really_cranky

I don't know how you use so many management tools, that sounds like you'd have to get a meta-management application for your managment apps. For PDFs, I use Mendeley to organized pdf articles and to annotate them (annotations are stored in a database outside the PDF file rather than in the file) and have found it really useful, especially because of search functionality across the entire OCR database of everything listed in it. That feature in itself makes me wish I could get all my books into OCR'd PDF without spending $$$. For a while I used a couple different task-management apps, but finally settled on the command-line-based Taskwarrior for its simplicity and ease. I always liked organizing my calendar via a Blackberry b/c I am too ADD to remember appointments and need a blinking red light to do that but if you don't have MS Outlook that's useless. I had tried using Scrivener to organize my writing but ultimately found it more limiting than helpful for a number of practical and technical reasons (like it renaming files and storing them awkwardly), and started just writing into text files with a text editor or bare-bones word processor, then organizing those manually via the file system (they're called "folders" for a reason) and putting them into a heavy-weight bloated word processor to finalize--you can find applications that will search inside text, if you don't already have at least one (grep? quicksilver?) on a default install. I also used Gnote/Tomboy extensively for drafting and note-taking, since it is also text-searchable but a little more user-friendly, and links automagically to other notes. I only ever used internet sources like blogs as primary sources/data points, and really didn't have much to do any non-academic reading while I was in courses. When i felt that sites were important, I would either print them to PDF with a date and time stamp on the PDF, or I would list them in a text file or inside one of Gnote's entries (which are all XML). As far as presentations, I was taught in public speaking class never to have a visual aid visible when not referring to it directly, so I would just use the IBM presentation software in Lotus and insert blank slides between each content slide. IMO this is more effective at keeping attention on what you say.

Most of the time I was in a classroom during coursework was in courses that were largely filled with undergrads, and even grad-seminar courses offered as explicitly-grad level often had a few undergrads. This led to the courses being undergrad-focused and concerned with "discussion"-style approaches to material, but administrators required attendance from the grads. I would really avoid doing this whenever possible, no matter how weak you are in the subject--go for the grad-level only course or take a tutorial or directed reading etc. At least for me, I became incredibly demoralized on account of feeling like I could have been in the library working, rather than spending half an hour on the road and going to classrooms at arbitrary times to listen to undergrads in their pajamas go through intellectual crises. I don't blame the faculty for this because it was clear to me that the administration expected a certain format to classes and expected that the children of the wealthy have a chance to develop Real World Skillz like "How To Hide Behind PowerPoint Slides", but it certainly made it difficult to feel like I was unable to get a chance to interact with an actual expert.

The only thing that motivates me in a meaningful way is the idea that some day someone may find the research I've done helpful to them. Not in the sense of "yeah I got cited again!" but in the sense of some other student or researcher finding what I do useful in her efforts to do something. Deadlines can help, but not because I'm lazy or a procrastinator, but just because it's almost impossible to make gradual daily progress in a coherent way in my experience--I can and have sat and written 1500 words a day for six weeks while following an outline and found that to have been a colossal waste of time that felt like anything but when I was doing it. It's much more effective, but much more painful, to draft a paragraph a day and then twenty pages overnight as far as getting things into a structure that works. A deadline can do that, even if it's just a personal one or a soft deadline.

tl;dr: I don't know why the hell I didn't quit, and now that I have a thesis written and revised and revised it's too late not to quit--can I still quit? Why is it taking a year to write and revise and revise and revise an MA thesis paper? It's a rude first post, and old hat for certain, and probably one-off on account of drinking and unemployment, but I am beginning to wonder how many times I need to be told to re-write my thesis by how many people. I simply am losing any interest in replicating the work again, and again, and again, and in traveling two hours for meetings--meetings which were few and far between during the semester I was supposed to be finishing my MA. It's especially jarring when my advisor actually read my f*cking chapters and gave feedback for the first time in about two years, but then some other professor, not on the committee, felt the need to intervene and question the quality of my scholarship--which is so vague that I don't think it can't not be an insult. I know my scholarship can't be that bad because I don't seem to run into trouble with conference talks. Maybe it's just this paper, which has been crippling. I wish I knew what to complain about, but I don't know that I do anymore. I'm tired of f*ckng blaming myself, trying as hard as I can and only facing what seems like a mixture of neglect and hostility from the people who are supposed to help me. This feels like a co-dependency, not a degree. I guess I can complain: no one was a good fit to be my advisor, I regularly couldn't fill my coursework schedule without taking classes outside the department then running into severe theory-and-method-shock; easily more than half my actual courses consisted of two or three grads wasting their time sitting in undergrad sessions listening to rich kids show off their ignorance then getting that "don't ask 700 level questions in front of undergrads" look from the professor about once every two weeks; my "advisor" was too busy filling a tenure file to advise or read more than twenty pages of my thesis; the lack of clear expectations or explanations outside of the one-page program summary listed required numbers of hours; the inability for anyone to answer me asking for so much as reading recommendations, etc. I left the business world to get into academia and now I am wondering if my wife wasn't putting shroom-sticks in the coffee since I can't get back in fast enough... I approached my professors as if we had a professional relationship, I never asked for help without showing I had put in substantial effort on my own, I never showed up hungover, I never flirted with faculty and never hit on undergrads, I never even made jokes about drug use in class, I never talked about personal problems, I never broke down crying or even acted like I was disappointed, I always made small talk, and I never wore sweat pants into class. I can drop all sorts of names into a paper or I can take them out. What the hell do these people want? It's like they want me to spend a dozen pages on theory and three on method, then tell me there's too much theory, then I trim the theory down or throw it out and write a lot of method, then they tell me there's too much method, then I try to balance it, then they tell me it's not good scholarship, then i try to remove my voice from the writing and they say it's too awkward, then... That's not me having a pity-party, it's me wondering why the hell I didn't see all these warning signs and quit semesters before I spent a dozen hours a day writing and re-writing, or spending most of my life in the library ignoring my wife and dog and trying to play catch-up for courses in which I had no background and in which the professors seemed only willing to meander on without any framework for introduction, let alone supposed course content, and without any eye to providing much in the way of standards. I remember trying to explain to one of my friends at another program that there were very few course options and very few had any overlap with my subject-matter and he really didn't seem to think it was normal. That was funny--it was all I knew. The thing I really don't get is why the fuck I can't just get the damn degree (an MA! a two-year (two and half? three? four?)!! program) with mediocre work. There is so much mediocre scholarship out there and so much of it is totally unreadable. There's even more consisting of clever regurgitations of others' work consisting of nothing more than the change of a single word in a lynchpin concept. I'm over this, but have too much skin in the game to walk away. Maybe this is me trying to realize to myself that I'm just not suited for this type of crap, and should have been a carpenter or a banker or a sculptor or a journalist but not a goddamn academic. Or should have gone into a social science, rather than a history-related field. It's funny, despite people telling me how smart I was when i was younger, I never valued my intellect that much prior to going to grad school, and after failing to get anyone to say "your thesis will stand a defense" for a year now, I don't think I have any intellect... This is like a bad marriage, I can't just leave, but since I'm committed I have to meet bunch of difficult, time-consuming legal requirements and fill out forms to get out.