Up by My Bootstraps

Heh. Well, I said I would try and get the post count up, and guess what? I failed miserably. Nearly four months gone by and nothing posted on the old blog. But I think it's about time to get things moving again, since things seem to be moving in my actual life (yes, I have one).

First, thanks to all for the comments expressing concern on the lack of activity. It's somewhat reassuring that I do actually have something approaching a readership, though I'm not sure I still do after neglecting the ol' blog so thoroughly. It's been two things, really - being very busy with work and polishing up the dissertation project, and also a general ill-defined sort of ennui, a feeling that life as a graduate student and in NYC is not quite so shiny and sparkly as once it was. Sort of like second-year syndrome, if you see what I mean, only happening in the third year.

All of which is not to say that I'm not enjoying life here, rather that I have been somewhat less motivated to write of late. I don't know quite when Google decides to delete blogs for lack of activity, but I think I must have come pretty close...

So the main thing is that the blog will be coming full circle, as it were - I'm off back to Japan to do my dissertation research at Waseda University from the end of September of this year. A couple of weeks ago, I learned that I managed to get a Japan Foundation grant to cover fourteen months' research in Tokyo, which was tremendous news (though not for my academic work that week; I got nothing done because I was drinking every night in celebration). To explain why it was such good news, consider that I was going to be heading to Japan on the Mombusho fellowship (as described in previous posts). Nothing wrong with that, of course, but the Japan Foundation is almost double the monthly stipend while I'm in Japan, and for obvious reasons this makes a huge difference. Be able to travel, pay for Kate to come out to visit, and so on and so on. There are some things money can't buy; for everything else, there's Japan Foundation.

Not just the money, either - it's a prestigious grant and not at all easy to get. Checking the records over the last few years, it's rare for there to be more than one awarded for the whole UK, so I guess they must have liked my project (or maybe it was that 100,000 yen I slipped into the envelope..;-)). Trebles all round!

There is one major hurdle first, though - my qualifying exams. September 12th, 2-4 p.m. I have to pass to proceed to the second part of the program and fulfill all of the PhD requirements apart from the dissertation, progressing to a state known as ABD (All But Dissertation), from where one can start to seriously look for jobs. More normally referred to as 'orals', this involves answering questions from a panel of four professors for two hours or so on literally everything covered so far in my time at Columbia - for me, that's four subjects, namely pre-modern Lit, Meiji and Taisho lit, Showa lit and Meiji history. An intimidating prospect, as you can imagine. I'm going to have to work my butt off this summer. It would be rather embarrassing to have gotten a Japan Foundation and then fail my orals...