I’ve spent a good part of yesterday and today–the middle portion of my spring break–tweaking my academic website. I’m presenting a paper at a conference in May, and I’m currently taking some tentative steps toward looking for more secure (i.e. non-adjunct) academic employment, so it’s good to have an “online presence” that actually reflects who I am and what I do.
This means uploading sample syllabi, fleshing out the portion of my website dedicated to scholarly research, and updating both my CV and resume (and yes, I have both: the former goes into detail about research and publications while the latter focuses primarily on teaching). All the stuff I’m tweaking, uploading, and organizing was already online, but when I moved this blog to WordPress, I also moved my website, and I didn’t immediately get around to moving, updating, and organizing these additional documents.
This week’s website-tweaking has also involved a strange sort of re-visiting. One of the things I wanted to re-post on my academic website is an essay I call “The Upshot,” which was the final section of the final chapter of my PhD dissertation. (I also re-posted the abridged and complete versions of my dissertation proposal in case anyone is interested in that.) “The Upshot” tells the story (in an informal and decidedly non-academic tone) of how I began, got stuck on, and ultimately finished my dissertation. In a word, “The Upshot” recounts the long, strange trip from the project’s initial stages to its completion.
In my own teaching, I typically ask students to write a final reflective piece that talks about their writing process, and I often find these informal essays to be the most insightful and enjoyable part of students’ final portfolios. How can you know what you learned until you look back on where you’ve been? In my own case, “The Upshot” is my favorite section of my entire dissertation; not only did I write it when I was (thankfully!) almost done, it’s the portion of the project that feels the most personal to me. The rest of my dissertation is me trying to sound like an academic; “The Upshot” is where I take off that formal guise and talk about what initially inspired me to start the project and what I came to learn from it.
Re-posting “The Upshot” forced me to read it again: it’s been nearly four years since I finished my dissertation and then promptly deposited its massive, still-boxed bulk atop a bookshelf where it’s been gathering dust ever since. The process of finishing a dissertation left me feeling overdosed on academic discourse, so I haven’t wanted to re-visit my own foray into that field. And yet, the paper I’ll be presenting in May is a chapter from my dissertation, so there’s something inside me that is dipping a tentative toe into the familiar (albeit still murky) waters of scholarly prose: presumably the interests that led me to start a dissertation are still a part of me even if I burned out on the actual act of completion.
I’d initially illustrated “The Upshot” with a handful of photos I’d taken during a lonely trip to San Francisco I’d taken in the summer of 2003, approximately six months before I finished my dissertation and almost exactly a year before my then-husband and I separated. As the ironies of the Universe would have it, that conference I’ll be attending in May will take me back to San Francisco. All roads, it seems, lead me back to the same themes, the same places, and the same images, the process of pilgrimage being an out-going trip that always seems to circle back to self and home.
Needless to say, I am not in California’s Marin County this week: today’s pictures are the same ones featured in the very essay I’m talking about.
Mar 21, 2008 at 7:28 am
That essay was wonderful, and resonated strongly with me. I have always been sensible that no place felt like “home.” At times I’ve visited places, either actually or virtually, and thought how my spirit might find peace there. Throughout, there was this wistful feeling of homelessness, lack of “roots.”
More recently, I’ve been doing persuasive speaking to myself (heck, I’m trained for persuasion and had a career doing it). One of my oft-repeated self-directed rhetorical questions has been: “What makes you think you’d be happier anywhere other than where you already are?” I use it in the macro sense (I’ve always thought of the outback of the Pacific Northwest in a sort of idyllic way), and in the micro (why worry about stalls in traffic, slow drivers–of whom I generally am one, by the way–things are fine where I am).
I am not and never have been religious, and my personal readings on Buddhism (which I consider not to be an actual religion), while instructive, never went much past enjoying the books (and inventing a few little mantras). My approach to the negative feelings of feeling “out of place” has mostly involved viewing life as a series of constant, or almost constant, decisions. Happiness, I finally “decided” is not a “gift of the gods” but, finally, another decision.
I sometimes say (to myself or aloud in conversation), “If I tell myself I’m unhappy, I’ll always be right. If I tell myself I’m happy, I’ll always be right.”
Thanks for sharing your essay, and the view into your personal journey.
Mar 21, 2008 at 7:48 am
I recently posted a note to myself that said “do the work” – a reminder that when I decided to start work on my doctorate I started it with this same goal in mind – to ignore the external motivators and focus on the work itself that I wanted to do in the process. It seems to me that there has to be a payoff of some kind for working with what I think of as “integrity” – to be truly doing the work for its own sake. It may well be that there *isn’t* a payoff for this, but the fact is – if I’m truly doing the work for its own sake, then there will *always* be a payoff – that is, the work itself.
On a good day (like those days when “The Upshot” emerges), it works.
Mar 21, 2008 at 10:59 am
Lori: San Francisco, May? Will you have any time at all to play?
Mar 21, 2008 at 11:58 am
Wow — it’s been that long since the dissertation?
I hope that in May you won’t take a lonely tour of Marin and let me play tour guide!
Mar 21, 2008 at 5:20 pm
As I scrolled through your site I was going to comment on this post…then it was that post…then I saw another post…
Personally, I enjoy comments and have no issue with someone commenting on as many as they wish. Some people, though, don’t feel that way.
I found you when I searched Google for “Eat Dessert First” pictures; thanks to Provincetown for some great stuff.
And, it appears, I’m rambling…
I’d welcome you to visit The Lives and Times… and if you’re open to it would like to do a link exchange.
Also, while I’m here, I wanted to ask a favor. Would you point a camera out one of the pictures of your home and share your view?
Will look forward to hear from you.
Mar 22, 2008 at 4:31 pm
twoblueday, I think this challenge of finding home wherever one goes is at the root of both my spiritual and creative practice. It’s simply a theme I keep coming back to in my writing, in my meditation, in my life… Kathleen Norris in (I think) Dakota: A Spiritual Geography defines the “sacred” as a sense of being at home: she says what people mean when they say they’re looking for “something sacred” in their life is they’re looking for a place to belong, to rest, and to feel loved & accepted. And I think she hits the nail on the head with that observation, and that “search for the sacred” is what I keep coming back to (and it sounds you do, too).
C, it’s always so challenging to do any work for its own sake…and it’s even more difficult to do a work which is intellectually, temporally, and fiscally demanding: it takes a long time, lots of money, and lots of mental energy to finish a PhD, as you well know. So while it’s difficult enough to, say, meditate for a half hour “for its own sake,” at least it’s only a half hour, meditation isn’t that difficult, and the practice is cheap, too. But spending (in my case) 10 years of my life, who knows how much money, and all that energy to finish something I’m not even sure I wanted…well, it’s more difficult in that case to “do the work.” I agree 100% with what you’re saying…and at the same time, I’m saying “but damn, that’s hard!”
Pica & Maria, J & I haven’t finalized our San Francisco agenda, which in large part is contingent on the conference schedule. But we know we’ll be in town for five nights, J might (?) be meeting with his boss for part of that time (it will be a semi-working trip for both of us), and we’ll be going to see the Red Sox play three games in Oakland during the weekend we’re there. (Yes, that’s the wonderful coincidence of this conference: it overlaps exactly with the Red Sox road schedule. Woohoo!)
And yes, Maria: it’s been four years since I finished my PhD. I can’t believe it myself.
Hi, Anthony: it’s a pleasure to “meet” you, and thanks for taking the time to comment. I’ll check out the links you shared, but I don’t do automatic link exchanges. Instead, I like to read sites for a while before deciding to link to them: I think the “test of time” is the best way of deciding if a blog is link-worthy or not. So if I like you’re site, I’ll be back, and things will go as they will from there. In the meantime, I hope you’re doing well.
Mar 22, 2008 at 6:19 pm
Were it not for the endless Fox News jabbering in the background in my father’s apartment, I would read your dissertation piece. When I get back home and my brain can function again…