It's That Time of Year
Just when PhD students start to feel thoroughly sick of whatever they are in the midst of--feeling, perhaps, twinges of spring fever as a result of psychotic people who have taken to wearing sleeveless tops to the library--it occurs to us that it's about time to be hearing back on the various fellowship applications we slaved over earlier in the school year. This tends to make us uneasy as well as fretful.
After going through all of Orfeus, Život II (very fine and significant avant-garde periodicals) and nearly all of Fronta 8 (which was long and almost entirely useless regarding art), I had the feeling that if I were only sane, I could bear no more of this. Fiddling around with improvements to my bibliography (noting, for future readers, which items have been reprinted and might actually be found in North America) did not prompt any feelings of satisfaction, but merely a sense that anyone who could compile such an endless bibliography should probably be shot before it grows any larger.
Furthermore, for most of the afternoon I had been trying to send a rather long email (relating to the said bibliography) which kept refusing to go forth.
Suddenly, to my great surprise, an email appeared whose subject line indicated that my advisor had fine news for someone or other in our department about something I had applied for. (She is very good at keeping us informed of the collective good news.) It was something that I have always, year after year, had exceptional aggravation about; except for this year, when the application did seem to go together without the usual stupidities. I don't think I had any remarkable hope that I would finally be offered the thing.
Fortune has smiled upon me, however, and I am one of the designated grantees.
I am still waiting to hear on a couple of other applications, but I think we can take it for granted that I do not need to teach next year and can apply all my demented energies to finishing off the dissertation. That is... those energies that are not devoted to rabbit massage and other similar pursuits!
After going through all of Orfeus, Život II (very fine and significant avant-garde periodicals) and nearly all of Fronta 8 (which was long and almost entirely useless regarding art), I had the feeling that if I were only sane, I could bear no more of this. Fiddling around with improvements to my bibliography (noting, for future readers, which items have been reprinted and might actually be found in North America) did not prompt any feelings of satisfaction, but merely a sense that anyone who could compile such an endless bibliography should probably be shot before it grows any larger.
Furthermore, for most of the afternoon I had been trying to send a rather long email (relating to the said bibliography) which kept refusing to go forth.
Suddenly, to my great surprise, an email appeared whose subject line indicated that my advisor had fine news for someone or other in our department about something I had applied for. (She is very good at keeping us informed of the collective good news.) It was something that I have always, year after year, had exceptional aggravation about; except for this year, when the application did seem to go together without the usual stupidities. I don't think I had any remarkable hope that I would finally be offered the thing.
Fortune has smiled upon me, however, and I am one of the designated grantees.
I am still waiting to hear on a couple of other applications, but I think we can take it for granted that I do not need to teach next year and can apply all my demented energies to finishing off the dissertation. That is... those energies that are not devoted to rabbit massage and other similar pursuits!
Labels: research
posted by Karla at 8:43 PM
4 Comments:
Congratulations, Karla!!! :-)
Congrats!
It is (as Kristen already knows) the same thing Kristen is enjoying this year. I'm glad I finally managed to do an application they liked!
Glad to hear your good news, Karla!
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