Category: Daily updates

Generally musings of the day, usually accompanied by a photograph

Workload, timelines, advisors, funding, pressure

A very good blog post on what to expect from a PhD program (and especially what the university itself won’t tell you): So You Want To Go To Grad School (in the Academic Humanities)?

Two paragraphs which are especially informative for people who don’t have recent personal experience in a PhD program:

The most important person in the process is your advisor, who is generally a senior member of the faculty in your department who shares your specialization. I struggle to find words to communicate how important this person will be during your graduate experience.. Graduate study at this level is effectively an apprenticeship system; the advisor is the master and the graduate student is the apprentice and so in theory at least the advisor is going to help guide the student through each stage of this process. To give a sense of the importance of this relationship, it is fairly common to talk about other academics’ advisors as forming a sort of ‘family tree’ (sometimes over multiple ‘generations’). Indeed, the German term for an advisor is a doktorvater, your ‘doctor-father’ (or doktormutter, of course) and this is in common use among English-language academics as well and the notion it suggests, that your advisor is a sort of third parent, isn’t so far from the truth.

If you are considering graduate school with an eye towards continuing in academia who you choose as your advisor will be very important: academia is a snooty, prestige conscious place and your advisor’s name and prestige will travel with you. But there’s more than that: your advisor, because they need to check off on every step of your journey and you will need their effusive letter of recommendation to pursue any kind of academic job has tremendous power over you as a graduate student. You, by contrast, have functionally no power in that relationship; you are reliant on the good graces of your advisor.

Related:

Into the fall

My friend Richard’s visit has provided opportunities, at this turning point of seasons, to bring friends together and enjoy multi-person conversations in contexts like distanced outdoor walks. It has been a great reminder of the world beyond the specialized niche of the PhD program, not to mention the sort of pre-pandemic social interactions which we all must value more highly now that we’ve felt and adapted to their absence.

My main task remains the same: finish the PhD and find something worthwhile to do after.

I’m grateful that I have such friends to enrich my life while I’m working.

Crazy heat out west

In the Pacific northwest of the US and Canada’s western provinces and territories a severe heat wave is breaking all-time temperature records.

The region generally benefits from moderate year-round temperatures, both because the nearby and massive Pacific ocean takes in heat in the summer and releases it in the winter and because prevailing winds from the west come from the ocean rather than over land. As a result, homes, infrastructure, wardrobes, and lifestyles are not suited to extreme temperatures.

Related:

Moving from Markham

At the end of July I am moving out of the room on Markham Street which I have been renting since December 2015.

Like the most recent flatmate who moved out of this three bedroom place, I am being pushed out by the landlady’s refusal to meet her basic legal obligations. I feel a bit conflicted about effectively rewarding misconduct by giving in to the renoviction that she has been pushing for, but this has also become a place of enormous stress and little joy since 2019.

The neighbourhood where I am moving in August is near Glencairn Station, so it will certainly be a change of scenery. I’m a bit sad that I will be farther from campus and the amenities of downtown, but that place seems set to be temporary precarious housing too, somewhere to live as I get through the final PhD stages of committee review and defence and while moving on to whatever will occupy my time after the doctorate.

solo

Having just helped my second flatmate move out, I am living alone for the first time in many years.

Before the sequence of flatmates here in the Annex, I lived at Massey College or with family in Toronto, or for a while in an apartment above a streetcar stop at College and Dovercourt with what would be the first of many flatmates who were also graduate students at U of T.

I had two places on my own in Ottawa while working as a civil servant: one on Booth Street within sight of the Environment Canada headquarters tower which I learned of based on a “to rent” sign in the window and where I signed a lease within minutes of seeing the place, having been pipped on a couple of other OK places by being the second or third to see it in the last few days or weeks. The other was the eco- co-op Beaver Barracks, which appealed to me largely based on their geoexchange heating and cooling system, which seemed a particularly sensible choice to me based on Ottawa’s severe climate in summer and winter.

Barring some time in Vancouver, I pretty much went straight from Oxford to Ottawa at the end of my M.Phil in 2007. In Oxford, my second year had been spent living with two fellow M.Phil in IR students who were encouraging and lively companions and who remain friends today, though infrequently-seen ones. Before that, I lived among probably a couple of hundred at Wadham College, where my graduate student room had a glass wall which faced inward into a two-story courtyard with everybody else’s small rooms facing in, the glass notably acoustically permissive.

Before that, it was alternating between my parents’ home in North Vancouver and two UBC residences: mostly Totem Park in my first and second year, and Fairview later. Fairview Crescent was a great concept for a residence, with multi-person units arranged along a pedestrian-only central street with a café. Late in my time as an undergraduate, I remember we would hold debate society executive meetings there, having grown up a bit out of beer and nachos at one of the places in the student union building.

It need not be a bad thing to be alone. I am grateful for the many forms of electronic communication I undertake with friends and family around the world, and it makes an enormous difference compared to being cut off from communication as well as direct personal contact.

I am giving every part of the place a deep and thorough cleaning. If nobody else is around and the place is dirty, there’s nobody else left to blame!

Virtual memorial tomorrow

Elizabeth “Liz” Hope, who had been the Head Porter at Massey College since before I first visited the place, recently and unexpectedly died. As the chief authority in the lodge controlling entry into the college, her company was a day-to-day experience for all resident Junior Fellows and visitors. For me, she did a lot to establish and help me understand the character and workings of the college, and I am grateful for her evident care toward Junior Fellows and contribution to the unique college atmosphere.

Among her prominent roles was distributing information relevant to college members by email, which inspired a song by Junior Fellows.

In a closed shell

Since I am going to be home and avoiding people indefinitely regadless, I am cutting out distractions to focus as completely as possible on getting thesis work done.

In some ways, I am happier not going outside

Perhaps surprisingly, I haven’t really been feeling too confined my by self-isolation so far. I think a big part of that has been losing the two overwhelming sources of stress on my walks: unstable men who seem to be in the midst of a psychological crisis and/or under the influence of a powerful stimulant, who I encounter on the sidewalks during many walks, and people with off-leash dogs that come running at me, giving me two big scares in succession from the dog itself and then from the nearly-always entitled and irate owner who wants to pick a fight about how friendly their dog is and how legitimate it is for them to have it off-leash on a sidewalk, trail, or park.

Even before the potential COVID exposure I had been refocusing my walks on the U of T campus, where I don’t think I have ever encountered one of those scary men or an off-leash dog of such a size as to pose a threat. On streets like Bloor and College, as well as the trails I have been exploring, almost every walk involves me changing course to take a wide circle around someone who seems unstable and dangerous or to avoid having to deal with double aggressions from dogs and their owners.

Recent incidents of dog owners getting aggressive with me when I have explained that strange dogs often come running at me when unleashed have even made me question whether I want to stay in Toronto. They seem to embody how affluence and entitlement have superseded empathy and courtesy in much of the population. Rather than maintaining a determination to live together in a way that respects the safety of all, many of my co-residents seem to be mega-libertarians whose ideology is that they can do whatever they want and everyone else can go hang.

On day six of post-exposure isolation, the avoided stress from these encounters seems to be more than counterbalancing the cessation of all exercise and limited access to food.