Holiday recovery

In keeping with the rule of holiday ends, it is naturally gray and rainy here. I'm still feeling a little under-the-weather, but it seemed like something my students would've done to have called in today. There are only a few days of lecture left anyway, so surely I can struggle through.

It's funny how little the job rejection is bothering me, though there are a lot of things factored into it, I suppose. The bigger distress right now is the loss of my little Black Box of the Dissertation, containing note cards that I need to pull together a book chapter. Yes, I used the note card system they probably taught you in fifth or sixth grade to do my dissertation: one fact per note card, the page and citation information at the top. That and the judicious use of End Note made the dissertation work fairly smoothly. And it has been useful when pulling things from the dissertation as a way of making sure I'm not writing things exactly the same way even when the topics are similar. There is, of course, one fatal flaw to this system: you must know where the note cards are to use them.

So sages and prognosticators of the interweb, lend me your magic and help me find the Black Box of the Dissertation, I beseech thee.

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4 Responses to “Holiday recovery”
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Sisyphus said...

Hmm ... under the bed? Behind the tv? In the very top shelf of the hall closet right behind the hockey wear? In the second row of books on a double-stacked bookshelf? At the bottom of one of those "yeah yeah I'll unpack this later" boxes you never got around to? In the kitchen cabinet behind a pasta maker you didn't know you had?

Heh, this is kinda fun. I may have to get out an Edward Gorey book to make up some better suggestions.

November 26, 2007 at 1:56 PM
Dr. Curmudgeon said...

Bust out the Edward Gorey!

November 26, 2007 at 4:22 PM
gwoertendyke said...

1. i missed the part about the job rejection, and i'm sorry. though glad you're not phased. 2. i cannot BELIEVE you used the notecard method. how? i've always felt that i lacked *the thing* that makes one a scholar because i never could get myself to do it. i only recently felt a bit better about my method. until now. 3. i hope you find the notecards. i know the attachment, even if the method escapes me.

November 26, 2007 at 10:54 PM
Dr. Curmudgeon said...

I think the note card method probably only works for particular types of research. In my case, a lot of what I do is a sort of meta-analysis focused on documents, so it's easier to make note cards work.

But - I think more importantly - it works well with how I think and gather information in general. Some of the best advice I was given in graduate school was to make sure that I figured out (if I didn't already know) how I worked best and to make sure that I set things up in a way that allowed that to happen.

November 26, 2007 at 11:45 PM