Holly ([info]several_bees) wrote,
@ 2008-02-29 13:14:00
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Most of you have never known me while I was not doing a thesis. Gosh.
I'm not a student, for the first time since 1986! Now I just have to wait around for several months while the examiners decide if I get to have a PhD or not.

In the mean time, let's see the result of all that study in the form of some statistics!

Times I changed thesis topic dramatically: 1.
Line which I thought was uncontentious but which turned out not to be: "Reading a novel that's had an enduring effect on the course of English literature doesn't make you a better person".
Line that still makes me snigger every time I read it: "Landow further argues that hypertext fiction instantiates the characteristics of Barthes' ideal "writerly" text".
Number of works in the works cited list: 112.
Number of people in the Works Cited list whom I've lived with: 1, down from a first-draft 3.
Silliest name in the Works Cited list: Cheeseburger Brown.
Appearances of the word "zombie" or "zombies" in the text of the thesis: 4.
Number of years since 1986: 22, apparently!
Line that I was told to edit for its non-inclusive language: "The cost of production acts like a peacock's feathers, flaunting his health with their extravagance".
Three sentence fragments: "Peter Pan/Anaconda crossover story", "a habit abandoned nowadays save in outmoded institutions like universities and marriage", "I must stop at the mall of Rundle to buyez des fleurs".

So, um, how does "not being a student" work? I'm doing bits of freelance game design and writing, but should I get a proper job? How would I do that? Do any of you need some games designed or stuff written or, er, relatively static websites or cakes made?

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[info]australian_joe
2008-02-29 01:25 pm UTC (link)
Now the nail-biting begins! Let's hope you don't get an examiner who just lost their job & house to a major natural disaster just before examining your thesis (as has happened to someone I knew, and the examiner was not very friendly in their assessment)!

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[info]reverancepavane
2008-02-29 01:48 pm UTC (link)

And now the real work begins – hunting down a publisher (or aren't you going to bother with the commercial version of your thesis).

And you really thought that line was uncontentious? Wow!

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[info]several_bees
2008-02-29 02:25 pm UTC (link)
I probably hadn't thought it through properly, but yes, at the time it struck me as fairly unarguable.

Not bothering with the publisher (though obviously if someone offered to put out the story component in paper I wouldn't turn them down); half of it's been online anyway, and the rest will be if it gets passed.

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[info]reverancepavane
2008-02-29 07:33 pm UTC (link)

Well, yes, I actually agree with your sentiments wholeheartedly. It's just that I've met much of the English Department, and utterly crushing their reason for existence in a single throwaway line, is not expected to endear oneself to them by any means. <grin>

And actually I'm more interested in the non-story (I won't say "non-fiction" until it after it has been examined <grin>) component of your work. Not that the story bit hasn't been interesting so far (or at least as far as I've read).

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[info]hoshuteki
2008-02-29 01:53 pm UTC (link)
Well, I always need cakes made, if that helps! I can pay you if it's a job you need, but er I don't really need *that* many cakes, so it likely won't be enough to live off...

Edited at 2008-02-29 01:54 pm UTC

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[info]several_bees
2008-02-29 02:27 pm UTC (link)
You could pay for a cake with a cake lecture, if you're you free on any upcoming Wednesday evenings (except the 19th of March).

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[info]hoshuteki
2008-02-29 02:30 pm UTC (link)
I'm free the next few Wednesdays (except 26th), though I don't know how a cake lecture might sustain you. I'd have to think about an appropriate topic...

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[info]bateleur
2008-02-29 02:21 pm UTC (link)
Congratulations on the finishing thing.

Be warned, the sense of having nothing to do lasts about a week. After that you'll suddenly remember the squillion-and-one things you deferred "until after my thesis is done".

Do any of you need some games designed

Yes, but since I'm hoping to get paid for the results I'd probably better do it myself!

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[info]several_bees
2008-02-29 02:30 pm UTC (link)
Mm, you're quite right of course; I do already have a thousand things I want to do, I just don't know how to organise them and get this non-studying life to work sensibly. I've been panickedly thinking of all sorts of stuff that I Should Be Doing, even though I don't really need to do it, just because it feels so wrong to not be feeling faintly guilty at all times.

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[info]bateleur
2008-02-29 02:37 pm UTC (link)
I suggest that you tackle the things on your list in decreasing order of how much fun they are. That'll have you feeling guilty again in no time.

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[info]ravenblack
2008-02-29 02:29 pm UTC (link)
Ah, the peacock complaint makes more sense to me in context than when you mentioned it. As "his" it can only refer to the peacock whereas as "its" it could be the peacock and the cost of production, with only a slight stretch. Which makes it more comfortable to read since (for me anyway) a pronoun there more naturally belongs to the cost of production than to the peacock.

Also, I want a static cake.

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[info]joranj
2008-02-29 02:36 pm UTC (link)
Congratulations!

Also, that line doesn't seem at all contentious to me. I have read many seminal works of British fiction and am still an arch-betrayer, so fair enough, I say.

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[info]xorphus
2008-02-29 02:48 pm UTC (link)
Yeah, man, Josh has read way more good books than me and I'm a considerably better person (you can tell because I lost most of our games). We're practically a twin study.

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[info]joranj
2008-02-29 02:51 pm UTC (link)
And if you want to cite us, or even get Kevan or Catriona to write us up and then cite them, then you can really boost that fifth statistic.

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[info]several_bees
2008-02-29 03:02 pm UTC (link)
So reading great novels that have affected the course of English literature doesn't make you a better person, but repeatedly watching movies about teenagers having adventures does?

Fair enough. Where does that leave me, as someone who's done plenty of both?

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[info]joranj
2008-02-29 03:04 pm UTC (link)
Morally ambiguous? You make cake, but the thread is ever-present that - one day! - you may make one with mushrooms in it.

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[info]several_bees
2008-02-29 03:06 pm UTC (link)
(Though Brendan's the 1 in the statistic already, and unless by "Greece" you mean "the fire escape" I've never lived with you, so not sure the twin study plan is going to work.)

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[info]xorphus
2008-02-29 03:26 pm UTC (link)
(The preening I'm doing here serves to flaunt my health with its extravagance.)

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[info]doseybat
2008-02-29 04:07 pm UTC (link)
The early post-thesis period is slightly surreal. I handed mine in 4 January, and whenever people ask about the phd I am a bit taken aback when to hear myself answer "I have handed it in". Future planning beyond not failing at current postdoc seems a bit too much for the moment..

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[info]human_loser
2008-02-29 04:20 pm UTC (link)
Congratulations!

How is that assertion contentious? Is it just an academic snobbery thing?

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[info]several_bees
2008-02-29 04:27 pm UTC (link)
Oh, if I'd thought about it I'd have realised it would be contentious; it is not at all uncommon or indefensible to believe that one of the functions or at least effects of literature is a making better, that art is intrinsically good because it helps people to be good, and so on. The idea of art as an influence for good, rather than just fun, is a very beguiling one, after all! And I'm sure, on reflection, that there have been occasions where specific people were made nicer or more helpful by specific important works of literature which they read.

Slightly empirically: humanities departments are not significantly nicer than, say, law or science departments, despite containing a lot more people who have read lots of Great Works. So it doesn't seem very likely that reading those great works is particularly improving (at least as compared to other fields of intellectual endeavour). Contextually, I was comparing lastingly influential novels to "random stories people write on the internet or the like", and I don't think people who read the first are generally improved by it relative to people who read the latter, but I can see why people would hold otherwise I suppose.

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[info]robert_jones
2008-02-29 06:21 pm UTC (link)
What, after all, is the reason that some literature is influential and some ephemeral? (Those categories are not quite disjoint, mind you.) One would like to think that people by and large take the gold and leave the dross.

NB also, being a better person is not the same as being a nicer person, so I don't think your empirical example tells us much.

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[info]several_bees
2008-02-29 07:19 pm UTC (link)
One would like to think that, but occasionally it strains one's belief or at least personal taste to do so.

I agree that being a better person is not the same as being a nicer person, but the flaw is in my statement of the empirical example rather than the example itself: English scholars do not seem better than scientists either. It might be that reading influential literature makes you a better person, but that science does so as well; I'd certainly like to believe that thinking about stuff is improving, and certainly it often makes people better at something, for exmaple being interesting to me. But this brings me back to the argument I was making (and I know you haven't read the thesis), namely that writing not-very-good fanfic or borderline-unbearable science fiction also involves thinking about stuff and might well be quite as improving, if indeed intellectual exercise is improving. It was within this context that it didn't occur to me that the statement might be controversial.

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[info]robert_jones
2008-02-29 07:29 pm UTC (link)
But personal excellence is an extremely difficult thing to assess, or even define. Some people might argue that being well-read is itself an excellence and so the statement that "reading influential literature improves a person" would be a tautology.

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[info]several_bees
2008-02-29 08:29 pm UTC (link)
Though surely that attitude comes combined with the recognition that ideas of personal excellence are indeed difficult to assess or define (unless you're Harold Bloom), in which case my statement merely parses as "my definition of being a good person does not include a stat for well-read-ness".

But I do think my supervisors were right to encourage me to rethink the phrasing; I was just very startled by it at first, and it hadn't occured to me in advance that it might be asked, whereas other statements that I wouldn't have been surprised to be questioned on went unremarked.

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[info]obandsoller
2008-03-02 08:27 pm UTC (link)
Cool. Well done!

Do you really have empirical evidence that reading Great Works doesn't make you a better person? I mean, yes, perhaps I might agree people in different departments don't seem to be particularly nicer or more horrible than each other, or better/worse. But couldn't it be that the people attracted to humanities departments need all that self-improvement just so they can be as nice as people who study, say, Law? ;-)

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[info]whatifoundthere
2008-02-29 04:50 pm UTC (link)
This whole post is ace, but I'm particularly smitten with your second sentence fragment. I think I would like to start using it to refer to all kinds of habits. Nail-biting. Gambling. Wimples.

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