1. Finish Silas Weir Mitchell chapter.  (July 14th)
2. Finish Jack London chapter.  (August 31st)
3. Compose a 3-4 page summary of the project.  (July 1st)
4. Whittle 3-4 page summary into 1-2 page summary of the project.  (July  14th)
5. Update and revise my C.V.  (July 1st)
6. Write minnesota review article on academic blogging.  (September 1st)
7. Draft MLA conference paper on academic blogging.  (September 14th)
8. Contact MLA about adding Scott McLemee to the panel as a respondent.  (immediately)
9. Order new printer cartridge.
10. Write commissioned review of Frederick Crews' Follies of the Wise: Dissenting Essays.  (August 1st)
11. Solicit more regular reviewing gigs.
12. Acquire reading knowledge of Spanish.
13. Discover previously untranslated Spanish-language primary sources and begin writing most impressive chapter ever.
14. Locate poems which deal with turn-of-the-century evolutionary theory.  (July 1st)
15. Track down some plays that do too.  (July 7th)
16. Create Abstractalous.  (Motto: "Because sometimes you don't wanna re-read the whole damn book.")  Write mission statement and establish categories.
17. Re-read the whole damn book if it's important enough to warrant a post on Abstractalous.  (Summaries and responses both acceptable.)
18. Read, annotate and write an abstract of one academic essay not germane to the dissertation every weekday. 
19. Revise old posts and collate them into The Best of Acephalous: Year 1.
20. Put out a call for candidates for another collection–The Best Academic Humor: 2004-2006–and beg people to pass the word around.
21. Read an advanced logic textbook at the pace of one chapter every three days.
22. Learn to set reasonable goals.
23. Return all irrelevant library books. 
24. Do something stunning with four reclaimed rooms. 
25. Purchase tickets to and hotel accomodations at MLA 2006.
26. Watch Mets march to postseason glory.  Cherish impression that all is Wright in the world.
27. Do one unexpected, unmentioned favor for The Little Womedievalist every day.  ("Unmentioned" so as to not allow it entry into the household "guilt economy" and thus compel LW to reciprocate.)
28. Read essay about the history of the book and/or medieval manuscripts once every third day.  (Start with the recent PMLA.)
    
29. Work out 3 days per week; engage The Little Womedievalist in long, pointless walk 3 others; rest on ass/laurels the remainder.
30. Think about dinner after breakfast to avoid having breakfast for dinner.
31. Avoid being evicted.  (immediately)
32. Avoid being dropped from graduate health insurance.  (immediaterly)
33. Purchase unobtrusive, modern fish tank for lonely, cannibal cichild, Charlie Brown.
34. Reconnect with old friends.  Via email.
35. Encourage The Little Womedievalist to follow her dreams and "do something" with our moleskin bedroom. 
36. Plan and execute vacation to Northern California.  Visit the Redwoods while there and be in decent enough shape (#26) to appreciate their immensity fully.
37. Order new printer cartridge.
38. Wake up early, down must-wait-hour-before-eating thyroid replacement hormone, do dishes then prepare and eat breakfast. 
39. Move prescription collection somewhere the heat of the stove won't murder its potency.  Dispose of all expired and/or unnecessary medications.
40. Donate anything not worn for more than 2 years to the Salvation Army.
41. Chunk hundreds of old New Yorkers and NYRBs.
42. Adopt efficient, non-haphazardly-stacked-on-floor-and-subwoofer DVD-organization philosophy.
43. Evict useless crap from the filing cabinet so it can fulfil its destiny and reposit some damn files.
44. Begin watching The History of Violence.  Become apoplectic when it refuses to play past the 21:39.  Return DVD to Netflix and request another copy.  Repeat.
45. Purchase DVD player that plays DVDs.
46. Clone honeysuckle from a clipping.  Create a wall of honeysuckle on the porch so the Santa Anas smell of Louisiana and Mississippi.
47. Pester Verano Place Schneider-style until someone stops the tub from running, reglazes its chipped porcelin, unclogs the bathroom sink and replaces the light in the vanity-area.
48. Re-dye slip-cover on the sofa a rich, deep something-or-other.
49. Steam-clean carpet in The Little Womedievalist's office.
50. Decide on and stick to weekly "laundry day." 
51. Find everything in the house a home.
52. Dangle string daily before Munds & Virgils.
53. Copy contents of hard-drives in towers-masquerading-as-furniture onto "The Sideways Cylon" and dispose of all dustbinned computers/printers/scanners/&c.
54. Trash all wires which connect things dead since '98 to things donated in '02. 
55. Discard unsalvageable papasan cushion, purchase replacement, scotch-guard, then scotch-guard some more.
56. Scotch-guard whole damn house.
57. Wonder why no one corrected your pronunciation of "pompous son."
58. Check credit score with FreeCreditReport.com.
59. Devote afternoon to art history once a week and post something about it every two.
60. Devote a different afternoon to art history and ditto.
61. Read one short story by Borges and/or Nabokov daily.
62. Compose list of all the books on the "to sell" shelves in the hall.
63. Dispose of all crap bookcases.
64. Iron 10 shirts and 5 pairs of pants once a week until everything in the closet flatters the figure.  Or is wrinkle-free.
65. Get a damn haircut regular-like, stupid hippy. 
66. Keep Noah Cicero apprised of all publishing developments.
67. Learn how to produce solid literary criticism by spending one evening every other week parodying an egregiously irresponsible article from Abstractalous.
68. Brush all four child-surrogates once a day and the furniture every other.
69. Convince The Little Womedievalist to read a "gateway comic" like Sandman.
70. Keep list of things to talk about with regular callers in order to seem less boring.
71. Smile more.  (Because Paul Ekman demonstrated that people not only smile when they feel happy, they feel happy when they smile: "Expression alone [i.e. with no underlying happiness] is sufficient to create marked changes in the autonomic nervous system.")
72. Read a few books and find a few blogs concerning deafness. 
73. Continue to sit on the yoga ball whenever possible.
74. Reconnect with "the gays" by driving up to Long Beach once or twice.
75. Buy birdseed so "our" baby birds return to "our" empty nest regularly.  (Also identify the species.)
76. Acquire sleep schedule of a normal human to avoid handwriting posts by candlelight at 3:38 a.m.
77. Think of 23 more things to do this summer.

Comments

[CR]

Reading Getting Things Done, are we?

[CR]

On a more serious note:

If you are going on the market this year, I would advise prioritizing the preparation of job-materials over the completion of the dissertation. Last summer, the only dissertation work that I did was the conversion of a chapter into a writing sample (hint: make sure the first 5 pages or so are absolutely fantastic). Other than that, I wrote and rewrote and rewrote again my 1) letter, 2) dissertation abstract, and 3) the underrated dissertation description on the CV.

(Another hint: make sure that the three iterations of your diss description - letter/abstract/CV are all unique - borrow no language from one to the next).

Because here's the thing about the dissertation: do you really think the powers-that-be aren't going to give you the degree with whatever you've got if you were to snag a nice tt position? They're going to basically destroy you once you've done the improbable, if not the impossible, if you've gotten a job in a climate ten times worse than the one they encountered at MLA 1985 or however they did it in 1965. See how this works?

Diplomatically dealing with the dissertation with job committees in another manner. One last hint: you're always already done. There is nothing left to do. If they call you on it, you might well be screwed, but for a lot of places nowadays, "I just have two chapters and the intro to write" is equivalent to, dunno, exposing yourself during your MLA interview.

Philly MLA: book at the Marriott. It's the place to be. Same place as last year - so I'm rather familiar.

Boy - I've done my good deed for the day. Imagine if I posted this stuff on my blog, what sort of hit I'd pull from July - September. But, whatever my blog's about, it's not about that...

[Belle Lettre]

You make me feel not only exhausted, but lazy. I'm just starting my master's thesis program---and this is what I have to look forward to when I write my dissertation and go on the meat market?

I can't wait until September, when we get Scott K.'s essay on "What I Did Over The Summer." :-)

[Mike S]

Scott, you've inspired me. So without further ado, my (strikingly less ambitious) list:

1. Finish master's thesis.
2. Switch to decaf.
3. Resist the urge to spend an exorbitant amount on Pink Floyd tickets.
4. Lead my rec basketball team to at least one victory (current record: 0-5).
5. Sift through Scott Eric Kaufman's garbage for old New Yorkers and NYRBs.
6. Read Gravity's Rainbow.
7. Read more Henry James.
8. Take the plunge and buy espresso machine to avoid spending fearful percentage of paycheck at Peet's.
9. Help my (highly) significant other prepare for GRE.
10. Find a reasonably priced, spacious, dog-friendly, one-bedroom apartment in the sweltering Inland Empire.

[Miriam]

Does UCI have a dissertation defense? If you can say "My defense is scheduled for...," departments which may otherwise look askance at an incomplete dissertation will be more likely to look upon you with a friendly eye.

Some notes about the cover letter (speaking from the position of someone who has set on several committees now...):

1) Please, no more than two pages, unless you're J. Hillis Miller, John Carlos Rowe, or someone similar.
2) So, this dissertation, it's important because...? (And you can tell me this in a paragraph, right?)
3) And what exactly is it that you do in the classroom?
4) What courses can you teach? (Hint: check the catalogue of the institution to which you're applying; this is one of the paragraphs which can do with some tailoring.)
5) Anything you care to brag about? (Awards, professional activities, etc.)

Incidentally, Chicago advises its grad students to have a three-minute "dissertation speech" ready--the idea being that you get the significant subjects on the table and then leave it up to your interviewers to ask questions. Never underestimate the importance of shutting up...

[ceresina]

Boy, that's a lot. Did you remember to put on it to order a printer cartridge?
(Are you sure you need an hour for TRH? I get by on 30 minutes...)

[Pierce]

Hooray for #61! I hope that your actions hold the same courage as your convictions--that is a weighty, and expansive list. My list is something like this:

1. Finish Gulliver's Travels
2. Stop smoking so much weed
3. Find second job which pays enough money to finance my way to freedom.
4. Write again
5. Stop smoking so much chiba
6. Make a decision about my next three (two?) years of college.
7. Stop doing so much grass or else I'm never going to pass any drug test, barring me from fully accomplishing objective #3.

Hope the recovery goes well. Excelsior!

[Laura]

Are you really going to spray scotchguard on your stuff? Dirt is infinitely better for the health than scotchguard germs.

[Stephen Johnson]

Re item #72 - if you're looking for a really nifty book on deafness (and Deafness), try Seeing Voices by Oliver Sachs.

My two cents worth, YMMV

[David R. Block]

Very impressive, Scott. But I won't ask for a progress report, because here where I work I hate the *&^% things. I could make more progress if it weren't for the time it takes for the progress report.

You've reached equilibrium (sp?) when you spend all of your time reporting on the nothing that you are doing. :)

[Scott Eric Kaufman]

CR and Miriam, thanks for the sound advice. I've filed it in my "Things I Must Remember When I Hit The Market" folder. I can't believe they don't tell people this, you know, generally, but I'll take every advantage I can get.

Ceresina, sadly, I forgot to keep that running joke on its feet through the whole post. I swear, with the money we spend on printer cartridges, we could, I don't know, have bought some status symbol. Also, vis-a-vis the TRH, the bottle tells me I need to take it on an empty stomach then wait for an hour to eat. Maybe it has something to do with the dosage and/or delivery system?

Stephen, thanks for the recommendation. I'm a fan of Sachs, and I'm surprised that book didn't appear in any of the Google and Amazon searches I ran. Odd.

Pierce, stop smoking pot! You're too talented to smoke your life away. I can still change your grade, you know. (Well, I can still threaten to.)

Laura, probably not, but I'm tempted. We have one cat who is getting up in years, so we've had some distressing accidents of late. I'm tempted to scotchguard some of the chairs, couches, pillows, blankets and rugs she likes to sleep on, because she gets agitated when they disappear into the washer, or when they're damp with Urine-Off, but I'm not sure she'd like 'em scotchguarded any better.

David, I'll be giving a progress report regularly. I'm not "in the swing of it" yet. I'm two days off the pain medication, which means I'm not doped up anymore, merely in pain. I'm still a little too cranky to work, or at least, too pained to sit still. But starting, well, a.s.a.p., as I'm incredibly antsy, damn near desperate to get rolling, I'll be posting status reports (of sorts).

[A White Bear]

Is there some joke I'm not getting about #1? Am I going to be the nerd who's all "Why not 'Silas'?" Groan, fine:

Why not "Silas"? Seriously.

[Scott Eric Kaufman]

If by joke you mean "typo," then yes, there's a joke there you didn't get. (I'm not sure how I punted that, but I chalk it up to not actually "reading" his name anymore, I see it so much. In my dreams, even.)

[john_m_burt]

Gee, and my summer list just says
1) Rest.
2) Lose 35 pounds.
3) Revive my massage practice.
4) Gird myself for the resumption of nursing school.
5) Blog daily.
6) Colonoscopy.
7) Refrain from detailing colonoscopy on blog.

[A White Bear]

Scott, that's a joke in itself, no? Because I'm writing about Enlightenment Philosophy, my hands automatically type Englishment every damn time. Practice makes error.

[N. Pepperell]

One of my undergraduate professors used to say: "Practice makes permanent - so be careful *what* you practice."