256 days and counting.

There are 256 episodes of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel. In the time honored tradition of bribing oneself to complete an unpleasant task, I plan to watch one episode after each 2 hour session of dissertation work.

Unstructured writing about my dissertation has provern to be helpful to me, as has discussing in a general way what is going on in the process. This blog is a place I can do both of those things. As an added bonus, I will have a new way to end the following conversation:

Random person I know: “So, how is your dissertation going?”

Me: “It’s going okay, I guess. My advisor liked it, but my readers thought that my historiography was underdeveloped and that I needed to be more focused on the cultural aspects of science in the early republic rather than the politics of Republicanism like I have done.”

Random person I know (eyes glazed over): “oh. so, when are you going to be done.”

Me: “Uh….”

Random person I know: “So, what are you going to do with that when you are finished?”

Me: “Uh….”

Now, the conversation will go like this:

Random person I know: “So, how’s the dissertation going?”

Me: “You know, I have a blog where I post my progress as well as other reflections on Buffy the Vampire Slayer and my cute baby and cooking. Why don’t you check it out? It’s easier than me explaining.”

Random person I know: “Cool! I didn’t know you liked Blogs/cooking/buffy?”

(much more interesting conversation follows).

So, why Buffy? why pick for my motivation a series that went out with a small splash 5 years ago? That’s a topic for the next post.