Posts Tagged ‘dissertation’

Gestärkt.

Tuesday, October 25th, 2011

Zum Monatswechsel ist meine Zeit an der Universität Hamburg abgelaufen. Zeitverträge sind besser als gar keine Verträge, aber sie bieten keinerlei Sicherheit, keinen Halt in Zeiten unsicherer Zukunftsaussichten am akademischen Arbeitsmarkt. Wenn einem der Arbeitsmarkt keinen Halt bietet und das Leben deshalb auch keinen festen Ort findet, ist es um so wichtiger, auf andere Weise den sonst bald arg gebeugten Rücken gestärkt zu bekommen. Sonst wird man irgendwann so krumm, dass man sich gar nicht mehr aufrichten und anderen in die Augen blicken kann.

Glücklicherweise hat sich diesen Monat bei zwei Gelegenheiten gezeigt, dass das Wagnis meiner Dissertation bzw. der dazugehörigen Buchveröffentlichung sich gelohnt hat. Sowohl auf der 3. Tagung des Atmosphärennetzwerks in München als auch auf der Konferenz Materialitäten in Mainz bin ich jeweils von mehreren Leuten angesprochen worden, die mein Buch gelesen haben und denen es sehr gut gefallen hat. Das ist ein fantastisches Erlebnis und gibt einem Mut. Ich interpretiere diese Rückmeldung so, dass es sich lohnt, offen zu sein, Risiken beim Schreiben einzugehen und sich nicht vorschnell vermeintlichen Standards des wissenschaftlichen Arbeitens und Schreibens unterzuordnen, sondern in jedem Fall auf’s Neue zu entscheiden, was man wie ausdrücken kann und will – und auch mögliche Schwächen des eigenen Arbeitens einzuräumen. Das mag einem nicht unbedingt sofort Anerkennung und einen Job verschaffen, beim Peer Review habe ich damit auch noch keine guten Erfahrungen gemacht, aber es ist besser, richtiger und vermutlich auch wahrer.

In gewisser Weise habe ich die Arbeit von Anfang an aus meiner Perspektive bzw. aus Perspektive meiner Generation geschrieben – nämlich aus einer deutlich spürbaren Unzufriedenheit mit der wenig selbstkritischen und sich dabei um so wissenschaftlicher gerierenden etablierten Sozialforschung in Deutschland. Ich hatte dabei wichtige Mitstreiter im Graduiertenkolleg und einen für Experimente offenen Doktorvater, ohne die ich den Mut für die Arbeit, wie sie jetzt steht, nicht aufgebracht hätte. Das hilft aber alles wenig, wenn die Arbeit erst einmal vom Tisch, der Titel verteidigt und die Postdocstelle ausgelaufen ist.

Dann wird es um so wichtiger, wenn einem Andere mit ihrem Lob den Rücken stärken. Das waren zuerst die anderen Jungen und das sind auch immer noch und vor allem: Doktorandinnen, Masterstudenten, frischgebackene Doktorinnen. Für sie und mich habe ich diese Arbeit geschrieben. Ihre positive Rückmeldung ist mir am wichtigsten. Allerdings kann ich nicht verhehlen, dass es in einer derart prekären Lage auch wichtig wird, die frohe Kunde darüber hinaus von Leuten mit grauen Schläfen und eigenen Büros zu hören – das ist auf den vergangenen beiden Tagungen eigentlich das erste Mal passiert und das gibt mir Hoffnung, dass sich die Arbeit an den Wurzeln auch langsam in den mehr oder weniger welken alten Ästen und Baumkronen bemerkbar macht.

Mal schauen, wie es weiter geht. Bis dahin möchte ich mich in voller Ernsthaftigkeit bei allen bedanken, die mir Lob ausgesprochen und mir so Mut gemacht haben – ohne das würde ich nicht so weitermachen können. Danke.

Merlot Ponty.

Sunday, May 2nd, 2010

When this search turned up in my log it made me hesitate for a moment. Then it provided for some extended entertainment.

And it is a lot better than the pretty frequent searches for keyword combinations that include both despair and dissertation

Wie schreibe ich meine Dissertation?

Thursday, January 11th, 2007

Da ich in meiner neuen Position als Postdoktorand am Graduiertenkolleg Topologie der Technik auch für die Betreuung und Beratung der neuen Doktoranden zuständig bin und da ich auch von ein paar anderen Leuten angefragt worden bin, habe ich in den letzten Wochen einen Teil meiner freie Zeit dafür genutzt, ein Mischwesen aus Erfahrungsbericht und Ratgeber zusammenzustellen. Gestern bin ich damit fertig geworden: Dissertation schreiben – Anregungen und Erfahrungen. Für Anmerkungen und Korrekturen bin ich sehr dankbar.

Dissertation is done & defended.

Saturday, December 2nd, 2006

wine and pretzel leftoversI guess the last entries displayed the change in lifestyle that occurred in the last week: I am finally done with the dissertation! This has generated more than a few sighs of relaxation.
The defense (or disputatio) of my dissertation has been tougher than I expected. After talking about my thesis in a thirty minute presentation – in which I did not use any fancy multimedia things at all – I was probed and questioned for one looong hour. The fact that I knew all of the professors on the committee did not make their questions less inquisitive and difficult. Just to point out the degree of concentration that was necessary to work my way through this trial: I had a full glass of water standing next to me, two times during the 90 minutes I thought about taking a sip, but it doing so would have distracted me too much. I did not drink anything from this glass… However, now it is over. And it went very well enough: magna cum laude. Afterwards we had sparkling wine and pretzels; the leftovers are displayed on the photo.
Even though we celebrated the successful finishing of my dissertation it has only been during the last few days that I started to realize that I am actually done. My deeply felt thanks go to all those who supported me during the last three and a half years – both intellectually, personally, and financially: Ihr wißt, wenn Ihr gemeint seid: Dankeschön!

Die letzte Prüfung.

Saturday, November 18th, 2006

Donnerstag nächste Woche wird die letzte benotete Prüfung meines Lebens stattfinden. (Ich glaube jedenfalls, dass nach Abschluss der Doktorarbeit keine weitere Prüfung kommt, bei der man benotet wird.) Spannend ist es aber auch ganz unabhängig davon ob es die letzte Prüfung ist – wie man sich leicht vorstellen kann. Das Promotionsverfahren ist mit der Prüfung, der sogenannten Disputation, abgeschlossen und die Note steht fest. Bevor ich aber den Doktortitel führen darf, muss die Arbeit veröffentlicht werden. Da ich die Arbeit als Buch über einen guten Verlag veröffentlichen will, wird sich das noch etwas hinziehen – mit etwas Glück ist es in sechs bis zwölf Monaten so weit…
Doch vorher will noch am Vortrag gefeilt werden. Die Disputation findet am kommenden Donnerstag um 16 Uhr im Residenzschloß in Darmstadt statt und ist öffentlich. Nach dem zwanzig- bis dreißigminütigen Vortrag folgt eine Diskussion von ungefähr einer halben bis einer Stunde. Meine GutachterInnen sind Prof. Dr. Helmuth Berking und Prof. Dr. Martina Löw (beide Soziologie). Die PrüferInnen sind Prof. Dr. Petra Gehring (Philosophie) und Prof. Dr. Dieter Schott (Geschichte). Danach ist dann alles vorbei. Und das wird begossen!

Now printing: page 1369.

Friday, September 22nd, 2006

Exhaustion. Luckily, the laser printer is still doing solid work, jutting out one page after the other. 6 times 308 pages. I did not get a lot of sleep last night. And I have some difficulties focussing on things that are more than a few meters away. I guess everything will be fine. Tomorrow I will drop the dissertations on their table…

The last line.

Wednesday, September 13th, 2006

Last night I finally reached it! Time to take a deep breath and then plunge into the text again… Moving, changing, editing, cutting, adding – this is what will keep me occupied for another week.

The space of a dissertation.

Sunday, September 10th, 2006

thumbnail image of my wordprocessor's windowSince I am writing about the production of space right now, and since I neglect abstract or representational space in my dissertation a bit, I want to offer at least to you, dear readers, a small insight into the space in which I myself produce knowledge and abstractions. On the image here you can see what my workspace looks like. (You can click on it to open or download it at full size.) Actually, I still enjoy this environment and I am very thankful to the Redlers for producing such an excellent piece of software. Not a single crash, and that with more than 140 images.

The final frontier.

Tuesday, September 5th, 2006

Well, today I have finished the last empirical section of my dissertation. Only the conclusionary chapter remains to be written – it consists of probably eight sections and, as usual, each section should take me a day to write. This means I should reach the last page sometime next week. Whew. And then: correction, shifting, adding, cutting and so on and so forth. I am now on page 249 with more than 140 images embedded in the text. Must sleep now.

News from typing-land.

Friday, August 18th, 2006

Yesterday, I completed the second of the three analytic chapters which make up the bulk of my dissertation. That is excellent news for me, especially since it means that work is proceeding according to plan. Which – surprise, surprise – is not the plan that I developed more than one and a half months ago. The good news is that the new plan (from two weeks ago) put me beyond mere page mongering and switched my writing mode to content mongering. That means that my daily dose of writing now consists of sections defined by their content.
One section per day. Twenty sections to go. One section has between one and ten pages. (I crossed the 150 page threshold yesterday.)
I have to hand in my dissertation September 22nd. The calculation is up to you. However, do not forget that I still have to give presentations in Lausanne and London this month. ;) Yes, time’s tight. But not too tight, I think. Please bear with me for the remaining five weeks…

What should I bore you with?

Friday, August 4th, 2006

These days my life consists of getting up, checking the online world, eating breakfast, writing, drinking lots of water, puzzling together still images cut out of my video recordings, having a small snack in the afternoon, writing or doing more Photoshop work, having another snack, perhaps playing a game of Bohnanza with Kerstin and Olli, and either more writing or some idling around until bedtime comes. Not that interesting. I guess that’s what routine is about. At least it brought me over the totally irrelevant but somehow symbolic 100 pages mark today.

Sight of land or overtaking the thesis.

Tuesday, July 25th, 2006

Good news, I guess. In the course of the last few days I was able to wrap up the chapters in which I introduce the term envelopment (Einhüllung). Because of the seething heat I lost track of my work for a few days, first bathing in the North Sea, then staring at the screen without seeing anything. Either frustration with lack of progress or adaptation to the heat finally set in and pushed me forward again, so that now – for the first time – I feel that I have completed a significant part of my dissertation. It is now quite a bit longer than my diploma thesis. There is land at the other side of the sea of words. Ahoy!

Roasting.

Friday, July 21st, 2006

Is it better to sit indoors with blankets in front of your windows, stuffy air, and temperatures of about 29° Celsius or would you prefer to have open windows, perhaps a hint of air movement every 30 minutes, and temperatures of about 35° Celsius?
This kind of question kept revolving crawling around in my head today. I tried to drown these questions in about five liters of tap water. Without success. Even sprinkling some lime juice into the water did not help.
Now it is almost midnight and my brain still feels like the embodiment of sloth.
I tried to stick to the editing and insertion of images when working on my dissertation today. What I succeeded in sticking to is my chair. If only dissertating would be as easy as transpirating…

The summer of dissertation writing.

Sunday, June 25th, 2006

There was a lot of work to do during the last four months: finishing the editing process of Lars Meier’s and my upcoming book, preparing presentations for three international conferences and one guest lecture, traveling to the places where the conferences were held and actually giving the presentations, feeling tired after getting back from the conferences and taking a few days to get back into working mode, writing a few applications, and, last but not least, dealing with social welworkfare institutions and our extremely bothersome landlord in Berlin. In all of this time, day after day, I knew that I also have to work on my dissertation, that my dissertation is the one thing that really and importantly must be finished as soon as possible. However, I did not write a single page.
This Summer was my answer to people asking me about when I think I will be finished. Now, summer has officially begun. As has work on my dissertation. During the last three days I typed 2.5 pages per day (line spacing is 1.2) and I intend to keep this speed for the next weeks. If this works out and I take a day off now and then I would be finished sometime in August, I guess. Well, it is not as easy as that, sadly. There will be the concluding ceremony of our post-graduate college in Darmstadt next month – for which I want to prepare a short movie – there will be a christening which I am going to attend, there will be the Gartenfest in August which will take a week and, at the end of August, two more conferences await. Summer ends in September. I think even with these foreseeable delays my dissertation will also be done before the end of summer. To be able to achieve this I will have to cut back on communication and socializing – for which I want to beg your pardon in advance. Keep your fingers crossed for me and we’ll have a very happy Lars sometime in September who will invite you to some major festivities!

Röchelruf und Münchnerbierherz.

Friday, September 9th, 2005

Worte wie diese sind die Freuden des Alltags auch wenn man fern der Heimat sitzt und den größten Teil des Tages auf den Bildschirm starrt. Und das obwohl hier in Kopenhagen glänzendes Wetter ist und es an Verlockungen für andere Tätigkeiten nicht mangelt…
Ansonsten habe ich erfreulicherweise heute das erste richtige Kapitel meiner Dissertation fertig stellen können (die Einbettungen) – die Öffnungszeiten in der Kongeligen Bibliotek erlauben auch Spätstartern wie mir noch einen produktiven Arbeitstag. Internet gibts da auch, allerdings nur über Port 80, so dass ich keinen Zugriff auf den Server der Zedat habe. Abends ist meine Bildschirmkondition dann so schlapp, dass ich es kaum auf die Reihe bekomme, noch einen Eintrag ins Blog zu befördern. Vielleicht hilft Routine vor Ort – zwei Wochen bin ich ja noch hier. Mal schauen, wie weit ich meinen arg ins Hintertreffen geratenen Zeitplan wieder einholgen kann…

Nature, Norway & no news.

Thursday, June 30th, 2005

I am sorry to tell you that for the next two weeks I probably won’t be able to post entries to this blog. I will leave Oslo for Kristiansand tomorrow. Starting there, the Bornholdt familiy and yours truly will travel up the west coast of Norway for the next two weeks. I am looking forward to do some hiking, having good food, playing board and card games, reading novels, and working a tiny bit on my dissertation. And all of this offline. :)

Zweiter Zwischenbericht.

Saturday, April 2nd, 2005

Nachdem ich im vergangenen Monat meinen zweiten Zwischenbericht inklusive Verlängerungsantrag für das letzte Förderungsjahr beim Kolleg eingereicht habe und selbiger Antrag am 24. März auch bewilligt wurde kann ich den Antrag jetzt im Internet veröffentlichen: Dissertation ‚Einhüllende Normalitäten‘ – Zweiter Zwischenbericht. Rückmeldung ist wie immer willkommen.

Dissertation take-off!

Sunday, February 27th, 2005

I am still dazzled, nervous, and adrenalin-hyped. I just finished the outline for my dissertation. This outline (done with the incredibly useful and well-designed OmniOutliner Professional) contains not only headlines for chapters, it also contains the respective chapters’ basic structure, and ideas, and hints regarding what I will actually write. This would be enough to generate a surge of adrenalin, however, this outline also contains page numbers, giving the best estimate possible at this point in time on how many pages each section of the text will have. Currently, the total is at 186 pages. I guess it is more likely to become longer than shorter. This is not all yet. One more piece of information has been entered by yours truly into this outline: the dates on which the respective sections have to be finished.
Whew. I am still stunned. After some tweaking, I have set the final page to be completed on the 26th of March 2006, leaving me with three weeks to do layout and corrections before my scholarship will end in the middle of April. The time table acknowledges things like trips, holidays, upcoming conferences, seminars etc. as far as it is possible to do this now. I have to write about 3 to 7 pages per week of writing. I would like to finish one or two weeks earlier though. The best chance of overtaking this time table – thereby making the final phase of writing my dissertation less stressful – is to be more productive in the next two or three months, so hold your thumbs for me.

*takes a deep breath*

Getting back into gear.

Thursday, May 27th, 2004

Now that I did my presentations at the college, graded last semester’s papers, and finished the hopefully-to-be-published conversation analysis article I can hopefully can fully re-engage with the actual work on my dissertation. Today I read some more Garfinkel. Referring to my short essay Am I an Ethnomethodologist, you can see that I haven’t read Garfinkel’s Studies in Ethnomethodology at that point in time – this was one of the theoretical gaps that I definitely wanted to close before I start to write my dissertation. Well, I am happy about having made that decision. It is quite an inspiring, if sometimes cumbersome read. Here’s a small citation:

To treat instructions as though ad hoc features in their use were a nuisance, or to treat their presence as grounds for complaint about the incompleteness of instructions, is very much like complaining that if the walls of a building were only gotten out of the way one could see better what was keeping the roof up.[Harold Garfinkel – Studies in Ethnomethodology (1967), p. 22]

Another favorite:

Although it may at first appear strange to do so, suppose we drop the assumption that in order to describe a usage as a feature of a community of understanding we must at the outset know what the substantive common understandings consist of. With it, drop the assumption’s accompanying theory of signs, according to which a sign and referent are respectively properties of something said and something talked about, and which in this fashion proposes sign and referent to be related as corresponding contents. By dropping such a theory of signs we drop as well, thereby, the possibility that an invoked shared agreement on substantive matters explains a usage.
If these notions are dropped, then what the parties talked about could not be distinguished from how the parties were speaking. An explanation of what the parties were talking about would then consist entirely of describing how the parties had been speaking…
[Harold Garfinkel – Studies in Ethnomethodology (1967), p. 28f]

And finally, if you have ever asked yourself what to study as a professional sociologist, here is Harold’s answer:

Not a method of understanding, but immensely various methods of understanding are the professional sociologist’s proper and and hitherto unstudied and critical phenomena.[Harold Garfinkel – Studies in Ethnomethodology (1967), p. 31]

It’s about technology, isn’t it?

Wednesday, November 12th, 2003

Many people would say that an institution that is concerned with technology and research should represent itself in a technologically adequate way. I agree. That is the explanation I like to present for what I did yesterday and the day before: changing the code of our post-graduate college’s website to be based on the current W3C standard and successor of HTML, XHTML version 1.1.

Another explanation would be: I want to avoid getting into my own project by doctoring around with other stuff…