So, that exam I've been mumbling about for months?

I passed. Go me. And thank God. If I'd had to do all that over again, I think I would have slit my wrists.

Now I'm at a stage of a PhD program often called ABD, "All But Dissertation." More formally, I'm now a "doctoral candidate" instead of a "doctoral student." (The new title and $1.50 will get me a cup of coffee.)

The ABD refers to the fact that you've completed all of your graduation requirements-- coursework, research credits, general exam, what have you--except for writing and defending your dissertation. You can't fail out at this point, although you can drop out, and a surprising number of people do.

It's arguably one of the oddest periods of a PhD program. No deadlines. (Well, not from the graduate school, anyway.) No tests, exams, or grades. If you're taking any classes at all, you're probably auditing them. As likely as not, you're already acting like a professor: teaching graduate-level classes, writing research grant proposals and papers as the primary author. But you're not done, and you won't be until you complete your dissertation. That can, and often does, take years.

Of course, first you have to decide what exactly your dissertation will be about.

I think I'll declare victory and get some sleep first. Victory! *thud*

Several well-meaning friends have asked: "So, you're done with the general exam now, right?"

Um. Well, not quite.

I wrote the essays for the general exam last month, but now I have to defend them. Meaning: stand--or sit, in my case--in front of a committee of five professors, explain my answers, and be prepared to respond to all manner of follow-up questions for about 90 minutes.

I don't pass until that committee of five says I do, and whether or not I pass is in some ways dependent on how well I perform at that 90 minute meeting.

That's early Wednesday afternoon. By some quirk of scheduling I have to teach a four-hour class on Wednesday night. Gonna be an interesting week.

Meanwhile, bubblesutonium has entered into the final sprint of becoming a lawyer: Passing The Bar. I won't see her for about six weeks. Almost literally. She's attending bar review classes every night that typically run until 10 to 10:30, plus Saturday classes, plus the eight hours or so per day (!) of suggested homework. (No, she's not actually doing that much, but still.)

You see us stand like greyhounds in the slips, straining upon the start, but like all good greyhounds, we'd really rather have a nap.

Ever onward. That bright light at the end of the tunnel is not, in fact, an oncoming train.

War and Peace it wasn't, and the only resemblance to James Joyce was that nobody sane wants to read the sorry thing, but I handed in my last exam essay today.

Now I crawl into a quiet corner and die.

Thanks for all the encouragement, both here and elsewhere. It meant more than you can know.

I've been working on the generals exams off-and-on for almost a week now, and today was the day I finally hit the wall.

( 5 hours, 4000 words. Wash, rinse, repeat )

I've cut way, way back on my coffee intake lately, but the crisp morning and edge of hoarfrost on the grass sent me into the kitchen for a cup of what my friend Dylan calls Liquid Black Happy Awakeness. Sometimes it's the simple pleasures that keep you going, like sitting in your living room with two hounds at your feet, sipping a dark roast coffee and reading the New York Times.

With a little over a week to go before my generals exam, I'm alternating between moments of panicked anxiety and stoic "oh hell, let's just get this over with" thoughts, sometimes within the space of two minutes. I had my first "you failed completely and it's not clear to us why you're here" nightmare a couple nights ago, so I'm right on track.[1]

bubblesutonium has her own troubles. She's graduating next month (YAY!) into the worst economy since the 1930s (oops). I went with her to a party of graduating seniors at her law school on Friday night, where the fear was almost a physical presence. "Only three of us have jobs so far," one of her friends told me. "Three out of fifty-seven."

But that's tomorrow's problem. Once in awhile, you have to pause and savor the moment without worrying about what's to come. bubblesutonium has put in four long, hard years of work to get her J.D. I couldn't be happier or more proud.

Tomorrow I'm heading back to San Juan Island, with the dogs, for a few days of study retreat and Thanksgiving celebration with my family. bubblesutonium is joining me on Wednesday. Sometimes it's the little breaks that keep you sane.


[1] For those who came in late: the generals exam is the last major hurdle in a Ph.D. program before you can start writing your dissertation proposal. You spend about 3 to 4 months reading articles and books on your topic. You get handed one question each by four different professors, spread out over four different days. You have five hours to answer each question in essay form, using the readings. After a few weeks, you defend your answers in an oral exam with your entire committee. Pass, and you go write your dissertation proposal. Fail and you get one more shot; fail twice and you get kicked out of the program.

School started a couple of weeks ago.

I wish I had some funny or sad stories to relate about it, but the well is a bit dry. I have to read or re-read about 90 books, book chapters, or articles by December 3rd--no exaggeration, unfortunately--so I tend to spend a lot of my days with my nose firmly planted into a book spine or a computer monitor.

My only real accomplishment of the summer was to drop a little over 20 pounds that I could well afford to lose. On one level, I'm very pleased with myself, but there were a couple of unintended side effects. For one thing, my wedding ring keeps slipping off my finger. None of my shoes fit right either. Never realized I had fat feet.

I could feel smug, but that would last right up until the next time I went to the gym and found myself surrounded by 19-year-olds with six-pack abs and arms like tree trunks. The UW IMA: helping old guys feel out of shape since 2005!

Meanwhile, the books are calling to me. "Every passing minute is one minute less," they whisper, followed by "...and you're still an idiot, so you might want to study more lest you leave the program head-first."

Toshio--no, that's not his real name--was one of the graduate school old timers. He'd been working steadily, first on a masters degree and then on doctoral research, for close to eight years. Finally, he was persuaded to wrap it up and submit the dissertation to his committee. It's a fairly simple process, at the end:

- The committee (hopefully) reads your dissertation
- You present your dissertation to the committee
- They ask you questions. You answer.
- If they like your work, you've graduated. If not...let's not go there.

( but sometimes academic politics rears its ugly head )

One of the joys of working in a small department: not too many professors to work with.

That can be a problem when you're working on a Ph.D. You're required to assemble two committees of professors to evaluate your work: a general exam committee, and if you pass the general exam, a dissertation reading committee.

(Hampshire people: Remember your Div III committee? Same idea, higher stakes.)

I've been working on assembling a general exam committee for awhile now. It's not a trivial process. You need four professors. Each must be smart, supportive--they have to understand the general area of your topic and care about what you're doing--and above all, you have to have compatible working and communication styles.

That last bit, as I've been learning, is absolutely crucial.

Prof #1 was easy. I came back to this department specifically and explicitly to work with her, and she knows it. Prof #2 is someone else I know well and have worked with on multiple projects. Prof #3 is the resident department theoretical genius and a person you Want To Work With(tm). Unlike most such prodigies, he's also a genuinely sweet person, and agreed quickly to help when I asked.

That left finding prof #4, someone who could help me with "research methods." Meaning: at a fairly concrete level, how do you design a research study? The department has a couple methods geniuses, but I couldn't use either one. One is going on a long-overdue sabbatical next year; the other isn't really interested in my topic.

So, time to look outside the department. But that carries its own risks. Professors outside of your department have their own students and their own problems. There's nothing that says they need to serve on your committee, and quite a few reasons why doing so can be more trouble than it's worth. (Hampshire people: Think "trying to get a professor from one of the other colleges on your Div III committee.")

I had a candidate in mind, an information school professor I've worked with before. I wasn't optimistic: he's a seriously hot researcher who wins awards and gets major research funding grant money. People fight to get his attention. He's turning down most requests. I screwed up my courage and scheduled a meeting with him anyway.

He agreed to help. He's on my committee.

I've been trying and failing to scrape the gleeful grin off my face all afternoon.

It takes a lot to get me to go to the eye doctor. I have a real phobia about anything touching my eyes, which means glaucoma tests are No Fun At All.

Unfortunately, I've spent my morning squinting blindly at a computer screen and cursing my current glasses, which tells me that I need to give up and get a new prescription. It's been a couple of years anyway.

In other news:

( Look! Academic progress! )

Mail call! Let's see here: Bill, ad, ad, tax form, bill, death threat, bill...

Oh, hey, what's this?



Why, it's The Great Courses! Wait a minute, I'm already taking too many courses. But! They have the answer:



Oh, well then.

( But wait, there's more! )

Those PSAs I posted last weekend proved to be unexpectedly popular. Apparently I've acquired a few new readers as a result. Hello, all!

---

Tabitha is getting her doctorate over in the communications department. She's soft-spoken, quiet, gentle, and sharper than a surgeon's scalpel. She's also one of the most workaholic personalities I've ever met.

Earlier this week I saw her a few rows over at a talk given by Dr. Jorge Cham, the author of the Piled Higher and Deeper webcomic. Apart from drawing comics, Cham travels the country speaking at colleges, giving a talk called "The Power of Procrastination."

Cham is a hilarious speaker, but he has a semi-serious message. Grad school is ungodly stressful, he says. You can't come home at 5 PM or on weekends and put everything aside. There's always something more you could be doing, 24/7. You have to learn to pace yourself. Procrastinate once in awhile. Do some things that you find engaging.

Everybody laughed and clapped in appreciation.

And the second that Cham paused for questions, Tabitha leapt out of her chair and raced for the door at full speed to go back to work.

"Were you even listening to him?" I teased her the next day.

"I know," she said. "But I had so much to do!" she said.

Considering that she's a tutor, teacher, and student who has a research grant to learn Hindi this year and has more published papers than I do, I decided to keep my big trap shut.

This one's going to be long and very academic. If you need a more succinct summary of my life at school, go read PhD Comics.

---

During Wednesday's class, at one point, one of the Ph.D. students from a different department complained about the lengthy technical explanations in an article we were reading. "This isn't scholarship," he said. "It's technical writing."

I glanced at one of the other technical communications majors, who looked ready to commit murder.

The professor, not from my department, nearly fell on the floor laughing. "Look at the tech writers!" she cried.

We get this kind of crap all the time, so you'd think we'd be used to it. (On the research side, my department is more about technical design and usability than writing. Nobody gets this but us. However, we have tech writers in our department, who work very hard at what they do.)

The comments really stuck in my craw, not least because I privately think the reading we've been assigned for this class thus far is complete crap. Poorly researched, giant leaps of logic, written with heavy dollops of esoteric jargon and academic gobbledygook to cover the lack of good ideas. If this is your idea of scholarship, buddy, good luck and God bless.

A big part of the issue here is a natural side effect of academia: everybody has their own research angle. My department is based in engineering. We're not big on abstractions. Deep, thorough technical understanding, empirical data, theories with strong explanatory power, and a desire to express complex ideas as simply as possible: that's us. We don't have a lot of patience for social sciences twerps who look for the proverbial Big Ideas, make heavy use of metaphor ("of course sixteenth century French infrastructure building is the same expression of state power as the World Trade Center was until 9/11") and think that if they use the word 'epistemology' enough times, it's research.

The social science twerps, of course, think that our ideas and research are simple-minded, puerile, unworthy of true scholars, and uninteresting.

It's sometimes a useful tension, but it can be wearing.

Lately I've been getting a lot of invitations for cross-department "research conversations," basically meet-and-greet opportunities for researchers from lots of departments around the university. There are all kinds of reasons why I ought to go to these. For the ideas, for the connections, for the opportunity to meet a few people. I'm notoriously bad at networking, and I need this kind of interchange to strengthen your own research and build some allies outside my own department.

I think part of my reluctance may be simple: I'm getting a little gunshy.

One of the classes I'm taking this quarter is a 5 credit monster called "Human Memory." It's taught by a cognitive psychologist who's an expert on, well, remembering things. She runs her experiments by asking people to memorize lists of terms or images and then remember them after a set interval.

I knew all that going in. You'd think I would have understood the obvious implication. The entire class is based on rote memorization. Lots and lots and lots of rote memorization.

One quiz a week. Two midterms. One final. All of the questions are given to you in advance. Your job, when presented with one of the questions, is to regurgitate as much of the professor's lecture back to her as possible, using her own phrasing wherever possible.

Undergrads love this kind of class, because it gives a clearly defined strategy for a good grade. Grad students hate it, because by and large we're usually asked to analyze and synthesize information rather than simply cough it back up.

I had a quiz in this class on Friday and have a midterm tomorrow. [1] I badly goofed the quiz due to a combination of nervousness and over-cramming. By Saturday night I was having a near meltdown at the thought of going through the midterm. I very nearly dropped the class, but got talked out of it by bubblesutonium and zauditu.

bubblesutonium volunteered to spend much of the afternoon quizzing me on the midterm, which will hopefully save my grade from complete martyrdom.

The midterm is tomorrow afternoon. We'll see how it goes.

---

What with one thing and another, by the end of last week I was about a week to two weeks behind on just about every class, research paper, and work project I have, not to mention four loads of laundry and several it-can't-wait household projects. (All those blown deadlines probably contributed to my Saturday night meltdown.)

I've been working like hell since the middle of last week and have, I think, just about gotten caught up. This happy state will last about twelve hours, but I'll take it.

I'm going to be drinking a lot of coffee this month. Remember when I said I preferred being hella busy? Never challenge the universe like that.

---

I'm not teaching and not working on any research with anyone in the department this quarter, which means my contact with my department is limited at best. I go to classes elsewhere at UW, hide in a corner in the library with my laptop, go home and work at my desk.

Sometimes that's easier. Academic politics can be a royal pain. They're working on selecting a new department chair, among other things. The farther away I am from that sausage factory the happier I will be.

(My cohort R. is on that committee. God bless her. She's got all the patience I lack. Not to mention smarts, talent, and personality.)

Still. Sometimes I lose track.

---

Happy birthday, inkboy. Sorry I missed your party. Blame my schooling. I always do.

[1] Well, today, really. But today ain't going to feel like today until I get some sleep.

Most major universities care more about research dollars than about teaching, but UW is an extreme case.

I went through two years of work on my master's here without ever understanding that. There were advantages to working full time and slipping onto campus only at night. When you're a fulltime doctoral student, you can't escape it.

Last year, UW proudly tells me, the university was awarded more than one billion dollars in research funding. Only Johns Hopkins got more, and Johns Hopkins is a private university.

"We are a research-one institution[1]," my supervisor used to say to complaining students. "If you don't like it here, go to Western."

Mark Emmert, the current UW president, sent a welcome-back mail this morning to everyone on campus. He noted the $1 billion research funding, talked up our local MacArthur Fellows, and noted that 'we're off to a great start.' "Enjoy your classes" never came up.

It's a great place to be a doctoral student, but I have to admit I am grateful beyond words that I didn't come here as an undergraduate. Too many 500-person lectures, classes taught solely by teaching assistants, and assignments designed to keep the professor from having to grade much.

Of course, the undergraduates can occasionally get revenge. Consider, for instance, the class gift purchased by the class of 2006, which the campus will now be stuck with for awhile:



It's supposed to be a husky, or maybe a malamute. I guess if you squinted hard enough....

--

[1] The Carnegie Foundation rates research universities by the number of doctorates they produced and amount of federal dollars they got in grants. They've since changed the system, but "Research Level I" used to be the highest ranking.

Some of you might remember that the maintenance guys yanked up the floor in my office building awhile back to get rid of some asbestos. (They've since replaced the floor, incidentally. Took them only four months. I was impressed.)

When the floor was first removed, signs were posted throughout the building indicating that the asbestos had been safely removed and the building was safe. I hadn't looked at them closely at the time.

In an idle moment today, I read the posted notice more carefully.

It's signed by some engineer who's authorized to certify buildings as asbestos-free. There's the usual scrawled signature above a printed line listing the guy's name. And then there's his company's name: BUREAU VERITAS.

Veritas, for those who didn't have Latin inflicted on them in high school, means "truth".

That's right, ladies and gentlemen: My building's asbestos was cleared out by the Ministry of Truth.

War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Asbestos is strength.

Today is the last day of class for the spring quarter.

The choir of angels accompanying that statement is possibly only audible in my head.

It's been a weird quarter, nothing like what I'd originally planned. Instead of three classes and one research project, I ended up with one class and four research projects. One project in particular--a leftover from fall and winter--was, shall we say, problematic. It's done, though, and otherwise the last ten weeks have been reasonably productive. There's a submitted research paper with my name on it, two more in progress, and I've got a few more things checked off on the 'You Have To Do This Before You Can Write A Dissertation' list.

As far as the teaching went, I had the strongest class I've yet taught. It was great. Time-consuming, though.

I'm not quite at my usual level of hypercaffeinated exhaustion for the end of the quarter, but I've been fighting off a sense of annoyed depression. There are days that the Great Big Piece of Paper looks farther away than ever. It took a couple of hours of staring at my "course of study" checklist this morning to realize that no, really, I had made progress.

(A "course of study" sheet is the worksheet that lists the Ph.D. requirements you've already met and what's left to do. For example, I need two "theory" classes before I can proceed.)

So. For now: two more papers, one more round with some research data, and one pile of grading. Then I can let myself melt slowly into a puddle for a few days.

Scenario:

The plan is to spend your 50 minute class showing a 45 minute videotape on giving presentations. Unfortunately, you discover five minutes before class that the VCR in your classroom is broken and can't be repaired or replaced. 25 students and one guest are now looking at you expectantly.

1st quarter: SHIT OMG NOW WHAT THE HELL DO I DO ARGH

2nd quarter:: Dammit, can't classroom support services do their jobs? Oh well, I'll just use the class I'd originally prepped for tomorrow. Maybe I'll show the videotape tomorrow if I can get the VCR working later.

3rd quarter:: Oh, what the hell. I hate that videotape anyway. I'll make a joke out of it to point out that presenters need to have a backup plan in case of equipment failures. Let's improvise a forty-five minute class discussion on professors who lack presentation skills, people who mumble, and distracting habits of twitchy people standing at podiums.

I have officially marked down Wednesday, May 2 as a Day of Suck.

Always good to know about these things in advance.

maarten, I think it was, explained the "graduate seminar" method of teaching. It works like this: instead of bothering to create a lesson plan, assign one of your students to teach the entire class. Do this once per class for the duration of the quarter, and you'll cut your prep and grading time to nearly zero.

This quarter, I've landed one of those seminars.

So I have a four hour class to teach on May 2. That's followed immediately by the one hour class I normally teach and the subsequent two hour class I'm taking as a student. No breaks. I get lunch once class lets out at 3:30.

It still beats eight hours of meetings, but it's amazing how much energy it takes to teach. You're exhausted by the time you're done. At least I am. I predict a long nap at the end of that day.

Grades were due at 10:00 this morning. It took until about 8:30 this morning to finish negotiating the grades with both professors of my evening class, but they're done, they're handed in, and I'm off the hook.

Some things I've learned about teaching:

One instructor = one class. I'd expected to be TAing two classes this quarter, but in truth it really was three. Even if you have two professors teaching from the same syllabus, their teaching styles, grading, assignments, etc. etc. will be different enough that you'll have to keep track of them separately. It's possible to TA two classes in a quarter and still play student, but when you get up to three classes, you're looking at a full time job.

Learn when to talk and when to shut up. Both of the professors I was working with are working professionals who are probably among the top 20 experts in my field in the world. One of them was a strong teacher who for the most part wanted me to sit in the back and keep my mouth shut--except when I was playing discussion facilitator, which was a dynamic we never did quite work out. The other professor was a brilliant man who's forgotten more about the subject than I'm ever going to learn, but who sometimes needed a bit of help managing the mechanics of the class. Since I would literally switch between instructors halfway through every class, I not infrequently got whiplash trying to remember which persona I was supposed to adopt.

Watch the cynicism. Microsoft people above a certain level develop a very Darwinian view of working life: devil take the hindmost, produce or be fired, and what the hell have you done for the company lately? I must've absorbed more of that attitude than I thought. "Learn to justify your existence," I told everyone in one section, and I said it enough that half of the people in the section quoted me in their final exam.

I still perceive that philosophy as a necessary truth in our line of work, but it came off more harshly than I'd intended.

Sometimes being responsible means pissing people off. Colin Powell said it first, and he was right. Still not fun, particularly when some of your students are also colleagues and friends.

Next week I go back to teaching only one class. It'll feel like a vacation.