Saturday, May 30, 2009

Mike, Ph.D.

On Thursday, I successfully defended my dissertation and have the approval of my committee (with revisions) to submit it to the graduate school "in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy." My committee was tremendous, offered some really great suggestions to smooth some of the rougher edges of my work, and was really supportive. I honestly believe that my greatest professional accomplishment in the past six years was having the foresight to pick an amazing group of people to support me in this quest.


The celebration was tempered slightly by this nagging head cold that I got on my trip out to defend and the fact that it really hasn't set in that this phase in my life is really coming to a close. I knew that it was ending, but even after completing my defense, it hadn't truly set in. I don't think that I really had time to step back and really realize the amount that I had learned until one of my committee members, who read the first draft of my first research paper in grad school, pointed out how much I had learned and developed in grad school that it really started to set in. I think that it is easy for me (and I imagine others in grad school) to get lost in how much we feel like we don't know and fail to realize how much knowledge and skill we do acquire. Although it seems arrogant to publicly acknowledge that, I think that it is something that we often do too little of in grad school.


I will be working the next couple of weeks to finish out my revisions and working on a project this summer that I am really excited about. Then, it will be off to Philadelphia for the next phase in this adventure!

Wednesday, May 27, 2009

And Then There Were Two

Shorter Weiner op-ed in NYT today: Not even God has enough money to run against Bloomberg. Also I want a baby. Can't blame the guy.

Monday, May 18, 2009

Done (for Now)

I (finally) submitted my dissertation at the very end of last week. It's amazing how many things are running through my head now, like "I should have run this analysis" or "This would have been such a better way to put that idea" or "Why didn't I leave more time to do x, y and z." But, there is nothing that I can do about it now before my defense. I expect a fair amount of revisions, but also feel good about the eventual prospects of each of the pieces to see the light of day in new form -- hopefully as pages in a journal -- at some point in the future. I'll find out on a week from Thursday when I defend.


For those of you who may be interested, here is the obligatory (but still cool) Wordle:


Wordle: dissertation3

Thursday, May 14, 2009

Blog Posts: Safe In Moderation

How are we ever going to be a legitimate source of information, snark and general pragmatic idealism if we don't post for two weeks? Absence has all been work-related, we swear. Please to enjoy this spoof of the corn refiners association commercials. Mike3550 and I have spontaneously done our own ("Hey hon, can you pass the salad?" "You know what they say about salad, don't you?") but these people do it better. Caution, there is a bleeped out racial slur that I think goes a little too far. Otherwise, hilarious.