Back to School

I am in my eighth year of graduate school.

It's not quite as bad as it sounds. When I finally finish, I will have two masters degrees in music (musicology and music theory), instead of just one. I'm getting two degrees, because I couldn't decide. (Actually, I think the two disciplines are artificially divided ~ I don't think you can have one without the other ~ and since it had been about two decades since I got my bachelor's degree, I felt I needed to immerse myself in both, to make up for lost time).

And I have been doing other things, besides being in school. I have two part-time jobs in music (teaching piano at a community college and serving as a church musician), I've taught piano and music theory privately, I've achieved two levels of professional certification from the American Guild of Organists, I've worked as a TA, and I've run 24 marathons in three years.

I finished my coursework about a year ago, and now I "just" need to take my comprehensive exams for each degree, and write a thesis. It will be one big thesis for both degrees, rather than two theses. Not quite a dissertation, but a "super-thesis."

When you are taking courses, there is a structure already set up for you. A professor hands you a syllabus, you meet at specified times, you have certain assignments due at certain times, and you have a classroom of peers for a support group.

But when you are studying for comps and writing a thesis, you are kind of on your own.

Especially at my university. I am enrolled in a place that is so seriously understaffed that it took almost a full month to get them to enroll me this semester. It was a reality check. I am afraid that this is the way it's going to be from here on out. I will have to be creative and persistent in order to get people to respond. I have heard horror stories of people going through the process at this school, and having to enroll in extra semesters because it took so long to get their dissertations read.

And I know it is not the fault of these people I need responses from. They are nice people. They are not the type of people to blow someone off. They are just overburdened, because things at the university are not the way they ought to be.

It is like being one of 23 children in a family. Large families are great, but there is no way that one parent can give enough attention to one child, when there are 22 other children to take care of. Everyone ends up being neglected.

Not to mention the poor mother. I'm thinking of Dr. Seuss's poor old frazzled Mrs. McCave. There is a picture of her, sprawled in front of her house, completely overrun by a stampede of children named Dave. The story implies that a flawed naming policy is to blame, but I question the wisdom of having 23 children in the first place. At any rate, something went wrong there, and the poor woman had no chance. My university has a lot of people in Mrs. McCave's position, for whatever reason.

Did I ever tell you that Mrs. McCave
Had twenty-three sons and she named them all Dave?

Well, she did.  And that wasn't a smart thing to do.
You see, when she wants one and calls out, "Yoo-Hoo!
Come into the house, Dave!" she doesn't get ONE.
All twenty-three Daves of hers come on the run!

This makes things quite difficult at the McCaves'
As you can imagine, with so many Daves.
And often she wishes that, when they were born,
She had named one of them Bodkin Van Horn
And one of them Hoos-Foos.  And one of them Snimm.
And one of them Hot-Shot.  And one Sunny Jim.
And one of them Shadrack.  And one of them Blinkey.
And one of them Stuffy.  And one of them Stinkey.
Another one Putt-Putt.  Another one Moon Face.
Another one Marvin O'Gravel Balloon Face.
And one of them Ziggy.  And one Soggy Muff.
One Buffalo Bill.  And one Biffalo Buff.
And one of them Sneepy.  And one Weepy Weed.
And one Paris Garters.  And one Harris Tweed.
And one of them Sir Michael Carmichael Zutt
And one of them Oliver Boliver Butt
And one of them Zanzibar Buck-Buck McFate...
But she didn't do it.  And now it's too late.

Theodore Geisel (Dr. Seuss), “Too Many Daves” from The Sneetches and Other Stories (New York: Random House, 1961).

I think this is partly why I found it so easy to neglect my academic life last year. No one handed my a syllabus, and said "Here ~ your first assignment is due in four weeks ~ here are the guidelines ~ now get to work!" It was a big, undefined blob of undoablity. So I enrolled in thesis hours, and let the professors attend to all the other Daves, while I got busy with other things that were already structured and defined and calling to me like a siren song. Amazing feats. Big accomplishments that changed the trajectory of my life. You see, I'm not discounting the importance of these things. But they did not move my Bodkin Van Horn any closer to graduation, and if I keep getting drawn into other projects, it will be my Zanzibar Buck-Buck McFate never to graduate.

So this year, I set about the task of defining my academic work, as any good GTD practitioner would. I have spent a lot of time this week figuring out what my next actions are, and setting up my system. And I decided that I would graduate in December of 2009. That gives me three semesters and a summer. I think I can do it.

I'm actually not starting the thesis from scratch. I have a topic, and a piece I want to analyze, and a methodology. I have already presented two papers at conferences on this topic. My thesis has not yet been formulated into a well-articulated proposal ~ it's kind of a Soggy Muff ~ but I've done a great deal of work around the periphery of it.

One of the things I contemplated this week was what kind of tools I plan to use. Am I going to use index cards, or a 3-ring binder, or some kind of computer software? I found a website called PhinisheD, where people can go to discuss all manner of things regarding their thesis or dissertation. It's a support group. I think I will probably join up, so I won't feel like a Weepy Weed, so all alone in this. Browsing through the site, I got a lot of good information about how other people organize their research (and their time, and their energy...)

I have never written a paper longer than about 20 pages, so I think it is important to organize everything in a way that works with my brain. I like technology, but I have found that I need the immediacy of paper and pen. It is always available ~ I don't have to carry a laptop everywhere I go, or wait for it to boot up, ~ and I like being able to thumb through physical paper pages of notes, rather than searching for invisible, digital files. So I decided that I would keep all my research notes in a 3-ring binder, with graph paper pages. All my notes will go into the binder. I can use highlighters to color-code things, so I can find information when I need it. When it comes time to write, I will refer to my notes, and mindmap my ideas on a gigantic pad of paper, and then linearize it by writing at the computer. I plan to purchase a software called Endnote, and put all my bibliography information into that ~ it automatically puts it into the correct format to insert into your document. Technology does have its place.

So yesterday, having decided on the tools, I went to Office Max. Anyone who knows me knows that I have an unnatural lust for office supplies. It's called "productivity porn." So I really enjoyed my trip to Office Max. I chose a lavender heavy-duty binder, and pocket dividers and mechanical pencils in lovely pastel shades that coordinate with the color of the binder. Most importantly, I got several notebooks of graph paper. I like grids. They give me guidelines to keep my writing straight, but I can write either horizontally or vertically, or ignore the lines completely, and go crazy all over the page. And I got a ruler, because it was on sale, and I can never find my ruler. And just for fun, I bought a package of humorous sticky notes.

So that's it. I'm pulling myself up by my Paris Garters, and am going to be a Hot-Shot graduate by the end of next year. I just needed a kick in the Oliver Boliver Butt.