budding scholar

A new year has arrived, one with a blue moon on New Year’s Eve, and family visits that kept me busy and gave me a break from worrying over my project for 10 days. I really needed the break, the complete focus on being an aunt. The fact that you never really disconnect has been one of the most challenging things about doing a Ph.D. for me. I know people doing startups, or writing novels, or becoming artists, or doing other original work probably face this too. Your work is with you all the time, and feels all tied up in who you are, in your identity in the world. How the work is going seems to matter more for for how you feel about yourself than in other jobs where you’re not trying to create something new. The rewards feel few and far between.

It often makes me miss teaching, the satisfaction of knowing you’re helping people learn every day. When I taught I had days where I was exhausted, my home life was a mess, and I didn’t know where I would find the energy to go to work. But then I got there, and the connection with my students was so rewarding that it made the problems pale in importance. I can’t wait to have this connection with students at the college level, in classes on culture and education, immigration, language policy, qualitative methods, and social networks. One of the most rewarding experiences in my life is helping people learn, mentoring them, supporting and encouraging their growth. I just need to get past this milestone/rite of passage of the dissertation!

A post soon about my goals for the new year. I’ve seen others do some last year/this coming year reflecting on their blogs and it’s inspired me. I haven’t made new years’ goals in years, but feel like it would help with the next stage of my study.

There’s a prevalent myth in the world of academia that it’s possible to get work, and especially writing, done during the holidays. It feels like this wide open time, full of whole days that can be spent writing. And then the holidays come, and they’re full of family and food and perhaps catching up on email. So in an effort to make my holiday time productive, I’m spending my mornings at the library in Toledo this week. I hope to write up all my fieldnotes, get through email, transcribe two interviews, and plan out writing projects for January. Mixed in with these work things, I hope to start finding some excitement about the holidays themselves, possibly by making Christmas cards.

As an aside, have you seen this preview? With the babies and culture of different places, it’s the perfect movie for a grad student working away on research into cultural integration while dreaming about life with kids.

The goal was to write 700 words a day this November. The result: an average of 678 per day, with the most being 2120, and several days of 0 (yes I kept track, in a spreadsheet!). On the whole it felt like an attainable goal, and I almost met it. Some days I used the writing time as a way of pushing forward on things like interview guides that had felt tedious and difficult (and thus led to procrastination). Other days it was a way of taking notes and reflecting on experiences, like the trip to meet a group of researchers in Jaén. Many days I wrote about research methodology, a necessary thing to think about right now. This feels like an important step in my career, becoming a regular writer. The goal for December is the same, 700 words a day, with a new focus: work on context/background material for my dissertation.

What are you working on, writing-wise this month? How’s it going?

Looking ahead, the week is full. Work in the morning, snatches of time in the library, visits to Gaudi architecture with my parents, meals at home. Looking back, the weekend was fuller. Walks along harbors, roads, parks and waterfalls; a 90th birthday celebration.

My 700 words a day has been a challenge, made just 3 days of the goal so far. But I think of them as October practice. Now it’s really November, and a Monday, and I’m excited about keeping up the writing this month. I find there is rhythm and flow to writing with a goal of 700 words a day. So my next hour includes a warm cup of Chai tea and writing. And each morning this week will be the same.

Do you ever write with a goal in mind? What kind of goal works for you?