Lunch break

Dude! Where did that week go? (I guess the best answer would be "trapped in the library basement".)

My brain's not quite functioning in English right now, and so you get some fragmentary observations about the sort of research I'm doing right now:

a.) I'm super-pumped because I found a newspaper article from 1930 that compared a bird flu outbreak (in the city's parrot population) to the economic crisis that Berlin was experiencing. I'm going to talk about parrots in my dissertation! (Where aaare you Styleygeek?)

b.) Thanks to the research I'm doing, I'm well-versed in the German words for "shot," "hanged," "poisoned [usually by gas]," "murder," "jewel thief" and "suicide." Also, apparently every time there was a murder-suicide in Berlin, this particular newspaper would write an article entitled "A Family Tragedy." I have more than ten such articles now, and I've only covered about six months' worth of newspaper. Messed. Up.

Okay. I've finished eating my hamburger and it's time to return to the dungeon. Maybe I'll go for a little walk first, since it's so nice and sunny outside now.

Another funding agency looks fat in those pants

I just heard back from [German funding agency]. And...it's a no. I made it to the last round (which is always nicer than being filtered out at the beginning), but today I got the "we regret..." email.

I'm weirdly okay with all this. So, this means I'm not gone for Christmas (if I'm going on my own dime and we can't afford to fly out Chris for the holidays, there's no way I'm spending Christmas on my own in another country). I'm only going to go for two months, and order microfilm of all the newspapers I need to use. This also means that I no longer need to apply for a visa. And I just did the numbers and figured out that, if I go and get a bank student loan (which I needed to do anyway), I can afford this trip and still have available money to fill in the gaps now that I'm a fifth year student and no longer get scholarship money from the university.

And that gigantic, insane application was not a waste: it forced me to improve my German skills, make contacts in Germany (who I will still visit, even if I no longer have to), and helped me to make sense of my research project.

So, I'm weirdly relieved right now. And have now started making active plans for my research trip. At least my life isn't on hold any more.

(The title is taken from the always-wonderful LynnieC, who decided to make me feel better about losing [Shirk-alike] by insulting the funding agency Mean Girls-style.)

Celebratory ice cream sandwiches

At 3:00 this afternoon, I mailed 114 pages of funding application off to the UN Building in jo(e)'s Big City Like No Other. I cut it really close, considering the fact that it had to be postmarked today, and considering the fact that I didn't get the last recommendation until 2:46pm. And considering the fact that until this morning we hadn't heard back from the Doktorvater since he originally offered to be my Doktorvater, and we needed a faxed or emailed-as-pdf letter of invitation from him.

But it all worked out. That was the most perfect application I could send out, and now it's out of my hands. I've been actively preparing for this day for a solid year, and dreading it for longer, and now it's over. Well, except hopefully they give me money.

And now I won't do any more work for this whole long weekend. (Except for housework, as tomorrow is Let's Make the House Perfect Day.) In honour of Queen Victoria's birthday, I'll spend the long weekend read Jasper Fforde's The Eyre Affair. And eating ice cream sandwiches.

I'd better get money out of this

Everything ridiculous about this application I'm working on,* presented in bullet form:

• On Friday, I'm going to have to courier a 116 page application package to NYC. (They want everything in quadruplicate.)
• The main webpage's instructions include the instructions to ignore the instructions provided on the last page of the pdf application, and then a link to the instructions I'm actually supposed to follow. Exactly.
  
• There is also a spot on the pdf application where I'm supposed to affix my photo, with lots of instructions about exactly how I should affix this photo. But, if you look at the real instructions (provided in the link), you find out that North Americans are not supposed to include a photo.
  
• I just filled out a detailed online application, each field of which had a specific maximum number of allowed characters. You only get to see the final pdf that is created after you finalise the application and click "Send." It turns out that some of the online fields are too long for the pdf form, and so my application says I was awarded my MA on "23 Novemb" with no year, and there's no way to change it. It's a good thing they also have my full online application on file and will have all my transcripts in quadruplicate.
  
• So, I have to print off a six-page pdf application form that's generated after I fill out the online application. This pdf has a solid green background on every single page. That's going to use up most of my printer's wee little colour cartridge.
• They required my high school final average (but no high school transcripts, thankfully). It's a really good thing I keep things like that.

If I win this funding, it will all be worth it. (If I don't, I will be pointing back to all the complaints listed here.)

* I think they're a wonderful organization that does so much good for my field. They just also have confusing amounts of red tape and need some employees to manage their online presence better. And after I've dealt with the much-more streamlined Canadian system (it's still strange to say that), I notice it a lot.

Relief

The German professor was much, much more lenient with me than I could have ever expected.

We sat down and had a conversation in German about what I study and what I'm going to do in Germany. He started off with easy stuff (asking me my name and such) and then gradually worked toward more complicated conversation, repeating or explaining himself whenever I didn't quite know what he meant. And I didn't do perfectly, sometimes garbling my sentence structure or forgetting words, but I managed to answer his questions.

And then, when he got to the form, where he had to evaluate me on a scale of "a" (fluent) to "e" (extreme difficulty understanding anything), I was inwardly praying "Please don't give me any 'e's. I'd be happy with 'd'." And he gave me "c" on both understanding and speaking (that means I can handle more than just basic sentences!) and then when he got to the writing and reading part he said, "You took the reading course? Well that means you'd have an easier time with reading than with speaking. And do you find that it's easier to write than to speak?" I confirmed that I had an easier time writing, because then I had a chance to stop and think of case endings and word choice. And so he gave me "b" on both of those. Which is huge. He just told them I'm a step below fluency, on both writing and reading (which are the important ones, when you're researching). I don't think I deserve it, but that's going to be really helpful for my application.

(And then he recommended that they pay for me to get a couple months of a German course once I'm in Berlin! He said that it won't hinder my application any, and would make my transition to Germany easier. That would be very helpful.)

That means I just might have a solid application to send. I'm going to start breathing again.

Trying to stay calm

At 1:30 this afternoon, I will sit down with a member of the German department and he will fill out a German language proficiency evaluation for me. We'll sit down for half an hour and he'll evaluate my level of German proficiency; that will help determine whether I win this much-needed travel funding.

I've been cramming for this for months, and all I'm hoping is that he won't check any of the boxes on the form that say "Has extreme difficulty [understanding simple sentences/writing a simple sentence/making any sense speaking German/reading simple sentences]." If I can get to the level above that, I'll feel pretty good. (I know that one year of Rosetta stone, a few months getting tutoring, and a single German reading course do not make you fluent. I just want some of my effort to be reflected on this form, and I'm worried that my level of German skills will keep me from getting funding.)

So, could you think of me at about 1:30 this afternoon? I'm just trying to stay calm so that I can do the best I can. (And then after this, my life will be much easier for a while. This application has taken over my life!)

This is my brain on funding application

Whoops! I went for a very long time without posting here. I have an important funding application due in a week (I really hope I get this one, because it would pay for my flights and expenses for my entire research trip to Germany), and it has taken over my brain.

This is much more work than the [Shirk-alike] applications. Yes, for [Shirk] I had to go to tons of meetings, fine-tune a Program of Study and track down recommendation letters. But [major German organization] wants me to have all that, plus an official invitation from a German university,* a whole bunch more documents (including my high school grades!), and also a German language proficiency test. And then I have to mail this huge application across the continent, along with three photocopies of everything. And the instructions are confusing and sometimes contradictory.

And you have to do their online application in one sitting!

So, I've been dreaming in German and longing for the simplicity of Canadian bureaucracy. There's something troubling about that.

(And now I'd better spend at least another hour working on German before Chris gets home!)

* But at least, after a full year of trying to track down a German Doktorvater, I have an invitation from a German university! Dr. Supervisor is a miracle worker. Yesterday I sent him an email, worrying because we hadn't found anyone, and today he found someone who will fax me an invitation on his university's letterhead. This means I'll have a stronger chance of winning funding!

Not living up to my name very well

It's going to shock you when I tell you that I haven't been posting because I've been too busy doing actual work. Like, making actual progress on things that I've put off for a long time. (This post runs long, but it's full of news, and so those who know me might want to hang on and keep reading.)

I know: it's stunning. I'll give you a moment to collect yourselves.

I was getting really stressed out because I had planned on applying for a Big Fancy Travel Fellowship by the end of June, which meant that by the end of June I would have had to:
a.) have found a Doktorvater (essentially a supervisor) in Germany
b.) have become fluent in German, or some good-enough equivalent.

Unfortunately, I had made these plans when I thought I'd be done my comps by the end of January. And all of these plans hinged on me being able to go to Germany by next January, which gave me a single semester (plus whatever I could get done while in Saskatchewan this summer) to do, uh, all of my dissertation research. Absolutely everything, so that I could go to Germany and plug whatever holes were left by my secondary sources and cultural sources (my novels, movies, artworks...).

So, for the month of May I mistakenly thought that the reason why I felt so freaked out and frozen by my plans was because I had problems with anxiety. Finally this week I sat down and tried to plan everything out and realised: I'm not frozen by anxiety problems; I'm anxious because I've given myself an impossible task.

And so I started re-adjusting my plans. First, I found out that I really ought to be applying to Big Fancy Travel Fellowship in November instead of this summer (the foundation added a bunch of new deadlines for short-term travel fellowships since the last time I'd checked their site). If I applied now, I'd have to use the funding by next winter. If I wait to apply in November, I could wait until the following autumn to go to Germany.

It's official: my big trip has now been postponed from January to September 2009.

After I made that decision, I realised that if I didn't start preparing for the Big Fellowship right now, summer would disappear and it would be September and I'd be freaking out saying, "I only have a month to learn German and find a Doktorvater!" (Again.) I had to be proactive this time. This meant that I needed to find something that would force me to immerse myself in German learning right now (and I don't have time to take a German course by November, since I'll be in Saskatchewan in July and August). And so I bought a 12-month subscription to Rosetta Stone. That way, it was cheaper than buying the CD-ROM collection, and would force me to get to work right away, so that I could get my money's worth.

Seriously? Rosetta Stone is the best thing ever. I love it so much. It works like my brain does, which means that I want to work on my German every day. I finished an entire unit this week, because I was having so much fun. I remember words and grammar without trying to memorize them. And, since it has speech recognition, I get feedback that tells me when I'm saying things wrong.

So, that's where I've been this week: feverishly working away at everything that I've been avoiding for a month. Suddenly, I'm making progress on my language learning, and I have a solid plan for how I can get my dissertation done in a timely fashion. And I'm actually enjoying myself.

What? First I start running and now I'm not procrastinating?

The trade-off

Pro: Unlike many of my colleagues, my research (while the specific work I do is not entirely "cool") falls within a field that is exciting to a broad, non-specialist audience. When I gave a guest lecture recently, I had to leave quite a bit of time for questions because my students were so excited to find out more. I get strangers in coffee shops overhearing my conversations about my research and asking me to tell them more about my field.

Con: I research in a field where not only do people care about the history, but where everyone has a strong opinion. Or a conspiracy theory. And where there are acres and acres of films, documentaries, books and websites, many of which perpetuate dangerous misconceptions. This morning I was getting up to leave a coffee shop with a friend of mine -- who is a Canadian historian -- when the men at the next table asked me questions about a.) whether Hitler was attempting to assassinate the Pope, and b.) whether Hitler was trying to re-write the Bible. They then informed me, in a matter-of-fact manner, that Hitler's erratic behaviour in his last several years was because of syphilis.

Pro: I work in a field that gives me so many teachable moments, with general people on the street.

I am a jelly doughnut

I was just sitting on the couch, sipping tea, watching the late afternoon sun filter through the window, and thinking about how much I love this city:

I was also trying to figure out how it was that I became a Berlin specialist. While I remember the moment when I decided to become a Germanist, I don't even remember deciding to focus on the Weimar Republic; I really don't remember making Berlin my main focus. It just happened. When I first visited Berlin (four years ago!) I was much more taken with Paris. But somehow Berlin is the one that has taken over my brain. I feel possessive of the city. I felt glad when the Sartorialist declared his love for the city, and got my hackles up when a few commenters expressed a dislike for Berlin.

You know, I still find it all a little odd. (Of course, I also think it's odd that I have an MA. Also, sometimes it strikes me as surprising that I'm married.)