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Defend against who?

16
May 2007

I have one week and two days until my defense. I am in a strange place. I have edited my thesis and sent it off to my chair for comments. I am waiting for comments from one of my committee members (Mom and I are going to get those today.). That leaves me with nothing to do except (well, laundry of course, but I mean thesis-wise) wonder what exactly is going to happen May 25 at 1 p.m. in Anspach 110 (if Anspach 110 actually exists*).

What exactly am I supposed to do at this defense? Do I have to prepare a statement? What questions will I be asked? How long will it take? And the big question… What do I wear?

I have no idea and that is a wee bit unnerving. Just a teeny tiny bit. I best be off to Mt. Pleasant. The sooner I get those comments the sooner I have something to do besides obsess.

Kim Hoelzli, YOU have a master degree, so spill. What happens at a defense?

*Last Friday, May 11, I had to turn in a form to the grad school to schedule my oral defense. The form required listing a time and place, and I had no idea what place to list. And so I called my committee chair. He was so reassuring. He asked me where, and I was clueless. And then he said something like, well, write down Anspach 110, I think it exists. I know there are a bunch of committee rooms there somewhere. And so I did, but I can’t help but wonder is there an Anspach 110, and if there isn’t will my defense really exist? One. Two. Three. The world may never know.

Thanks for playing.

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Revising and editing

12
May 2007

I am going through my thesis and trying to eliminate approximately 10 percent of the words. I wonder as I do this, who has been messing with my manuscript? I find myself guilty of EXACTLY the same things I mark in my students’ papers, and I wonder how I didn’t catch it?

I don’t have the word “that” very much, and the adverbs are also few and far between. I do, however, start a lot of sentences with but and and. I also use the word “down” quite a bit, as in I sat down instead of I sat. Another word I was shocked to find over and over is Just. It seems impossible to get rid of all my “was” constructions.

The first three chapters are now down to 11,600 and some words, approximately 10 percent less.

I was going to write more about this editing, but my husband came home from the girls softball practice, and we now have to go to Autumn’s first game of the season.

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The End

09
May 2007

Bring on the revisions.

I have finished writing my thesis! That deserves an exclamation point. I am done. done. done. That is, I am done with the composing from scratch.

I now have to revise, but I have been revising all along, so this should not be so bad. So where am I exactly?

I have finished writing all of the chapters that will be appearing in my thesis. They are all there, structured in the way I want them structured and some of them are very very polished. The others, are very polished, but still need some work to reach the very, very polished status.

I should be able to defend my thesis the week of May 21.

At the moment, I have sent out the first three chapters to my two additional committee members. I received comments back from one of those two.

The remaining chapters have all been edited by my committee chair. I need to revise those, and send those out to my other two committee members. When I get comments back from them, I will revise my thesis to create a “defense version,” which is what I will defend later this month. Then after the defense, everyone signs off and I pay to have it bound, and it sits on the shelves of the Park Library forever and ever as a nicely bound red BOOK.

What have I learned?

1. I learned how to mine for good stuff from the bits and pieces of writing prompts I have written in the past.

2. I have learned that my rough draft material tends to have major issues with conflicting verb tenses.

3. I have learned that I really truly can write something longer than a newspaper article. (When I first signed up for grad school, they wanted a copy of something I had written that was longer than 8 pages in lenght, and I did not have one single solitary thing. Now I have lots of somethings over 8 pages in length. Hoozah!)

4. I learned that while I was swamped with work, my children grew several inches, and when I finally look up from my laptop I noticed that their clothing had all shrunk, especially the boy child who is not yet concerned that he looks like an orphan covered with dirt wearing clothes two sizes too small. Since I have noticed, my most frequent comment to him (besides I love you) is “Are you wearing clean underwear?”

5. I learned that when I compose from a writing prompt I am more likely to be guilty of info dump. Info dump is not good.

6. I learned I was most guilty of writing info dump when I was trying to explain my complicated family structure — that I’m 11 years younger than the second youngest, while the other four are stairsteps, etc.
But finally I figured it out and eliminated the info dump.

7. I learned I was not very nice to my mother when I was a teenager, and she loved me anyway.

8. I learned I can WRITE.

9. I learned that I learned things about me by the very act of writing.

10. I learned how nice it is to finally be able to see THE END. And that feeling lasts for about 5 seconds before you realize now that the degree is within your grasp that now the hard work really begins — getting a job.

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So Close to the end (Senioritis again)

03
May 2007

Last night was my last grad class. I am also done teaching classes. Now, I just have to grade all of my student papers and finish the rewrite on my research paper (due Saturday). So, um, that means, for the next few days I’m going to be pretty busy.

After class last night, my prof treated all of us to pizza and beer. It was nice to sit around and talk. One of my fellow students was told she didn’t have the “aura of marriage” despite being married for three years. It was a fun class and all of us ended up at the bar afterwards, which is pretty cool.

Yesterday was a scheduling nightmare, but we made it through.

Autumn was inducted into the National Junior Honor Society last night. Unfortunately neither one of her parents were able to attend the ceremony, but Autumn went with a friend. That had more to do with yesterday’s wild schedule.  Justin had baseball practice at 5 p.m. while Amanda and Maxine had softball practice at 6 p.m. and Autumn’s ceremony was at 7 p.m. With me at school, Steve was left alone to go in three different directions.

Plus Justin had a concert at 1:30, which I was able to attend. Then I picked him up from school, and Maxine up from her school. And then we arrived at the field an hour early. Maxine and Justin stayed busy while I sat in the van with my laptop plugged into a cigarette outlet doing homework. And I had to leave the field before Steve actually arrived. He had left work at 4:30 to pick up Autumn and Amanda from track practice. He then had to take Autumn to a friend’s house in Prudenville before arriving at the baseball field at about 5:30 p.m. I was there until around 5:10 p.m., so we just missed each other.

I meet Friday with my prof to continue working on my memoir. We both have pretty clean schedules the next few weeks, so I hope to make a lot of progress. I sent the first three chapters to my other committee members, so things are looking good. It’s almost over, right? So close.

The summer isn’t completely clear. I start teaching online in mid June, and then at the end of June that writing workshop begins. Plus I have to work on my resume and apply for full-time jobs. I really need to work on that next week.

And now I’m just rambling. Thanks for playing.

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Out of the Box

26
Apr 2007

(Two, that’s two posts in one day! Amazing! Be impressed. Also, please note that I am not a slacker like some people I know.)

(clear throat)

So, I walked into my grad class last night and one of the other students (I’ve mentioned her before although I just called her my presentation partner for chapter two), smiled at me and said, “Lin-da.” In a very strange tone, like she knows a secret. And turns out she did.

“I read your blog….” she continues.

And I groaned. OK, maybe I didn’t groan out loud, but I definitely groaned inside. Although I think I did say something like, “Don’t tell me that.”

So. Hi Michelle!

Now, pay attention, because this is where Linda confesses something strange, and you realize she is a lot weirder than you ever imagined. (See, I’m even writing in third person, so I am already proving I am weird!)

I have been writing for newspapers since I was in high school, which means I’m used to seeing my name as a byline in the newspaper. I have a very strong audience awareness when I write (in some cases, too strong according to one of my professors). Yet, I still fail to make the connection that there really IS an audience. (Confused yet? Let me try to explain….)

You see, when I write I am sitting in my house, typing onto my computer. It’s just me and my computer (walking down the Avenue, not the ole but the new….) So. Where was I? Right. It’s just me and my shadow, er, computer, and I pretty much just type into the thing. And I don’t think about people actually reading what I write. I mean, I do, but I don’t. As I said, I write with an audience awareness, and by that I mean I realize that I need to provide enough information to orient a reader, to anticipate questions and needs a reader may have and to address those questions and needs in my writing. (However, that doesn’t mean THIS particular post is doing all of that.)

But what I don’t do is I don’t think about people (and by that I define people as in people I actually know, ala someone I am going to have to face in person as I go about my daily life) reading what I write. In other words, I know there are tiny people who live in my computer who I communicate with regularly, but if I’m not logged into my computer, these people do not exist. (Yeah, I know. Shelley, AGK, Teri, Kira, the Kims and a bunch of others are really going to be surprised about that one.) Of course, I know they really exist. After all, one of them is my mother, but I get surprised when something I blog or write about for publication elsewhere becomes an actual topic with me in person.

This used to happen with my sister Dee quite a bit. We’d be talking on the phone, and I’d be telling her some neat story, and she already knew. How did she know? She read my blog. Really? People read this? Real people read this? (Yes, apparently today’s unofficial theme is ‘Linda is delusional.’)

But then there are the weird ones. The ones where I am standing in the grocery store line with my children, buying my weekly groceries, and the cashier recognizes me from reading my column, I’m the Mommy, in the newspaper. And instead of being excited about being recognized, I freak out. I immediately start to wonder — am I buying anything embarrassing? Did I just yell at my kids? You mean real people actualy read that? It’s just surreal.

There was even one time (and Shelley, I believe was a witness to this) when I walked into a session during the Erma Bombeck writing workshop several years ago. And one of the people leaving the previous session, spots me and says, “You’re Linda Sherwood.” Well, yes. But, um, I don’t know you. How in the world would you know me? And the answer was from my (now defunct) web site, Small Town Press. I’d had a photo on there, and she recognized me. And once again, I get floored when I learn that people I know in the box (as in my computer here) really exist out of the box. And that people I know out of the box (Hi Michelle!) now know I’m in the box. So yeah, totally delusional.

Thanks for playing.

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