Welcome this is a poor house

This past weekend I got a letter in the mail from Loyola. I knew what it was when it arrived and had a pretty good idea what it contained. It was a rejection letter for the Schmitt Fellowship. The Schmitt is a fellowship for ABDs that is essentially the same thing as the fellowship I currently hold; it pays you to do nothing but work on your dissertation. One of the best parts of either scholarship is that they cover all school expenses in addition to having a stipend. Therefore, this means that next year I am basically F'd. The History department actually got 3 Schmitt fellowships, which makes it even more frustrating. It's pretty ridiculous that these sorts of things pit colleagues against each other, but oh well. What can you do, right? I saw two of the winners at the Dissertation Writing Group meeting last night and at least those two went to folks that I know and respect (the other winner is a nice enough person, but has been fully funded with no teaching obligations for four years. I mean come on. Spread the wealth a little bit!)

All of this means that now I'm going to be headed back in to the wonderful world of student loans. I threw my name in the hat to pick up a class at Loyola, but I'm sure it's no easy chore for a first time teacher to get one. Even one or two classes per semester would be a huge boon and pretty much keep me on, or close to, my current fiscal situation. More to the point though I'd really like (and need) the teaching experience. If I can't even manage that I'll probably be forced to either take a HUGE loan (which I don't want to do) and/or try to find a part-time job in this current shit economy we find ourselves in.

If I do manage to get a class or two, I have a pretty good feeling that I will get really close to finishing my dissertation in the next year. The only other thing to figure out is when I can get back overseas for a few weeks to fill some research gaps, but I think it's feasible. I spent a few days last week going through some research material, and I think the burn out is starting to fade a little bit. So when I get back from the honeymoon at the end of the month I think I'll be ready to crank out some more writing. I was able to get a page or so written today, which was good.

Back from Michigan

I'm back after a long weekend in Michigan. It was a good visit and I got to see a number of my friends, a sweet hockey game, and I enjoyed some Hungry Howie's pizza - always a good thing. My buddy Tine gave me his old N64 along with the best video game ever - The New Tetris. My roommates and I used to play this game ALL the time in undergrad. Needless to say it might be a dangerous thing to have around the house now, but so far, so good. If it becomes too much of a problem I now have a study carrel at the library up on the Lake Shore Campus. I assume I'll get some decent use out of that, and it will be nice to have a quiet place to work and to be right there in the library as well.

The Dissertation Group continues to meet. We've basically been a discussion entity up to this point, but in two weeks I'm going to present some of my work and we'll have a proper workshopping session, which should be good. I'm interested to see how it turns out, especially since the chapter I need help on is all over the place right now. A bit of constructive criticism would bode well for this chapter at present. The first one was much more straight forward, while this one is trying to compare and contrast four different cities, which can be a challenge in terms of structure. So we'll see what happens. Hopefully there will be some satisfactory notes to post in the near future.

Completely unrelated, I've been working my way through all of the Dick's Picks albums. I actually own 2-3 of them and downloaded the rest (I know, I'm a horrible person. I'll buy them once I can afford to do so). There are 36 volumes and all but one are multiple CDs. I started the last week of October and just finished this week. You would think one might grow tired of that much Grateful Dead music for that long, but actually it had just the opposite effect. Most Deadheads fall into one of two camps, Jerry or Bobby. Personally, I'm deeply ensconced in the Jerry camp, but the Dick's Pick exercise leaves me with a greater appreciation of some of Bobby's work. I'm still not drinking the Weir kool-aid, but I'm probably less likely to skip past the Bobby tunes now than I used to be. Although, some songs, like Lost Sailor > Saint of Circumstance, will never be listenable to me and always get passed up.

I also went on a book-buying binge about a week or so ago, and have since received all of my purchases. The expensive books were of the academic ilk and should be useful for my dissertation. I also found a number of cheap books on the Grateful Dead that I wanted to read, and one on The Band. I've almost gotten through a book of interviews conducted with various members of the Dead and I find it to be a very enlightening book. It's really amazing how progressive the band was, not just musically, but in terms of musical innovation. Their experience with musical equipment, especially PA systems was more interesting than I thought it would be. I'm looking forward to getting through the other books, especially Phil Lesh's autobiography.

Miracles happen

At about 10pm tonight we checked the answering machine and there were two calls for me regarding my lost items from last weekend. As it turns out, everything lost has been recovered, and at minimal expense. My faith in humanity is restored!

On another note, I went to the dissertation writing group and it was a really positive experience. We're hoping for still greater numbers but it was good to have people in a similar situation to bounce thoughts and concerns off of. I asked about the chapter I'm currently working on and got some sound advise about splitting it into two chapters. Hopefully that will make things easier at these opening stages. We plan to meet the first and third Monday each month, with extra time off during the holidays. The plan is to establish goals for how much work will get done and to possibly present material to each other for feedback. It's really a way to help stay on track and establish some structure and accountability to the dissertation writing process. I think it will be a good motivator. The guy who initiated the whole thing even have "livestrong" style bracelets made that read "LUC Ph.D. ABD" on one side and "History Department" on the other - sort of a constant reminder of what we all should be doing, even if we're not. So far so good.

Updates

Nothing much going on here, aside from a turbulent weekend last. Due to some irresponsible inebriation I lost a number of personal effects, but, for the most part, have resolved all the problems something like that causes. To make matters worse, I had a gig on Wednesday evening, and, once again, none of my friends showed. Apparently the Cubs game was a major deterrent. Oh well. Two more shows coming up in the next month. If this trend continues I might have to invest in some new friends. Either that, or give up live music, but who really wants to do that?

Another thing of interest next week is a meeting of a Dissertation Writing Group organized by some of my colleagues in the Loyola history department. The first meeting is on Monday and I'm intrigued to see what the whole thing is about. I'll post any thoughts or suggestions as they come.

The new computer continues to be a boon. I've got a lot of material for the current section of the chapter I'm working on. I think next week I'll get back to writing and hopefully get a chunk of the chapter done! We'll see. The one thing I have noticed thus far is that it is easy to get carried away with detail and context. Currently I'm looking at the way housing for ex-servicemen contributed to the memory of the Great War in Ireland. It is necessary to give background on the various organizations charged with overseeing the construction of ex-servicemen's houses, but at the same time there is a fine line between giving context and getting into administrative history. I'm trying to avoid the latter. Perhaps this is something to bring up with the dissertation writing group, right?

New MacBook

Well, not exactly new new, it's a refurbished laptop, but it's got what I need. It's fast and able to handle all the stuff I need for work. iPhoto, Word, Bento, MacSpeech Dictate, and everything else work great on the new machine. No more waiting minutes, literally, for a program to load, to switch between programs, or doing any other day-to-day tasks. It will probably take a day or so to get everything transferred to the new machine and get it back to where the old one was. Nevertheless, it's great to have a new machine. I don't think it's absurd to get a new machine every 4-5 years. It's been 4 years since I got my iBook, and it's been a great computer. Let's just hope that I can get another good 4 years out of this MacBook. But right now, I'm really excited about being able to dive in headfirst to my research and writing (Does that make me a geek? Probably, but that was never in doubt.)

The other thing I need to mention, and I'm sure any one else in graduate school can agree with this, is that Interlibrary loan is the greatest thing ever. I'm working on part of one of the main chapters of my dissertation at the moment. I found a book on the subject I'm currently writing about (housing for Irish ex-servicemen) that Loyola did not own, naturally. A few quick clicks and interlibrary loan had the book for me in a few days. The book is a great complement to the primary sources I have, by filling in some of the administrative history those sources lack. Needless to say, the folks at ILL will be getting an acknowledgement when this thing is done!

Coping with life as a poor graduate student

As I made clear earlier this summer, the debacle with my credit card in Europe was a truly trying experience. Unfortunately, the worst effects of it are only now being felt. I can reasonably say that entering my 5th year of graduate study this is the first time I feel like I am on unstable ground financially. Yes, I won a research grant this summer and have a fellowship in the coming academic school year, but the former only helps to pay off the credit card debt I do have and the latter only really helps with cost of living expenses. There is little to help replenish my devastated savings. Perhaps I should have taken out a larger student loan this year, but it looks like its too late to adjust that. Honestly, I'd prefer to have a higher credit card bill that I know I can pay off over a longer period of time and be more stable, than to be able to pay off the bill quicker but face financial straights. The timing couldn't really be worse for all this, but there's not a whole lot to be done at this point except to ride it out.

On the research front, in addition to the database program I found, I also got a copy of MacSpeech Dictate. This is pretty much exactly what it sounds like, dictation software. It lets you speak to your computer and it will type out what you say. I figured since I have so much stuff to go through, a lot of which is in JPEG format and thus unable to be copied and pasted to a text document, this would be good and efficient alternative. The only real problem is that my iBook G4 runs a PowerPC processor and the program needs and Intel Mac. Luckily I can use Katie's MacBook while she's at work. Right now I'm just waiting for my microphhone headset to arrive and I'll be good to go. It will be good to start getting through this material so I can delete some of it from my iBook's hard drive. Sure I have it all backed up on an external hard drive and archived on DVDs, but I can't bring myself to delete the 20+ Gigs of photos from my hard drive yet, even though they're sucking up almost half of my hard drive space and contributing to slow performance (even worse than I was experiencing before, which were the result of putting Leopard on such an old machine). Add a new Mac laptop to my list of things I need but can't afford at the moment.

Throughout all of this I've tried to keep a "Candide" attitude telling myself that everything will work out. Let's hope that Voltaire's satire isn't just that in this case.

The (potential) lies of academic pedigree

While updating myself on several of the blogs I read regularly I came across a few recent posts about the ever-present issue of the job market for history PhDs. Yes, it sucks. We all know that. What really bothers me is what I consider the cheapening of the PhD degree from certain universities. (See comment #34 here). The author of that comment, on the subject of requirements and expectations for graduate students states:

1. These “minimal intellectual attainments” are falling. Only 15-20 years ago graduate students in my field had to know both French and German. Now you can do it without either. My own institution’s doctoral program is anemic, but colleagues in “healthier” ones lament the decline of their incoming students in terms of preparedness, writing skills, analytical ability, self-confidence, and most other indicators of success common to academia and the more promising fields to which gifted students are increasingly attracted. Compare that with the ever more competitive admissions processes at elite undergraduate institutions and law and medical schools.

I cannot argue with all of these statements, but at the same time I think the situation is vastly over simplified. I look at my own academic career as an example. I am by no means an elite thinker, but I have a pretty good head on my shoulders. I admit that my decision to go to grad school was pretty hasty, but I have busted my ass in school to try to make up for any shortcomings I had when I entered. The comment on foreign language really irks me. I have no problem with the requirement for foreign language knowledge. I know that I had to do a lot of French in a short period of time to get up to snuff. But the original poster's comment lacks context. Not all fields NEED foreign language knowledge. Yes, it may be helpful, but it's not always critical. The prevalence of English as a spoken and written language throughout the world mitigates, in many cases, the need for foreign language simply because so many sources are available for the native English speaker. Furthermore, Americanists generally have less need than say Europeanists. My focus in Irish history tends to push me closer to the Americanist camp simply because the sources that I need to conduct my work are in English. The trend toward easing these sorts of requirements is the result of recognizing this situation for what it is. If I was studying French or German history, it would be ludicrous to undertake either without fluency in each respective tongue.

The idea that there are more schools offering PhDs and granting degrees to students that otherwise wouldn't have them is insulting. Especially when you look at the limited number of openings at elite schools. Sure they can remain in their upper-echelon of the Ivory Tower, but to suggest that people from non-elite schools don't do good, important work is ridiculous. Because that is the impression given by commentators such as the one cited.

Intelligence is only one of many factors that determine which universities one applies and gets accepted to. Remember, applications are voluntary, so some really smart people might opt NOT to go to elite schools even if they could get in. Governing factors such as finances, location, program reputation, and, for undergraduates what one thinks they want to study, all color application choices. Personally, I wanted to teach secondary education when I as applying to undergraduate schools. In Michigan the two best programs for secondary ed were generally considered to be Michigan State and Oakland University. Those were the only schools I applied to. In hindsight, I probably should have applied to University of Michigan as well, but their program for what I wanted to study was not as good, so it made no sense at the time. I opted for Oakland University because it was smaller than MSU - I didn't want to be a face in the crowd and have TAs as instructors - and less expensive. Since I was geared toward secondary ed my history curriculum was slightly different than other history majors, and as a result I probably had fewer upper-level history courses, but the difference was probably only 1 or 2 classes overall and I rocked the upper-level courses I did take, generally getting really high grades from the toughest profs in the department.

When I made the decision to go to grad school, because of time constraints, I only applied to two schools - Loyola and Boston College. I got into Loyola and decided to go there. So my academic pedigree is Oakland University > Loyola University Chicago. Probably not the most impressive. But in reality, I have noticed that where you get your degree matters very little, no matter what people say. At conferences I have been amazed at the quality of work from people at a variety of institutions, including really bad work from people at elite schools, and really good work from people at Loyola type schools. Dr. Robert Bucholz, one of Loyola's faculty members who actually gives a crap about graduate students, has said that he'd put Loyola students in the same ring as elite schools any day. I always thought that was a bit of posturing on his end, until I started putting conferences together and seeing the kind of stuff being done. I would agree with him on that point. I know that I am always impressed with my forerunners at Loyola and how well versed they are in the discipline. As this post suggests, different tiered graduate programs serve different purposes. I think that is a better perspective on the issue raised here.

In the end, I recognize that the prospects of finding a secure/rewarding academic job is unlikely and that my opinion doesn't matter on the subject, because as Tim Lacy pointed out here the system for evaluating programs is inherently flawed. I'm not trying to say that Loyola is a top-tier school. Don't get me wrong. But it is a very good school, and there are a number of other factors (size of school/department, funding, necessity for part-time work, etc.) that contribute to Loyola's, and schools of it's ilk, being branded as "inferior" - a label that is then siphoned off to it's graduates in the academy. Are there some bad eggs at Loyola. Sure there are. But I'm sure people would be surprised at the similarities between our department and that of a top flight school, at least intellectually. In the end, isn't that what really matters? No matter where someone goes for their PhD they're going to bust their asses to finish the degree. At the same time, all the literature and commentary indicates that newly minted PhDs shouldn't expect their efforts to be acknowledged by a tenure-track job. Anyone who enters grad school with the mentality that that is the only acceptable situation for them are setting themselves up to fail. But I would hope that during the course of one's training as an historian (or any humanities field) that (s)he would be able to revise their thinking.

Basically I refuse to be labeled as an inferior historian simply because of where I went to school. In the words of W. Axl Rose - "Don't Damn Me!"

The Dissertation Proposal

I assume that most doctoral-granting institutions require PhD students to write a dissertation proposal before they embark on researching and writing their dissertation. At my school we have a formal, public defense of the proposal, but I realize that might not be the case at all schools. Since I finished my exams in November, I've been working on my own dissertation proposal. I wrote the majority of it over a 1-2 week period in mid-December. So when the current semester started I had a complete draft to present to my adviser. Luckily, my adviser is of the opinion that the dissertation proposal is a step in a larger process, and that it does not have to be a perfect specimen - your research will and (probably) should change as you get further into your subject. Therefore, splitting hairs over the minutia of your proposal is an exercise in futility. I know that other professors in my department are of the perfectionist school. Granted, each adviser is entitled to their own opinion on dissertation proposals, but the overall effect of the perfectionist school has been detrimental to the process in general. Too many students spend way too much time writing, and, of course, putting off completing their proposals. As one of my committee members told me last week, no one should take more than two months to get their proposal done. I agree. That is also why I'm shocked that some people in my department take a year or more to finish their proposals (if I had not switched advisers, I surely would have been one of those by no fault of my own). The long short of it is this: the dissertation proposal is a set of ideas and hypotheses. It doesn't have to be flawless or even set in concrete. The most important thing is to speak with your adviser before and during to process and determine their expectations so that you can set reasonable goals for completing the proposal in a timely manner.

Building solidarity

Last night I spent some time with colleagues discussing various aspects of our collective graduate school experience. One of the topics we discussed is something that I have been actively trying to change this year - the lack of camaraderie in our department. It seems to me that this problem stems from a number of factors. First, we're a relatively small department. That means that cohorts are not very big and one if lucky if they have someone with a similar research project to bounce ideas off of. Second, we are an urban school in Chicago with people spread out over a large area. This creates a motivational issue for people to actually get out of their houses and participate in various activities (especially with the current shape of the CTA and the winter weather). As the president of our department's graduate student association I've made concerted efforts to increase interest in our organization and foster a sense of community amongst the students in the department. It seems like this action won't pay off for another few years as it will probably take a few more years of sustained advocacy to get our department where it needs to be. Providing opportunities for people is only one half of the equation. The other half involves people actually taking part in them. One can offer as many services as they like, but if no one uses them what is the net benefit? It seems both sides are deprived of positive opportunities. What are some ways to get people more involved? How does one go about getting people to show up to meetings, workshops, or even the bar? These are some of the issues my department will continue to face for the foreseeable future.