Well, not really. I still have a couple of sessions and a final examination for my regression class, but I’m not very worried about that (perhaps foolishly so).The ‘true’ end of the semester came for me today as I handed in a paper for my stratification class, a breathless race to meet a hard-stop 12noon deadline. I enjoyed writing on my chosen topic - I had thought, initially, to discuss educational credentialism in elite U.S. schools but gravitated toward discussing freeters and NEETs and Japanese youth labor markets. Butterfly mind, anyone? Unfortunately, the quality of the paper was atrocious - and given that it was for a professor who’s an established figure in stratification research, embarrassing in the extreme. I guess I can now look forward to a bit of downward career mobility myself. Still, in the tradition of ‘the best paper is a done paper…’ I’ll just count my blessings that it’s finished so I can move on to other things.
Also, yesterday I had to present a preliminary dissertation ‘brainstorming’ prospectus. It was a complete disaster. Already frazzled by last minute changes to my stratification paper, I ended up discussing in a fumbling manner a mish mash of world culture theory and Luhmannian systems theory. It wasn’t a bright moment in my career. Memory of the puzzled looks of my fellow doc sem participants should motivate me to do better next time and prepare more diligently.
To celebrate semester’s end, I decided to skip out of work early and catch the ‘Golden Compass,’ the film adaptation of the first volume of Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy. While I enjoyed reading the Golden Compass, by the end of the trilogy I thought everything had gotten quite out of hand and the plotting cumbersome and actually unintentionally hilarious. The only thing I’ll say about the film is that it looks gorgeous…but as I sat there watching I thought to myself, if I hadn’t read the books would any of this make one iota of sense? It’s really quite surprising to me that the film comes in under two hours. While I thought some plot trimming would have been inevitable given the intricacies of the book, the film is just one mad dash from one scene to another. I hope the ‘director’s cut’ gives the story the breathing room it deserves. One-sentence review: beautiful to look at, but not particularly enthralling.
Off to Seattle for a one-week vacation between December 24 and December 31! I am so looking forward to a cup of Zeitgeist coffee and Hot Pot donuts. Still, it will be a short vac. as I’m working all winter break on a conference that’s taking place at TC in March, and the holiday is the best time to take care of all of the ticky-tack work.
