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It is I, Dr. Me!
Apr. 13th, 2013 09:01 amI got back from Oxford yesterday after successfully defending my dissertation! I am now Dr. Lorraine, She Who May Read Fanfiction Guiltlessly All the Live-Long Day! LOL
I had to make the trip by myself, which was fine except for the crushing boredom of being alone in Oxford for two days while it rained. I realized on this trip that Oxford is no place for someone without a lot of disposable income or her doctor's permission to drink. LOL The rain prevented activities like walking around the Square (which is probably for the best as I always want to buy everything) or campus for the most part, and if I wasn't pregnant, I'd probably have parked myself in a bar and nursed a drink and talked to the townies for hours. Alas, instead I parked myself in the Super 8 and watched approximately four million hours of Frasier while waiting for the defense to roll around. Note to self: you get what you pay for; Super 8, you are dead to me.
I got very nervous before the defense, but once it started, I calmed down and the whole thing felt more like a conversation between friends than it did a grilling. My committee has all gotten very old in my absence. They're all in their seventies, and I think I made the right decision to go physically to Oxford for the defense rather than doing it by phone conference. These people (with the exception of the outside reader) comprised my MA committee as well, so they've been around my entire graduate student career, and it was very gratifying to see how proud they are of me and how much they feel that my success reflects positively on them.
I got zero criticism on the dissertation. No, "here's a flaw in your logic" or "what about this thing you left out?" Everyone was very complimentary, particularly on the writing style, and I left that room feeling like a million dollars--a very tired and hungry million dollars. LOL
One question I was asked during the defense that really gave me pause was about why I chose to dedicate my academic career to Ouida. Everyone already knew the most obvious answer. I was assigned to be my director's research assistant in my first semester of grad school and she was working on a book about Ouida. I fell in love with the author in the course of helping my director put this book together, and the practical side of me also thought it would be a shame not to put the extensive research and reading I'd done for this project into a second use. Also, Ouida hasn't been scholarshipped to death and there's plenty room to write about her without feeling like I'd be writing yet another diss on Faulkner or whoever. But that isn't what Dr. K. was asking me. He told me that he'd lost his father when he was a boy and that he'd chosen in part to write a dissertation about Boswell and Johnson because that search for a father figure resonated with him. He told me he had a friend in graduate school who was a little person who struggled with feeling as if she were grotesque, and she chose to focus on the grotesque for her Ph.D. work. What Dr. K. wanted to know is what draws me to Ouida beyond any practical concerns. What about her resonates with me on a psychological level? What answer am I looking for in her work? I realized that what draws me to her work is very connected to who I am as a fan, particularly a writer and reader of fanfiction. Ouida's books are melodramatic and filled with lush emotion (much like the fic I tend to spend most of my time reading), but they are also subversive and take place somewhere in those interstices between what happened in real Victorian people's lives and the ideal trajectories their lives were mean to move along (much like the fic I spend most of my time writing, fic that subverts canon while remaining canonically plausible). She also writes novels with extremely heavy slashy subtexts and lots of triangulation of desire. I didn't expect to come away from this experience with something new to think about (besides how to turn this monster into a book), but I'm glad I did.
So, to recap: starting in fall 2013 you will all have to address me as Associate Professor Dr. Lorraine forevermore. LOL
Thanks for all the cheerleading and well wishes along the way. I could not have completed this degree without the support of my friends, both online and off.
*hugs*
I had to make the trip by myself, which was fine except for the crushing boredom of being alone in Oxford for two days while it rained. I realized on this trip that Oxford is no place for someone without a lot of disposable income or her doctor's permission to drink. LOL The rain prevented activities like walking around the Square (which is probably for the best as I always want to buy everything) or campus for the most part, and if I wasn't pregnant, I'd probably have parked myself in a bar and nursed a drink and talked to the townies for hours. Alas, instead I parked myself in the Super 8 and watched approximately four million hours of Frasier while waiting for the defense to roll around. Note to self: you get what you pay for; Super 8, you are dead to me.
I got very nervous before the defense, but once it started, I calmed down and the whole thing felt more like a conversation between friends than it did a grilling. My committee has all gotten very old in my absence. They're all in their seventies, and I think I made the right decision to go physically to Oxford for the defense rather than doing it by phone conference. These people (with the exception of the outside reader) comprised my MA committee as well, so they've been around my entire graduate student career, and it was very gratifying to see how proud they are of me and how much they feel that my success reflects positively on them.
I got zero criticism on the dissertation. No, "here's a flaw in your logic" or "what about this thing you left out?" Everyone was very complimentary, particularly on the writing style, and I left that room feeling like a million dollars--a very tired and hungry million dollars. LOL
One question I was asked during the defense that really gave me pause was about why I chose to dedicate my academic career to Ouida. Everyone already knew the most obvious answer. I was assigned to be my director's research assistant in my first semester of grad school and she was working on a book about Ouida. I fell in love with the author in the course of helping my director put this book together, and the practical side of me also thought it would be a shame not to put the extensive research and reading I'd done for this project into a second use. Also, Ouida hasn't been scholarshipped to death and there's plenty room to write about her without feeling like I'd be writing yet another diss on Faulkner or whoever. But that isn't what Dr. K. was asking me. He told me that he'd lost his father when he was a boy and that he'd chosen in part to write a dissertation about Boswell and Johnson because that search for a father figure resonated with him. He told me he had a friend in graduate school who was a little person who struggled with feeling as if she were grotesque, and she chose to focus on the grotesque for her Ph.D. work. What Dr. K. wanted to know is what draws me to Ouida beyond any practical concerns. What about her resonates with me on a psychological level? What answer am I looking for in her work? I realized that what draws me to her work is very connected to who I am as a fan, particularly a writer and reader of fanfiction. Ouida's books are melodramatic and filled with lush emotion (much like the fic I tend to spend most of my time reading), but they are also subversive and take place somewhere in those interstices between what happened in real Victorian people's lives and the ideal trajectories their lives were mean to move along (much like the fic I spend most of my time writing, fic that subverts canon while remaining canonically plausible). She also writes novels with extremely heavy slashy subtexts and lots of triangulation of desire. I didn't expect to come away from this experience with something new to think about (besides how to turn this monster into a book), but I'm glad I did.
So, to recap: starting in fall 2013 you will all have to address me as Associate Professor Dr. Lorraine forevermore. LOL
Thanks for all the cheerleading and well wishes along the way. I could not have completed this degree without the support of my friends, both online and off.
*hugs*
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