PTSD

More dissertation blues (or are they woes?)

Continuing on from Elizabeth's post, here're some more musings and questions on dissertating:

1. It comes after the need to find a place to live in. Though, after a month of bludging off friends, I am growing to like living on sofas. It’s a good thing I’m not one of the taller members of the human race. Sofas, futons, blow-up mattresses, floors, I can give you ratings on most of them by now.

2. Not sure if no. 1 is enough of an excuse. Though if I am living in any of the spaces mentioned above, I can’t really work on my proposal, can I? It’s not allowed when you are visiting other people to go off and try to work on it.
I wonder, if I don’t find anywhere to live in in the next few weeks, do I still have to work on my proposal? And, how about the many other things I’m supposed to be doing (book chapter, article, etc etc)?

3. I now have keys to about four different flats/houses in the DC metro area. Either my friends have too many keys or they just trust me far more than they should.

4. I'm concerned about how do I make myself “cool” so I can beat out the many other applicants for each of the room I have looked at so far? The last place gave me a questionnaire to fill in. This included sections on how I felt about gay people (indifferent, as I do about people in general), vegetarianism (evil to be rooted out of society but can be tolerated since most of my family belongs to this misguided group), Republicans (some of my best friends are some), the “coolest” job I have had (picking fruits in Northern Australia in summer) and what I plan to do in the future (marry a rich lawyer and live off his ill-gotten gains while I keep working on my dissertation. Hopefully, I’ll have a proposal to work off on by then).

Seriously though, I’m planning a paper on this room-searching process. Oh, about the survey? I didn’t fill it in. I just want some quiet space to live and cook in, not a general outpouring of feelings among housemates before they even start living together.

5. So, yes, there has been no work done on my PhD proposal so far. At least, no amendment to what was already there. I did do my part for social networking among the PhDs and benefitted from the cheap beer (though am not planning on making use of the tattoo information since I am a wuss). Does that count as part of the dissertating process? The conversations were mostly about food (strange Ghanian corn stuff and buried Nepali spinach) and Canada (and Canadian food). Both of these have nothing to do with my PhD or anybody else's.

6. On Monday, I return to my search for a room. Right now, I am bludging off some other friends in the wilds of Virginia. I have a basement of my own and feel rather like the thing that’s kept hidden in the basement though they frequently shout down the basement door when it’s time for me to come up and eat (which is fairly often since there is not much to do otherwise).

7. Oh, I can’t work on my proposal too because I forgot the converter plug that converts my (Australian version) computer plug to American. I actually forgot it in Denmark so now I have a plug that converts from American to Danish (which is useless here) but not one that converts the original (Australian) to American. And, since I don’t have a plug that I can plug into the socket in the walls here in America, I can’t work on my proposal which is in the computer. That’s a better excuse than the first one, I reckon.

posted by Priya @ 11:36 PM