#phd year 2

[theartofprose]

March 26, 2019

Half-way through my longest day of the week: one seminar at Columbia, a graduate program committee meeting, a meeting with one of my advisors, and a seminar at NYU with a professor from CUNY. Tack on a 90-minute commute in the morning and a 50-60 minute commute in the evening and it's a long day!

To make up for the time I'm going to spend prepping for and having conversations with other people, today will involve 0 library runs and 0 words written. I will have to send emails and get the ball rolling on catering for Friday, though. I'm thinking samosas!

The spring weather is so nice right now, I wish I could have taken time to lounge around outside too!

[theartofprose]

March 25, 2019

There's a lot of green in my life this week. After my one-person, stay-home, writing retreat last week, I’m back to work in a “green” space (literally painted lime green) English department on Greene street. Using my green notebook. Eating green apples; spinach, pea, artichoke couscous; and ginger-lemon noodle soup with mushrooms, tofu, and bok choy. You get the picture.

I haven’t made any more progress on that article draft, yet. Instead, I went for an intense sunrise run this morning. I’ve also been busy catching up on some reading—poems by Michael Field, Hopkins, Thomson. And I submitted another draft of both my major and minor exam lists. Organizing the PhD admit welcome week, next week! (Welcome, reader! If you’ll be visiting us!)

Before then, though, I have plenty of commitments in my schedule:

two seminars, two meetings on Tuesday

one seminar, one roundtable discussion on Wednesday

one FT meeting, a day of writing, and a friend’s talk on Thursday

an event in special collections to run on Friday

🐝

[theartofprose]

March 21, 2019

It's the middle of reading week, here in New York. I haven't left the house in days--except for a trip to the local library--to spend as much time as I can on this draft of a paper I'll be work-shopping with my favorite early modernists next month.

I've made encouraging progress on the draft, now that I've instituted manageable writing goals. Last week, I wrote 500 words a day for the short essay on Barbauld. This week, I'm aiming to write 1,000-1,500 words a day. (Note: this is a second draft of a short seminar paper that I wrote in a great fury in December; not a totally new venture.)

My hope is that this new--and more sane--approach to my writing practice is a habit I'll be able to make use of when I write my three end-of-semester papers. Using word counts, instead of paragraph or page lengths. It feels like WC are less psychologically damning at the moment.

The other thing that I am working on this week is trying to nail down my reading list for my major exam (Romanticism), which is due April 1.

[theartofprose]

I love it when I unplug after hours and hours of writing and the turns of phrase I need all pop into my head, faster than I can find a new piece of scrap paper and a pencil. My to-do list for tomorrow is now a palimpsest of paragraph pivots and concluding thoughts.

[theartofprose]

jet lag + travelling + writing = mess

Essay number 3 has been submitted! On time! I have the feeling it's going to take me weeks *weeks* to recover from this weekend. Which is good: I've got nothing on my docket until the end of January--which is pleasantly far away now.

[theartofprose]

Proofed and submitted essay no. 2/3. (The one on artist’s books that I kid you not took me five weeks of staring at books in special collections to understand what was going on.) I have about 20 minutes to look for articles for essay no. 3, before the library closes. Then it’s time for tea and celebratory popcorn.

As a perfectionist with (self-)trust issues, I have a hard time letting go of projects. Hence, why I’m in grad school.

[theartofprose]

Finished my workday by attending a lecture essentially titled "Eighteenth-century dildo theory" and it was delightful.

Learned more about the BLs cataloging system and the difference between "private case" and "cupboard" shelfmarks. I didn't think the British library could get more, well, British about how they catalogue "pornographic" materials.

It made for a fitting follow-up to the lecture on alchemy I attended two weeks ago.

[theartofprose]

I think I've developed a new writing tic: I am only able to stop editing paragraphs once I've counted the number of sentences and the number of words in those sentences to make sure I haven't used three colons and two em-dashes in a single sentence.