Over at Anggarrgoon, “Claire”:http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/anggarrgoon/2004/03/23#a63 is worried about losing the hidden benefits of graduate school.
bq. I finished my dissertation today. … What excuse will I use now when I try to eat cereal with a fork? or have no clean clothes? or when I eat porridge for dinner? probably that I’m making the most of it before I stop being a grad student and have to be respectable…
Here’s a true story. When I was reading that a few hours ago, all the talk of food made me kinda hungry. So I headed over to the kitchen, washed a bowl, pulled out the cereal box, and then looked at the clock and realised a bowl of cardboard-flavoured cereal wasn’t what I needed at that time of day. But had I not noticed the clock, I think I’d think that being an academic would have been a pretty good excuse in the circumstances. So provided the job market for Australian linguists is as strong as it should be, Claire will have all the excuses she needs for a long long time.
More seriously, congratulations to Clare on finishing the thesis. I wonder how many people there are so far who have finished a PhD while maintaining an academic blog?
{ 12 comments }
Chris Lawrence 03.24.04 at 6:53 am
Well, I managed it (see here); I wrote virtually all of my dissertation while I kept up the blog. So, it can be done.
Congrats to Claire on making it through!
Duckling 03.24.04 at 10:22 am
Me too hopefully in a year’s time. argh. It’d probably be 6 months time if I didn’t spend so much time on my blog.
eszter 03.24.04 at 11:07 am
I started my blog a year and a month before I finished the dissertation.. and no, I would not have finished it before, although of course I cannot prove that.
Then again, I also chaired the Grad Student Gov’t at Princeton while preparing for and taking my Generals so maybe these things help my productivity.
Heather 03.24.04 at 2:33 pm
You mean it’s possible to blog and finish writing? Congratulations, Clare!
Blogging is so much more fulfilling in the short term that it’s an easy distraction. Maybe I’ll return to this post by May of next year to tell you all that I did it, too…like Eszter, I don’t think the time I need would be shortened any if I were to stop blogging.
J. Ellenberg 03.24.04 at 3:53 pm
The wife and I were hungry at 11:30 last night so we each had a bowl of Frosted Mini-Wheats. What do non-academics do?
Elle 03.24.04 at 4:53 pm
I’m a tenured full professor, and I still sometimes have cereal for dinner. However, I do eat it with a spoon.
trish 03.24.04 at 5:35 pm
give me until Sept. and I’ll have blogged throughout almost my entire PhD, minus the first six months.
Cleis 03.24.04 at 5:56 pm
Hey, hey, I’m working on it! Stop harrassing me!
;)
DJW 03.24.04 at 6:24 pm
I don’t blog, in part since reading blogs seems to be slowing down my dissertation enough. My dissertation is currently in a ‘bad dog’ phase, though, so I’m probably looking for excuses.
Josh 03.24.04 at 7:41 pm
I’m in the home stretch, and have been blogging through the entire writing process (started when I was wrapping up my field research). These days, the blog has suffered a bit as my writing has ramped up, but I’ve also been told that I’m “increbibly brave” for posting a daily running word count on my blog’s sidebar (makes me accountable to both advisors and family, though it’s debatable which exerts more pressure on me)…
Kikuchiyo 03.25.04 at 12:03 pm
If I ever finish my dissertation, will it mean that I stop subsiting on a diet primarily composed of coffee?
Blinger 03.25.04 at 10:57 pm
Well I’m in the middle of the course work for my masters and will start the dissertation later this year.
the purpose of my blog is to keep me focused on language and also to write something everyday hopefully improving my writing.
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