• SSHRC is on the move.
  
• The article Greg and I were writing on deafness has been pushed back because the scope of it got too big for us to give it an adequate treatment in the time allotted. But we're going to keep at it.
  
• I have to remember my other funding options.
  

I'm going to post a "Latin Tutor Available" sign in my house. There's a lot of beginners here this year, and I may as well see if I can come to an arrangement. Money is acceptable, but so is food or even trade in kind (any Anglo-Normanists out there?). I also really need to remember to submit my application to teach in the winter term.

As for research, I'm working with chronicles right now, and while I find them interesting, they're not particularly rich in the material I need. One reference here or there. Mostly they're more interested in calling opponents sinners and heretics rather than fools. But I do have two references so far, so maybe I will find more.

I'm not sure how I'm going to pull all this together. I've got my pastoral manuals and a heck of a lot of court cases, a couple chronical refs now, Margery, and Piers Plowman. Somehow this will all pull together into a single coherent thesis? I guess SSHRC is good practice for this.

Meanwhile, I really wish I had time to stop and do some secondary reading. There's a lot going around in the background that I need to sort out. I need to revisit my conceptual books. Time is such a fleeting thing. Perhaps I will beg an indulgence of my supervisors next meeting.

Grad School Defined

From the lovely Mel:

"The change from undergraduate course work to graduate course work is somewhat of a shock to the system, like someone's doused me with a bucket of cold water. Cold water filled with BOOKS and FISTS."

Research adjustment

Being a "research student" is something of an adjustment. On the whole, I enjoy it a lot, though there's something comforting and familiar about classwork.

I am responsible to myself. I have to keep myself organised and motivated. On days when I don't feel like doing much, I still need to push myself. I also have to direct myself as to what to do. Do I look at this? Read that? What's most important? It's interesting, to be sure. Last week was a little slack and confusing, but I have a game plan for next week, which will help.

I like the general lack of pressure.

It's strange, having advisors. When I worked with David, I knew him well enough that I was comfortable just asking random questions and learning from him. I still am, and I still do. It's weird trying to form that sort of relationship now by necessity. Yes, I can ask questions when I feel in a jam, that's what they're there for.

I've got a lot I can learn from them about how to do research for this sort of massive project, where you have to be able to account for just about everything and anything marginally related. You might not write about it, but you have to know about it, in case someone asks.

Oh, and I'm not the only one to want to throw Piers Plowman against the wall in a bewildered rage. I'm comforted to know that.

The Impossibility Terror

Yesterday I got my hot little hands on Irina Metzler's excellent "Disability in Medieval Europe: Thinking about physical impairment during the high Middle Ages, c. 1100-1400."

I cracked it open this morning, and after ploughing through the first two chapters in mesmerised fascination, I sunk into the black pit of despair. This book is amazing. The methodology is sophisticated. The explanation of the difficulties posed by such an interdisciplinary field is eloquent and concise. I am so far from this bar I see set before me.

After a brief period, sanity returned, and I remembered that I'm not supposed to be at this level yet, and that is what the next 4, 6, 10 years are all about. So I am choosing to be inspired by it, and will probably snag a copy at next year's International Congress on Medieval Studies in Kalamazoo.*

And in the meantime, I will meditate upon it in hopes of it helping me write my SSHRC application.

At last year's Medieval Academy of America meeting (or was it K'zoo?), I remember a discussion about us lowly students becoming fans of senior scholars. It's sadly, geekishly true. OMG!!1one! You wrote that book about medieval disability, and it was totally teh awesome! Can I have your autograph!?! Hmm. I wonder if that's what the open bars and wine hour are really about. They call it "socialising" and "networking," but really it's just an excuse to get the young'uns drunk enough to act like Japanese fangirls so they can enjoy the adulation.

That presents a disturbing enough mental image that I think it's time for me to quit writing.

* There are no less than three special sessions on disability proposed for the 43rd Congress. "(Ab)normal societies: Disability as a Socio-Cultural Concept in Medieval Society"; "Embodied Identities: Disability and Gender in the Middle Ages"; "Disability in the Middle Ages: a Roundtable Discussion". "The Representation of the Self in Medieval Discourse" also sounds interesting. This is a sub-field that's really starting to gain momentum!