west of the moon

safehome.

Every year, WisCon ends and my heart breaks a little bit.  And then, every year, some airline or another takes my wee broken heart and stomps on it until I'm thoroughl downtrodden and defeated.  I left the hotel at around 2:45pm Wisconsin time, I arrived at my home at around 2:45am California time. 

Wait, that sounds wrong, fourteen hours door-to-door.  And yet it appears to be correct.  Huh. 

I'll write more later, of course.  If nothing else, I need to write up the Feminist Fiction panel, because Dan wants a reading list.  The short version, though, is that it was just about perfect.  Sure, I didn't get to spend enough time with anyone, and sure, I'm exhausted.  But I was happy all weekend, and I miss all of you.

Graduation: the ceremony

Getting ready to leave the house on Thursday morning, Matt and I agreed that "regalia" is a really good word. 

So here's the thing.  The night before graduation, we were out for dinner with my family, and in the middle of dinner my mother turned to me, looked me straight in the eye, and asked me what was going on.  I fumbled a bit.  "We're, uh, having dinner?"  No, she said, what's going on with graduation?  What aren't you telling me? 

I mean, honestly, what kind of question is that?  Apropos of entirely nothing, the night before graduation, demanding to know what it is that I'm not telling her? 

Except that something -was- going on, and there -was- something I wasn't telling her.  In particular, I hadn't told her (or my father) that I had been selected as the graduate student speaker at commencement.  I was hoping to surprise them.  I stuck to my story, though, and it wasn't until they saw the program the next morning that they figured it out. 

I'm going to be honest with y'all.  The ceremony itself was kind of a blur to me.  I didn't really sleep the night before (a memory of a long dream about running a marathon is the only evidence I have that I slept at all), and I was just really happy and really excited the whole time.  (And more than a little nervous about speaking in front of that many people.)   I remember parts of it very clearly.  The commencement address, for instance, I remember that.  David Kennedy started off with a really charming and funny bit about graduation and the real world, and then, having charmed the audience, moved into a discussion about the relationship between military service and citizenship, the responsibilities of civilians in the waging of war, and the dangers of the current state of our military policies and oversight.  The awarding of degrees, though, that part is definitely a blur.  I don't think I even heard them say my name, I just remember the department chair keeping up a very soothing-sounding murmur of instructions: "stand on the taped X, duck your head down a little so I don't knock off your hat, here, shake my hand, look that way and smile, take this piece of paper, now go over that way."  And then afterwards, the doctoral hood kept sliding off-center, and the necklace I was wearing got tangled in the button on the front of the hood. 

The speech I gave, that appears to have gone well.  I didn't trip and fall down on my way to the podium, I didn't talk too fast, the audience laughed where I'd hoped they would and clapped at the end.  I talked about William James, and about what I've learned studying history, and since half of everyone I've told about the speech has asked to see a copy, I went ahead and put it on the web.   

In the morning, on the way up to campus, it had been cold and grey, but by the time we headed over to Dwinelle Hall for the reception it was a gorgeous and sunny day.  A good time was had by all at the reception, during which I mostly tried to find and congratulate the other doctoral students I knew and my parents mostly tried to tell embarassing stories about my childhood to my professors.  (I tease!  A little.  But my dad did tell a long series of stories to my advisor, some of them about how he always wanted me to be a lawyer and some of them about how other people always told him I'd make a good teacher.  The lawyer stories were all familiar to me; the teacher stories I'd never heard before.) 

After the reception, lunch.  We took BART again, this time to Rockridge, for our celebratory lunch at Oliveto.  Bay Area people, pay attention: this restaurant is incredible.  My mother wanted me to keep wearing the cap and gown (and the hood, which was gradually stepping up its efforts to strangle me) all the way to the restaurant, which gave her a very easy excuse to tell all the strangers on the train how proud she was of me. 

To recap the rest of the day, in as best a long-story-short format as I can manage: fabulous incredible lunch, run quickly home to change shoes and pick up manuscript, scurry up to campus to file, paperwork, lollipop, off to my parents' hotel for another quick round of celebrating, then Matt and I went down to Fellini to decompress a little.  I had some salad, some ginger cosmos, some dessert, and then we went home and I slept for almost eleven hours. 

Graduation: the paperwork.

I called the manuscript finished about a week before I actually officially filed it.  That was the point where all of my advisors agreed that it was in good enough shape, that I didn't need to rework the conclusion, and so on.  That didn't mean I was done, though.  That just meant I was ready to devote myself to the details.

The details, where a dissertation is concerned, can take a really long time.  I tell people that I spent an entire morning tweaking the punctuation in my footnotes, and I think they think I'm kidding, but I'm not.  The bibliographic database software does about ninety percent of the work for me, but I still needed to go through and change a lot of things by hand (there's some problem in my output filter involving cited works, page numbers, and extraneous periods, but... okay, I've just bored myself even mentioning it, so I'll stop there). 

Then we got into issues of page formatting, page numbering, margins and footers.  None of this is difficult, really, but it seems like everyone I know has some horror story about people finding out at the last minute that they've done something wrong, that they used the wrong paper (one copy on acid-free archival, one copy on regular copy paper of at least 20 pound weight, all of it plain white) or the wrong font (at Berkeley, any normal-looking serifed font is fine as long as it's at least 12pt, but I hear that some schools have more specific needs), or some other stupid thing.  I say "stupid thing" because it's all fiddly details, but the people with these horror stories are very smart people.  This is why I threw myself whole-heartedly into double-checking all the details.  (Also, after spending so many months fighting with larger and more abstract issues, there was something really soothing about having small and concrete problems to solve.  "How can I make this pagination work?" is a nice contrast to "How can I explain the methodological problems of working with the early state normals?", not least because the former can be solved by printing test pages while the latter cannot.)

I had kind of hoped to get all the paperwork out of the way early, because I had family coming for graduation.  I printed the final document on Sunday, family members began arriving on Monday, the graduation ceremony was Thursday, and the absolute final deadline for filing was Friday.  Circumstances conspired against me, though, and I didn't get the final signature I needed until late Wednesday.  The good news is that my family was really understanding and completely willing to entertain themselves while I ran off to meet with advisors or have yet another envelope-size consultation with the nice men at the stationery store. 

To jump slightly out of chronology, I ended up filing on Thursday.  Commencement (more on that later), then celebratory lunch, then running back up to campus to file.  I squeaked in right before the office closed and then waited for nearly forty-five minutes while the graduate degrees staff members processed other people's paperwork and answered a lot of complicated questions from panicky near-graduates.  (One guy seemed to have some problem where he'd switched advisors and then switched topics, and he had forgotten to get his new abstract signed by his new advisor, but he had an old abstract that had been signed by the old advisor, and he seemed to be trying to get the woman at the desk to say that this would be okay.)  After all my test pages and compulsive re-reading of the dissertation guide, though, I had both copies of the manuscript, on the right kinds of paper, and I had the two surveys and the one form ready and filled out, and I had the three extra copies of my title page and the two extra copies of my abstract, and I had the right size envelopes and the right format pages.  The actual processing of my paperwork went smoothly and quickly.

At the end of it, they gave me a piece of paper that confirmed receipt of my dissertation, and then they gave me a lollipop.  And that was that, apparently.  It would have felt anticlimactic, I think, except that I was still caught up in being happy from the actual commencement ceremony.

Commencement.

  Puffy hat and all. 
  Originally uploaded by Susan Groppi.

impending, and acknowledgements.

This appears to actually be happening.  I'm pinning down appointments for getting signature approvals on the manuscript, I picked up my robes yesterday, I've been getting logistical coordination emails from the department admin.  I seem to actually be graduating.

Six years apparently isn't that long for a doctorate, but it feels like forever.  I had to pick up some paperwork in the department yesterday, and I spent a little while sitting in the courtyard near the department offices.  My first year at Berkeley, I used to sit out there all the time--I'd eat lunch there, do some of the reading for my seminars.  The light seemed golden every day.

I've been trying to say something about how it feels for this to be ending, and I can't manage to say anything articulate.  It's a jumble of things--excited, wistful, empty, sad, giddy, impatient.  I also keep remembering how everything felt when I first started graduate school, these strikingly clear memories. 

Later this week, some news on what's coming up next for me.  But first!  My dissertation, that behemoth of a manuscript, has this acknowledgements section.  I like the acknowledgements section, it was a lot of fun to write, and I think it's unfortunate that these things get buried away where none of the people I've thanked will ever get to see it.  Luckily, we have the internet on our side, and I can show y'all my acknowledgements.  (I tried to put this behind a cut or something, to save everyone the enormous post, but I can't figure out how to make that work in TypePad.  Sorry.)

First and foremost, I owe an enormous debt of gratitude to Cathryn Carson, John Lesch, and Alison Gopnik for serving on my thesis committee.  Their guidance and support has been invaluable.  In particular, it would be impossible to overstate how thankful I am to have had Cathryn Carson as my primary advisor for this project.  Not only did she help me navigate the research and writing process, she also exerted a calming influence over the emotional turmoil that can sometimes afflict the lives of graduate students, and showed me how to find confidence in my work as a historian. 
    I have been fortunate also to have such a supportive community at Berkeley, both in the Office for History of Science and Technology and in the History Department.  Roger Hahn, Paula Fass, Richard Cándida Smith, Stephen Glickman, Diana Wear, Margaret Olney, Elihu Gerson, Mark Brilliant, Kurt Beyer, Ellen Bales, Sokhieng Au, Erika Dirkse, Teddy Varno, Stephanie Young, Moon Duchin, Åsa Andersson, Tom Burnett, Kalil Oldham, Ki Won Han, Matt Sargeant, Andrew Mamo, and Alex Wellerstein all deserve special mention here for all the different ways in which I have come to depend on and value them. 
    This project has benefitted from the wisdom of the history of science community outside of Berkeley as well.  Portions of this dissertation, in varying forms, were presented at meetings of Cheiron and the History of Science Society.  At those meetings, I received both encouragement and useful critique from Michael Sokal, Rob Wozniak, David Robinson, Katherine Pandora, Christopher Greene, Richard von Mayrhauser, and many others.
    The bulk of the research for this dissertation was conducted with the help of a Dissertation Improvement Grant from the National Science Foundation, with additional funding from the Office for History of Science and Technology at the University of California, Berkeley.  I would also like to thank the friends who housed, fed, and entertained me at various points in my travels, especially Sarah Prineas, Kyle Niedzwiecki, Mary Anne Mohanraj, Kelli Carlson, Dawn Gilpin, Augusta Ridley, David Krinsky, Alan DeNiro, Kristin Livdahl, Meghan McCarron, and Carina Hayek. 
    As with all archival research, the research for this dissertation relied heavily on the assistance and goodwill of librarians and archivists, and while every single librarian I worked with was both friendly and helpful, a few of them stand out for going above and beyond the call of duty.  In particular, I would like to thank Mott Linn at Clark University for giving me a walking tour of that campus's points of psychological interest, Charlotte Brown at UCLA for opening the archives early, the archivists at both Harvard University and Wellesley College for finding materials not included in the regular departmental collections, and the entire staff of the Archives for the History of American Psychology in Akron.
    Over the last few years, as this work has gradually expanded to fill all of the available space in my life, I have been blessed enough to have friends who knew when to be sympathetic and when to help me keep perspective on the whole thing.  As I reach the end of the dissertation, I realize that I owe thanks to more people than I can reasonably name here.  Karen Meisner, Heather Shaw, David Moles, Jed Hartman, Tehshik Yoon, Christopher Barzak, and Benjamin Rosenbaum have gone to nearly heroic extremes for me, though, and it would take a colder heart than I possess to not acknowledge their help. 
    Finally, I would like to thank the three people without whose contributions none of this would have been possible.  Matt Withers made it possible for me to be where I am today, both by encouraging me to do the best work I was capable of and by believing in me even when I didn't quite believe in myself.  Above all else, though, Richard and Elizabeth Groppi made it possible for me to be the person I am today.  Their love and their unwavering faith in me gave me the confidence to pursue my ambitions, and I will forever be thankful for all they've done for me. 

machine translation.

One of the many problems with having so many writers as friends is that their language games aren't as much fun when I play them.  Case in point, the machine translation exercise that David and Ben were playing around with.  I took a paragraph from my dissertation, ran it through a few Google translator round trips (mostly German/English, in honor of psychology's ancestry).  Here's what I came up with:

The large national universities of the Midwest and the west were more, as if adjusts universities in the northeast into straight facsimiles of the large research.  They were educational institutes with another history of the northeast research schools, and they confronted very different institute delimitations and pressure in their early years.  Consequently the psychology programs, which developed at these schools, had another letter of the programs, which were examined in the preceding chapters.  The history of psychology at the national universities is not one of fascinating however limited illustrations.  Rather it is an important chapter in the early history of the American psychology, which must this point untold remained large.  As on the highest profile research universities and the psychologists so exclusively concentrate, attached to them, historians have caused up to now excluding the limited illustration of the early history of the American psychology.

The most striking thing, for me, is the shift from "state university" to "national university."  I've actually got a footnote in that section addressing this point: "The term "state university" refers to a higher educational institution that is mainly supported by the government of an individual state; the term does not refer, as it might in a European context, to an institution under the control of the federal government."  I also like how my phrase "interesting but marginal figures" turns into "fascinating however limited illustrations."

Dissertation!

Dissertation!
Originally uploaded by Susan Groppi.

I still need to get signatures from the professors on my committee, one of whom is out of town until the middle of next week, but still. Look at that!

words that start with "r".

Where Haddayr leads, I'll follow.

• Reading.  I'm a compulsive reader.  I try to always have a book with me so that I can read while waiting in line at stores or for the bus, and I keep magazines in the bathroom so that I have something to read while brushing my teeth.  (In a pinch, I've been known to read the backs of shampoo bottles while brushing my teeth.)  As a kid, I used to read and re-read the backs of cereal boxes at breakfast, until my mother gave in and let me have a book at the table.  I also read fast, which can cause problems--I have to stock up on reading material for long airplane trips, which makes my carry-on luggage way heavier than it really needs to be.  One side effect of this is that, honestly, if the circumstance is dire enough, I'll read anything.  If I'm stuck in the Denver airport on an unexpected two-hour layover and it comes down to a choice between Beyond the Valley of the Dolls and not having a book, I'll choose the wretched prose every time. 
• Red Sox.  I'm the first to admit that I'm not the most attentive of fans.  I missed the entire Bronson Arroyo debacle, and the other night when Matt was all "hey, Mirabelli's back," I was all "back? where'd he go?"  My attention span may be short, but my devotion is abiding.  (I do pay -some- attention.  I was horrified when they let Theo go, and joyful when they brought him back.)  I first became a Red Sox fan shortly after graduating from college.  Some friends of mine would have people over to watch the games on television on weekends and evenings, and we'd grill some hamburgers and corn-on-the-cob and hang out, and that was how I learned about baseball.  However!  While it's true that my feelings about the team have their roots in this kind of golden-age sentimentalizing of a generally good time in my life, I think I'm actually at a point now where I can say that I like the baseball as much as I like the ancillary experiences.  And the Red Sox are my guys.
• Running.  This makes me sad.  I like running, and I am not very good at it, and the fact that my attempts are so irregular is doing nothing to make me better at it.  I'm right now chalking it up to my general state of out-of-shape, and now that the worst of the dissertation stress is over, I can start working on good habits again.
• Redhead.  For the longest time, I wanted to have red hair.  I started coloring my hair when I was fifteen, and kept doing it on and off through the early part of college.  There was a time when I was practically an expert on the temporary and semi-permanent haircolor selections at the supermarket.  I want to say that I had a great eye for which color variations would look more natural on me, but that's a lie.  My Irish heritage notwithstanding, I don't really have the coloring to be a redhead, and whether it was "zanzibar cinnamon" or "radiant firelight" or "natural light auburn", it always looked fake.
• Ramapo.  This was the name of my high school, Ramapo Regional High School in Franklin Lakes, New Jersey.  (To my great surprise, Ramapo has its own Wikipedia entry, but it's inaccurate.  I'm pretty sure Tara Reid ever actually attended Ramapo--she moved to Los Angeles right after junior high.  And if she had, she would have been class of 1994, not class of 1993.)  The word "Ramapo" comes from (if I have this right) a dialect of the Algonquin language.  Where I grew up, the place names tend to be either Lenape (Mahwah, Pequannock, Wanaque, Ho-Ho-Kus) or Dutch (Wyckoff, Voorhees, Waldwick). 

What is that, five words?  I don't think I'm going to make it all the way to ten.

• Recapitulationism.  Loosely speaking, "ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny", or the idea that the individual development of an organism follows the same stages as the evolutionary development of the species.  So, for instance, human fetuses go through developmental stages where they're functionally equivalent to amoebae, and then fish, and then amphibians, and then lower mammals.  Recapitulationism was originally a physiological and biological theory, but a lot of the psychologists I've been studying applied it as a psychological and anthropological theory as well, reasoning that human infants and children go through stages equivalent first to lower primates, then to less civilized human societies.  (Their phrasing, not mine.)  I've been told (although I haven't confirmed it with my own research, so take it with a grain of salt) that this is actually one of the reasons that the Boy Scouts invoke so much tribal and Native American imagery, because young boys were believed to be roughly equivalent to tribal peoples in their evolutionary development.  (Again, I need to point out that these are not my ideas.  Casual racism is only one of the many weird things in the background of my research.)
• Research.  Over the last few years, I've conducted archival research in a lot of college towns throughout the United States. Spending time with other history graduate students sometimes makes me feel like I'm losing out on part of the research experience, though--people in my program are going to Moscow and Jakarta and Berlin, and no matter how much I loved Iowa City and Ithaca and Lawrence, they're just not very exotic.  And archival work is such a strange experience.  It's sometimes very exciting, sometimes incredibly repetitive and dull, and often just tiring.  Every time I go on research trips, I have this idea that I'll be able to use my off-hours to get other work done.  "I'll be gone for two weeks, but I can work on these manuscript revisions in the evenings!"  And it just doesn't work. 
• Rocketship.  Strange Horizons has been nominated for a Hugo Award twice now, and as editor-in-chief I get to claim all of the magazine's loot, which means that I have two (two!) tiny little rocketship lapel pins and a small silver rocketship-shaped desk clock.  It's really very exciting.
• Reality television.  These days, it's just "Top Chef", which is entertaining enough, but I'm just using it to tide me over until the new season of "Project Runway".  I used to watch, what, "The Apprentice" and a little bit of "American Idol", but they don't keep me interested anymore.  ("The Joe Schmoe Show" still reigns supreme in my own personal reality-television universe, though.)
• Revolution.  Are scientific revolutions actually revolutionary, or just evolutionary?  Discuss.

Ha!  Ten!  I didn't think I was going to pull that off.  (If you want to play too, ask in the comments and I'll give you a letter.)

Johnny Cash.

Just so we're clear on this?  Johnny Damon is dead to me.

And he looks stupid with short hair.  So there.