grad school – autistext

I hate noise

…says someone in the midst of studying for her candidacy exams.

Everything is really loud. The wind clanging the blinds together. The guy upstairs walking to what I presume is his refrigerator, given the sound patterns. Me typing. Me talking — even when people tell me to speak up. (I’m always loud. Don’t they get it? Loud, loud, loud.) Cars — need I say more about cars? The hallways at school, filled with feet and hands and mouths and papers and hair and eyelids and trashcans and mop buckets and plastic wheels and cellphones and clocks (some living, some dead) and doors and windows and air units and keyboards and beeps and teeth and light switches and flickering fluorescents and benches and…

I am home today, writing. And reading. I’m just wrapping up a five-week writing course, a course that I taught and enjoyed and feel exhausted over. The quarter system is fast-paced. The half-quarter system is even more fast-paced.

Scissors make noise. As does cardstock. But cutting out rainbow infinity signs is a welcome break from grading, a more welcoming sort of noise:

Rainbow infinity sign cut-outs on a black chair

Crickets.

Program of study

I’m a Ph.D. student in English. I finished coursework in March, and I’m now prepping for my candidacy exams, which I hope to take the last week of September. My department requires a program of study from PhD students — a longish document in which we propose our field and focus areas for our exams, as well as our reading list. The POS also includes a description of the dissertation, plus some other description-like stuff (e.g., previous graduate work, teaching and professional experience, conference presentations, publications, projects, and the like).

I’m happy to say that my POS passed (!), and I’ve begun tackling my reading list. I’ve here posted the descriptions of my field, focus, and dissertation, if only because they deal with autism and rhetoric in a large way. Of course, things are subject to change, and my thinking will evolve, I’m sure. But nonetheless, this seems to be an accurate picture of where I’m at right now.

Continue reading Program of study

Where I’ve been

It’s been a month. A hectic month, to say the least. This evening, at 5:45pm, we’re holding our first official meeting for the Autistic Self-Advocacy Network at Ohio State. Benzion Chinn and I are co-chairing the group. I’m quite excited, though I’m also quite nervous. We have no idea what the turnout will be like. I’m hoping for a moderate number of dedicated people. Too few people would be sad, and too many people would be overwhelming. Alas, we shall see.

[For more details about the meeting, you can read the ASAN-Central Ohio blog.]

I’ve also [finally] finished writing my program of study, a massive document that describes my field and focus areas and contains my reading lists for exams. I just found out that it passed, and I’ll post the document here in the next few days as it’s quite relevant to this blog.