The summer is starting to wind down now, and fall is fast approaching. (You students out there will know what I mean.) School starts in 16 days for me (29 Aug.), and then the race against the clock is on! So, as I look ahead, what do I see?
First, a look back. I finished my scheduled writing for the summer yesterday. A little later than expected (maybe by a couple days), but initial drafts of two thesis chapters are done. (You can check them out here if you are so inclined.) Back in May, I hadn’t planned to any writing in the summer at all. I intended to simply plow through my reading list and compile as many notes as possible, then hit the typewriter come September. Well, things changed mid-stream; I felt I had compiled enough thoughts to deal with two distinct issues in chapter length essays. So, I put the reading aside and did some writing. It ended up being good as a way to keep my writing sharp. Instead of getting as much reading done as I had originally anticipated, I got more writing done. I think, all-in-all, I’m in a good position for the fall.
So what’s in store for the fall? Well, obviously working on the thesis. My plan is to finish a second draft by Christmas so that I can use January and February to revise and edit (I defend in March). Right now, the goal is to write a chapter per month. Prabably this will mean reading up on issues specific to the chapter for the first 3 1/2 weeks of the month, then taking the last 2 or 3 days to write the chapter. By November, I should have the anticipated 5 chapters drafted and hopefully ready to revise.
But I’ll have to fit all this in with course work (Mathematical Logic) and teaching (3 sections of Intro to Philosophy). Oh, and some other big project: PhD applications (gulp!). Yep, we’re yet again in the process of thinking about where we’ll be living 10 months from now. Thinking about it can be fun as we anticipate yet another change, another community, another school, etc. It can also be a little unnerving because of the uncertainty. But if the next change will be as successful as the last one, then we should be in pretty good shape.
PhD applications are about a course and a half worth of work all on their own (which is why I’m only taking one real course this term). Of course, there’s filling in all that paper work. But the two biggest components I need to work on are the personal statement (a statement of my research interests and my interest in studying in a particular dept) and the writing sample! which is basically a very refined piece of philosophical writing. I will probably use one of my term papers from last term, but I need to do a whole lot of revising, narrowing the scope, tightening the arguments, etc. to get it into shape, and do it in a hurry! The first applications are due in two months!
I meet with my advisor to talk about all this stuff on Tuesday, to set a schedule for the fall, talk about project scope, check up on summer progress, etc. One of the things we’ll talk about is PhD programs to apply to. I have a tentative list that includes 19! schools. But that will probably be narrowed down next week. I won’t list the schools now, so the curious will have to wait to find out the potential places we might end up (I’ll post on it later). I’ll only say this: the current list includes 2 Canadian schools, 4 UK schools, 2 schools on the U.S. west coast, and a bunch of schools in the U.S. northeast. The rest you’ll have to wait for.
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