Monday, May 13, 2013

Blogging to My PhD: For Real This Time

Remember how I said I was going to blog about each of the texts on my exam list as I prepared for my comprehensive PhD exam? Then do you remember how I did it for about two weeks and stopped?

Yeah. Things got a little hectic. Then things got a lot hectic. I realized I was not going to be able to take exams this summer like I had hoped, so now I am taking them at the end of Christmas break. That makes it sound like I have a lot of time, but there are about 80 texts on my list, and in the fall I will be teaching four classes (on top of, you know, raising a family and whatnot). That means that this summer has to be reading-intensive.

So, I'm renewing my efforts, and I'm writing this to explain all of the random posts about ancient rhetoric (which will soon be followed by random posts about less-ancient rhetoric. Promise.)

Here're some of my books. Aren't they beautiful!?

So, if you've been through/are currently going through studying for comprehensive exams, what are your tips?

7 comments:

  1. I am looking forward to it all. Really. I find the study rhetoric fascinating (promise I am not being sarcastic) and I appreciate your perspective.

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  2. I seriously have no idea how you find the time (or energy!) to blog in the midst of teaching/family/prepping for exams! When I was at that stage, all my free time went to cooking/baking, reading novels, and trash TV to give my brain a break!

    The best advice I received was to keep lots of good notes on each thing I read, particularly copying down all the good quotes I thought I would use (with correct citations in place). When I was trying to make a point, I could page through the notes on the relevant texts and then just copy and paste or paraphrase the supporting text without having to go back through the books.

    I also assigned a mass of keywords to each. They I could say broad sweeping
    things ("All of humanity is....") and look down the keyword list to make
    sure I remembered everyone who had actually said such a thing.

    I'm old school, so I ended up printing everything and color coding it in a binder, (I've had friends who just tag documents in EndNote) so I never had to get the actual books back out, just paged through my massive binder to pull my outlines together. It helped immensely!

    Best of luck with the prep!

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  3. I'd love to know your book list for insight on ancient rhetoric. I can also learn from you on how to survive earning a PhD with everything else going on!

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  4. Good luck!! I am taking my exams in September, so I will be reading all summer, too. You will be my inspiration!!

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  5. Thank you for these tips! They are great. I especially needed to hear the "limiting note taking to two pages" and "even if I have to 'read' six books a week." I really think that my greatest obstacle is going to be my tendency to overdo it and try to carefully read every word and take notes as if I'm writing a detailed paper on each text, which just isn't going to be possible (or very useful, probably).

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  6. September! Good luck! You'll have to let me know all your best advice when you get done.

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  7. Oh my word, yes. One of the things that everyone told me (and I didn't believe) was that once I had written the first exam I would realize how ridiculously over-prepared I was. And it was true.


    You will be astounded how little time/space you actually have in the end to discuss everything you have read.


    I'm also someone who naturally errs on the side of too much detail in note-taking, so this was actually quite a useful exercise for me (and has proved helpful with the dissertation as well).

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