12th Carnival of GRADual Progress

With today's installment, the GRADual Progress carnival hits the one-year mark! Hooray!

Now for perhaps more sobering news. After a year, the carnival still seems to be averaging only three or four submissions. Also, a distinct lack of hosts. There have been six wonderful volunteers during the past year and I am very grateful to you all, but ultimately, that means I am hosting it one month in two. And I can imagine it will continue to be hard to find volunteers to host as long as the submissions are so few that hosting requires a lot of work to find posts as well as link to them.

Finally, I'm not going to be a graduate student much longer (graduation is finally in sight!) You can all see where this is going, can't you?

The GRADual Progress concept is up for grabs. It comes with a pre-made website and email account, should you wish to use these. You are welcome to do whatever you like to revive the poor thing. You can continue to run it as it has been run until now (good luck with that finding hosts thing), or change the format, frequency, whatever. If you want to be that person, please leave a comment here. Maybe several people might want to collaborate.

If I get no takers, we can always leave the website as a sort of permanent archive of grad-related posts, kind of like what Horace has recently put together, but from the student perspective.


Which brings me to this month's links

In a series that would go nicely in Horace's collection, Fabio at orgtheory.net has just written a set of posts on how to make it through grad school. I'm not going to link to all the older posts in the series, but the most recent three are on choosing your topic, other considerations for during the dissertation writing process, and finally, models for actually writing the dissertation. Jim Gibbon has kindly assembled links to the full set of posts.


There's been a lot of learning going around:

PhD Ladybug is exhausted and learning to establish boundaries.

Queen of West Procrastination is learning to allow herself to be human and is refocusing her academic self-image.

Ancrene Wiseass is learning to be herself.

EA is learning when to stop.

Kisha learns that there is a big gap between the metaphors of climbing a mountain and falling off a cliff.

Parts-n-pieces has learned an extreme strategy for making herself write.

Stewgad learns why you should avoid taking a decade to write your dissertation.


And some pondering:

The History Enthusiast wonders why we procrastinate. Her commentators have some ideas.

FemaleCSGradStudent wonders at the fact that moving from industry into academia didn't lose her the Dilbert-style managers.

Psycgirl writes a thoughtful post about losing her stride and finding it again.

Earth Wide Moth has a fascinating post about all the interrelated tasks that fall under the "canopy" of dissertating. Including staring off into the distance!

Turducken has some thoughts about the academic job market. Then there's the "most stereotypical PhD story ever". And don't miss the hilarious discussion of three different approaches to graduation!


And some suggesting:

The History Enthusiast reviews mind-mapping tools.

Academhack shares some fantastic "old-fashioned" academic tools.


And some milestones:

EA has finished writing up her participants' experiences.

Running Red Lettered passed her thesis defence.

Skookumchick turned in her Done Damn Dissertation Draft (DDDD). As did I!

Zelda has completed her minor revisions and her committee signed off on them.

WWW Mama may have found an exit-ramp from grad school that might just be an on-ramp to the rest of her life.

Finally, from the other side of the great divide, One Bright Star participated in her first defense as a professor on the student's committee.

Congratulations to all of us!