Wind Down, Gear Up

As I watch my colleagues fighting their way across the finish line of the spring semester, I feel like my year is just now getting started. Perhaps that's because it's been almost a year since I defended my dissertation prospectus, became ABD, and began researching and writing my dissertation. I also had a fellowship this year that released me from my teaching duties, and so I never felt particularly moored to the rhythm of the academic calendar. If the Jewish new year coincides with the commencement of the academic year in the fall, and the Gregorian calendar resets in January, then it just feels right to celebrate some kind of New Year in the spring. May has become my Dissertation New Year, a time to be inspired by the accomplishments of the last twelve months and an opportunity to make resolutions for the next phase.

I am starting two major projects in the coming weeks. The first is an oral history project at the YM-YWHA of Washington Heights-Inwood. I will interview staff and members who have been affiliated with the agency since the 1960s or 1970s. These oral histories will provide additional perspectives on the events that took place at the Y and in Washington Heights during these tumultuous decades. My travel and time in New York will be supported by a generous grant from the American Academy for Jewish Research. 

The second project is a bit out of left field, but I'm very excited about it. I will be conducting a corpus analysis to identify when the term "ghetto" was adopted by African Americans to describe  segregated urban neighborhoods in the United States. I will write about this in more detail in the coming weeks, because corpus analysis is not a methodology commonly used by American historians. It's part of an increasingly popular field called the digital humanities, and I've recently had the opportunity to learn about and practice methods for using digital tools in scholarly research and dissemination.

I feel rejuvenated by these new undertakings. Each is its own education and brings with it a new set of logistics. It's crazy but fun, and somehow I'm still managing to write my dissertation in fits and starts. Stay tuned for more. 

The Value of Time

The New York Times ran two articles this weekend, both written by professional researchers, about the relationship between productivity and how we perceive our time. One made the case for boredom as a tool for creative fulfillment, the other critiqued the contemporary obsession with quantifying every facet of life--including and especially how we spend our time. Both argue that it's counterproductive to meta-analyze how we spend our time, or should spend our time. In light of my recent attempts to maximize my writing productivity and make headway on my dissertation, I found elements of these arguments compelling.

In "The Other Side of Boredom," freelance researcher Mary Mann related how the boredom of her job as an under-employed kayaking guide inspired her to pursue a new career in research. For her, boredom helped her realize that she most enjoyed spending her time pursuing the "delayed gratification" of discovery. Her stints of boredom in the kayak-guiding job showed that she was not averse to tedium--which admittedly describes most of the research process--if it ultimately yielded "idea-shaping information." Mann offered the following advice for others hoping to usefully harness their boredom:

“So what turns doing nothing into creative fuel? While there are no conclusive studies on this, therapists and psychoanalysts I’ve interviewed tend to agree that the best way to really use boredom is to allow our bored minds to wander freely and to pay close attention to where they go, like watching a Ouija board supply answers under our own fingertips.”

I'm charmed by this notion of boredom as a tool for revelation, which in turn makes me doubly wary that this is an ultra-powerful justification for procrastination--a "get out of jail free" card for days spent knitting on the couch instead of working on the dissertation. Mann never really addresses whether, past a certain point, periods of boredom begin to yield diminishing returns. 

Over in the business section, Natasha Singer profiled Professor Natasha Dow Schull for the Technophoria column. Prof. Schull is a cultural anthropologist who will soon release a book about consumer electronics that monitor and quantify the behaviors of its users. In the interview, Schull critiques technologies that attempt to change a user's behavior with a prompt or cue instead of by providing users with their data so they gain insight into their behavior patterns. She accuses these technologies of turning the "quantified self" into the "infantilized self," and warns that while users feel like they're investing in their wellness they're often just redirecting anxiety from one neurosis to another. 

I am guilty of this charge. While I have avoided wristbands the prompt me to exercise, I have tried multiple apps that quantify the time that I work and prompt me to adhere to a work schedule. Recently I wrote about how I'm using the Pomodoro technique. When I start my Pomodoro  app, it tells me when to start working, when to take my breaks, and when I've met my goal. Although the app does not monitoring my compliance, its reminders are changing my behavior. The regular interval of beeps and chimes are training me to work consistently for shorter periods of time, and  the amount of time I work each day increases by incorporating five minute rejuvenating breaks between sessions. That's all well and good, but Prof. Schull's argument does raise two questions. Can I maintain these work/rest patterns and the enhanced level of productivity without the use of the app? And is my obsessive monitoring of my time merely distracting me from my real anxiety, the writing of deep historical thoughts?

Both Prof. Schull and Ms. Mann ask if we over-value productive time and create anxiety where there should be creativity. I was reminded of some advice that my mother passed along to me from her friend: "we are not machines." Perhaps, by programming my time, I'm making my task harder than it has to be. And as useful as my mom's second-hand advice was, it's compelling to hear this case made by fellow researchers. I know their time is spent doing much of the same work that I do, and I give more credence to their advice than to most of the people who admonish me to "just chill." 

 

Tax Day

My father in law, who does my taxes every year, always says that tax day is the adult iteration of opposite day. Whatever was good for you all year suddenly becomes a liability, while your drama and trauma and failure become valuable. At no time in my life has that been more true than during graduate school.

For 364 days each year, I wish that I did not have to think twice about whether or not to buy a $5 sandwich. On April 15, I embrace my low tax bracket and wait for the government to send me a check. From a tax standpoint, graduate school certainly beats working an entry level job!

Conversely, one of the few good things that happens to graduate students--grant funding--is very bad at tax time. A windfall of a few thousand dollars can add several hundred dollars of tax liability, and without careful financial planning you can end up with a very nasty shock in April. It's imperative to save part of your grant checks to cover taxes. 

I'm not delusional. I understand that my tax return effectively subsidizes my labor and empowers my employer to continue paying low wages to graduate students. For one day, though, I conveniently forget this fact. Tax day is a good day!

Solar Fuel

I have no scientific evidence on which to base this claim, but I had a superbly productive day and I attribute it to the sunshine and spring breeze. Pittsburgh has had some exceptionally beautiful weather this week--and I mean exceptional in the truest sense, this does not happen often--and I've been working outside on the stoop of my apartment building. For an hour this morning and for two this afternoon, I sat and reviewed the secondary literature I'm using to write the first section of my first chapter. It was warm enough to have my arms bare, and so even when my back and bottom began to ache from being pressed against the hard concrete steps I refused to get up and go inside. I just kept reading, leaning gingerly against the wrought iron banister that's come partially unmoored from the porch. 

The magnolia tree across the street is blooming. The playground down the block is filled with kids from the Catholic school. Everyone else is at work and so it's just me, reading, uninterrupted.