Category: Daily updates

Generally musings of the day, usually accompanied by a photograph

Housed

For the first time since I moved out of Massey College in May, I have permanent accommodation.

My aunt Roksoliana helped me move out of the room they have been kindly letting me use, and set me up with a large infusion of food as a moving out / birthday gift.

For the next eight days, my absolute priority has to be grading: both papers from my undergrad Canadian politics course and from my graduate level environmental decision-making course.

After that, it will be a hard push on the thesis proposal.

At some point, I will have to find time to start unpacking boxes and to make it possible to move around my room without jumping over stacks of them.

Academic work and insect strategy

Life is hectic with advising my undergraduate students on the first written assignment while grading assignments from the graduate course where I am a TA.

I have been using a few breaks to play the excellent and engrossing boardless board game Hive, both online and with the portable pocket set. I haven’t progressed to the advanced mosquito and ladybug pieces, but I have been getting better at effectively pinning the enemy queen and at thinking in terms of the game’s tempos.

Once this round of grading has been wrapped up (after the undergrad papers come in and are dealt with), I undertake a determined PhD proposal and ethics review push. The winter break should provide an opportunity to make progress in the absence of teaching obligations.

This year’s teaching

This is going to be my busiest year yet on the teaching and (especially) the grading side. I am working as a teaching assistant for the same second year Canadian politics course which I taught last year. This time the professor has decided to structure the tutorials as debates on topics like whether to change Canada’s electoral system or lower the voting age. Compared with the standard approach of discussing the readings, this seems likely to produce more student engagement.

I also got a job as a TA for the first year graduate environmental decision-making course which is part of all the collaborative programs U of T offers in environmental studies. I am told it’s quite unusual to be a TA in a graduate level course. I will mostly be grading, but I will also be delivering a lecture next Friday on EU fishery access agreements in West Africa.

This should all be comparatively feasible since I am not taking any courses in the fall term, though my main focus has to be on putting together my dissertation proposal and getting it through the necessary departmental and ethical reviews.

Autumn 2015

On the day of the equinox, it seems worth considering what the next few months will involve. I still need to find an apartment: a task which will feed into the academic work which is urgently due, but hard to achieve without a base of operations, thesis books and files outside of boxes, and access to my main computer systems. Finding a PhD supervisor will also be important.

By mid-December, the ad hoc committee at the University of Toronto are meant to make a recommendation about fossil fuel divestment. Also, my first term on the Toronto350.org board will end with the scheduled elections at the beginning of that month.

Otherwise, I will have tutorials to teach, photographic projects to undertake, and whatever surprises the weeks ahead bring.

Housing situation getting worrisome

I need to be out of Innis College by the 29th, and so far haven’t found anything close to an affordable and acceptable replacement. All the on-campus residences that take grad students seem to be full, and all efforts through Craigslist, Kijiji, and Padmapper have been failures so far.

Alongside the development of my formal PhD proposal, finding housing needs to be my top priority for the rest of August.

Structurelessness

Princeton established the Institute for Advanced Study in 1930 as a place where some of the world’s greatest minds could pursue their research without distractions like teaching and administrative tasks. Richard Feynman famously criticized the idea, saying:

When I was at Princeton in the 1940s I could see what happened to those great minds at the Institute for Advanced Study, who had been specially selected for their tremendous brains and were now given this opportunity to sit in this lovely house by the woods there, with no classes to teach, with no obligations whatsoever. These poor bastards could now sit and think clearly all by themselves, OK? So they don’t get any ideas for a while: They have every opportunity to do something, and they’re not getting any ideas. I believe that in a situation like this a kind of guilt or depression worms inside of you, and you begin to worry about not getting any ideas. And nothing happens. Still no ideas come. Nothing happens because there’s not enough real activity and challenge: You’re not in contact with the experimental guys. You don’t have to think how to answer questions from the students. Nothing!

Something a bit similar happens to me during the summers, especially when I don’t have a regular job. Whole days are open in the calendar – and there is always endless work to do on my PhD and on climate change – but it can be extremely hard to become and remain motivated. The framework of classes, teaching, and Massey College events during the year helps make the blocks of open time seem valuable, and helps force you to get specific things done in them.

PhD work needs to be pretty much wholly self-motivated, so I am definitely going to need to develop habits and a mindset to support that over the next three years.

Off to Ottawa

From Sunday to next Saturday, I will be in Ottawa for the Canadian Political Science Association conference, and to visit my excellent friends Andrea and Mehrzad.

Before I go, I need to submit the final term paper for my Markets, Justice, and the Human Good course. Perhaps predictably, I am writing about economic inequality and environmental sustainability as policy objectives that are not always in alignment. I am hoping that once I get comments back and discuss it with Dr. Carens, it may be something I can rework and submit for publication.

Despite having two commercial photography gigs in the last two weeks, this summer without a normally scheduled job is taking a toll. I had to borrow from my PhD fund to pay the summer rent (though I hope to pay myself back with photo work) and am currently sitting with $26.17 in my chequing account. Hopefully, there will be a lot of free food at the conference (though they were notably stingy last year at Brock University).

The clear calendar illusion

By now, I should intuitively understand that the open-looking weeks three or four weeks away in my calendar won’t be an oasis of productivity for major projects. Inevitably, Toronto350.org-related obligations, alongside photography and PhD work, will end up eating much of the open space before it is actually reached.

Thankfully, a totally open schedule isn’t necessary to progress on major projects. It can even be an impediment, as it can encourage the worst sort of diversion activity: the not-at-all-urgent project which is presently more appealing than what really needs to get done.

My priority projects for the moment:

  1. Write the final term paper for my markets and justice course
  2. Write a substantially longer and more sophisticated PhD research proposal
  3. Get my wedding photography business fully up and running

In addition to the normal Tuesday planning meeting, I am chairing a Toronto350.org board meeting tonight and must proofread the bylaws. There is also a divestment meeting tomorrow. Additionally, I have been hired to photograph a Canadian foreign policy conference between tonight and Friday, which unfortunately precludes participation in tomorrow’s Graduate Student Colloquium on Canadian Politics and Public Policy. Indeed, I need to get photos of the panellist at tonight’s 6:45pm event, before dashing off to chair the board meeting at 7:00pm.

Paying summer bills

I have applied for four TA positions at U of T: three in the School of the Environment and one with a methods course.

I am also looking to shoot weddings commercially over the summer. I am working on setting up a website. Since it will mostly be people looking for a last-minute photographer who won’t already have plans for the summer, I will mostly advertise on Craiglist and Kijiji.

I got a second (used) dSLR body, so now I have the basic gear required to book weddings commercially. I also got a robust traveling bag to carry the two 5Ds.