Get Your Mind Off The March Lull

[DaniB23]

Someone had started a thread about conferences that I found to be really helpful in getting my mind off the applications that are now out of my control (and got me away, briefly, from the refresh button on the results page/my email), and I figured I'd pay it forward with this thread.

So!  What kind of things do you watch/read/listen to/play when you should be working/reading/writing, that you justify as "research?"

My actual research focuses on two different areas: 1. neoliberalism and american 1980s-early 2000s teen films, and 2. nationalist cinemas of the middle east/postcolonial studies.  So, typically I will justify any movie or television show that has a teenager in it as "research."  I'll also justify watching my partner playing grand theft auto because I can critique the background narratives on the talk radio station his character often listens to.

I also tend to justify reading anything on the internet or otherwise as working on my comprehension skills.

Things I haven't been able to justify yet in terms of my actual work: Re-watching every episode of Law and Order: SVU over and over again; hate-watching Keeping up with Kardashians; Playing Euchre and Solitaire on my phone; Facebook.

What about y'all?

[lesabendio]

I'm pretty much reading anything I want and trying to avoid the pressure to throw myself into preparing for the fall. Considering that I'll be reading, writing, teaching full-time for the next 7 years, I want to enjoy my last summer outside of academia. At the moment, I'm binge reading Ursula K. Le Guin and Octavia Butler novels on my Kindle and writing long letters to the friends I'll be leaving soon. I also maybe drink too much and eat a ton of Korean food.

I haven't been a student in such a long time that I don't really know what I should be reading or researching. After work -- especially now that I don't have apps to work on -- I usually just make dinner, throw on Netflix, browse the internet, read in bed, and then fall asleep. That's pretty much a day-in-the-life of my weekday schedule. Weekends are a different story. I am a weekend warrior. And this is what's causing me some anxiety: I don't really know how to be student anymore and feel that maybe I really should be taking steps to prepare for academic life. I'd appreciate any advice about what I should be doing the summer before a PhD program, especially from GCers who have also taken long detours into the "working world." Sorry if I'm hijacking this thread! 

[ProfLorax]

4 minutes ago, lesabendio said:

After work -- especially now that I don't have apps to work on -- I usually just make dinner, throw on Netflix, browse the internet, read in bed, and then fall asleep. That's pretty much a day-in-the-life of my weekday schedule. Weekends are a different story. I am a weekend warrior. And this is what's causing me some anxiety: I don't really know how to be student anymore and feel that maybe I really should be taking steps to prepare for academic life.

If I'm reading your post correctly (that you work on the weekdays and then laze around, but on the weekends you do all the fun things?), I'd say that's a great academic schedule. Honestly, scheduling my work like a typical 9-5 work week has done so much for me. I love having weekends to hang with my family, go on adventures, drive to new places, etc. It's hard to stay focused during my strict "work days," but it's absolutely worth it. So I don't think you're too far off! Your schedule is what many academics strive for. 

[DaniB23]

10 minutes ago, lesabendio said:

I'm pretty much reading anything I want and trying to avoid the pressure to throw myself into preparing for the fall. Considering that I'll be reading, writing, teaching full-time for the next 7 years, I want to enjoy my last summer outside of academia. At the moment, I'm binge reading Ursula K. Le Guin and Octavia Butler novels on my Kindle and writing long letters to the friends I'll be leaving soon. I also maybe drink too much and eat a ton of Korean food.

I haven't been a student in such a long time that I don't really know what I should be reading or researching. After work -- especially now that I don't have apps to work on -- I usually just make dinner, throw on Netflix, browse the internet, read in bed, and then fall asleep. That's pretty much a day-in-the-life of my weekday schedule. Weekends are a different story. I am a weekend warrior. And this is what's causing me some anxiety: I don't really know how to be student anymore and feel that maybe I really should be taking steps to prepare for academic life. I'd appreciate any advice about what I should be doing the summer before a PhD program, especially from GCers who have also taken long detours into the "working world." Sorry if I'm hijacking this thread! 

I agree with ProfLorax in terms of your weekly schedule being a 9-5 type thing.  I went from the working world into my MA and the advice I'd give is if for any reason you get syllabi early, or reading assignments early, be smart about how early you start it.  Start early to get ahead, but not so early that you don't remember what you read for when class starts.

I really think it's a hard thing to prepare for practically, because you don't really know what to expect, so as long as you are reading literature, or engaging with whatever medium you like as your object of study, you will be in the best shape you could be.  There is always a bit of a learning curve in the beginning with understanding the expectations, but I didn't find that I had a hard time figuring that out and doing well.

[HumanCylinder]

I love this idea for a thread. Even though I have some acceptances, waiting for these last few results has been making me so crazy! Especially since one I'm waiting on is a top choice. 

I tend to work on late-Victorian and Modern poetry and literature, and I especially enjoy avant-garde/formal experimentation and gender issues. I tend to think of myself as a pretty academic theory/aesthetics person, but then one day someone started to describe my interests as popular culture.  This really threw me for a loop because I tend to dislike most of contemporary popular culture (sorry if this sounds horrible!), but then I realized that I did have a pretty strong cultural interest.  It's just that I like to focus on counter cultural phenomena in gender and race. Anyway, this is just a long preamble to explain that I did eventually find myself looking at cultural things as a sort-of-not-really research, like DaniB described.  A strain within all of this too, is that I like to look at bodies in the world and break down the reflexive relationship there.

So, one of my personal interests is in sports.  I watch a ton of football and basketball (and tennis, when it's on), and I've recently been thinking about how I could turn this into a project.  My writing sample stemmed from looking at home decor, which is another personal hobby/interests.  Since I pretty successfully turned that into an academic topic, I've been seeing what else I can work on in a similar vein.  

I also had this idea connecting more contemporary hip-hop to Harlem Renaissance poets, so I just enjoy listening and connecting the lyrics to the concept I came up with.  

Last thing that is a little more off topic.  My MA institution is putting on a small film event and they'll be showing The Decline of Western Civilization with Penelope Spheeris on a panel afterwards. I was super obsessed with this film as an undergrad and watched a bootleg version many times.  Punk was a big influence during high school, so I'm excited about this.  I like to incorporate literature and other arts in my research, so I've also wondered if I can work punk in.  It definitely influences my way of thinking even when I'm not directly drawing on it. 

I'd love to hear what cool things other people are thinking about, or what they justify as research.  I know I just watched a lot of film adaptations when studying for the GRE Lit.

[DaniB23]

5 minutes ago, HumanCylinder said:

I love this idea for a thread. Even though I have some acceptances, waiting for these last few results has been making me so crazy! Especially since one I'm waiting on is a top choice. 

I tend to work on late-Victorian and Modern poetry and literature, and I especially enjoy avant-garde/formal experimentation and gender issues. I tend to think of myself as a pretty academic theory/aesthetics person, but then one day someone started to describe my interests as popular culture.  This really threw me for a loop because I tend to dislike most of contemporary popular culture (sorry if this sounds horrible!), but then I realized that I did have a pretty strong cultural interest.  It's just that I like to focus on counter cultural phenomena in gender and race. Anyway, this is just a long preamble to explain that I did eventually find myself looking at cultural things as a sort-of-not-really research, like DaniB described.  A strain within all of this too, is that I like to look at bodies in the world and break down the reflexive relationship there.

So, one of my personal interests is in sports.  I watch a ton of football and basketball (and tennis, when it's on), and I've recently been thinking about how I could turn this into a project.  My writing sample stemmed from looking at home decor, which is another personal hobby/interests.  Since I pretty successfully turned that into an academic topic, I've been seeing what else I can work on in a similar vein.  

I also had this idea connecting more contemporary hip-hop to Harlem Renaissance poets, so I just enjoy listening and connecting the lyrics to the concept I came up with.  

Last thing that is a little more off topic.  My MA institution is putting on a small film event and they'll be showing The Decline of Western Civilization with Penelope Spheeris on a panel afterwards. I was super obsessed with this film as an undergrad and watched a bootleg version many times.  Punk was a big influence during high school, so I'm excited about this.  I like to incorporate literature and other arts in my research, so I've also wondered if I can work punk in.  It definitely influences my way of thinking even when I'm not directly drawing on it. 

I'd love to hear what cool things other people are thinking about, or what they justify as research.  I know I just watched a lot of film adaptations when studying for the GRE Lit.

I love this!  It's funny because my thesis, also stemmed from an interest in punk.  I was watching The Punk Singer (a documentary on the lead singer of Bikini Kill, Kathleen Hanna) to wind down one night and I started to think about how a lot of the very female centric teen films from the 90s had some elements of the riot girrrl movement, even if it was just a soundtrack heavily reliant on riot girrrl bands. The more I watched teen films, the more I realized punk in general wasn't necessarily specific to 90s teen films and someway and somehow my research got me to the neoliberal woman subject in 80s teen films.

Actually, that's a big thing for me.  My partner and I often don't agree on what to watch for enjoyment, so we always end up settling for documentaries, which always seem to inspire my work.

[savay]

My research is in a few different fields: contemporary Danish & Icelandic literature, Nordic cultural identity & globalization, poststructural ethics, and narrative identity/subjectivity theory. I can justify almost any enjoyment of pop-culture from the Nordic region as research. Which is dangerous. It's been a lot of Danish tv dramas (which truly is amazing television -- happy to rec some if interested) / Icelandic films lately -- "I'm brushing up on my Danish/Icelandic." Also been listening to a lot of Icelandic 90s hip-hop. There's a big Taste of Iceland event coming to Chicago this month, sponsored by the Icelandic government, featuring concerts and talks and food events. So much research to do! 

Any longreads on Lit Hub or Flavorwire or Jacobin are all "research," particularly if they in any way touch on translation, literary essays, lit crit, Nordic lit or Nordic culture. I've also been reading a lot of Norwegian literature lately. Any type of Nordic baking... easy peasy. I really need to appreciate the Austrian impact on Danish baked goods by making pastry. Yes. I really do.

The Punk Singer was such a lovely documentary. I do a lot of zine stuff in Chicago, and lately I've been working on one about death and grieving and its narrative effects -- very tangentially related to my research interests, I suppose.

@lesabendio - In the Le Guin/Butler vein, you may enjoy Johanna Sinisalo's work. She does Finnish speculative fiction. I just finished her book The Core of the Sun yesterday, which is set in near-future dystopian Finland and examines gender norms and a welfare state gone haywire with an extra does of capsaicin addiction thrown in. This is another thing I have justified to myself as research.

[EmmaJava]

The March lull indeed!  It's like my damn email is broken. Nothing is happening. Or - "nothing ever happens":

 

[lesabendio]

@ProfLorax. Yes! You're reading my post correctly. I do all the fun things and all the other things important to me on the weekends. It's comforting to know that imposing a 9-5 schedule onto academic work is doable. My anxiety stems in part from a fear that I wouldn't be able to apply the work habits and task management skills I've developed over the years in various office jobs to the more unstructured work schedule and demands of a PhD program. I'm hoping that I'll be able to continue keeping my work separate from my personal life and other ambitions.

@DaniB23. Thank you so much for the advice. I'm glad I'm not alone in exiting the "working world" to pursue an academic career. Ever since I got accepted into a program, it's all been a little overwhelming, and I appreciate all the advice and emotional support here on GC. That's a great idea! I've glanced at the descriptions of courses that my program will offer this fall, but I haven't seen any syllabus posted yet. I suppose the professors teaching those courses wouldn't make syllabi available until later this summer. Would it be wise to ask in advance, or just wait until I sign up for courses before the quarter/semester begins?

@savay. I'll definitely check out Sinisalo's sci-fi. Thanks for the recommendation!  

[DaniB23]

24 minutes ago, lesabendio said:

@ProfLorax. Yes! You're reading my post correctly. I do all the fun things and all the other things important to me on the weekends. It's comforting to know that imposing a 9-5 schedule onto academic work is doable. My anxiety stems in part from a fear that I wouldn't be able to apply the work habits and task management skills I've developed over the years in various office jobs to the more unstructured work schedule and demands of a PhD program. I'm hoping that I'll be able to continue keeping my work separate from my personal life and other ambitions.

@DaniB23. Thank you so much for the advice. I'm glad I'm not alone in exiting the "working world" to pursue an academic career. Ever since I got accepted into a program, it's all been a little overwhelming, and I appreciate all the advice and emotional support here on GC. That's a great idea! I've glanced at the descriptions of courses that my program will offer this fall, but I haven't seen any syllabus posted yet. I suppose the professors teaching those courses wouldn't make syllabi available until later this summer. Would it be wise to ask in advance, or just wait until I sign up for courses before the quarter/semester begins?

@savay. I'll definitely check out Sinisalo's sci-fi. Thanks for the recommendation!  

I would wait until you get the syllabi from the professors.  I've had one or two who sent the syllabus a few weeks before classes started, and other who didn't provide the syllabus until the first class. Often I find that professors make them last minute, but if they don't or happen to email the course asking for students to come prepared having read a certain text, then it doesn't hurt to get ahead if given the opportunity.

[Dr. Old Bill]

For what it's worth, I tend to be fairly proactive when it comes to asking professors for syllabi well in advance. It's a mixed bag, to be sure -- some have a firm idea months in advance, and some won't know the probable readings until the first week of course. I think it can't hurt to ask, however, and it can help to get ahead of some of the readings (which is particularly helpful when it's literature, in my opinion...sometimes the more highfalutin academic articles and theory fall from my brain completely after only a few days...).

ProfLorax has attested (in this thread and elsewhere) to the benefits of just relaxing when you can. I completely agree. Spring break is coming up in a week, and while I plan on starting (and maybe finishing) a couple of papers that are due at the end of the month, I know I'll also be catching up on some movies and maybe hanging out with friends a lot more than I've been able to do during the semester.

Edited March 4, 2016 by Wyatt's Terps