Multiplicities in the City

I know there’s value in slowness, whether in thinking, eating, or spicy Czech-French novels. There’s more, of course, but I’m impatient. I know good work takes time, and I don’t want to rush it. And I love being part of this academic world and having the privilege and luxury of spending my days like this, refining ideas and aspiring in my way to improve conditions in the corner of the world I work with. But I do have some complaints…

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So this is the final installment of my probably unnecessarily detailed qualitative and quantitative dissertation analysis. Part 1 is here and you can read Part 2 here, if you want to get up to speed. In those previous installments, my work appeared sporadic and chaotic, with my mood all over the map. Lots of disappointments, self-doubt, and malaise. At the same time, we saw that continuing through low points – just putting in the time every day – led to…

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I’ve already written a little about the efforts I took to keep track of my moods, qualitatively and quantitatively, during the process of writing my dissertation. But it was a long road, and so here is Part 2, the endless middle slog. To remind: every day I wrote down what I worked on, what chapter it was, and my daily word total. On Sunday evenings, I calculated my word total for the week as well. I also took qualitative notes…

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So I passed my private defense today. I feel both triumphant and exhausted, but now I’m inhabiting a strange null space – kind of like floating between gravitational masses, I’d assume – because the first defense is done, but the public defense still looms. So I’m not Dr Wolfe yet, but everyone keeps telling me that the hardest is already past. Instead of discussing the private defense, though, which was rigorous and exhilarating, I want to talk about the process…

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