So, I passed the proposal defence. At Toronto, this is sort of the equivalent of the comps, which we don’t do. For those of you who don’t know, but are wondering (as opposed to those of you who don’t know, but don’t care, which, trust me, I understand) the process goes like this:
First and start of second year: classes, preliminary fieldwork, external grant applications, start the proposal
Second (and for me) start of third year: focus on proposal (with a few more grant applications). Write draft, revise, revise, revise, revise, revise, polish, polish. Send to six academics of intimidatingly impressive credentials. Wait four weeks for comments.
(In my case I set up the defence for 2 days after the deadline for comments, usually it’s two weeks. This left me with only two sets of comments and one day to write a presentation responding to them. I did that because I have a cheap—relatively speaking—ticket that gets expensive after the 9th, because clvrmnky is coming with me and he has this time off work, and because we want to have a nice Christmas vacation on the beach. So the quick turn around was really mostly my fault.)
I wrote the presentation starting at 9 am and going until 12 am (with breaks for eating, lots of staring at the screen, writing one sentence then erasing it, consultations with a friend about how I was approaching the comments, and about 45 minutes to deal with a minor visa SNAFU that has been resolved). I stayed over at a friend’s place in Toronto so that I would be able to get to the defence in time, and arrived hungry and tired because I could neither eat nor sleep well in the days before.
Then it was two hours of being on the spot. There were 5 academics there, in a semi-circle around me in our department’s new enormous board room. I read my presentation, and then answered their questions. It was gruelling, even though they were mostly kind and encouraging. They (mostly gently) pointed out what felt like major flaws and oversights and asked how I would deal with them, had I thought about them, etc. Some I answered well, some not so much. After two hours I left the room for about 5 minutes and then they came out and said I passed. It was slightly anti-climactic.
So, we are off to Accra on Sunday, and then Kumasi on Tuesday or Wednesday. I will be updating more regularly now that I have (or at least anticipate having) more interesting things to say than “got up, drank coffee, edited proposal, went to bed.” I look forward to hearing from those of you who’ve promised comments, emails, and letters. Everyone’s good wishes and encouragement have helped keep me going through the harder stages of this process, and give me the courage to face a year alone. Thank you.
Filed under: Anthropology academics
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30 October 2007, 10:20
Hey, all. Just a quicky update to say that it looks like the proposal will be going forward sometime this week, so if all goes well, I should be in Ghana in early December.
Filed under: academics news
24 July 2007, 16:02
In the British nursery rhyme, Thursday’s child has far to go. Akan speakers assign names based on the day of birth: a girl born on Thursday is Yaa. Yaa is the name of a female deity and also of an Asante cultural hero, Yaa Asantewaa, who led the final Asante revolt against the British.
When I was young, I thought that “far to go” was a pretty lame—what? fortune? Anyway, I would have much rather been “fair of face”, “full of grace” or even “loving and giving”. My travels to Ghana, where you can often tell the day a person was born by their name and which is far from my home left me reflecting once again on that invocation from my childhood. I didn’t draw any exciting conclusions, just thought about it, and that I had, indeed, come far.
Now, again, I find myself reflecting on this scrap of rhyme, bit of memory. This year has marked a lull in my enthusiastic pursuit of academic goals. It has become difficult to maintain the excitement that brought me to grad school and that focused me so intently on the project that I have set for myself.
I’m still committed to my project, but I realize what makes people leap from project to project, what makes people take forever to write their thesis. Graduate work, in particular the PhD, is far to go.
There are, in every project, points at which the effort to sustain the project is disproportionate with the satisfaction that one is currently deriving from it. In an anthro PhD, I think that period may be most of the second year: classes are over or ending, intellectual demands are increasing, and yet you still have nothing that the discipline takes seriously as academic work, that is, fieldwork.
As my fieldwork approaches, I’m finding that my excitement is returning, although with considerable trepidation as I contemplate a year removed from friends and family. And I’m very glad to see it, because it is a welcome companion on my journey.
Filed under: academics thesis
