Arabic calligraphy on the side of the Taj Mahal.
Welcome to Week 8 of Summer writes! It’s the week after the Fourth of July: do you know where your summer writing goals are?
Usually in a twelve-week writing group, this is where people really start to fall off—don’t let this be you! Stay strong and keep the faith for the next five weeks, and you’ll feel better for it. And as always, happy writing!
Weekly Goals:
Nicole: Basically, I still have to complete most of the goals I set out last week. Defense is Tuesday! I have been practicing Q and A for the defense with 2 colleagues and by roughly writing out some of the answers to anticipated questions. But I still need to finish rereading dissertation, and (key) finish preparing the 10 minute presentation covering questions, analytical process, and contributions, practice this tomorrow afternoon with 2 colleagues, and also write the abstract (in the worst case this can be done after the diss. defense but that is less desirable; I will be even more over it then!).
Dan: Monday I’m going to spend with my boyfriend because he has the day off, but Tuesday through Friday I’m going to stick to my five big poms, but adjust my work schedule to be 10 to 12, 130 to 330, and 4 to 5, and see how that goes.
Meg: I am just going to keep doing what I’ve been doing, which is working on my stuff in a 3 to 4 hour chunk in the morning, break for lunch/paid work/ meetings, and then another 3 to 4 hours in the afternoon/evening.
Naoko: – Discuss with data manager options for image sharing
– Discuss with data center re: producing list of moms of eligible for enrollment
– Set clear qualitative training dates and revisit qualitative training brainstorm
– Write introduction and methods for Intergrowth paper
Steph: 1) Complete edits through Chapter Five
2) Begin to revise teaching statement
Ye Olde Royle Blog 
I am guilty of falling off. Getting back on the horse here. Also, need to start consciously prioritizing dissertation stuff over peripheral things.
For this week:
– Discuss with data manager options for image sharing
– Discuss with data center re: producing list of moms of eligible for enrollment
– Set clear qualitative training dates and revisit qualitative training brainstorm
– Write introduction and methods for Intergrowth paper
Still alive and kicking over here! I finished a big task this weekend–revising a journal article–and now I just need to finish drafting the letter detailing my revisions today, let everything “sit” for a day, then send it off tomorrow or Thurs. Then I need to get back to writing the diss. Revising this article helped me to have some epiphanies about my overall argument, so I want to work on developing those before I get back to working on the second empirical chapter. I am in a good groove at the moment, work flow wise, so I am just going to keep doing what I’ve been doing, which is working on my stuff in a 3 to 4 hour chunk in the morning, break for lunch/paid work/ meetings, and then another 3 to 4 hours in the afternoon/evening.
Holy cow. You are DONE with the Revise and Resubmit? That was fast!
Holy cow, you are DONE with your PhD!!!
Shoot! I think I missed last week! Because of the holiday and I knew that I would be taking a few days off, I was actually pretty productive. This week, I am working on going through each chapter and doing some more line editing (tightening up sentences, cutting, etc.), but I got the major revisions done that I wanted to on this book.
My goals this week are:
1) Complete edits through Chapter Five
2) Begin to revise teaching statement
I don’t know if you’ve seen this post by Karen Kelsky on teaching statements, but I think it’s a really good one. Number 7 on this list is definitely going to guide my rewrite when I get around to it.
Hi. I passed my defense today!!!! Wanted to post that update.
Congratulations, Dr. Nicole!!!
Wow! Congratulations!!!!! Inspires me to keep plodding along!!
Thank you!!!!
A few more things to tie up but these are not huge 🙂
Sorry for letting the week slip by without seeing or replying! I’ve continued to be in a slump with regard to writing but have gotten a ton of other work done which I think was the main problem that prompted hitting a wall. Made it through about 450 Evening Bulletin articles that are now digitized (see there are some benefits to procrastinating…two years ago, these weren’t available, LOL!). I have enough to finish off chapter one and begin writing and not simply researching chapter 2. Goals for next week (in case I forgot to comment in a timely fashion) are to return to writing a minimum of 2-50 minute poms in the morning and research/prepping for 3 – 4 hours in the afternoon and evenings.
Writing goals for the coming week:
1) Change the identified typos in electronic diss. document.
2) Develop conclusion ideas on citizenship more (revision requested by committee). Can send this to my advisor starting early next week.
And as long as 2) is moving:
3) Work on NSF reporting some more.
4) Itemize the suggested R and R changes.
Did really well with my writing goals last week. Got some teaching prep done, got more things uploaded to Omeka, booked an oral history for later in the month, and edited the two transcripts I had in the can. I thought I had a third but didn’t, so late in the week I turned my attention back to the article, and wrote up some secondary literature to strengthen my historiography section, which I now feel much better about. Key for me this week was using Self Control to block GMail, Facebook, and Newsblur (my RSS reader) for about eight hours during the day, so I’m going to continue doing that this week, with my five 50-minute poms each day. I’m going to keep plugging away at the article this week—my adviser told me to send it to her for comments on the 26th, so that’s my deadline! This week I also need to devote some serious time to teaching prep—for my two history classes I need to decide what books will need to be ordered from the campus bookstore, and for my DH class I need to decide on a topic for the class project. For the DH class I need to also look at examples of other people’s syllabi for ideas about readings and structure.
Hi all, I am doing well over here. I had a momentary slump (of a couple days) after I sent off the R&R. I found it difficult to get into the groove switching back to the dissertation. But I made good progress over the weekend, and hoping that momentum continues throughout the week. Originally my deadline for this second chapter was July 31, but I am moving that up to July 25, a week from this Friday. The goal for this week is to make sure I have all my illustrative data excerpts for each part of the typology I’m building, and to finish thinking through how it works conceptually. Goal is to write 750 new words every day! Secondary goal is to fine-tune job docs based on some feedback and politely harass my letter writers about getting the letters done for the first few job apps.