Orientation week is a nice feature of being in school in September. I don’t really remember what happened at UBC / in the Foundations program / at Totem Park residence in 2001, but during my grad orientation at Oxford in 2005 I met my friend Margaret and in my earliest hours at Wadham College I […]
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Since U of T has replaced the inadequate funding it issues in years 1–6 of the PhD with none at all it is causing new problems and reinforcing my determination to finish and defend my dissertation by September 2019. First OSAP (the Ontario student loan program) told me I would get no fall payment because […]
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It’s weird how silence here can be indicative of unproductive inactivity or times when I am so busy I don’t have the time to put anything together for a sibilant intake of breath. I’m focusing on the thesis research as much as possible in the period before classes resume.
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This is my first intense batch of academic interviews, and I feel like they have been going remarkably smoothly. It has been pretty straightforward to start getting in touch with people, scheduling times, doing preparatory research, and then having conversations people about their experiences with divestment at Canadian universities. I don’t think it constitutes the […]
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The three days of dissertation boot camp, organized by the Graduate Centre for Academic Communication, have been highly productive for me. While the advice was good, I could personally have done without the short instructional segments on things like goal setting and editing. What was extremely useful was the structure: sitting in a room with […]
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I spent much of today’s boot camp doing research online about Canadian university divestment campaigns and trying to contact people who have been involved. Even though all the campaigns have happened since 2012, there’s a lot that has clearly already disappeared from the internet, though some of the websites established by campaigns remain in the […]
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I’m at my first day of a three day “dissertation boot camp”. I’m working on adding to four chapters: my issue and literature context chapters and the ones I have started on repertoires of contention and political opportunities. In the lead-up to starting my undergrad program I bought the only printer I have ever owned. […]
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I’ve been feeling with August loneliness I’ve noted before in the PhD program, but not as acutely as in some previous years. Certainly having the chance to visit Andrea and Mehrzad in Ottawa contributes to that, as does a general sense of progress with PhD research and even of an identifiable end to the doctorate. […]
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