Screw this whole academic thing. I wanna be a rock star. I should never have given up the drums!
Category Archives: the dissertation
post about by academic life, the dissertation, and other smarty-pants stuff
The circle is now complete. When I left you I was but the learner. Now I am the master.
I have finally completed the dissertation, all the necessary revisions, and will, this afternoon, take it up to school, drop it off with the academic secretary, get the last required signatures for graduation, and be, by all accounts, Done. Phinished, to borrow a phrase.
Because some folks have expressed interest in reading my work, I’ve posted it to my academic papers page. Feel free to download and read and cite to your heart’s content.
What I really want to say is that I can’t help but feel different. The dissertation was huge. I’ve turned that very important corner in my professional academic career. And losing Kai was rough, no doubt about it. But we’ve been making new routines, new habits, since he left, trying to get used to coming home and not being greeting by him. And when we move, I’ll be moving to a place that will have no memories of Kai attached. Which is pretty big deal when you think of all the places I’ve lived in the past nine years and how each of them was effected by that dog in some way. So things are going to be different. They already are.
Before the oral defense officially started this morning, Judith (one of my committee members) and I were making polite small talk, chit chat. She told me that around the same time I passed off my dissertation to her, another one of her students had turned one in that was 700 pages long. Mine’s a mere […]
In other, other, other, news, once the Dissertation has been defended, I expect everyone to call me Dr. Scott. No wait. That’s not what I was going to say. Once Thursday rolls around, I’ll be posting something more, oh, I don’t know, Buddhist. Unless of course my Radiohead boxset ever shows up. In which case maybe I’ll talk about the difference between digital downloads, CDs, and vinyl. I don’t know. But I do know this: maybe I’ll be just a little be less distracted.
There are, as I write this, four full copies of my dissertation sitting on my desk. One for me, and one for each member of my committee. That’s right. I’m done. I’ve put all I can into this damned thing and it’s finally complete. The “final,” “defensible” draft, all wrapped up and ready to be […]
I’m not sure if the fact that I (we) own the top three albums of the year, according to the New York Times, makes me still young enough to know what’s hip, or, since it’s the New York Times, it makes old. Then again, I did just say “hip.â€
Instead of going after Clark Strand’s ideas specifically, I’m going to talk about “American Buddhism†and why I’m finding myself increasingly dissatisfied with this categorical term. Suffice to say, a lot of what follows comes directly from The Dissertation, so think of it as a little preview, a teaser movie trailer.
It’s freakin’ cold out there. But, then again, it’s not like I’m livin’ in North Dakota or anything. So I’ll just get over that one. At any rate, on to other things. There’s a whole bunch of things I’ve got rollin’ around up in the ol’ noggin today that I could be writing about. But […]
