Running… Through the Week

With all of our comings and goings to the University, we’ve been paying a lot of attention to our little neighborhood, particularly to the area around Mitchell Library. Our path takes us by there most days, and sometimes we return late enough in the evening to see it all lit up. Isn’t it beautiful? We still can’t figure out what the lady on top of the dome is doing, but one of D’s PhD supervisors has an office on the top floor and has promised to open the fire escape and take a look (we think it odd that he hadn’t done so already).

D. has met officially with his dissertation supervision… and has been handed his schedule, which we can only say is a bit brisk! Despite the fact that many PhD candidates enjoy three or four years on their dissertation, a recent failure of a candidate to complete a reasonable work in five years has galvanized the department into…well, not quite a panic, but close.

In the next 2 weeks, D. has to expand his research proposal from 500 words to 3,000 words, so that everyone’s clear what he’s studying. He also has to have a good 95% of his bibliography done (the bibliography is, basically, what his reading list for the next 3 years). In order to do the bibliography, though, he has to draw up a plan for how to determine what goes into the bibliography, which means he has to develop a matrix of

a. the different technologies he’s considering as being part of his topic,
b. the different organizational contexts he’s examining,
c. the various aspects of the issue (emotional, economic, legal, social, etc.).

He also has to include, in that matrix, a 4th dimension, examining the possibility of “islands of procedure” within organizations.

{EDITORIAL NOTE: Did you get any of that? No? Never mind. The train is rolling on.}

Once that matrix is done, D. will find anything else which appears to relates to each intersection of all of those areas, and will hopefully at that point be reasonably assured that his reading list will be complete.

From that point onward, he’ll be reading and writing. He’ll present what he’s doing orally before a review board sometime in December, and, according to the schedule, he’ll have read all of the literature he’ll be reading for his three year project — by the end of May.

Oh, and also by May, he’s supposed to have written up a literature review of all of his sources, and to have a plan for where he’s going to go from there, which includes a methodology for doing this research, an explanation of what case studies he needs to do, and arrangements to do them over the summer! So much for a leisurely three years, eh?

Obviously, one of our party has had to drop German, and the other won’t be taking the course except online; sadly, there’s just not enough time in the week. D’s supervisors don’t particularly want him to be dedicating the time to learning German (the original idea was so that he could read German philosophers in the original language). Instead, he’ll be sitting in on courses in the Law, Business, and Social Sciences department, because his dissertation really bleeds over into Law, Business, and Sociology. The dissertation supervisors are worried that any drifting toward philosophy will take away from his main topic. So – no German class for fun, and noses firmly pushed back to the grindstone. Phooey.

What’s that sound? Do you hear a thumping? Perhaps it’s the sledge-hammer wielding plumber in our living room, whacking a great gaping hole in the wall! Unlike plumbers in the U.S., whose duties seem mainly confined to sewer and drainage pipes, this plumber is concerned with all of the pipes in a house, and is here because of the boiler.

When we moved in, we saw what appeared to be water stains on the wall; the property managers reassured us that things would soon be set to rights. Unfortunately, they merely cleaned up the mold, and never did much else about it — which doesn’t suit the owner of the house, who currently lives in New Zealand. She has encouraged us to pursue hassling the property management company, and so finally someone from the gas company came out — and informed us that the leaking pipes have nothing to do with water, but with carbon monoxide. He red tagged the boiler, and shut off the gas at the source. We were informed that it isn’t the gas man’s job to open the wall and reveal the pipes, that a plumber needed to do that. So, our plumber not only has a huge wrench, he has a sledge hammer, which he cheerfully used.

Fortunately, it wasn’t too cold; only 44°F (7°C) overnight, so lighting a lot of candles (reminiscent of our very first studio apartment) and doing a bit of baking and boiling water assured us of a cozy evening in the loft. But now this morning one gas guy has morphed into three, asking T. questions which she has to rapidly translate — frantically — and tentatively reply, hoping they’re all on the same page. Scots English: even more fun with technical terms! Stay tuned for whether or not T. makes her novel deadline, and if the heat and hot water is ever turned on again…

Right. Can anyone make sense of THIS?

We spotted this little cycle locked outside of the Mitchell Library. We wondered at it, as it doesn’t even come up to T’s knee at its tallest. It has a hand-brake for the rear wheel, but it has no …pedals.

Eh?

There’s a website listed on the rear axle (because doesn’t every bike have a website?), but no explanation to be found there, either. Apparently this scoot thing is a non-training wheel beginner bike; the rider is meant to …walk it?

What, exactly, is the point of that?

Another voyage onto the sea of weird.

Must run — much studying and writing to be done, and not enough time in the week in which to do it.

– D & T

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