Wednesday, November 28, 2012

Trying not to hate a chapter

I need to get in a better mental space about chapter 2. This is the first time in months that I've felt like crying about research. I could write a whole lot more about why I'm feeling so crappy, but I don't think it would make me feel any better about it.

Friday, November 16, 2012

I'm pregnant!

I had a hard time deciding what to title this post, so eventually I decided to just make it clear rather than clever. Jon and I are expecting a baby in late May or early June!

I've written before about how Herb is extremely supportive of his grad students having kids in grad school. I figured out a few years ago that my student health insurance covers maternity 100%. I've got my fellowship until August. It just seemed like a good time to go for it, so we did, and it worked. Apparently all of those years of birth control were money well spent!

I told my committee I'm pregnant- almost all of them in person. Herb said it had been a while since there was a baby in the lab and I was doing my part to keep up the lab fecundity. Sam said he thought I might be. Chip gave me a high five. Melody said, "Congrats- how far along are you?" Leo said, "Well-timed."

Boy am I motivated to finish- and now my committee knows the extra reason why! My defense is probably going to be April 23 or 24, and the baby is due May 31. Technically I'll finish in the summer term because that's when I'll submit my dissertation to the university. Do you think a baby counts as an external deadline? Or about as internal as deadlines get?

Monday, November 12, 2012

Defense week

In between December 2012 and August 2013, there is one week when I can defend because Herb is going on sabbatical. One. April 22-26.

It's 23 weeks away. Oh goodness me. I have a deadline.

Saturday, November 10, 2012

Accepted! Finally!

After 3 years of writing, revising, adding data, refining, and rewriting, the so-called "short note" has been accepted! By my calculations now, I've put more than 330 hours into this project over the last 3 years (a year ago my count was 263). It has been at this same journal since last Christmas. This is my first dissertation chapter.

There is one caveat- the editor thinks it could be trimmed somewhat. The subject editor made no requests and the editor offered no specific comments or even a ballpark number of words to trim. Has anyone else had this happen? "Accepted, but please make it a little shorter?"

So it's almost there. Really almost there. Hopefully I only have a few more hours of work on this, ever.

I really need my other chapters to go more quickly than this one!

Saturday, November 3, 2012

Old connections

Waaaaaay back at the beginning of my PhD, on my first scouting trip to Ukenzagapia 4.5 years ago, I met another PhD student I called John (not to be confused with my husband Jon). I wrote about meeting him at a restaurant and then staying at the field station where he did his research. That was the only time we ever saw each other, but we kept in touch occasionally over email for a while since we were studying similar things in similar places. I hadn't heard from him in nearly 3 years. Recently, I got an email from him because he saw my name on the paper that just got published. It turns out that he now has a job in conservation that he loves- in Jon's Hometown. I've mentioned before that we'd like to move there, and he tipped me off to an opportunity that I'm definitely going to apply for. It's exciting when networking works!