May 2006 Archives

For those who don't know, Susan and I will be moving to Vernon Hills this summer. Specifically, we'll be living in a place called Museum Gardens. Nice place. But also very expensive, at least compared to what we're used to in Normal. So to help alleviate our costs in moving, we decided to sell a bunch of our furniture and then live minimally until we scrounge up enough money to buy new stuff. In the meantime, we'll fill some of the empty space with Swedish stuff.

We said our first goodbyes to some furniture this evening with the selling of the couch and loveseat. They provided some good sittin' over the past couple years - it was a good run. The fellow who purchased them and three of his friends lugged them down three flights of stairs and onto a pickup truck...and out went about 150 pounds of moving and packing expenses. Maybe it was more weight...I don't know, I somehow managed to get out of ever having to carry them anywhere :)

Now we're working on getting rid of the coffee and end tables, entertainment center, dresser, and night stand. We were going to sell the bed, but we figured that it might be nice to have a place to sleep until we move. I guess we'll wait on that until the last minute. I don't think it's going to be too bad living without the rest of the stuff; we still have a couple chairs and a kitchen table. The one who's going to have the toughest time, however, is Murphy. He just loved the spots between the cushions on the couch. The poor guy actually has to sleep on his own bed now! I'm sure he'll learn to appreciate it.

So...would anyone like to purchase some excellent lightly-used home furnishings?

I wish that someone would have told me that Conan O'Brien was going to be in Chicago this week. I would totally try to stalk him if I were up there right now. And what I wouldn't give to catch a glimpse of him and Mr. T walking around the city. How surreal would it be to see that if you weren't expecting it?

On that note, I will now go to bed. And perhaps I will try to write something that requires a moderate amount of thought in the near future...

So Murphy and I began our nightly walk outside for him to relieve his bladder before bed, and something in the sky caught my eye (but not quite like a big pizza pie). It kind of looked like a blimp. A gray-ish shape with a strobing red light and a bright white light at its edge. The only thing was that the more I looked at it, the more irregular it seemed, and the less it seemed like it was moving. And what in the world would a blimp be doing in the Central Illinois sky at midnight?

So I kept my eye on it for about 10 minutes as I walked around. It didn't move at all. Being the nut-job that I am, I figured that I'd try to catch this little spectacle on camera. You know, so if it started zipping around, I'd have the shaky amateur video to sell to UPN or something. I went inside, got my camera out, and after a couple unsuccessful attempts to leave without Murphy making a fuss that could potentially wake Susan, I leashed him up again and took him downstairs. I looked to the sky, but now all I saw were boring old stars. And the moon, of course (which, incidentally, did hit my eye like a big pizza pie). Yeah, it's an anticlimax - sorry about that. But where did my UFO go?? I couldn't have been the only one who saw it tonight. It was in the south sky. Anyone...? Anyone...? I really don't want to think that I was hallucinating.

As Susan and I drove through the relatively-scenic State Farm campus today, I saw something that I've actually never seen before: a cricket match. I didn't get a chance watch the game go on (I was only driving by), but the quick glance made me somewhat happy to know that there is at least a little bit of international culture in Bloomington-Normal. Although I do believe that all of the people playing were Indian, so it wasn't as surprising of a sight as it would have been if the players were a random sampling of frat boys from ISU. Still, I thought it was pretty neat. Maybe I'll find a match to sit down and watch some day.

In many graduate school programs, there are several hoops through which jumping is often required. (Did you like how I didn't end that sentence with a preposition?) In my program, those hoops include taking an exam that crams your entire academic career into four questions, writing a really boring book that no one will ever read, and working a year of forced labor in a doctoral-level job that pays a salary rivaling fast-food service.

I had always expected the first of those to be the most difficult for me to handle, knowing how my mind works and how I study for things. The comprehensive exam requires one to be prepared for questions on anything that has been learned during training. For most people, that's about four years worth of material. One group a couple years ago created a study binder with about 700 pages. Overkill? Maybe. A demonstration of the breadth of topics that we need to be held accountable for? Scary enough, probably. Here are the routes one can take with the exam: Take the exam; you can either pass it outright, pass it conditionally, or fail one or more parts. If you pass it conditionally, you are given an opportunity to orally clarify your answers in front of the grading committee. If you fail any of the questions, you have to take the exam again, but only the parts that you failed (each question follows a pre-set theme or general domain). That second attempt follows the same pattern: pass, conditional pass, or fail. If you fail any of it the second time, you're out of luck (i.e., Congratulations on throwing four or five years of graduate school out the window).

My scenario? I took the exam twice, and was asked to defend some of my responses the second time around. This was the most difficult route that I could have possibly taken, but the good news is that I came out of it alive! Next step: dissertation. Most might imagine that a couple-hundred-page document would be a much more daunting task than an 8-hour exam, but for me, not so much - at least that's what my warped mind tells me. I only had so much control over the exam; I could study and write the best answers that I could, but I had no idea what I would actually have to write about until I opened the question booklet, and I had very little idea of how my answers would be viewed by the grading committee. With the dissertation, I create it all, and I have complete control. It is my baby and I can do it (mostly) on my terms. I like how that works. Of course, I am evaluated at the proposal and defense, but it's a completely different ballgame.

So that's where I am right now. I'm kind of psyched at being able to plan my immediate future with some level of confidence, and I'm looking forward to getting into the meat and potatoes of my dissertation. It's about autism, parents, and marriage. More on that later, though. It should be interesting...