The Academy’s Bench Warmer

I’ve been doing my level best* to confine my teaching–including prep work, etc.–to Tuesdays and Thursdays, leaving M/W/F for dissertation.  But I keep falling behind, and this week I had to stay up late on Monday and get up early on Tuesday to grade and prep lectures.  Predictably, classes yesterday went poorly.  Fine; we’re allowed bad days, I say.  I’m more concerned that I was a truly grumpy and unpleasant bastard from Monday night through Tuesday.  The students, fortunately, didn’t bear the brunt of it.  My spouse, unfortunately, did.  Turns out I’ve developed an impossible need for absolute silence when I work, and it becomes even more exacerbated when I’m under the gun.  My spouse having the audacity to breathe or offer me a glass of water–well, that was simply unacceptable, and I delivered a few sharp and extremely ill-advised remarks.  Ugh.  Apologies galore, and my spouse forgave and understood, proving once again that I am the junior partner in the relationship.

Lessons learned?  Get my shit done during the day, especially if it’s due tomorrow.  If I’m going to work in the evening, choose stuff that’s not time-sensitive–reading a book for my dissertation is fine, but grading papers that need to be returned tomorrow is not.  And if that means that I need to do teaching prep during part of a dissertation day, so be it.

* I love that phrase.  It ranks right up there with “I don’t give a flying fuck.”  Which, of course, I shouldn’t say.  Dirty, dirty words.

Yesterday, my adviser called me and told me to do two things.  First: don’t cock up the conference paper I’ll be giving in March at the American Society for Environmental History; apparently, my panel’s chair/commenter does not tolerate shit work.  Okay, my adviser didn’t say that exactly, but that’s the gist of it.  Second: make a dissertation schedule and work diary.  This is fantastic for at least three reasons:

1) My adviser seems to have a pretty good feel for what I need in the way of direction.  Just the other day I was musing about how to proceed as ABD, and then BAM!, a phone call telling me what to do.  I suppose there’s an off-chance that my adviser reads this blog, but I’d rather think that my adviser (a) knows me well enough to give me a push when one is needed and (b) has seen enough ABDs treading water to know that an adviser’s intervention can be very important at this stage.  In short: my adviser’s advising, which is excellent.

2) Turns out that maybe I do matter to my adviser.  Nice to get the attention.

3) I get to make lists and schedules and calendars!  I have a perverse affection for to-do lists and the like, and my adviser has basically given me license to schedule to my heart’s content.  In addition to creating a calendar for finishing the dissertation and making a schedule that builds in dissertation time every day, my adviser also wants me to write a work diary, to keep track of what I do (and don’t accomplish) each day.  At first I thought to put that on this here blog, but (a) how mind-numbingly boring would that be! and (b) I’ve come to see this blog serving a different function for my academic development, extra-dissertation-wise.  Plus, it means I get to buy a cool notebook.  Bonus.

About a month ago, I became/went ABD (All But Dissertation, for those fortunate to have avoided such a silly acronym).  I did so before the official beginning of my fourth year in the PhD program, which puts me right on track with the norm.  In our program, you’re meant to be done with your coursework, minor field, comprehensive exams, and dissertation prospectus by the end of your third year, and I just made it.  So hoo-ray for that.  Since then, I’ve been busying myself with teaching two classes (African American history is going quite well, thank you for asking), occasionally looking through microfilm for an article I’m revising, and playing Civilization, one of my favorite video games of all time.  What I haven’t been doing is my dissertation.  I’ve read a few books, spoken with some people in the field, and put in a few billable hours of “thought” or “conceptualization,” but I haven’t done any real research.  Nor have I looked into fellowships and grants, which I’m pretty sure I should be doing.

Today, I make a concerted effort to do what I should be doing.  But what should I be doing, exactly?  The last three years have consisted of identifiable hoops through which to jump.  Now I’m on my own, equipped with a vague sense of what I need to accomplish–get fellowships, write a dissertation, get a job–but little idea of how to do those things, exactly.  There are some more experienced graduate students whose example I can try to follow, but (a) I’m frankly unimpressed by much of their work and their (lack of) progress; (b) no one provides specifics on what they’re doing, exactly; and (c) everyone’s case is different.

So off I go.

First: thanks to those who replied to my plea for books on African-American history.  I’m working through the list now, and more suggestions are always welcome.

Now for a different conundrum.  I’ve been working on my dissertation prospectus–a funny process that I should write about someday–and find myself puzzling over a question of vocabulary.  Or perhaps categorization.  Namely: how do I collectively refer to a group of countries (and their peoples) circa 1958-1978?  The list is a bit long, so I’ve left it for the bottom of this post.  I’ve come up with a few monikers: Developing; Non-Aligned; Decolonized; Postcolonial; Non-Western; and Third World.  But each of them suffers from one (or both) of two problems:

1) The label doesn’t work for all of the countries.  Brazil, for instance, could be considered a non-aligned country in 1965, but it’s hardly “decolonized” (Portugal left in 1822).  And Somalia may be non-Western, but so was the Soviet Union, and it’s not on the list.

2) The label is offensive.  That goes for “developing” (which assumes a particular economic trajectory), “decolonized” (in which independence is something done to a country), and “Third World” (which smacks of “the Other”).

The obvious solution seems to be to drop categorization and appreciate the differences between these countries.  Yet in the story I’m telling, these countries are all in the same boat, a boat that is decidedly different from North American, European, East Asian, and Soviet bloc countries.  That is to say that in this particular narrative, these Developing-Non-Aligned-De/Post-Colonial-Non-Western-Third-World countries share more in common with each other than they share with that other set of countries.

So I’m facing an academic and ethical problem.  I’m going to give myself points for at least grappling with this question and wondering about its implications.  But I’d like to go farther than that and actually do the right thing, academically and ethically.  Suggestions are most welcome.

Countries in question: Brazil, Indonesia, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Bangladesh, India, Zaire, Sudan, Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Rwanda, Burundi, Ethiopia, Yemen, Somalia

I note that my blog has been as boring as–per the saying–whale shit.  Actually, more boring; it turns out whale shit is quite interesting, as you’ll see here.  Many apologies to you all.  I hope to identify that little part of me that is interesting some time soon, and transfer it to the blog.  Meanwhile, I’m working away at my dissertation prospectus.  Had a productive morning yesterday, banging out half the outline.  Hope to do the same today, but I got barely a wink of sleep last night, so we’ll see how it goes.  Content-wise, I’m drifting more and more into work on the aftermath of colonialism in the 1960s and 1970s.  Suggestions on neocolonialism are most welcome.