minutes to make a single point.

There were also two smart people who were "discussants" for Professor Famous's lecture. What this is supposed to mean is raising questions and generating critical issues that the lecturer didn't address. But in practice this often turns out to be "listen to me talk" (as do Q&A's).

So here's the total picture. Imagine it's 4:30 p.m. You're in between meals—really in between meals. You're in a room that's a little bit warm. Professor 1 introduces Professor Famous and his Powerpoint. Professor Famous mumbles into his computer. He starts to go overtime. No one cuts him off, because he's, well, famous! He talks until he feels like stopping, having shown a number of interesting slides and talked about some intriguing sources. But basically you're famished and exhausted. Time to go, right? No! There are two more smart people who have to talk. And this they do. Then Professor Famous responds. Then Professor 1 says the dreaded words: "I think we have a few minutes for discussion." And you're like, please, please, just let us get to the reception and the cheese cubes (we are always on a CheeseQuest, remember) and we can make a getaway. Not one but two people ask questions, and Professor Famous responds to what he feels like responding to, delivering an embarrassing and unprovoked smackdown in the process. At this point you're not sure if you're going to get home in time to watch Project Runway on Lifetime TV for Women, which comes on at 10.

But escape I did, gentle reader, with time enough to spare for Project Runway. I have resolved that when I'm running shit, I will vet the people whom I invite to my university for a certain level of charisma and some discipline in sticking to a schedule.

Also, if there's any way to pre-screen people for whether they can talk to anyone but a laptop, that would work too. My computer is my right arm, but it is not my best friend.