But – somewhat related to the diss – I have a publication! I did a book review of Nadja Durbach’s Spectacle of Deformity: Freak Shows and Modern British Culture for Disability Studies Quarterly – Vol. 30, No. 3/4 (2010). You can read it by going here http://www.dsq-sds.org/issue/current and scrolling down until you see my name. It’s only a few pages long, so you can skim it quickly if you’re so inclined.

It was neat to write the review, and it made me feel like more of a participant in a specialized field of knowledge. I’ve never quite felt that before.

That’s all the news for now. I’ll try to write periodically throughout the fall because I won’t exactly be doing nothing. I’ll still be reading scholarly stuff on the weekends and combing through periodical archives on microfilm. I just won’t be able to do any writing, what with the eight thousand students I’ll be responsible for and all.

I’m reading about sensibility because Boruwlaski invokes it in his autobiography, although he sees himself as combining sensibility and rationality, a combination that wasn’t thought to readily exist. Eighteenth-century critics of sensibility accused it of making people weak and unable to survive in the “real” world (see Henry MacKenzie’s Man of Feeling (1771), in which the “man of feeling,” having no place in this cruel world, dies with a sigh and a tear). So one point that I’m going to make in my chapter is that Boruwlaski wants the positive aspects of the cultural distinction that goes along with sensibility and attempts to side-step its critics by saying, “but I’m rational, too!”

In the interests of the dissertation, I will embody sensibility for the rest of the day. So you might want to avoid me, unless you want to see a lot of weeping and blushing. I’m also currently working on my “mute gestures” (really?! I’ve read this phrase a thousand times in 18th-c. novels, but haven’t noticed until now how crazy it sounds…)

I mean, there’s the whole conservatorship thing, and that pesky 5150 hold she was on for a while. This is helpful to me because I know that if I do end up losing my mind, society has some safety nets pre-arranged for my (and your) protection – so that’s good.

Viva Britney!

I feel both incredibly guilty that I’m not working, and incredibly hostile that people (including myself) expect me to work – like I owe it to them, or myself, or whatever. So I’m mad at any friends and family in advance who might ask me if I did any work today. And then who will judge me because I haven’t. Or who will be concerned because I haven’t, for my sake. But the two get conflated in my head.

I know that sometimes you just have to sit down and make yourself do it, and no amount of little tricks or mind games will make it any better or easier. (But if you’re planning on explaining this to me any time in the near future, BEWARE. Like I said, I’m already hostile and I don’t know who you are yet…)

The other day I was taking a walk and was thinking really productively about the dissertation. I’ve just read this autobiography of one of my monsters – the Comte Boruwlaski, celebrated Polish dwarf – and have found something I didn’t expect to find: sensibility. This is a big-deal concept in the 18th c. that has to do with the cultivation of physiological feeling toward another’s emotions. People would affect sensibility all the time, and a lot of novels, especially in the later 18th c. interrogate sensibility’s place in the world. So, anyway, Boruwlaski’s autobiography, written in 1788, reeks of sensibility. This is really interesting, because my project is concerned with the representation of the monster. With Boruwlaski’s autobiography, we have a monster presenting himself as having sensibility – but he also presents himself as a man of reason (critics of sensibility often pointed out its tendency to overpower intellect). So Boruwlaski is not only invoking sensibility in his book, he is also engaging in contemporary debates about it in specific ways.

Boruwlaski is the only one of my monsters who actually had the opportunity to shape his public persona, and he is also the only one who, in periodical advertisements, has less of a focus on his monstrosity. He becomes a nobleman who also happens to be a dwarf. This is also apparent in the types of exhibitions in which he features: almost all of my periodical ads on Boruwlaski talk about him as hosting a public breakfast or organizing a concert. He is the host of a sort of refined entertainment. He never merely sits in a shop window or at a fair booth to let people marvel at him. People do marvel at his size when he gives his public entertainments, but they also marvel at the facility with which he plays the guitar, or the elegance of his demeanor while he is welcoming his distinguished guests. This is markedly different from the other monsters, whose physical anomaly is both the reason for, and the focus of, the spectacle advertised.

There, now. Are you happy? I just did some writing, albeit, scattered and unpolished. Does this mean that my day hasn’t been a total waste?

Like, yes, it’s ok for me to work for 15 minutes and take a nap, as long as it’s a good 15 minutes.  And then, so in the 15 minutes I was supposed to be working, I answered two e-mails and opened my document on Word.  That counts, right?  Naptime!  Yesssss.

Or, it’s perfectly normal to watch 7 hours of tv straight and eat an entire bag of family-sized sour cream and onion potato chips (but they’re baked!).  And then cry about the dissertation.  And then look on Facebook to see everyone else’s great lives in comparison to me, sitting here in Losertown.  And then organize my dissertation books into piles, according to priority.  And then take a nap.

The scenarios are endless, people.  This is what happens to too many good PhD candidates.

So anyway, I’ve begun meeting with a friend once a week to talk about the dissertation again.  And it was a really good idea.  Not only does it prevent me from staying in bed for 24 hours at a time with the same critical essay laying, neglected and covered with grease from my many pity-feasts, next to me, but it also helps me put things in perspective.  My diss buddy is really level-headed about how much work is reasonable to do at a time, and she has tons of great ideas for ways to approach writing.  I’m not exactly sure what I bring to the table (comic relief?), but I am grateful to have these meetings.

The latest cool thing to emerge from our meetings – which I actually knew and had practiced before, although in my self-pitying quagmire I forget these things – is the strategy of inserting things into a draft like [add section on sensibility and MacKenzie here] and then moving on.  Because there are lots of things that you know should go into a chapter at a particular point, but you don’t necessarily have the time or energy at that moment to look it up and write it out.  Then you can just keep on writing along your same train of thought, instead of throwing something and exclaiming to the heavens that it’s so unfair and there’s too much to do and it will never get done. (Yes, my writing process is pretty awesome, I admit).

So that’s the advice for today, kids: if you’re drafting something and don’t have the energy or resources to follow up a particular strand of the argument, bracket it for later!  We’ll get to later…well, later.

Additionally, a number of my friends are actually finishing their dissertations and getting jobs (although these two things are certainly – and in these economic times, generally – not ready partners). This has contributed to my job-focused-ness. Especially when friends – good, brilliant, talented friends – are failing in job searches.

Up to this point, I had been consoling myself with the idea of going into the private sector if this whole academia thing doesn’t work out. “I can always go make a ton of money in the real world, where it’s a big deal to have a PhD and people will pay you beaucoup bucks.” Except when I was scrambling to find a job last month and looked outside academia, I didn’t get a single response to any applications I submitted. Ouch. Apparently people trying to fill administrative assistant positions aren’t interested in an English ABD from Ohio State.

I’ve been reading around in The Chronicle of Higher Education for tips on nonacademic job searches, and I came across a couple of columns that reflect this dilemma quite nicely. Adam Ferguson (pseudonym) writes a 2-part series on his nonacademic job search, so read both, please! I’m posting them here for your reading pleasure.

http://chronicle.com/article/So-Why-Did-I-Fail-/46746/

http://chronicle.com/article/The-Nonacademic-Job-Search/46796/

New Me: Reads monster scholarship and resists temptation to panic. I am contributing something new, in that I am exploring this phenomenon through periodical advertisements, which have their own generic characteristics, history, and motivations. I don’t have to re-assess what monsters mean for mankind – I can explore one facet of monster culture to add to the overall narrative. In this way, my project is unique.

And who knows? I may end up proposing something even more unique than this, something that I can’t think of right now because I haven’t done the work of the dissertation. But I can finally read other people’s scholarship without thinking, “Why didn’t I think of that? It makes so much sense! Now there’s nothing left to say.” It certainly is a new reading experience.

1) find a full-time job NOT in academia

2) cobble together adjunct positions at multiple universities

The first option is good because it will probably pay a heck of a lot better than any adjunct work, and it will give me benefits. The downside is that it doesn’t show dedication to the field of higher education, which will be a potential strike against me when I go on the academic job market. The second option will show that dedication, and it will keep me connected while I try to finish my degree. The downside of the second option is that it will be a lot of work for little pay and no benefits…and long commutes around Ohio.

As of right now, I have adjunct positions lined up at Otterbein and OSU’s Marion campus. I will be teaching five classes in the fall, commuting 3 hours a day, and having two to three workdays a week that will be 12 hours. I have a couple of job applications out to other places, but I haven’t heard anything yet.

The dissertation must go on, whatever I end up doing to pay the bills. I’m going to work on making a writing schedule for this summer. I guess I should also work on, you know, writing.

The other thing that’s happened that throws a bit of a damper on my forward momentum is that I lost my job at the university. Arts and Sciences cut a lot of graduate student funding and I was affected negatively. This means that I also have to find a job, which is the other thing that’s taking up my time this week. I have some deadlines to meet for submitting application materials.

But I’m still feeling upbeat overall – I have a project supported by a great committee, and I have a direction! These are all good things.

My next step is to add about 10 pages to the prospectus document where I unpack some key terms and concepts (disability, monster/freak, spectacle, periodical) to give a good theoretical basis to the project. This will become the draft of my introduction. Then, according to my awesome advisor, I can start with whatever chapter excites me the most:)

Probably the best thing that happened yesterday is that one of my committee members complimented me on my writing, and said that the writing isn’t going to be difficult for me. This runs counter to everything I believe about myself. My professional identity is simple: good teacher, good administrator, bad scholar, bad writer. When my committee member was talking about my writing being engaging yesterday, the room started to spin a little bit for me. How do I accommodate this new piece of information? Do I believe it? Do I revise my professional identity?

It seems preliminary for all that. In the past two and a half years, I’ve produced one thing that is well-written. I’m not sure that demands a professional identity revision. The real test is whether I can continue to produce good work on a regular basis. Anyone can write a nice piece every once in a while (or once in a few years), but producing good work on a regular basis seems like a radically different thing.

So basically what’s happened here is that I’ve taken a really nice compliment and turned it into another opportunity for failure. I’m sure that the “real” me will poke its ugly head through the veneer of a well-written prospectus, horrifying all my committee members and making them regret their decision to sign on to this project.

Sick and twisted.