1.21.2009

I’m a little terrified by the paper I’m writing, for a lot of reasons totally unrelated to the fact that it isn’t even close to done yet. It’s actually the point that I’m making and the people I’m making it to that make me feel panicky.  How do you tell a bunch of old guys [...]

1.20.2009

I spent my morning being terribly academic, sipping a chai latte in a localorganicfairtrade coffee shop, listening to Depeche Mode, and furiously highlighting and annotating my hundreds of pages of reading. Then I went to the basketball arena to watch the inauguration with thousands of other people. Then I came home and dropped a class. [...]

1.19.2009

This was previously posted in a more private blog on December 17th, 2008. I give you this, because the topic has come back to bite me in the ass…again: “A note to all of my friends either currently in academia or heading that way in the future: Never submit an abstract and bibliography to a [...]

1.14.2009

So, as the end of the fall 2008 semester tried its best to grind my face into the ground, I tried my best to keep blogging. I obviously failed, as the low post count for December will show, but that isn’t to say I didn’t churn out some material. In fact, I have several text documents full [...]

1.14.2009

New semester, new posting season for Ph.Dead.  No, I did not actually die at the end of last semester. It was a particularly unrestful winter break, however, due to excessive traveling and excessive our-apartment-is-falling-apart-but-they-won’t-let-us-move raging. Now, the fateful day has arrived: the first day of classes. Time to brace myself and charge headfirst into chaos.  [...]