¶ Progress Report for 8/25
Scholarly Pursuits1:
- On my paper on Jesuit educational drama2 I made very, very little progress. Mostly administrative. Words: 0.
- On my prep for my quals, I mostly finished Wyatt and have some nice notes to review.
- I submitted the one remaining student’s grade that I’d procrastinated for a couple of weeks. I struggled with this one: should I smack her for unintentional (I give her the benefit of a doubt) plagiarism, or should I teach her a lesson?
- I solicited and received some nice input (from a few people) on the syllabus for the course I’m teaching this Autumn. Luckily, the term doesn’t begin until late September3.
- I returned three books, very begrudgingly, to the library, including one I need for my Jesuit paper4. OhioLink is a wonder, but the strictly-enforced renewal limit is sometimes painful.
Non-scholarly Pursuits:
- I’m not going to bother reporting this. But I did a lot of stuff around the house.
NOTES:
1 I’ve decided I need some public accountability on my progress, especially since I don’t have the benefit of courses to guide my efforts. I know that only a few of you ever read this blog, but one of you is my mother, and thus some transparency in my progress might provide some necessary motivation.
2 This is a paper that just won’t die. It is the final thing for my coursework, for a class that ended months ago. I was sick at the end of the term and took an Incomplete, and now, lacking a firm deadline, the paper is an absolute mess. It’s grown to twice its original (nearly complete at the time) length and has changed its argument half a dozen times. Right now, it has no reasonable argument. It’s simply a mess of notes and observations and prematurely aborted theses without any central organizing idea. An unqualified mess.
I find that Jesuit educational drama is both interesting and infuriating. I like the untrodden ground I get to tread, but working without a safety net of other scholars is pretty intimidating. I want to shoot ideas off people, but there’s no one to talk to really (except Allison Shell, but I’ve never met her). It is about as unsexy as early modern English literature gets: it’s not even in English! I take refuge in the fact that (these particular plays) were written by Englishmen, or rather one Englishman.
My plan is to get this paper out of the way as quickly as I can (ha ha) so I can focus exclusively on my exam prep (and my teaching and my family and my responsibilities at church which are not inconsiderable and my health). Right now, Simons’ plays take up too much of my brain; they block my view of everything else. I wish at least that I had a way of working them into my dissertation but it looks like a (for now) dead end. Someday I’ll polish up my completed (from my mouth to God’s ears!) paper and submit it for publication. For now I just need to submit it to Chris Highley.
Chris, if you stumble across here: I’m sorry.
3 There are only a few benefits to the quarter system, but a late start to Fall quarter is one of them.
4 The other two were the new collected works and companion to the collected works of Thomas Middleton. If anyone is feeling unjustifiably generous, those would make a wonderful gift. For me, I mean.
26 August 2008
Comment
< Website: a final apology (for now) | Progress Report for 8/26 >
# Comment by Thom on Aug 26, 03:01 PM:
Wait. Which one of us is your mother? Is it me? ‘Cause that would be rather embarrassing to discover through your blog.
On another point, I failed to grasp the distinction between “smack[ing]” the student and “teach[ing] her a lesson.” Please clarify (and, if willing, share your final decision). When I re-started grad school a few years ago, I got a C on my first paper and the prof said, “I assume you didn’t do this on purpose so I’ll give you a C, but if you plagiarize like this again I’ll fail you and report you to the academic honor board.” Them’s hard words for someone who thought he knew how to write, but they most definitely taught me a lesson. (Mainly a lesson about the differing citation standards and expectations of different disciplines, but that’s an important lesson.) By the next paper, I’d figured out the proper approach to citation for that discipline/department/professor. (I got an A- in the class, thanks for asking.)
# Comment by renaissance girl on Aug 26, 06:20 PM:
1) your font is too small.
2) do you read notes of a neophyte (the blog of that title)? you should. she digs jesuits, but perhaps differently than you do.
3) “summer productivity”= a sham.
# Comment by Jeff on Aug 27, 10:22 AM:
@Thom:
if you are my mother, I have more issues that I have been previously aware. To the best of my knowledge, you and my mother are distinctly different people.
I’ll respond about the student, with some carefully anonymized detail, in a later post.
@renaissance girl who does not capitalize:
1) I made the font two points larger. I hope that’s better on your aging eyes.
2) No, but I’ll take a look. My blog reading has become more limited as I’ve grown more aware how much I use them to procrastinate.
3) If you say so, but it still feels like I’m the only one. I hate to think that everyone is a liar, but I think that perhaps everyone (in academia) is a liar (about how much they accomplished over the summer).