Tag Archives: dissertation

30x30

30 by 30—2015 Year End Update

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434 days.
62 weeks.
37,497,600 seconds.

That’s how long I have before I hit 30 (and thus the amount of time I have to complete my 30 by 30 list!)

Even more scary is the fact that I have only 112 days to complete my dissertation if I want to graduate on time, which by the way IS part of the professional category of my 30 by 30. So where do I stand? Here’s where I was the last time I remembered to swing by my website:

Travel
√ Chicago
√ Quebec
Charleston/Edisto Island (this will be my next blog post, coming soon hopefully!)
France and Belgium
San Francisco

I can now check off Charleston/Edisto Island from the travel category, though I never blogged about it. Vacation 2015 was lovely, and quite possibly one of my all-time favorites. It’s a lot of fun to vacation with the niece and nephew (and their parents and Mimom and Grandaddy are pretty nice, too!) With that vacation, plus some serious family time this Christmas (both my side and Karen’s side, as I write this at Karen’s grandparents’ house!), I think I can safely check off another big (and certainly ongoing) item from the personal category: spend time with family. I’ve also been able to check off some items from the Musical, Spiritual, and Just for Fun categories this year. It’s been a great start to the list, and looking back in total, a year of great accomplishments.

Here’s where the list stands (again, not giving it away in full!) heading into 2016, with some comments:

Personal
√ Spend time with family

Professional
Earn my PhD
Seven publications (no really—I’ve already got five if you count the two book reviews, with three more dissertation chapters and a third book review under development!)
Land a job
Month-long photo challenge
Purchase a professional suit (perhaps a bit vain of me, but I’ve been waiting to lose some weight first…and hey, forthcoming job interviews are maybe not all wishful thinking and pipe dreams, right??)

Spiritual
√ Talk theology with a minister—Thanks, Rev. Matt Hampton!
√ Volunteer for a good cause (more on this if I ever get around to it, but suffice to say that volunteering at Church Street’s Soup Kitchen has been one of the most meaningful, amazing additions to my life this year!)

Travel
√ Chicago
√ Quebec
France and Belgium (forthcoming, summer 2016!)
√ Charleston/Edisto Island
San Francisco (forthcoming, March/April 2016!)

Musical
√ See another Broadway show — Godspell (I don’t care if it was staged in the Church Street Parish Hall, it was an amazing production!)
√ Sing in another opera—Knoxville Opera’s production of Boito’s Mefistofele (sure, I was just in the auxiliary heavenly chorus, but it was fun!)

Just for Fun
52 in 52 book challenge—this may never happen at my current reading rate!
Hike Mt. LeConte—seriously HAVE to do this in 2016
Watch a dozen classic films—now taking suggestions!
Watch a meteor shower?—or something else if the opportunity does not astronomically present itself…
√ Baseball at Turner Field—finally checked this stadium off of my MLB travel list, now up to a grand total of Busch Stadium II & III (STL), Kauffman Stadium (Kansas City), Nationals Park (D.C.), and Turner Field (ATL). So many more stadiums to visit…I’m looking at you next, Great American Ballpark in Cincinnati!

TTFN! There’s life to be lived (and dissertation chapters to be written…!) Much love and best wishes to my readership (all, like, four of you) in 2016.

Knoxville, PhD, UTK

A Well-Deserved Update

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I realize it has been a long time since I posted any kind of update to the blog. My apologies.

With that apology comes the roll-out of a new blog template! I thought it was high time that my dark and drastic website design change to a brighter, cheerier, and easier to read look. Voila! Feels better already.

In case you haven’t been informed, my dear five readers, this semester has been one of substantial change for me, academically and professionally. I switched to working with Dr. Derek Alderman, Geography Department Head at UT Knoxville and all-around outstanding scholar in the fields of geographies of race and memory and the U.S South. In the process, I temporarily lost my funding at UT (but I will be back teaching Geography 101 in the Spring – yay!), started looking for jobs, completely changed up my dissertation ideas, and started working as a server at Puléo’s Grille at the Strawberry Plains Pike exit on I-40.

I plan to use my blog/website better, more frequently, and more professionally in the future, after being inspired by my new colleague Tyler Sonnichsen. But we all know I’ve made similar claims before!

Geography, Oslo, PhD, Research, Travel

Quick check-in: Oslo 2013

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Hi all,

I thought I had better post at least something to my blog as a record of my trip to Oslo in 2013 even if I only have five people who read my blog. Karen is doing a much better job of blogging, and she has tons of followers somehow! I’d say it’s not fair, but she does put more effort into it…

Anyway, two busy works days down in Oslo, and about three work weeks to go. This weekend all of Norway celebrates two holidays – a one of our interview participants put it yesterday, “We get one day off for Jesus and one for the constitution.” Friday is Norwegian Constitution Day, the major national holiday (think Independence Day, all you Americans). Monday is the Pentecost bank holiday, so most everyone doesn’t work then either. Sort of bad timing for research purposes, but super cool that our team gets to experience the national holiday.

I got my desk and security card for Fafo today, and I should be there all day tomorrow to work on my dissertation research and Micheline’s project. So far, I’ve been splitting my time between finishing the revisions for publication of my thesis research on the Stolpersteine Project and working on scheduling interviews for Micheline’s NSF project (for which I am her research assistant, just on the off chance you didn’t know). We’ve had quite a lot of success lining up interviews for the first two weeks of the fieldwork, during which our two undergrads are here. Some of our interviews will also help my dissertation research, but I will do more on my own during the second two weeks. So maybe I’ll have time to post about that research then, but don’t count on it. I treasure sleep too much most evenings!

I’m sure there is more that I could say, but I’m currently drawing a blank and I’ve got to get back to my revisions. If I were going to give short recaps, I’d tell you:

  • Weather hasn’t been that great while we’ve been here. It’s rained harder than normal, and everyone’s told us this is a colder than average spring.
  • Washing dishes by hand almost everyday is a pain, but that’s what you get when you rent an apartment after only seeing one photo. Speaking of apartment photos, I think Karen is working on a post with those right now…
  • The bathroom is small. Like ridiculously small.
  • Several of the staff at Fafo remembered me from last year, and we already started catching up on the last several months. Their kindness and generosity constantly impress me, and it is really nice to know people in a foreign country, especially in comparison to Berlin in summer 2011 when Karen and I were pretty much alone for a month.
  • Norwegian TV is pretty cool. The apartment I stayed in last year didn’t have one, but even the basic channels have a lot of American TV and the Norwegians don’t dubbed anything, so we watched Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull a few nights ago, and Karen’s had the TV on for several American TV shows while I’ve been working the last few nights.

That’s all for now. Oh! Wait, now I remember what I was going to say earlier! Karen asked if we could take a train to Sweden one weekend so we can see more of Scandinavia on the cheap. Except it isn’t cheap. So if anyone wants to loan me about 500 bucks… let me know.