It Seemed Like a Good Idea

No dissertation work today. I'll write a plan of work for Chapter Two tomorrow.

Today I MUST finish these encyclopedia biographies. All three are in various stages of disrepair. The Eva Clayton article is the most complete--her biography is the least complicated and information on her has been very very easy to find. The Corrine Brown piece, for which I have the most research in terms of pages and notes, is still in need of balance. Brown has been controversial throughout her entire career (and I love troublemakers) and she also is my sorority sister--so I'm working on making sure there is a good balance between the good and the not-so-good. Lastly, there's my favorite subject, Lelia Smith-Foley-Davis. I finally sorted out the Smith details and the Davis details, but the Foley name is still a mystery. I'm going to take one more stab at making calls and hitting the library on that in the morning, but if I don't have an answer by noon, I'm sending off the piece as is. I have the beginning and the end of that piece the way I like them, but I need to brush up the middle. And for the first time ever, my bibliographies/further reading lists are not done for any of these pieces!! I'm usually the bib queen--they tend to be my means of procrastination, but I don't have any sources down for these articles. Terrible shame.

Back to work.

Is Fashion Anti-Intellectual???

You all can blame Stewgad for this late night rambling...

The issue of attire has surfaced this week in good ol' Chronicle. Stewgad's thoughtful response on classroom confrontations and dress has prodded me to pull out one of my favorite lectures: "Attire in the Academy: Why Matching is a Scholarly No-No." I'll deal with the belligerent student issue another time....

I've never understood how sloppiness came to be defined as a sign of brilliance or "coolness." Think about it and look around. If you've ever attended college, worked at a university, or even seen various portrayals of professors on television, the sloppiest or most eccentric dressers are generally those thought of as the "most intellectual" or the "coolest." Don't get me wrong, casual is one thing, but too many academics are just down right sloppy and un-groomed. I mean is a comb non-environmental or something?? Does matching violate some post-continental philosophical statement that I'm not aware of?? Did Habermas say, thou shalt not change your shirt more than twice a week?? Ok, really, I'm picking on a small minority of academics whose basic attire annoys me immensely.

In all seriousness, I think that it is easy to oversimplify the academic classroom uniform as a smoking jacket/pipe or jeans/tshirt or tie-dye/birkenstocks (oooh I hate those shoes). No one in campus administration really dresses that way and most instructors/professors don't either. Whenever we talk about norms of classroom appearance in particular, we need to take into consideration sooo many things, especially--age, gender, race/nationality, region, and discipline/nature of institution. I went to high school sponsored by a religious college/seminary--the norms for attire in that environment were pretty formal. Having taught and attended school in both the Northeast and the Southeast, there are vast differences in just region. At my ritzy, private undergraduate institution in the Southeast, only science professors dressed like they were about to go into the woods or a swamp after class, mostly because they actually might. Generally, professors looked--professional. "Formal" dress does not at many institutions communicate rigidity or strictness; it can also communicate style, flair, respect, religious beliefs, and/or professionalism. As an undergrad, I did not assume professors who dressed up were prudish, mean, or inflexible; if anything, I really didn't even notice at all. What I noticed was the few professors who looked...well, a hot mess: the hippies, the goth chicks, the farmer, the lumberjack, etc.

Perhaps dress is a sensitive area for me because I teach public speaking and we talk explicitly about what nonverbals such as dress can communicate. I believe it is important for me to practice what I preach. I tell my students that in formal speaking situations they should always dress one notch above their audience, stand out just a little bit--so I do the same. This does not make my classroom formal or rigid--those peers who have seen me teach know that I maintain an interesting balance of being in charge and "cool." I prefer communicate my openness to students in other ways--like respecting them and being friendly. But even if I was not in public speaking, I can't see myself dressing down. I came into graduate school, and graduate teaching, straight out of undergrad, a year or so YOUNGER than the traditional undergraduate. I was a TA and a speech consultant as an undergrad so I felt comfortable in the classroom, but I knew that my students would not see me as an authority. Why? I was entering a large, Northeast college town public school and I'm young, I'm a woman, I'm Black and I'm from the South--I didn't belong. (In my first semester, I had students referring to people of color as simply "coloreds"--but I digress).

Given all of my various cultural/social influences and the models I had as an undergrad, it never occurred to me to dress casually, and it's not in my nature to be sloppy :). Where I come from, everyone dresses up to go to work--and this was my job. I quickly had to get used to being in the SMALL minority of graduate student instructors who wore anything other than jeans or khakis to class--interestingly enough, most of us in that group were women, Black, or Southern (and generally some combination thereof). In contrast to what I had seen in the Southeast, quite a few of the young women instructors at my Northeast institution seem comfortable in jeans and other casual attire. I've even seen some wear tank tops and other trendy apparel that show off interesting things like tattoos and belly button rings. That would be uncomfortable for me, especially being so close in age to my students and with all of the stereotypes about Black women's sexuality. Overall, I wear what is comfortable for me; what I've always worn to any job--dress clothes. And like most jobs I've had, I build "casual days" into the calendar. In my classroom, those tend to be days when I am critiquing speeches and sitting in the back of the room for the period. But, I can't get down with Ms. Mentor on being dowdy. I love sharp clothing--I'm not flashy in the classroom, but I'm not afraid to wear things that I actually look nice in. I'm also extremely petite so in general, I wear a lot of heels, in and out of the classroom. I have a pair of Nine West 3" heel boots that I had to retire because I wore them out--they were my favorite shoes to teach in and my dissertation advisor called them "self-esteem boots." My students and co-workers often comment on my clothing, and although occasionally with my co-workers it serves as another marker of my "difference," with my students it is always very positive. Every semester at least one student would say that they appreciated the fact I "actually got dressed" to come teach them.

Review: 1) Smart people can match. 2)When you brush your teeth, comb your hair, and change into something that doesn't resemble what you slept in, people appreciate it.

Teaching Portfolio

Ok, it's official. I am going to apply for at least one academic job. After some good counsel from friends in and out of academe, I have decided that it is important for me to get the experience of being on the job market, and more importantly, to begin putting myself in a position to be at the type of institution I really want to be at.

That being said, I realized today that I need to get started on my teaching portfolio. Now I've heard that these portfolios are taken in to search committees with various amounts of interest. Judging from the ad and the department website, it seems like this committee is very much interested in teaching--the ad asks for evidence of teaching including evalutations, sample student work, sample syllabi and assignments--the website indicates lots of faculty-student contact hours. Well, I realized today that some of the information I will need may have been discarded in my move--my bad. In particular, I think I chucked a lot of my qualitative evaluations (my students' brillant one-liners about my teaching were weighing down my boxes). But, I think I have enough materials to work with for the time being. Basically, I just need to get my act together, put this information in a nice package, and spruce up my teaching philosophy statement. I wrote one in the beginning of my graduate program when I first started teaching--clearly my thoughts about teaching may have evolved since then. So I have a new goal to add to the to do list--create a teaching portfolio in the next few weeks so I can some feedback before my first application deadline.

Anyone seen any really good (or really bad) examples of teaching portfolios??? I could use some advice on this one...

Enough job stuff--my obssession with checking the ads daily is growing to twice a day. I haven't done any real work today. Registered for a conference that I can't afford to attend. But mostly, I've been monitoring the work of the men installing new windows into the house. They've been here ALL day, which means unfortunately, I've been stuck inside all day too. Of course, now that they are leaving, it's starting to rain so I no longer have the desire to go outside. Sigh. Eventually, I will get back to finishing up these encyclopedia articles...I only have until MONDAY!

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.

Must Finish Revisions

Well, the 27th is over and I've officially missed my first self-imposed deadline. I've been going at these revisions all day and I'm still not done. I did sidetrack myself a little earlier today looking at the latest job positions and thinking about possible postdocs. Today I had my first real moment when I thought I might actually go on the job market in September. There is a posting for a position at a very nice Southeast University that I would love to teach at. But, the call is for a social scientist in an area about as far as you can get from what I do. So immediate excitement was followed by immediate disappointment. I really think I'm going to end up waiting until the next hiring season--probably would be in my best interest for completing the dissertation this year anyways.

But back to the introduction that will never end. I keep finding holes to patch in Chapter One, but it feels a great deal like attempting to patch up one of Lil Kim's outfits--you're going to use so much fabric, you might as well buy a new outfit. It almost feels like I should start over with a new chapter, but I know that would only frustrate me more. So I'm forcing myself to focus on just two things for the rest of the night--strong transitions and topic sentences. I am tempted to add some political cartoons I found of Condoleezza Rice that further illustrate my point, but of course, that is just adding more work to this durn chapter. I need to finish what I've started so that I can get this thing off of my desk and out of sight for a while. I'm hungry for feedback on my progress--I mainly want to know if what I'm writing even sounds like a dissertation. I am still having issues with VOICE; I'm not even sure if what I've written so far sounds like me. My gut reaction--it doesn't. I need to read what I've written so far out loud, but I'm too lazy at the moment. Tomorrow.

For now, I AM going to finish these revisions before the sun comes up.

Back In Town

Three of the longest days of my life. Driving all day Sunday. Cleaning, packing odds and ends, and running around College Town all day Monday. Driving again all day Tuesday and unloading and unpacking tonight.

I'm tired, but I'm finally really here. I can finally focus. Right?

One of my students from last spring left a letter in my campus box. He needs a letter of recommendation by July 15th. I don't mind writing his letter--he was a wonderful student. But one more thing to do.

And then there's those 3 encyclopedia articles due next week. And then there's that article of mine that needs to go off to a journal ASAP...

But first, tomorrow I am making every effort to finish Chapter One. I need to get something off of my plate. I have to load some stuff into the attic, but I WILL revise!!

Needs More Revision

I haven't met anyone who enjoys revisions so I'm sure it goes without saying but--I hate revising my work.

Chapter One revisions are not going well and the 27th deadline looms closer. Will she make her first deadline??? I feel like this sets the tone for the whole process--perhaps I am doing myself a disservice for thinking that way. After all, I did just get through all my PHD coursework and comps in two years--are a few more days of revisions going to kill me???

The revision process is lengthening because, as hoped, the time away from Chapter One attempting to write Chapter Two gave me some insight into the problems of Chapter One that I was struggling with. So I'm re-envisioning my perspective on the whole project already. Still using womanism--still talking about African-American women politicians--BUT--I'm realizing that the women that I've chosen to study are all troublemakers. And that's why I like them. So why not play up this angle--why not just say that this is a discussion of the rhetoric of the "scratchy tag"--individuals who serve as productive irritants in a system and a society that would seem to say non-White/non-male individuals don't belong. By speaking out despite their status at the margins, they are truly "acting womanish" in the African-American rhetorical sense of the term. So this also helps me further justify why I'm using womanism over black feminism; I am not just talking about epistemology or ideology--I'm talking about a particular attitude or behavior that I think womanism gets at a little more accurately. So my study will hopefully introduce one way of looking at political rhetoric through womanism, while also leaving space for future research that draws on additional definitions of womanist rhetorics.

The problem is that I'm going to lose some of the time I need to make these changes during this trip up to College Town tomorrow. I really wanted to hand in Chapter One physically, but an email will have to do for now.

Saturday's Goal: Revise Ch. 1

Somehow, I did manage to get some work done yesterday. After much much delay, I finally got to work on that first big section of Chapter Two. There is still lots to be done, but it felt good to get back in the groove of writing. How did I get out of the slump you ask? My best friend. She called and reminded me that we were supposed to hang on Friday night--but only if I got some work done. Sometimes simple external motivation is all it takes. It was my first time "going out" down here in years--but that's another story for another blog.

Today, I am going to get to work polishing up Chapter One so I can turn it in by the 27th. I'll be in PA again for a few days so I'll get to physically turn in my first chapter! (Doesn't printing it out and dropping it off feel better than email? Maybe that's just me.)

Off to work. In the meantime, visit CLASSICS etc.: The Seven Dwarves for a cute analogy to what it means to be a grad student. I'm going to start using this to explain to folks down here what it feels like to be a PhD student.

Hooked Up, Proper

**We interrupt any possibility of being productive today to announce that Mon finally has hi-speed.**

One of the interesting aspects of the move was that I had to deal with dial-up for a while. Imagine, trying to read .pdf articles--it was a rough couple weeks. But no more!! The good people at the Local Cable/Media Giant came by today and hooked me up proper. This is such a wonder addition to my otherwise dial-up life.

I will attempt to go back to work now, but I make no promises. Even my aging computer seems to have a little more pep in its step today with the new addition. So the chances for play are near 100%. . . . Next addition--laser printer--coming next week or so--stay tuned.

Are We Writing Yet??

Wednesday was a total loss--Sick Day #1 of the dissertation process. Spent the entire day in bed.

Seeing that Thursday is now over, I guess you would say that today was a loss too. I spent most of the day in the car with no AC on in 97 degree heat. Needless to say, I felt a little drained by the time I finally made it home. Only redeeming value of the day, I did have some time to read. Great new book if you're interested in race, class, and gender issues: Calling Cards: Theory and Practice in the Study of Race, Gender, and Culture (edited by Jacqueline Jones Royster and Ann Marie Mann Simpkins). I have not gone through all of the essays yet, but I'm enjoying it so far. I wish I was as articulate as Royster in expressing why it is so important to do scholarly work on race and gender.

I need to get some work done. Chapter two is calling--again...

Chapter 2--No Pages!!

Try as I might, I have no new pages to show for Chapter Two today. I'm incredibly disappointed. I knew it wouldn't be easy, but I thought that it would be fun and exciting work to get back to 19th century rhetorics. And it may have been--had I not found a million other things to do today. I was very distracted by the idea of my future employment today. I've been talking to friends and family a lot about life after the dissertation, and I think these recent conversations sent me looking at the job postings that are out so far in my field. It's been difficult trying to explain to folks that I can't just apply for a job whenever--I can't upload a resume and a one paragraph cover letter to Monster.com and call it a day. There is this small window of a hiring season that I have to work with, job ads for things that I don't do in my field that I have to weed through. But after looking around the web today, I realized that there are some deadlines for positions in other fields that I'm interested in that are quite a bit earlier than the normal dates in my field. I have some huge decisions to make about going on the market, and unfortunately, I need to hurry this decision-making process.

Today was also one of those days where I just didn't want to be in the house on a computer. Now there was really no reason to be outside--the heat index was a MUGGY 100 degrees. Not really what I would call good outdoors weather. You work up a sweat walking from the front door to the car. I did make a valiant effort--took the laptop out to my favorite corporate bookstore spot and everything. But for the first time in the years I've been going there, there were a good three million people in the bookstore. Not a seat/bench/couch free in the house. I think either everybody had the same idea or there are a lot of broken air conditioners in the area because of the recent storms. I don't know, but I'd honestly never seen this many people there. So from there the day just went downhill--I ran around town for most of it--writing nothing. I started to work this evening, made some additions to Chapter One, but of course it started thundering and lightning again and the power starts flickering. Good reason to shut things down.

So I'm still up; I could write now. I've outlined the areas that I want to cover in the first section--but that's about as much as I'll probably do tonight. Another honest stab at it tomorrow.

Putting Down Chapter One

Well, I got the introduction out of my system, for the most part. It's now one good revision away from going off to my chairs. On track to send it off by my 27th deadline--YEAH!! Need to step away from it for a couple days though so I'm off to work on Chapter Two.

I'm tired, but must get-it-done. The opening paragraphs to Chapter 2 are drafted. I woudl still like to find some type of a quote or anecdote to open the chapter. The purpose of the chapter is to give a survey of Black women's political rhetorics; the chapter does similar work to the introduction of another one of my favorite books--Shirley Logan's We Are Coming. My goal is to give an overview of the history, developments, and growing diversity of Black women's political expressions. Since my study is going to focus so narrowly on formal, elected politics, I think it is important to show that there is a diversity of political expressions by Black women that extend far beyond electoral politics and goes back much farther than the Voting Rights Act/civil rights movement. Sometimes when I read the literature, scholars paint this picture that Black people did not become politically active until the 1960s. So I want it to be clear in my work through this chapter that by no means did Black women's politics begin with Shirley Chisholm.

Chapter two will have four major sections. Tomorrow, I will tackle the first section, which gives an overview of Black women's rhetorics prior to emancipation. Since nineteenth-century rhetorics were my area of study for my MA, it will be fun to get back to writing about my first love.

Sundays Will Be Optional

I'm writing tonight, but in the future I think that Sundays will be my day off from writing. All my life, Sundays have been the day for family and looong naps--why break the tradition. So if I feel like writing on Sundays I will, but no pressure from now on unless there is some big deadline lingering. Tonight, I felt like writing and I need to keep moving on Chapter One. I've gotten down the womanism section, but I think I am going to go back tomorrow and add another paragraph on why I'm choosing to use womanism instead of Black feminism. It's one of those annoying scholarly debates that I was trying to avoid (because in reality I'm using both), but I know I will have readers with various commitments to the terms so I should address this more. Currently, I have about a sentence on it, and that's just not good enough.

I'll probably stay up another hour or two, and do some more hammering on this literature/scholarly conversation stuff. But Chapter One is actually shaping up. I will be doing more work on it tomorrow that I originally planned (more literature and adding a section on defining my terms--especially politics, rhetoric, rhetorical criticism--that's going to be a pain). Hopefully, by the end of the day tomorrow, I'll have the full draft done and can begin revising it and working on Chapter Two Tuesday.

Chapter Two is going to be a lot more fun--harder, but a lot more fun--I've been itching to get back to work on it. I've intentionally set to work on both because Chapter Two is also an introduction; it introduces the particular rhetorical history of Black American women in US politics. I designed this study to be as ambitious and as feasible as possible, and every time I write the terms Black women in politics, I realize how huge the project could become. Politics reach far, far beyond just electoral politics and I cringe to talk about Black women only in the US. I know that I have to limit the scope of my study so I can actually graduate and get this degree while I'm still sane and young enough to not mind being poor. But it's hard when there is just sooooo much I want to write about, and that is going to be a huge struggle with Chapter Two. I am going to have to work really hard to make sure I don't go beyond the essential points in outlining the rhetorical history of African-American women in politics.

But let me get back to Chapter One for now...

Chapter One Moving Along...Slowly

Yesterday, I did finish what I had planned for Friday's goals. I was up until the wee hours of the morning, but I was feeling movtivated so I worked on my biography projects as well.

I haven't been able to kick my late night writing habits. Throughout grad school I did most of my writing between the hours of midnight and 4am. I've been trying to change that and get into a more "normal" routine. But I've noticed myself writing later and later this week. Perhaps I shouldn't resist. Perhaps I should keep my old night creature habits. My concern is that I will run around all day, thinking that I will just "write later," and after a full day I won't feel like writing. Since most everyone I know is at work during the day, it seems more sensible to write during the day and have the evenings to spend with friends and family. But my thoughts don't really get moving until, oh around now. We'll see--Monday starts the "serious" writing routine. I'm going to give it a few weeks. If writing during the day just doesn't work, it's back to my nocturnal hours.

I've been mulling most of the afternoon (while doing laundry and rearranging the furniture in my room) over the order of chapters. For now, I'm thinking boring ol' chronological order. I've been very resistant to it, but I'm going to go ahead and pretend that the chapters will appear that way for the sake of getting this introduction drafted. I know they won't actually be written in that order, but I'll go with it for now (disrupt it later). So in a few moments, one of my goals for today will be done, just as soon as I finish typing these chapter summaries.

As for the literature...sigh. I'm going to try to line up my literature reviews for the introduction as well, but I really don't feel like it tonight. I may work on the womanism part and save the scholarly conversation for tomorrow evening.

Friday Goals: 1.5 out of 3 so far

I'm just getting in from a four hour lunch, so needless to say, I didn't get everything done that I was supposed to today. Fortunately, the day is not over--back to work for me. But rather than being too hard on myself, I thought I'd write for a moment on my progress to get me going for the work I have left for the evening.

This morning, I went through my books at home and settled on four that I'm going to use as models for Chapter One--

• Cheryl Glenn, Rhetoric Retold: Regendering the Tradition from Antiquity Through the Renaissance
• Roxanne Mountford, The Gendered Pulpit: Preaching in American Protestant Spaces
• Patrick Rael, Black Identity and Black Protest in the Antebellum North
• Susan Zaeske, Signatures of Citizenship: Petitioning, Antislavery, and Women's Political Identity

One thing stood out as I was going through all of my books--length. Published book introductions are a lot shorter (on average) than I was thinking in my mind. I know that a dissertation has different goals, and therefore its chapters take different forms than published books. But since one of my goals is getting this work published as a book, I'm trying to make sure this work conforms to publishable standards as much as possible now. So it's probably not the best thing that I've taken four models, but I didn't find just one that did everything I had in mind. Glenn's opening is fantastic for blending scholarly literature--she gives you a literature review that fixes her work within a larger conversation. But she does so without making you feel like you're reading a literature review. Mountford's voice is so striking to me--she openly discusses her investment in the work and the emotional connection that she has with the project. Her book has been one of my favorites since I read it last year. Zaeske and Rael are both efficient models in the practical details of an introduction. Zaeske provides a good model for previewing the layout of the study. Rael adeptly summarizes his arguments and most importantly for me, lays out what his study does not do. I'm interested in the way that he clearly demarcates his territory; this is what my study contributes to, this is what it can't do at this point. I think this is important when you are doing work that opens a new door in a discipline--sometimes I feel like there are those readers who are expecting me to do EVERYTHING at once. Since no one in political comm talks about Black women, I feel some pressure to write THE book on Black women when truly this is only an opening to what I hope will be an ongoing conversation.

Goal 1--Check.

Goal 2--Pulling out the gems from my dissertation proposal. I'm about half way through that process. Hope to finish that in the next couple hours.

Goal 3--Dr. Rice--progress today, zero.
Rael does a great job of opening Black Identity with a fable that becomes an analogy for the subject of his work. He creates five meaty paragraphs that tell the story and make the connection to his work. From there he can quickly go into "This book examines..." I'm trying not to edit myself too much at this stage, but I think I'm going too far into the Rice aspect--I should keep it to an opening episode and get to the work of the introduction.

Back to work...

Thursday--Progress

Today was a decent day of progress. I finished a complete draft for the biography I was having the hardest time with, Lelia Smith-Foley-Davis. That in and of itself should be enough for one day, but since that is not technically dissertation work (although she will appear in Chapter Two), I didn't really feel I had accomplished anything until I wrote on Dr. Rice. So I did get out a couple pages on Condoleezza; they are decent pages so I won't fuss with them too much right now. I just needed to get going.

Goal for the weekend: To have Chapter One completely sketched out by Monday. Normally, I don't write this linearly--it would be more my speed to start in the middle and work my way back. But this time, I want to make sure the skeleton is in the works early on. I already know that Chapter One is going to have a HUGE hole in it, methodology, but the parts that I do know (literature, Rice, womanist perspective) I want to get down on paper. That way I can add to it, tweak it, and fill in the holes more easily as I go along. Oh and there is that deadline of July 27th that I gave myself to get Chapter One circulating...

Plan for the Weekend to Meet Goal Without Losing Sanity:
Friday:

• Look at a few of my favorite book introductions to get an idea of what elements I should include in Chapter One. I've already identified a few books that have introductions that read more like my Chapter Two, so mental note, don't get distracted by Chapter Two.
• Pull out the parts of my dissertation proposal that I'm actually going to use/expand on (Definition of Topic, Contributions of Study, Relevant Scholarly Conversation).
• Continue writing on Condoleezza Rice.

Saturday:

• Develop the literature review aspects of Chapter One. Clearly identify the bodies of literature that I'm contributing to/responding to. This will primarily involve further expansion on the dissertation proposal.
• Commit to paper a possible order of the remaining chapters, even knowing that it will likely change again. The order of my content chapters on the individual case studies changes from week to week, but based on the feedback of my committee, I need to start thinking more critically about how these cases might best blend together.
• If not exhausted and still needed, keep working on Condoleezza Rice.

Sunday:

• Deal with the methodology hole. Write about Womanism/Black Feminism as Methodological Perspective.
• Look at how other rhetorical scholars talk about their methodology for doing textual analysis work.
• Also look at feminist methodologies and write into Chapter One the intrinsic motivations for doing this work as well as the extrinsic. I want to be very honest in this study about my position as a young Black woman and what perspective that brings to the project.
• Is that Rice part finished yet??

Monday:

• Review what I've accomplished--set new goals as needed.
• Read for my VOICE.

I've always received compliments on my "voice" when it comes to writing. Faculty and peers generally enjoy reading my work, but the longer I've been in grad school, the more I feel like I don't have a voice. To some extent, I have lost that sense of knowing what makes my writing mine. I don't even have a style anymore--I've created this crazy collage of MLA and Chicago in recent months (I need to stop!) I know part of it is just fatigue--my writing has become very lazy (by my standards), but again, I think that is due to being out of a serious routine. There are serious downsides to finishing graduate coursework--one of the major ones being that there is no threat of looming seminar papers to keep you writing. And when you've been writing papers every year of your life, any respite from that work is much needed. So really, since December, I've been on a serious writing hiatus. While I was studying for comps, almost all of my writing involved texts on my reading lists--taking notes, summarizing arguments, playing texts against each other--but I wouldn't call that "writing." The whole comps study process for me was more like...typing, lots of typing. I did some work on revising papers and what not, but it wasn't a regular routine. I will say that when I sat for my comps and produced my answers, the feedback that I received from my committee was that my writing was very good. My advisor felt that I was really coming into my "voice," and gaining more confidence as a writier. But I just don't see/hear it right now...

Self diagnosis: Writer's laryngitis brought on by inactivity.
Prescription: Write more.

Major Cleaning, Major Thinking, Minor Writing

The house is quickly starting to look normal. I finally made some space for myself in the office so I'll start work in there tomorrow. I still don't have any "real" internet service, so I need to get that going tomorrow as well. Everything major (i.e. clothes) is unpacked, but there are still some office related boxes in the trunk of my car that I need to take care of. Other than that, I did get a lot of unpacking and organizing done today. So in that regard, I feel like the day was productive.

On the other hand, my time for stalling on writing and thinking is running out. I did some good reading today in an old favorite (Patricia Hill Collins Black Feminist Thought), and tomorrow I will do some writing on that Condoleezza Rice introduction. BUT, it will have to wait until I take my grandmother downtown to pay some bills. Unfortunately, I have not established my "office hours" so the fam is still treating me like I'm home on vacation. But starting on Monday, there will be no phone calls, no errand running, no "let's go hang out" until my writing is done for the day. I will be holding a press conference after church on Sunday to make sure the family is on the same page. In all seriousness, I'm looking forward to getting back to a steady writing routine, and of course I'll blog my successes and FAILURES.

For now, I'm going to do a little writing on those 3 biographies I have to finish, and then call it a night. I know Grandma will be calling me bright and early in the morning....

I Should Write

All day today I told myself, I should write, but I never got around to it. I thought about doing some writing now, but a good friend just told me to get some sleep. I think I'm going to do that. Tomorrow is a new day, but I probably won't do any writing. There is just too much junk that needs to be unpacked and put away. My desk is buried behind a pile of stuff so I really need to finish this work of clearing out a space for writing. I really don't think well in clutter--I'm very "Feng Shui" about my writing space. There is also a little junk in my head that needs to be unpacked right now. I pushed it aside while I was on vacation, but I need to deal with it. It's slowly working itself out, and hopefully it won't take up too much more of my week....

Back on Land

After an exciting week of cruising and hurricaine dodging, I'm finally back on solid ground. I had an absolutely FANTASTIC week--even in spite of the weather. Our captain was a nautical genius!! He moved us around the storm on calm waters--unlike another cruise line that sailed out with us--they had rocky waters during the storm and all of the passengers were locked in their rooms for 6 hours!! We truly had smooth sailing and I'm incredibly glad I took this vacation for myself. I am feeling relaxed and refreshed!! My best friend and I are already planning our next cruise. My goal is to be cruising again next May or June (assuming I can find a way to make some more $$$ outside of my funding), and hopefully that will be my present to myself for completing the diss and possibly graduating (I hope to graduate in May, but August is probably more realistic because of the graduate school defense deadlines being so early).

At any rate, we are relaxing in Florida tonight and then we will hit the road some time tomorrow. I'm not looking forward to being home and unpacking, BUT my attitude towards everything is so different and positive right now. I feel a lot less stressed about going into this new transition and writing the diss. I know it's going to be hard, but I feel like I can make it!!

Regular dissertation blogging will commence Tuesday....Cruise pictures to come soon!

And Then This Hurricane....

So I'm out on the high seas and there is this storm brewing in the ocean right behind me. Sigh. The weather onboard ship has been nice. Yesterday we were in Jamaica--it was a little cloudy and very hot, but no rain. Once we returned to the ship, they announced that they were going to cancel our next two stops--Grand Cayman and Cozumel--and head instead for Nassau, Bahamas. We'll be at sea for today and tomorrow and in the Bahamas on Saturday. My best friend and I are bummed because we knew this was the season for storms, but everyone was said it was too early in the season for a serious storm. Obviously, these people don't know what kind of luck I have. But, still having a great time--off to get more delicious food...