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triplebogey

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Everything posted by triplebogey

  1. An iPad may be in my future, and I'll be glad to have it for a variety of reasons. In the meantime though I'm wondering about productivity via Pages. Does anyone know if Pages supports footnotes? And if so, can files produced in Pages be exported in a format Word can read, so that a document can be edited in Word?
  2. A colleague of mine made a similar switch. Based on our conversations, it seemed like laying the groundwork for such a change and keeping your department's DGS in the loop is important. In other words - get in touch with any new folks you'd like to work with, make sure they're on board, and play with your hand in the open. If you can show you've got a legitimate interest in a different field and a halfway concrete research question in mind, things ought to pan out. This is something on my mind, as well, though I doubt I'll ever actually switch fields (I'm rather happy where I am).
  3. I apply a speed read in the sections mentioned by CrazyCatLady. I'll read the entire introduction word for word, the entire conclusion word for word, and the intro and conc. paragraphs in each chapter word for word. Outside of that, I'll read the first sentence of each paragraph closely and quickly scan the rest. Seems to work OK for me.
  4. General words of support from friends and family, none of whom (aside from my wife) who really seem to understand the point of it all. To most of them success is indicated by salary; attempting a PhD in the humanities is at best, to them, an eccentric hobby that may or may not yield financial results. Fortunately I stopped caring what most of them think long ago!
  5. Good call. I was trying to get at the motivation, rather than the outcome, for most folks. You hit the nail on the head, though, with what I'd like to see departments acknowledge - nonacademic does not equal alternative, either because of a student's own motivation or the job market.
  6. Ah, the woes of the untenured scholar. I feel your pain. My field is politically sensitive in the extreme so even a well-founded argument against the accepted narrative is unwelcome. On the other hand, I've been advised that my MA thesis will disappear into the ether as far as my future career is concerned. If your advisor is on board with your desired evisceration, you may be able to let 'er rip.
  7. Could you expand on this a little bit? I'm a little confused on the difference between your own contribution and an existing narrative. Granted this isn't a research thread, so PM me if you want to discuss more on it.
  8. Tone is hard to convey on the Internet and I certainly don't want to be part of a nasty argument like I've seen on here before, so I'll say outright I'm not trying to be snarky or a smartass - I intend no offense. But yes, I do attach a negative meaning to those words because in my experience (personal, limited, my own) they're treated as such. What little career guidance I've been given thus far has entirely assumed a TT career; I've never been asked what I intend to do with my PhD after graduation. I suppose what I'm getting it is that I'd like to see the PhD experience treated as just what it is - an educational stepping stone to something else, whatever that may be. Perhaps instead of conversations that go "where would you like to teach after you're done here?", we could start having discussions like "what do you want to do with your training?" I entirely concede your point that a TT job is where the vast majority of folks head after getting this degree, and I'm speaking from my own experience, but I know if I were to openly say I had no intention of applying for TT positions after graduation my relationship with faculty would change substantially. Not that I have that sort of set plan at this point,but I at least want to have options for myself when the time comes.
  9. On another note, I sort of wish we (meaning the grad school / faculty / administrator folks) would quit using the words "alternate" or "alternative." I'd rather get away from any sort of norm, like you mentioned above. I don't like hearing about departments offering guidance for "alternative" careers for PhDs - makes it sound like folks who don't take the TT research job are somehow not quite up to par with the rest. Why can't we lump all career choices in together and view the PhD as a means to whatever end we choose, rather than a set stream that some people might choose to "deviate" from?
  10. THIS. Great thought. Anyone who thinks grad school is a postponement of adulthood, as sincere as their intention may be, has no idea what actually goes on there. How about the financial struggles many of us have? Learning how to budget responsibly on what we're allotted - or borrow - is a mighty task. How about the other type of budgeting we have to do - budgeting time to get massive amounts of different projects done? Or the interpersonal skills that are a must for dealing with some of the...how shall we say...more eccentric folks in our fields, both student colleagues and faculty? Sure, we often have a freer hand to choose our path between the beginning of a project and the end, but the tasks are no less numerous or difficult. Re: your last comment about following the "rules" to adulthood and still behaving immaturely - so glad to see someone else say this. I have several friends from high school - folks I care about dearly and miss greatly now that I've moved away - but still live the undergrad lifestyle of zero responsibility outside of work and wouldn't lift a finger to achieve something outside of the 40 hr/week job (not that 40 hours a week is a bad thing in itself - I'm jealous, of course). I think the giveaway for me was when one friend waited for their father to come pick their car up and take it to the dealership for a non-operating windshield fluid jet rather than do it themselves - couldn't be bothered to sit in a waiting room and talk to a mechanic
  11. Folks like to hang out with other people experiencing similar situations in life, even if only on the Internet. A lot of times the grad experience is rather confusing and it's nice to have a place to turn to where you can more or less blend into the crowd without anything personal at stake. Plus it's good entertainment, a great place to hear about books, movies, foods, etc. that other people might like. I suppose the short answer is the same as for any other online forum. In this specific case, this board doesn't just exist for the admissions process, so folks can stay on and hang out. The only thing that seems pathetic to me is the need for anyone to start a thread about how pathetic other people are for choosing a course the OP may not choose for him or herself. And don't say you were genuinely curious, because nobody is going to respond well to "can you all tell me why you're so silly and hang around here?"
  12. YES. A fellow fan of the Wars. MTFBWY.
  13. In my experience I've found all the assumptions that go along with telling someone I'm doing a grad degree in history are hilariously ill-founded and narrow-minded. I've gotten the "so what're you gonna do? Teach??" as though teaching is a bad career. The implication is that teaching high school would be a bad thing; personally I've got nothing against that possibility and think it would be rewarding to get involved in secondary education, as I know that half of my history education in high school was an utter waste of time. Then there's the "if you can't get a teaching job, what else can you do?" Gee, I dunno. Between undergrad, MA, and PhD programs I'll have done at least 10 years of research, writing, teaching, and networking...I can't possibly imagine how else I could put those skills to work . Finally there's the money. "You won't make very much, will you?" My wife and I thrive on very little right now. If I couldn't find joy in life on our tiny incomes there'd be something massively wrong with me. And besides, faculty at my department make very comfortable salaries, thank you very much, so I know it isn't all poverty and misery.
  14. I use Zotero to organize my research. It's free, and I've found a way to carry it with me everywhere - by carrying around a flash drive that has the Portable Apps version of Firefox on it, I can install the Zotero plugin to that browser and work in the software on any computer the same way I would at home. I use Zotero both to keep track of references and for the notes I take on sources. Zotero offers you the option to generate a report of each reference, so if I'm working on something and don't want to look at a computer screen for my sources I can have a sheet with all of the source's bibliographical information along with the notes I've taken on it (helps a lot for seminar discussions, too).
  15. Similar to the thread helping us boost our Dropbox accounts, I thought I'd start a new thread for SugarSync. I've only just learned about it but it seems pretty great; with the default settings it looks a little different from Dropbox (i.e., you tell it what folders to keep synced, rather than dumping everything in one folder to be synced), but you can just as easily use SugarSync's "Magic Briefcase" the same way you currently use Dropbox. What makes it different? Right out of the gate, you get 5GB rather than 2GB free. They also let you do a number of things to earn more free storage (upload a file via email, install the app on a smartphone, share a file, etc.). In any case they do provide a referral link to get more storage; for every referral that results in a new free (or paid) account and app installation, each person gets 500 MB. I thought I'd go ahead and post my referral link here: https://www.sugarsync.com/referral?rf=cgaxizw9bppow&utm_source=txemail&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=referral Thanks!
  16. Just in case there's still any un-Dropboxed folks out there yet: http://db.tt/n3u4NFd
  17. Do you need to take the course(s) for credit? At my institution (within the humanities, anyway), professors generally don't mind PhD students sitting in on their courses. Would that be acceptable or do you need official confirmation of having taken the class?
  18. I use Zotero to keep track of what I've read along with notes on each reading. As the program keeps track of the citation, it isn't a big problem to go find it via the library's database; in any case, I probably have a PDF in my Dropbox, organized by the course or project for which it was read.
  19. Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle's The Mote in God's Eye. Very good so far.
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