Category: Writing

By the standards of the break so far, today has been surprisingly productive. I read half of Kuhn’s Structure of Scientific Revolutions, wrote 1000 words for the introduction to my thesis, made some progress on the Dobson book on the environment and political theory, nearly finished up my foreign aid paper, and revised my CV for the job search.

I think a lot of the increased productivity can be explained by Emily now being up the road, working on papers of her own. I no longer feel like the one man on the dark side of the moon, scribbling away to himself. I feel like part of an Oxford community again, and one that is engaged in similar pursuits and therefore able to derive motivation from a sense of shared endeavour.

With luck, the remainder of 2006 involve an equal or greater amount of per-hour to-do list completion (focused on the academic category, rather than web / photographic stuff). If the trend persists until the start of term on January 15th, I may actually finish those three draft chapters. I am certainly looking forward to the return of friends and fellow students, the resumption of dinners in Wadham and New College, and the start of my international law course.

PS. This is an amusing observation. Interesting how just rewording something can make it seem very unusual. xkcd has succeeded Digger and Nine Planets Without Intelligent Life as my favourite thoughtful web comic of the moment. That said, both of the others are still excellent. My toque goes off to Alec Reed, Ursula Vernon, and Randall Munroe. I hope to buy them each a drink someday.

At almost terminally long last, I have come up with a draft of my paper on moral arguments for and against foreign aid. While a paper of 2500 words cannot begin to engage with the specifics of the broad moral conversation, I think it at least summarizes positions in an interesting way and highlights some of the most fundamental clashes between the positions.

The secret to getting papers written is obviously to abandon my home (too devoid of people and too full of interesting but non-academic things), as well as libraries (populated by pale and frightening ghouls who seem to be trying to get a jump on their June exams), and adopt a coffee shop without internet access as a base of operations. With good tables, a staff that will not kick you out even four hours after you bought a drink, and four shots of iced espresso available for £1.79, Starbucks remains my top choice. My firm and ongoing rejection of the idea that Starbucks is a soulless corporate monster is already well documented here. Ah, the joys of adopting counter-counter-culture positions.

For now, the plan is to read one more substantial journal article on the subject, give the paper another careful read, have one external reviewer glance through it for cogency of language and arguments, give it one more tweaking myself, and then pidge the thing to Ngaire Woods and move on to the next bit of work.

The Oxford winter break is now halfway over, with three weeks remaining. Somehow, that rather changes my thinking with regards to the accomplishments so far. Having spent two of the three weeks so far in Turkey, and dealt with what limited Christmas related activities I had, I feel less bad about not having completed masses of thesis reading or writing yet. As it now seems quite unlikely that I will be going anywhere with Sarah P. before the break is over, that leaves me with a good block of time to push my way through my enduring to-do list.

I should probably have anticipated that searching for jobs right around Christmas would be all-but-impossible. The fact that nobody will respond to emails within about a week of the celebration makes a lot of sense, when you consider all the stress and staffing problems that it necessarily involves. Hopefully, once we pass through the gate of New Year’s Eve, some connectivity and productivity will re-emerge among potential employers.

The plan, therefore, is to finish my developing world papers (including at least one external edit) by the 29th of December, without fail. That should keep me hopping during the next few days: from abandoned library to less abandoned coffee shop, for reading and writing respectively.

PS. I am really coming to appreciate TextMate. It has replaced TextEdit in my Dock, and I may even shell out the 39 Euros for a legitimate copy, once the thirty day trial expires. I especially appreciate how I can work on PHP files, .htaccess files, and the like without having to worry about formatting problems – and with colour coding to boot.