Shameless Graduate Student Update

As you might be able to tell from my last post, it's been a week. The bad part of it really isn't mine to tell, but let's just say that I have appreciated Derek's trial offices for the dead.

I think I was complaining a few weeks ago about being overcommitted. Well, I'm trying to clear my plate a little at the moment by the best route possible: I'm writing papers. My first first author paper is currently under review at one of the big journals of my sub-field. Today, I sent around my next paper for internal review, which hopefully will be submitted to a journal that doesn't hear much from my sub-field but has a fairly wide reach. So I just may submit two papers of my own this summer.

Monday, I learned that an abstract of mine was accepted for oral presentation at a big conference in October. To most readers of this blog, this will not mean much. But I've been submitting abstracts to conferences for more than three years now and I always have to present posters. Poster sessions frankly are depressing. They tend to be sparsely attended and repetitious. But worst of all, presenting a poster is a sign that your work is not particularly interesting. Speaking at a oral session is proof that I finally do something that a large number of people might find interesting. And that's kind of cool.

The Summer Is Magic

That is, it is a giant vacuum of time. I've been working for the last couple of hours or so to push a paper toward readiness for submission tomorrow. I was hoping to submit two other papers by Michaelmas. As it is, I know I have to submit one paper (and possibly do a bit of work on another one submitted at the same time) by Grosstestetide (look that one up). Unfortunately, neither of these two papers are the ones I intended to submit at the beginning of the summer. Oh, and there's my fifth project, which is paying half my stipend at present. As one of the postdocs in a related field (and a church friend) said to me recently, "You're 100% funded and 450% committed."

While I do feel like a productive graduate student (if thin and stretched like butter spread over too much bread), I have to think of my thesis research, which feels a little too ghostly at the moment for my comfort. Some of what I'm doing is related to my topic, but part of me wants to have a clear research plan on paper. But frankly I don't have the time.

Sundry Matters

Graduate school is very quickly heating up again. I have two classes next term. Furthermore, I have two ongoing research projects, which really don't seem to be coming to a gracious close very soon. As you can tell from the various series on this blog, I very rarely finish anything. Indeed, I have profound trouble with completion generally. On top of that, I have two conference papers due Easter Wednesday. I'm TAing a course and volunteered to guest lecture on Easter Friday. Holy Week is my favorite week of the year, but it looks like it will be a rather unbalanced mix of work and prayer.
Tomorrow, however, I will be seeing Die Grosse Stille . If you're lucky, you may get a review.

If you get a chance, read AKMA's latest piece. It's very much in the vein of a lot of writing these days about "polity," but he makes it a bit more palatable than other dishes. I've asked him a hard question through his e-mail comment system. He also will have a piece in the Christian Century that will go online fairly soon, which he fears will lose him friends. Knowing many clergy in his Diocese, it is my profound hope that his friends there will keep an open mind. Because I suspect that there's an astonishing secret behind AKMA's life. That seven years after Rowan Williams was born, AKMA was formed by God to act as an American analog to Williams, so that one could divine Williams' thoughts by asking Adam. Some would say they are simpatico .

Well, that's a strange thought for the night. I guess the nightly phantasms came early.