here's how prelims work

For those who are curious, here's how our prelim exams work. At the end of coursework (two years for most people) you declare three areas of specialization: a primary teaching field and two supporting fields. Mine are 20th. c. American lit, 20th c. Southern lit and culture, and "Religion, Literature, and Modern Culture" (I put that one in quotes because my advisor and I changed the title about twenty times before settling on that one). Then you make three lists, one for each field, which are approved by the committee. Spend about a year reading the list, then take the exam.

The written exam happens on one day--it's four hours long in a little room with only your list, a dictionary, and a computer. The exams vary tremendously; mine consisted of four one-hour essays. Officially, you turn in a diss proposal on the same day as the written exam, but my advisor wanted my proposal earlier. A week after the written comes the oral, which is two hours long. First hour is about the written exam and the reading list, second hour is a discussion of the diss proposal.

Boring post, but since I'm writing about my exams so much, and since Academom asked, I thought I'd offer a description.

P.S. Every time I title
a
post with all lower case let
ters, I like to imagine I am
e.
e.
cummings. It
brings me a small moment of
joy.
I have almost shared
that with you
many times.
Glad to
get it off
my
chest
now
.

one more prelim tip

(this post is for you, M.)

A friend asked me about studying for prelims and sharing my methods for preparing, so I've been thinking about it after the written exam. One more thing that I think helped me was to outline critical conversations. Remembering secondary sources was much harder than remembering literary texts, so when I saw a significant exchange happening among my secondary sources I outlined that. For example, in my second list there were a lot of critical texts about how to define the South and the field of Southern literature, all working around the question of what constitutes Southern difference. I created a document that listed their names along with a couple of sentences about their views, focusing on the ways that they intersect with and respond to other critics. Really useful because I was able to easily remember and draw from my outline of the critical conversation and insert myself into it for an essay on the exam.

It's all about relationships. Remembering what one critic or theorist said or what happened in one literary text is much less important than making connections among them.

preliminary report on prelims

I got the phone call from the Advisor and the report was great! He said that my exam was "quite good" and had some specific compliments for me. I will share two because they may be useful for others.

The big strategy that paid off was that I focused the questions into something workable. All of my questions were very large, broad, big picture questions, and I was required to use so many primary texts and so many secondary texts from such and so lists to answer them. And I only had an hour for each essay. So I took the big fat big picture question, took a few introductory sentences to narrow it down (and justify the narrowing) and then wrote essays about the narrower topics. I was nervous initially because I was afraid that I might appear to be side stepping the question, but this strategy actually worked well because I explained why the narrower topic was important to the big picture (briefly) and then could actually say something substantial rather than broad generalizations.

The other strategy was actually suggested by a colleague who was going in to defend his dissertation at the same time. He advised me to mention texts or theorists that were related to the topic but that weren't necessarily essential to the answer--works I wanted to talk about but didn't have time to elaborate on. A little name dropping. Then that would demonstrate my breadth of knowledge while at the same time providing topics to discuss in the oral exam. The Advisor noticed that I did that and commented that it was great because, in fact, it provided plenty of material for my committee for the oral exam. Material that I provided, so I am already comfortable talking about it. (The key here is to drop names you WANT to talk about!)

As far as the experience of the exam--utterly dissatisfying. But a lot of people have expressed the same feelings about their exams. I was frustrated because I did not have enough time to write about some really important issues and texts. I spent too much time on the first question and had to short-change the last one (which is a guarantee that I'll be talking about it at the oral). I was shocked by the limitations of the test situation--as far as the opportunity to develop good essays in such a short time--even though I knew what I was getting into. But apparently, it all worked out well.

And a week from today I have the oral exam. I need a new ticker.

written exam is done

now I wait for a phone call from the Advisor.

I just don't know what to do with myself

(except to blog, of course)

Written exam is Tuesday. In toddler world, weekends don't count as work days, so really, I've got two days. What do I do with those days? No idea.

Counting down to prelims

Today I had the pre-exam meeting with the Advisor, and it was not what I had anticipated. He had not recieved questions from the other committee members yet, so he did not know for certain what would be on the exam. So he could not vaguely allude to questions, which, as I understood was the purpose of the meeting. But I did learn some things:

• There will likely be no identification questions on the exam. I have spent the last two days reviewing my books and listing potential ID questions, but those efforts have not been wasted because now I can probably recall some details that will in fact be useful in answering essay questions.
• The test will likely consist of four one-hour essays, some of which will be required questions and some of which will offer choices.
• A common mistake that people make is not giving specific examples in their essays. The work I have done preparing for IDs should help me to avoid that.
• I should not neglect the earlier twentieth century even though (because) my dissertation is on contemporary works.
• I should be prepared for questions that diverge from my diss topic. Wow. That really narrows it down.
• Questions should not be such that require me to address any specific work, but they will require me to address a specific number of works from the three lists.

So I feel okay about the whole thing, but not like I know any more than I did yesterday. Except no IDs. That is good news--such specific questions sometimes make me freeze up. I'm still not sure what to do about the poetry--I just can't fathom writing about poetry without the poem in front of me. But it looks like maybe I won't have to do that, and I enjoyed reading the poetry, anyway. How can anyone have an American literature reading list with no poetry on it?

I was trying to talk to my mother yesterday about the exam and she asked, "So did you actually read the books on your list?" Um...yes. What a wierd question. My family has no idea what I do. But they try.

Preparing for exams

My exams are in six weeks. I haven't finished reading yet, but I'm getting there. The paralysis that occured in conjunction with the dissertation proposal set me behind schedule. I got a good response from the Advisor on my last proposal draft, but it requires one more revision before the exams. I actually wrote a whole proposal without mentioning any primary texts. I'm that good. I knew that wouldn't fly, but I am reluctant to assign primary texts to my chapters yet--I'll get to that in another post.

All advice I have received about preparing for exams has included writing my own questions. Not necessarily answering them, but coming up with smart questions and listing works I might address in an answer. Good advice. But there are a few questions that I need to answer before I get into the exams--major concepts that I need to articulate, works that I need to connect explicitly, big ideas that I will need to have worked out so that I can answer other questions.

So here I am assigning myself essays. On the blog. Public accountability. My lists are 20th c. American lit, Southern lit and culture, and religion and modern culture.

I need to narrate a kind of history of the study of Southern literature, connected with the history of "Southern identity" (C. Vann Woodward), with a focus on what scholars in the field are doing now and how that is different from the idea of Southern literature when it began to be established as a field. What is The South? What is Southern literature? What do the Agrarians have to do with it anymore?

I've got a lot of theorists of religion and modern culture on my third list: Marx, Freud, Jung, Durkheim, Eliade, James, Girard, Nietzsche. I need to write an expository essay that addresses the major ideas of all of these guys and then finds connections and disagreements among them.

The poetry on my lists appear in chronological clumps: 1920s-30s, 1950s-60s, late 1970s. And somehow Rita Dove ends up in the 80s all by herself. They're actually clumped more by the dates of specific collections than by the author "schools" they are usually classified in. So some poets end up in a different "clump" that one might expect. Why the clumps? What features do the poems share? What are the differences between the clumps? Are poets responding to one another? What major formal changes are happening?

I need to write something about African American religion that mixes Christianity with African religion. That shows up a lot in my primary texts, and I've never done much more than recognize and acknowledge that it's there. I should write something about that--I'm fairly certain that such a question will be on my exam--and anything I write about that topic will be useful in my dissertation later. It's something I need to work out.

So, there. Four essays. My paying-the-bills job responsibilities will be over next week (as will the paycheck!) until July so I can devote myself fully to obsessing over exams.

Reading for exams

I just read a post from New Kid on dissertation process and found it helpful--one of my hopes for this blog (I seem to be doing this a lot lately--expressing what I hope to gain by blogging--wierd--I wonder why I'm doing that) was that I would find people who were blogging through their dissertation process and learn from them as I begin my dissertation. I like the idea of public accountability--I think I'll start posting progress, too. Here's an update: still did not write the dissertation proposal. I did write a good solid page along with an extended email to my currently absent advisor. Still, not a real proposal.

So to contribute to the blogging of Ph.D.-in-progress, here's what I have learned while studying for my prelim exams. Disclaimer: I have yet to take exams. Success of this method is not proven. I set a schedule for myself at the outset, allowing reasonable revision of that schedule, but not extreme deviance from the plan. I started out with this schedule: read four items per week. Very reasonable. Very bad way of scheduling. I fell behind and now have to read five to seven items per week to finish. At the semester break I revised my schedule into something that works much better. I have an accountability date set about every three weeks, at which I will have read X number of items. That allows for some weeks with slower progress without the guilt--guilt can be paralyzing! Also, the reality is that every item is not created equal, so when I have spent a few days on one particularly difficult or long piece, I can follow it the next week with a string of easy one-a-day pieces a meet my goal by the accountability date. I have my list posted on my wall in my office with a tally of my progress. This helps by creating a small amount of public accountability, but I have found that the most beneficial part has been that I can see my progress. Because I am not writing and producing completed pieces of scholarly writing at the rate I did in coursework, I feel often as if I am accomplishing nothing. When that hits me, I tally up the books on the list and have a tangible sense of progress. I have factored into my schedule time to work on an article I want to submit for publication and, more importantly, time to work on my diss proposal. This is where things aren't working--the diss proposal is not happening. That's another post.

This method has worked to keep me on task and on schedule as far as how many items I have read. My method of reading and note-taking is a different story. I don't so much have one (but I often pretend I do when important people ask me about it). More on that later, too.

Any comments about reading for prelim exams would be appreciated. I'm not ready for comments about diss proposal. I'm too depressed about it today.