Week One

Good news: I just got an e-mail informing me that a conference proposal I made last month has been accepted. I ended up applying to present a paper at this conference the night before proposals were due. I almost wasn't going to do it, but then I figured it would be stupid not to make up an abstract for this conference. It deals exactly with my specific interest within my field, why wouldn't I at least try to go? So I wrote an abstract based on some research I was doing last semester, and lo and behold, my proposal was accepted and now I'm on a panel with two other people presenting my ten-minute paper. Which hasn't been written yet, of course. This is the first time I've tried the "submit the abstract first, write the paper if the abstract gets accepted," game. I realize that this is how many academics function, but it's not how I have functioned prior to now, so this will be an interesting experiment for me. The conference is in New York City in late April, so I'll be able to drive there and hopefully stay with Kiki, thus not having to shell out hundreds and hundreds of dollars for a conference experience. And it will give me an excuse to see Kiki, which is a nice added bonus. Plus it hits at the perfect time, right before my end-of-the-year performance review, so I'll be able to go before the faculty with my good academic record (hopefully it will still be good by that point) and the news that I presented at two conferences this semester. That should make me look pretty strong. Oooh, and I also just realized that the professor I'm doing an independent guided study with this semester will probably be more than willing to help me with this paper since it has a lot to do with what I am strongly considering writing my dissertation on, and if I continue down this research path this prof is likely to be my dissertation adviser. So maybe I can kill two birds with one stone and work on this paper as part of my independent study in lieu of reading a couple of books.

This good news caps off what has been a promising first week of the semester. Besides doing the same teaching load I did last semester (two intro classes, which are located as far away from my office as they can possibly be and still be on campus), I'm taking four courses again this semester. One of them is just the one-hour guided study I mentioned, with Dr. Absent-Minded Professor. I call Dr. AMP that because s/he is constantly like, "Oh, yes, we were supposed to do that this week, weren't we?" and, "Right, I should have e-mailed you days ago! So sorry!" You may wonder why I'm seriously considering taking hir on as my dissertation adviser. I'll tell you why: despite hir propensity to be absent-minded, s/he tends to be a good advocate for hir students and hir advisees are actually graduating in a timely manner. Plus s/he tells it like it is when it comes to making it in this profession and getting a job. Plus I've discovered if you tell hir exactly what you want to do, s/he's willing to make a few additional suggestions and then basically go along with your plan. And that's what I need: someone to approve my plan and then help me finish in a timely manner. I don't care about being BFF with my adviser, and as of right now I don't think I'm going to need someone to hold my hand the whole way. I just need to be able to check in with someone once in a while to say, "Am I on the right track here? Okay, cool, thanks." And I think s/he will hopefully be able to do that for me. It helps, of course, that s/he also has excellent name recognition. Haha. True, my topic could change completely between now and May. That's sort of what this semester is for, testing out my potential dissertation topic to see if its really feasible.
Besides the independent study, I'm also taking two three-hour courses within the department. One, with Dr. Hyper, will also allow me to do a lot of potential dissertation research from many different angles. I think the class is going to be hard as hell. We have a good 300 or 400 pages of reading every week, plus we each have to give a presentation on our work almost every week as well. The reading is all stuff I'll need to do for my comps eventually anyway, but good God. Dr. Hyper is a speed reader-an actual speed reader, not just someone like me that reads faster than normal people-and I think when s/he creates hir courses s/he forgets that not everyone shares hir skill. I know this class will be incredibly useful for me, but I am also already envisioning all the Mondays when I'll be awake all night long trying to finish my work for class on Tuesday. I'm also taking another class with Dr. Scary. I don't know what I was thinking when I signed up for courses with Dr. Hyper and Dr. Scary in the same semester, but at least Anna, Nicole, and Stacy all did the same thing so we can commiserate with one another. Dr. Scary's course seems like it is going to be very interesting. It concerns an area of the field that I have always been extremely interested in but never studied in depth, and it involves some fun-sounding projects (yes, really). I just hope that s/he continues to like me this semester, since s/he is known for being extremely volatile.
The last class I'm taking is an out-of-the-department course. I have to take three of them as part of my course work, and I plan to take one each semester until I'm done with my course work. When I started here in August, everyone told me that our department is extremely challenging compared to most departments on campus. I didn't fully believe that until now. When I saw the syllabus for my out-of-the-department course, I almost laughed out loud. I'm used to being handed syllabuses (or syllabi, depending on if you're of the Latin or Greek persuasion) that are seven or eight pages long with detailed calendars, project descriptions, tons of required and recommended readings, etc. This syllabus? It was one page long. One page! We read only one book a week. And although I don't want to get into what sort of books they are, I will tell you that it's going to be easy reading compared to what I'm used to (after all, if I tell you the out-of-department course, then you'll know another department that I'm NOT in, and I can't willingly give you clues like that. Accidentally, sure, willingly, no). We write only one paper over the course of the semester, and it's only 5 pages long! And we do have a final exam, but the professor already basically said that we'll all get "A"s as long as we're not lazy. While there's a chance that all of these students will have a vocabulary that I don't share and I will be prevented from actively participated in discussion, I don't actually think that's going to happen. I think this course is probably going to be pretty easy compared to what I'm used to.
Which is funny, because when we were introducing ourselves in the class and I mentioned that this is one of my out-of-department classes and that I am working on a PhD in something else, I definitely saw a couple of dubious looks and something that looked suspiciously like an eye roll. I wanted to say, "Please, you people have NO IDEA," and then pull out my syllabus for Dr. Hyper's class, since if this course is any indication, I apparently do more in one class than they do in every bit of their graduate coursework.
See, my field is not always (hell, even often) highly respected. More than once I have had people say, "Oh wow, you can get a PhD in that?" As a result of this disrespect, I think there is a tendency for professors in my subject to overcompensate in order to prove that we are "real" scholars. That certainly seems to be what's happening here. Several of my friends are also taking classes in other departments this semester, and they all report similar laughably small workloads. The next time someone patronizingly says, "Oh, you study [subject]? Wow, that must be really easy!" I'll just smile. Or maybe kick them in the nuts. Because I definitely know better.