This Thus

Goodbye for Now

Peter — Sat, 07 May 2011 16:32:19 +0000

So, as is quite obvious, I am not tracking my academic life on this blog anymore. Honestly, I just found that I had too much to do and this was not a project I felt that I could really keep up with. I probably should have posted a “good-bye” post at the beginning of this past semester, but I guess I figured my silence would suffice.

I may return to this when I finish coursework and am working on comps and my dissertation because, while my time will still be filled with work, the rhythm of it will be more conducive to keeping up something like this.

If you are interested in following my personal life and the various things I find interesting (some of which may indeed be focused on academic stuff), feel free to check out Living the Liminal.

So, mayhap I’ll be seeing you here in 2012. Until then, be well and dream big.

Sometimes I Wonder

Peter — Mon, 06 Dec 2010 22:51:59 +0000

Sometimes I wonder if, with all that is happening in the world, I’m doing the right thing with my life. Should I be out there in the streets or trying to smash into the corridors of power and make a difference socially and politically? If I believe in theatre and the arts, should I be devoting my energies to bringing it to the people who have the least opportunity to access it instead of to those privileged enough to go to college?

What, really, am I doing, and why? There are days when I can answer that question and feel positive about myself. Today is not one of them. In part, it’s probably because I’m at the end of the semester and up against writing deadlines that make my life stressful and I never, ever feel positive about the papers I write at the end of the semester. Still, sometimes I do wonder.

End of Semester Blues

Peter — Fri, 03 Dec 2010 03:31:35 +0000

As you can tell, posts here have slowed down to a crawl and odds are I won’t be doing much over the next 15 days other than working on papers and grading and trying to work on papers and grading. I definitely plan on taking a good hard look at what I need to do better next semester to keep things a bit more balanced and productive in my life and how to manage being both a PhD student and a creative, healthy person at the same time. Or as close to healthy as I can get. Look for that sometime in the second half the December. Until then, I leave you with one of the more amusing spam comments that have attempted to be posted to the site.

I commitment never thoughts the dead for now I went to France and Germany, it was my finest respite ever. Western Europe countries are great repayment for tourists, as there are illusive attractions, beautiful landscapes and you can comprise believable in good time there. The prices could be slash, but pacific is quality prosperous there.

Seriously, Dada poetry or spam? Sometimes it’s hard to tell.

For all of you grad students or loved ones of grad students, good luck over the next couple of weeks.

Worst. Semester. Ever.

Peter — Sat, 27 Nov 2010 02:21:19 +0000

I’m staring down the barrel of an end of semester shotgun and find myself the least prepared for the work I have yet to do in all my varied and long career in academia. For some reason, I just have not been able to get a solid grasp on any of my paper topics for my classes and now is the time I need to be writing, not researching or reading but that’s about all I can do since my brain doesn’t seem able to fix upon a singular, solid thesis to pursue in any of my classes.

It’s a frustrating feeling. And frightening as all hell. We are talking about single digit days before I have to turn in an 8-10 page proposal for an article length article, and only a week after that, I need to have my Shakespeare paper in good shape, followed by my Formation of the America’s paper. It’s not so much that I haven’t started writing that’s the problem (although I really wanted to be in a position to begin writing this weekend), its that I am still flailing around and don’t feel like I have anything of interest or import to say in the areas I’m working in.

Have you ever come up against the end of the semester and felt utterly lost in terms of your seminar work? If so, please let me know because I’m hitting my head against a wall these days . . . and that’s not helping all that much.

Anonymity vs Responsibility

Peter — Thu, 18 Nov 2010 14:12:28 +0000

Sometimes I regret starting this blog in my own name and wonder if I might be more productive with it if I’d chosen to be anonymous and felt safer talking about certain aspects of my experience in graduate school. For example, I don’t feel like I can really address some of my feelings on the theatre produced by the department, or certain dynamics between professors and students, or even students and other students. Not that I would want to turn this into a gossip fest, but it might be nice to tease out some of the complications of working toward a PhD with an eye to the actuality of working in a specific department.

On the other hand, as I care about theatre, theatre pedagogy, and how theatre departments operate within the larger field of academia, these are issues that I will always grapple with and probably now is as good a time as any to develop strategies that are respectful to my colleagues while allowing me to be as honest as possible. This is a challenge for me because bad theatre and poor teaching are among the things in this world that make me get angry and very, very riled up. Again, however, now seems as good a time as any to start learning how to handle this challenge.

Any tips?

There Are Days

Peter — Tue, 16 Nov 2010 02:03:45 +0000

There are days when being a graduate student seems like the stupidest decision in the world. Then there are days when you find yourself reading a book about the relationship between politics, plague, and Shakespeare and come across a lengthy section dedicated to the life cycle of rat fleas and the bubonic plague and you think to yourself, “this is why I am where I am: so I can spend afternoons reading this kind of thing.”

Of course there are bad days, but this day? This day was a good day.

"Politics, Plague, and Shakespeare’s Theater: The Stuart Years" (Leeds Barroll)

Taking Breaks

Peter — Mon, 15 Nov 2010 21:41:45 +0000

ProfHacker has a great rundown on various ideas for taking a break and recharging. From physical exercise to simply taking some time to breathe.

Check it out here

Blackboard or WordPress?

Peter — Sat, 13 Nov 2010 16:28:19 +0000

I did not put my Intro to Performance courses up on the web at all this semester but plan on doing so in the spring. I want to mostly have a place to put assignment guides, calendar, sections of play scripts, and occasional announcements. Given the nature of the course, I don’t need to have my students do a whole lot in a digital fashion.

I’m currently trying to decide if I’m going to roll my own solution using WordPress (a platform I’m rather comfortable with) and Google Calendar or go through the university’s Blackboard installation which will probably have lots of tools that I don’t end up using and which is closed, proprietary, and not the best in terms of user experience. However, I haven’t used it in a number of years, so I don’t have a good handle on how BB has changed over the past decade. Part of me wonders, however, if a lot of other classes use it, the irksome elements might be worth it so that the students can have a centralized experience with their coursework.

Anyone have thoughts on the matter? I’d like to work on putting everything together over the winter break, so I want to make a choice soon.

Oscar Brockett

Peter — Mon, 08 Nov 2010 18:49:38 +0000

Oscar Brockett, the world’s foremost theater historian and a former University of Texas professor, died early Sunday morning after suffering a massive stroke late Saturday.

Brockett, 87, leaves behind hundreds of former students and colleagues around the world, as well as a daughter, Francesca Brockett, and her husband, Dr. James Pedicano of Austin. (Link)

There’s no doubt that the field lost a remarkably influential and well-known historian. Please click through to the Austin360 site for more information.

5 Year Plan, or Lack Thereof

Peter — Sun, 07 Nov 2010 21:48:35 +0000

You know, I’ve been involved with a number of universities and grad programs and I don’t remember any of the departments making a conscious and across the board effort to create a plan for itself. At least not one that included discussion and awareness on the part of the students (both graduate and undergraduate). Is this one reason why there seems to be a “well, it’s always been done that way, that’s why” kind of attitude in most academic departments? What would a department look like that had a direction? A plan? One that was openly discussed and enacted and even contested by everyone involved, faculty, staff, and students?