What do people prefer: The Atlantic Monthly or Harper's? I'm sort of thinking I could swing the subscription to a monthly (my weekly is The New Yorker), but I'm not sure which one I should get.
Last week was the first week of classes, not that I have any classes or anything. On the whole, it was good stuff. I got some work done, and in particular, I started building my data sets. My "data sets" basically consist of county-level census data for Illinois, Missouri, Georgia, Louisiana, New York, and Massachusetts for 1840-1870. I'm tracking things like population, agriculture, and industrialization. The first one is easy. The latter two are harder. I have to make some choices about how I'm going to operationalize those ideas (number of people employed? capital invested? acres of farmland? number of industries?). Richard Bensel does some work on this, so I'm going to see how *he* did it and build from that. I also need to find some information on dates of infrastucture projects in those states, particularly turnpikes and canals. Maps of those other projects, and the sources of their funding, will also be necessary. Really, my dissertation seems more like a series of annoying errands than anything else at this point.
The most fun part of this is that historical census data is *not* electronically stored. This means that I photocopied a shitload of census data, and put it all in binders. Now I spend my days hunched over my desk, headphones jammed in my years, entering data into Excel spreadsheets. Also, history sucks. First, counties change over time - new ones are created, old ones merged together. Second, the ordering of these counties are not always the same (example: in some years, all the parishes that are St. Whatever in Lousiana come at the beginning of the "s"'s; in other years, they are at the end). This means more heavy lifting in getting my data set started. It also means that I have to locate county maps for each state for each releavant decade, rather than just using a single map (geographic analysis is a heavy part of my dissertation). These are not particulalry *huge* problems. They just sort of *are.* Such is the joy of academia. The one nice thing is that working on my data set feels *productive.* I like that.
In other banal news, E. is trying to sell me on a book idea. He wants to write the book, but "doesn't want to do it alone." Basically, he's trying to recruit me. This would be, his words, "a way second concern for me", with my dissertation coming first. It's tempting. To have a second book, even co-authored, in progress while on the market would be nice, and wouldn't hurt my eventual tenure proceedings. It would also be on a totally different topic than the diss., which is another big plus when you're on the market. On the other hand, it would be a time suck from the dissertation. More importantly, while I love E. - he's kind of flaky. I'm afraid we'd start this, and it would go nowhere, and he'd end up ditching it. I mean, that wouldn't be all bad. Even if we just started the project, we could still do enough work for an article or two. It wouldn't be a wash. I'm just hesitant about getting my hopes up. Not sure what I'm going to do yet.
But here's a keeper for you: Early in the week, I turned in a memo on my dissertation that E. had asked for. He took it from me and said: "I'm going to go poo and read this." That, folks, is the definition of *classy.*
Last week was the first week of classes, not that I have any classes or anything. On the whole, it was good stuff. I got some work done, and in particular, I started building my data sets. My "data sets" basically consist of county-level census data for Illinois, Missouri, Georgia, Louisiana, New York, and Massachusetts for 1840-1870. I'm tracking things like population, agriculture, and industrialization. The first one is easy. The latter two are harder. I have to make some choices about how I'm going to operationalize those ideas (number of people employed? capital invested? acres of farmland? number of industries?). Richard Bensel does some work on this, so I'm going to see how *he* did it and build from that. I also need to find some information on dates of infrastucture projects in those states, particularly turnpikes and canals. Maps of those other projects, and the sources of their funding, will also be necessary. Really, my dissertation seems more like a series of annoying errands than anything else at this point.
The most fun part of this is that historical census data is *not* electronically stored. This means that I photocopied a shitload of census data, and put it all in binders. Now I spend my days hunched over my desk, headphones jammed in my years, entering data into Excel spreadsheets. Also, history sucks. First, counties change over time - new ones are created, old ones merged together. Second, the ordering of these counties are not always the same (example: in some years, all the parishes that are St. Whatever in Lousiana come at the beginning of the "s"'s; in other years, they are at the end). This means more heavy lifting in getting my data set started. It also means that I have to locate county maps for each state for each releavant decade, rather than just using a single map (geographic analysis is a heavy part of my dissertation). These are not particulalry *huge* problems. They just sort of *are.* Such is the joy of academia. The one nice thing is that working on my data set feels *productive.* I like that.
In other banal news, E. is trying to sell me on a book idea. He wants to write the book, but "doesn't want to do it alone." Basically, he's trying to recruit me. This would be, his words, "a way second concern for me", with my dissertation coming first. It's tempting. To have a second book, even co-authored, in progress while on the market would be nice, and wouldn't hurt my eventual tenure proceedings. It would also be on a totally different topic than the diss., which is another big plus when you're on the market. On the other hand, it would be a time suck from the dissertation. More importantly, while I love E. - he's kind of flaky. I'm afraid we'd start this, and it would go nowhere, and he'd end up ditching it. I mean, that wouldn't be all bad. Even if we just started the project, we could still do enough work for an article or two. It wouldn't be a wash. I'm just hesitant about getting my hopes up. Not sure what I'm going to do yet.
But here's a keeper for you: Early in the week, I turned in a memo on my dissertation that E. had asked for. He took it from me and said: "I'm going to go poo and read this." That, folks, is the definition of *classy.*
VIEW 4 of 4 COMMENTS
I've got nothing to add on monthlies. I miss getting Muscle & Fitness and Saveur, but I'm not sure that's what you're looking for.