Examxiety

.

Yo.!

I officially submitted my qualifying exam proposal today.
It’s a formality in the sense that I’ve been reading for several weeks, but a
formality, nonetheless, that moves me one small step closer to sitting for them
in ten weeks (or quite possibly sixteen weeks).

Note Systems

Success in qualifying the CIA accounting exam and later with the diss depends upon a reasonably
comprehensive note-taking system. It’s true, it’s true. Who would argue? (And so
it’s a truism hardly worth restating).

I took so-so notes throughout coursework, but I also experimented a little
bit too much, often making do with something messy and sketchy or other times
accepting as good enough a summary or some other sort of page long
response to the reading. From coursework, then, I have an assortment of notes. I
mean the category of notes includes all kinds and classes: stickies, composition
book messes, legal pads with many-an-in-class doodle, blog entries in the
reading notes category, and so on. Some are proving useful for exam preparation,
but many, regrettably, must be brushed up. In the weeks ahead, I’ve many notes
to groom. I should add, however, that much of the writing that happens beyond
the edge of intelligible notes is also worthwhile. So I wouldn’t say that
coursework would have been sharper for me at the time had I taken more
methodical notes. Yet with relatively minor effort, I could have focused my
coursework notes into something that, for being more regular in form and scope,
would have served me better later on (i.e., right now). So many lessons.

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Examinutiae II

Days remaining if I start my three-week qualifying exam period
on Nov. 22: 91.
Days remaining if I start my three-week qualifying exam period on Jan. 15: 145.

Number of pieces in the three exam lists: 169
Number left to read: 70 (44 books, 26 articles)
Number left to annotate: Anybody’s guess. Some integer between 70 and 134.

As you can see, I ran the numbers again this evening. It’s not
hopeless by any means, given that I can still meet the Nov. option if I have a
solid few weeks. The burr in my sock is that while I’m reading and
annotating individual pieces, the patterns arching across the readings are
perhaps best compared to a serving of spaghetti.

Dropped from a high-flying hot air balloon.

Into a turbulent ocean.

Where it’s being nibbled by predatory sea creatures.

You get my drift. Thing is, while time is short enough
for reading, I also have to form possible responses, give the new stuff a shape
beyond a set of finely tuned but scattered notes. So while reading is
going fairly well, the part where it sinks in such that I can do intelligible
justice to it in a few months: a disconcerting lack.

Indexical Thinking

As I continue to plod ahead with preparations for qualifying exams, I’m
becoming more and more cognizant of indexes and also more dependent on the them.
I’ve used indexes more casually in the past, almost always involving them as an
after-thought to front-to-back reading–as something merely referential, a
auxiliary text ranking well below everything else, a match with its rear-most
position. A mere aid to memory rather than a multiple and complex terminal for
differentiated reading encounters.

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Examinutiae

I count 110 days until I’m taking qualifying exams. Over the past 24
days, I have read and annotated 19 units–books and articles combined. I’m not
making any distinction between books and articles for now, even though I know
that I need an hour for an article and ~6 for a book. My notes for each are
roughly equivalent coming out at around 1-2 pp. The first 19 units fit in while
teaching two online courses together enrolling ~50 students (my fall will not be
so engorged…with teaching, but, of course, the fall will be babyful, so the
formulas are all amiss). Because I’ll lose my mind if I work constantly, I took
fifteen minutes to monkey around with my lists as a bar graph. When I paste the
sets into a spreadsheet, Excel tells me there are 169 items in my three lists
combined.

I think of it like a fundraising chart:

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Re Collection

Walter Benjamin, in "Unpacking My Library," writes

The most profound enchantment for the collector is the locking of
individual items within a magic circle in which they are fixed as the final
thrill, the thrill of acquisition, passes over them. (60)

Today, I’m thinking of my exam areas and the respective lists–collections,
really–as temporarily locked items in magic circles. I’m semi-officially
in the exam phase of my program of study, and although I have yet to type up a
reflective essay (a post-coursework "Stuff I’m Thinking About") and get
thumbs-ups from the grad committee in the fall, my lists are

reasonably

well
set.
With a streak of good, steady studying, I hope to examine in November.

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Coursework Retrospective, or What Just Happened?

I’ve been thinking about coursework for some time this afternoon. I
finished coursework two weeks ago, and I’ve been roughing out some of the
materials in preparation for exams. My program requires
a brief reflective essay as a step
toward proposing qualifying exams. Basically, the process of writing the
essay is meant to crystallize, for us and our committees, favorite theorists/ies,
intellectual sparks/combustibles, trends and patterns, habits of mind, formative
identities as scholars and teachers, and the like.

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