In search of completeness

Sometimes, ladies and gentlemen, I break the internet.  Google tries its best to suggest what it thinks I really mean, but sometimes it stares back at me blankly as if to say, "Seriously, wtf are you even saying to me?"  This was part of finishing off the tedious process of verifying the words in a glossary Tennyson made in one of his notebooks, then checking a concordance to find out whether he used these words in his poetry.  It's but one example of some ways I've pursued my research over the past four years that were extremely time-consuming and probably unnecessary.  But I wanted to be thorough.

I could credit/blame my engineer father for this fastidiousness, but it also comes from a base level of suspicion I have for how a lot of literary critics go about making their claims.  All too often, they seem to "prove" their points with a representative example or two, and we more or less take their word for it that a general pattern is being described.  For my PhD, I didn't want to operate off my own personal impression of In Memoriam's alliteration.  So I made descriptive categories and I counted them.  It took weeks and some outside assistance manipulating Excel to form graphs.  GRAPHS.  In an ENGLISH dissertation.  Was I insane?  All this for maybe a page of discussion.  Definitely insane.  But as my friend Ian said the other day, the degree must be partly about proving you've done enough work.  That, at least, should not be an issue.

My new workspace

The title of this post has another meaning, too.  I'm ready for this PhD to be done.  It's good to feel so familiar with a topic, but I find it hard to look at it anymore.  It's time to move on to something new and full of potential.  And, let's face it, there are days when I'd really like to go home.  I'd like to sleep in my own bed, spend the morning tidying up, the afternoon sewing at my parent's house, and the evening seeing a double feature at the Stanford Theatre.  But for all its stress, my daily pattern is relatively pleasant -- and I've just moved into a cozy room in a real house, right by the river in a very peaceful neighborhood.  Onward!