Chapter One--OUT!!

Before I get to Chapter One, let me say that thanks to all of you annoying academics in the blogosphere, I now look at the Chronicle on a regular basis. I never thought I would be one of those people. As a matter of fact, I even took a seminar a couple semesters back on Higher Education--we were supposed to read the Chronicle every day. Key words here, supposed to--I rarely did. I could pretend that I'm just looking at the job ads, but alas, I'm starting to read the articles too.

So by now, all of you (self-proclaimed) nerds out there have read the adventures of Frodo Baggins, ABD. Well, today I was once again possessed by the precious ring. For the past 72 hours I've been obsessed with Chapter One. I could not/did not leave the house and rarely left my computer until it was done. I crashed and burned about 4+ hours after my last post, still with unfinished revisions and new ideas about the chapter in my head. So when I got up this morning, I ate and got back to it. I did a little BS'n of course--job market related--but mostly it was revision, revision, revision. I decided that rather than hold back, I would get it all out of my system. I knew that Chapter One was still on my desk, not because it was a bad draft or I was afraid to show it to anyone, but because there was simply more I wanted to do with it. So I did--even added some those cartoons I was thinking about. So here I am 24 hours after my deadline with a good, complete draft of Chapter One.

YYYYYYYYYYEEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Man, accomplishment feels good. I know that my chairs will kindly shred it up and return it to me in little pieces, but it just feels good to feel like I've accomplished something in this process. Exactly one month after my proposal, one solid chapter draft. Given all of the moving and vacationing and other personal and biological issues, I feel really good about that. So excuse me while I momentarily abandon all of the humility I'm so well-known for. For the next few minutes, I'm all that and a bag of chips.

Ok, back to reality. I did my usual job surfing today. Quite a few new announcements came out, most of which were outside of my current geographic interests or outside of my research abilities. But today, I found the FIRST ad in my area of expertise at an institution I might actually enjoy teaching at. AND it sounds like that might be considering ABD candidates (Doesn't the line "PhD required by time of appointment" sound like ABD applicants won't be trashed immediately or am I reading that incorrectly????) So, yesterday I was leaning heavily towards postdocs or some other form of funding for my research for the 2006-2007 year, but now I'm back at seriously considering going right back into full-time teaching. I'm still so burnt out from teaching non-stop during my program that it's hard for me to judge how I'm going to feel about being in the classroom a year from now when I'm done with the dissertation (yes, I WILL be done--Frodo made it so can I). One thing I need to do is determine the teaching load at this particular institution. I do know that if I go back into the classroom next year, it needs to be gradual--jumping into 4 (even 3) sections of teaching would send me running for the hills, no the islands. {My best friend from high school wants me to move to the islands with him and of course today I happened to run across a Fulbright to his favorite island--St. Lucia. Sooo tempting.} I have just a few weeks to really decide what I'm going to do about this faculty job issue--the deadline for this institution is in just two months. I must figure out what I'm doing, very, very, soon....

Now that Chapter One is off to the bosses, it is time to get out these durn encyclopedia articles. Procrastination is a smurf! I'll get to them later today.