I had a dream that one of my professors told me he emailed a link to my rockwrite project to Thomas Kuhn (1922-1996). Why??

Got a new book today: Applied Linguistics by Guy Cook from the Oxford Introuctions to Language Study series. I already have Rod Ellis' Second Language Acquisition and Claire Kramsch's Language and Culture. It's a very readable series (the book are small and only about 120 pages long), and each volume has snippets of readings from important texts in the field and good suggestions for further reading.

DONE.

p.s. I graduated with a 4.0. Sweet.

99.9 with a line over it

I am 99% done with my masters degree.

The next 1% falls into place on Wed.

I've decided not to make my thesis public because I'd rather work to turn it into an article. But get in touch if you'd like to read it.

Down to the wire.

My "thesis," aka unbound project, has been approved. As far as I know, this means I am cleared to graduate on Saturday.

My tables are horrible, and one of them is missing. That's for Thursday and Friday. My self-imposed deadline for the final final FINAL submission of the project is Friday, May 11, at 1 p.m.

I need to write one or two paragraphs and maybe an extra sentence or two here and there.

If I had this to do over again, I would have started sooner and not taken four freaking other classes at the same time. Considering what I was up against, I think I did a great job. If I'd had just this project and nothing else, I'd be a little disappointed in myself. But you graduate with the Masters project you have, not the Masters project you want. Or something.

Technically, our English department does not require that I conform to HSU's graduate handbook for formatting*, so I shouldn't be sweating it too much, but I want this thing to be as good as it can be. In case you're wondering, an "unbound project" means that I have 2 readers instead of a committee, and in the end it sits on a shelf in the English dept. office collecting dust for a couple of years, after which it goes in a drawer. A "thesis," on the other hand, requires a somewhat rigorous committee process and an oral defense, and goes into the library and therefore is accessible to anyone in the world who has interlibrary loan privileges.

Anyway, I'll be submitting it to Humboldt Digital Scholar in the next week or two, which means anyone will be able to read it. I think you'll even be able to find it on Google Scholar in time, which is nice: in terms of my work being "out there," I'm not limited by the fact that I haven't written a thesis.

Regardless, I don't want to look like a moron.

(*Then again, I think require that I conform to MLA style, and my project is in APA, as per the applied linguistics convention. I honestly believe that no one is policing these requirements whatsoever.)

PROGRESS?

Penultimate draft of thesis turned in to readers, tipping the scales at 88 pgs including references and appendices. Still not 100% there, but not so bad, considering.

Development of Writing Abilities project (Rockwrite) finished.

Chinese finished.

Paper I'm working on today, "Problems of Definition and Evaluation in Popular Music" = worrisome. 15 pgs of notes but nothing emerging. Talked to prof and feel like I'm off track. If there is one paper I'm going to be totally BSing, it's this one. Maybe I should be concerned about my grade. I'm not sure. The topic of the class is totally out of my sphere of understanding. More on this later.

Walter Ong -- presentation went very well. Paper is underdeveloped at 11 pages, but I'm not too worried about it.

6. More. Days.

Then I am turning off my academic brain for a few months and am just going to write record reviews and huge, sprawling thinkpieces that go all over the place. And ride my bike a lot.

Other Floors, Other Voices: a textography of a ... - Google Book Search

Other Floors, Other Voices: a textography of a small university building.

This looks cool. Swales + Bazerman = English powerhouse! Anyway, this is like writing & rhetoric & anthropology & everything cool, combined.