Today’s #100DaysOfCode progress:

I completed all of the “Basic HTML and HTML5” challenges at freeCodeCamp.

I also read/watched the following:

• How I got my first developer job at age 40 after 10 months of hard work
• The tools and resources that landed me a front-end developer job
• Join the #100DaysOfCode
• How to Get a Developer Job in Less Than a Year
• 100 Days Of Code - The Rules #100DaysOfCode - YouTube
• Learning to Code: When It Gets Dark

I forked the 100 Days of Code repository to make my own 100 Days of Code Log.

I also set up a Dev page in Notion, with subpages to track goals, deadlines, schedules, a reading list, tools and resources, and notes about things I always forget. (Like how to do forms in HTML5. Because I’m very old-fashioned and not used to it being so straightforward.)

But Kimberly, why are you doing this now? Aren’t you getting a PhD in cosplay or something?

I’m getting a PhD in Library and Information Science. Knowing how to code has rarely made anyone’s life worse.

But one of the main reasons is that, though I’ve been developing websites for about 25 years, I have almost never made money off of it. Which is kind of ridiculous, when you think about who gets paid what for what. It occurred to me that perhaps my potentially lucrative hobby might be a thing that could make me money.

And why I’m doing it right now, is that yesterday I started watching the BeyondProf webinar, “3 Things You Should Do Now to Maintain Momentum in Your Job Search.” BeyondProf is always putting out great stuff and this is no exception. Maren got real about what higher ed might look like in terms of hiring in the near future. And sure, the likelihood of getting a tenure track has been tiny for years.

But until recently, alt-ac seemed like a very good option. A preferable option, even, in my case maybe.

And in this webinar, Maren confirmed what I began to suspect when I heard about hiring freezes at local institutions: that Plan B (or, again, in my case, probably Plan A) well is about to dry up. She talked about having to take odd jobs while you figure stuff out.

And I asked myself in what industry I could be content taking an entry-level position at age 40, with a PhD in LIS and 9 years of experience in education, aside from the cough number of years I’ve spent in grad school. (When I graduate, it will be 9. I will have spent half of my post-grad time in full-time work, and half of it in full-time school.)

The answer was immediately apparent: tech. The nice thing, too, about gaining web development skills is that it doesn’t actually chain you to the tech industry. Lots of library vendors, socially conscious businesses, and non-profits need web developers. And pay them better than they pay librarians. (I know money shouldn’t be a thing or whatever but I have a lot of loans and health care expenses and a 30+ year old house that needs maintaining, so. Also, hi there, we live in late stage capitalism, it means we need money to survive.)

Anyway.

My goal is to have all the skills needed to be a full stack developer by the time I graduate in May 2021, so that if necessary, I’ll have my pick of front end, back end, and full stack jobs.

My deadline for some kind of employment is November 2021, when my student loan deferment grace period will end.

Is it ambitious? Yes, but I’m not starting from scratch.

As I mentioned earlier, I’ve been sitting on an accepted-with-revisions paper for well over a year. (I know. I know. Okay?) The paper needs major revision, which I will do.

I’m actually kind of glad I let it sit for so long, because it gave me the opportunity to look at the reviews again with fresh eyes. I went through this thing when I first got the decision where I was very excited to be accepted with revisions. Then I read Reviewer 2’s comments.

Reviewer 2 says things like, “This feels like the work of a beginning researcher ‘writing one’s way’ into a topic.” Reviewer 2 is not wrong. I wrote this my first semester of the PhD program, sat on it for 3 years, and revised it minimally before submitting. (I KNOW. I had a baby, okay? And then he turned into a toddler. SHH.) I re-read it before reading the reviews this time, and REVIEWER 2 IS NOT WRONG.

I also took Wendy Belcher’s point that reviewers who take the time to offer detailed comments think something is worth working on until it’s better and can be published; if they thought it was worthless, they would simply say it should be rejected. (The decision recommendation from Reviewer 2 was “Not acceptable as is; needs major revisions as indicated.” There is an option for straightforward rejection; Reviewer 2 did not take it.)

The first time I looked at these reviews, I read Reviewer 2’s comments and got all “BOO you don’t get me, you’re wrong” and now I’m like, “Oh, Reviewer 2, you’re so right, thank you thank you thank you.” Because Reviewer 2 said:

The conclusion’s intriguing ideas indicate that perhaps the author, after writing the paper, has discovered a few trends in the review that, if revisited, could reshape the literature review to be more powerful and deliver more impact, finding deeper insights than those that are listed here. I hypothesize that this is one of the first research pieces written by a student doing first forays into scholarly writing, and that now that this preliminary work is done, a second attempt would be more nuanced and in-depth.

And Reviewer 2 also said:

It may be that focusing on three topics meant that all three issues could only be covered in a cursory way within the page limitations. It might be interesting to consider going deep in just one or two of these areas, which might open up more space for that deeper understanding to happen.

This is a brilliant idea. My original audience for this was a professor, who needs to know different things than other researchers and library professionals might.

From now on, I think I’ll think of peer review as getting free editing.

I have a lot to think about. This is going to be a lot of work to rewrite. But it’s going to be really good work to do, and will (I hope) break me of my distaste for/impatience with revision. (As an editor, I’m super into deep revision. As a writer, I’ve already moved onto the next thing…)

Time to be my own developmental editor, I think.

Since the beginning of my doctoral program, I’ve struggled to situate my work and research interests. The role of libraries in learning. Interest-driven learning in libraries. Connected learning. Information literacy and learning. In particular, geeky interests and their relationship to learning. Nothing felt quite right.

Last year, a new journal called Information and Learning Sciences launched. I noticed. I maybe signed up for table of contents alerts? I don’t know. But I kind of forgot about it for a while.

I remembered it again when I needed to read a couple of chapters from the book Reconceptualizing Libraries: Perspectives from the Information and Learning Sciences for my comps, but then once I was done with that, it slipped out of my mind again.

People have only been embracing the interdisciplinarity of these two particular fields for the past few years; nobody really would have thought to use them together before that. Now, this is a defined interdisciplinary intersection with a growing body of scholarship, and it is a place where I can actually plant a flag for my own work.

It’s funny, because right before I started my PhD program, one of my colleagues at LEARN NC, Joseph Hooper, and I would talk about the intersection of LIS and LS all the time. And if you look at my coursework choices, one of the only courses I’ve taken that was about content rather than theory development and methods is Intoduction to Cognitive Science and Sociocultural Perspectives on Learning. It feels like I should have arrived at the realization that this is where my work sits much earlier.

But it doesn’t really matter. I’m there now, and I’m looking forward to immersing myself in the relatively small body of literature about it and seeing how it relates to my dissertation work and other research plans.

I’m reading Dr. Katie Linder’s blog archive. One of her earliest posts is titled 51 Tips to Help Academic Writers Be More Productive. It’s a very different sort of set of tips than the kind I was complaining about yesterday. The latter is all about telling you what kind of work you ought to be doing. Not, here are actual tools to help you get the work done, but just… remember all this work you could be doing. Don’t forget how you could use this time wisely.

(Phrases I hate: “use your time wisely” and “live up to your potential.” Blargh. If I want to fritter my life away reading fantasy novels and only be an A- student, that’s my business, middle school teachers. Oops, sorry, went to a dark and distant place there.)

Dr. Linder’s post, on the other hand, doesn’t remind you that there’s work you could be doing. Instead, it gives you tips for how to tackle the work you’ve decided to do.

Her first tip is to start a daily writing practice. I’ve been meaning to do this for a long time, and struggle to build up consistency. So I went beyond Dr. Linder’s help, and went to another favorite scholar of mine, Dr. Raul Pacheco-Vega. He offers four strategies, both for creating a good container in your schedule for writing, and for deciding what to write when you’re making it a point to write daily so you don’t just stare at a blank screen for 15 minutes a day.

The first of his tips involves working to deadline like Wendy Belcher suggests in her book, Writing Your Journal Article in 12 Weeks. So I “got out” my ebook copy of that book and looking through the table of contents, discovered that she has a whole chapter dedicated to responding to journal feedback.

Well, I’ve been sitting on an accepted with revisions article for well over a year, and it’s pretty embarrassing. The other day I sat down to make the revisions and got overwhelmed quickly. I ordered a print of both the article and the reviewer comments from Staples, so that should be here soon. And now I have this schedule from Belcher’s book that’s got me ready to actually get down to it.

So here I am, essentially going to do Dr. Jo Van Every’s 15 minute #acwri challenge, using this revision to launch my daily writing practice. Guess what Internet? You’re my writing buddy and you’re going to keep me accountable.

Here’s the schedule:

4/15 - 4/19, Read through p. 298 in the book and follow the instructions for reading the editor’s letter and reviewers’ reports.
4/20 - 4/26, Identify which journal decision was made and decide how I will respond.
4/27 - 5/2, Prepare a list of recommended changes and how I plan to respond to them.
5/3 - 5/9, Revise the article.
5/10 - 5/16, Draft my revision cover letter and send the article back out.

Basically, a month to turn this thing around. And I’m going to try to have my (sadly at different times of day, thanks coronavirus) work schedule be:

First 15 minutes: Settle in, review to-do list. Second 15 minutes: Write. Remaining time: Work on data collection and other tasks.

We just finished up week 4 of staying at home. In one sense, I didn’t have much going on before this; grad school and parenting a young child don’t really leave much space for doing things. But I’m realizing now how I do have even less going on, because I’m not even going on playdate outings or whatever.

We started watching Animaniacs with M, just in time to get excited for new episodes coming sometime ever.

Like so many other people, I’m growing weary of doing all of my communicating with people who don’t live with me via Zoom call. I do like being able to see people’s faces; I hate phone calls. But it’s wearying, right?

I found out that I didn’t get a dissertation completion fellowship from my school. That would have covered my tuition, fees, and health insurance, and given me a (very modest) stipend to cover living expenses. Because life, I have missed the deadlines for all similar awards. (Though I only found 4 I was eligible for anyway.) This has prompted a lot of questions for myself about what comes next, specifically in terms of being able to contribute to my family’s financial wellbeing, which is going to need a lot more help because our childcare costs are more than doubling next year. I’m reluctant to take a (eventually) face-to-face full-time job, because I want to be with my kid in the afternoons. He’ll get out of school at 3:15 and I want to be there to pick him up, not put him in aftercare or delegate that to somebody else.

So, what can I do, that will pay me, lets me work from 9 - 3, and is flexible enough to accommodate both dissertating and chronic illness? I’ve landed on freelance editing, which I did for a few months after getting my MSLS. (And maybe a little writing, but it doesn’t pay as well.) My current assistantship contract ends on May 15; I’m open to taking on new work any time after that. If you need an editor, get in touch. I’m hoping the university will be able to work with me to at least fund my tuition and fees, but tuition doesn’t buy groceries or pay preschool teachers, soooooo…

That was kind of the biggest thing that went down this week. I spent a day moping about it and not feeling like doing much else. But I did read some Internet things. Let me share them with you!

I will be soothed, actually

Why We Turn to Jane Austen in Dark Times I love Jane Austen. This does a great job of explaining how her works are soothing without denying that life is hard sometimes.

I try to check Tumblr’s Week in Review most weeks, because I want to know what people are fans of. When I saw #cottagecore pop up, I was intrigued. It’s kind of like… hygge with more fairy rings and fawns? And also, from what I’m reading, a queer-friendly aesthetic in a way some other Internet aesthetics aren’t.I wanted an explainer, and the Internet gave me one. And then it gave me two more. This has me pondering Internet aesthetics. I’ll let you know what I’m thinking about those as I develop my thoughts further. (But FYI, two of my favorites are vaporwave and [seapunk]aesthetics.fandom.com/wiki/Seap….)

Also, I’m fairly certain the appeal of cottagecore/farmcore is related to phenomena like the Joy of Missing Out and the general consumerist move toward coziness more broadly. (I even briefly thought, “Maybe I should crochet big cozy blankets and sell them for exorbitant sums.” None of us are immune to this sort of thinking, I fear…) Also I got a little grouchy reading about grandmillenials, who I guess seem to me to be wee babes rediscovering the New Domesticity and sharing it online as though Gen X didn’t already do that over 15 years ago…

Currently

📖: Blue Mind by Wallace J. Nichols, A Conspiracy of Truths by Alexandra Rowland
🎬: ST:TNG in 40 Hours
🦸‍♀️: The Power of X
🎮: Professor Layton and the Miracle Mask, Lego Marvel Superheroes 2

My preferred comedy format, though I’ve not really performed it, is sketch. Yes, I did improv for years, but basically because a sketch teacher was like “It’s like sketch if you didn’t write it first.” It was only recently in conversation with my mother-in-law and W that I realized that this love of sketch dates from when I was around 3 years old (like so many things!), and that aside from my parents’ churchy sketch parody show “Sunday Night Live” (which was one of my favorite things my parents ever did when I was a kid), this love of sketch also came from Sesame Street and The Muppet Show.

(A friend signed my high school yearbook, “Maybe you will become a writer for Saturday Night Live and then I can start watching it again.”)

Now that M is deep into Muppets and I’m more familiar with comedic structure, I’m noticing how good Sesame Street and The Muppets are at these things. This sketch with The Martians is a great example of a fish-out-of-water situation, playing the game of the scene, the rule of threes, and breaking the pattern.

Kind of makes sense that Muppets would be the source of solid comedy, given their background on SNL and everything.

I submitted proposed changes to my research design to my committee today. I had to make these changes in light of COVID-19 eliminating the possibility of in-person fieldwork and the fact that my work has been both delayed and slowed due to not having my regular childcare/daily rhythm.

Here are the changes I’m making:

CONSENT

The consent document will be distributed to participants as a form in Qualtrics; they will certify that by submitting the form, they are consenting to participate in the research.

SUMMARY

1. Information horizon interviews will be conducted remotely via Microsoft Zoom, rather than in person. Participants will draw their information horizon maps, photograph them, and send them to the researcher via email or text.
2. The interview protocol will include a question about the anticipated impact of COVID-19 on the cosplayer’s future information practices.
3. Instead of inviting broad participation from the cosplay community, the research will use convenience sampling, inviting participation from cosplayers that she met at a con in 2019 and use snowball sampling to find additional participants to invite. She will only open up broad participation if she is unable to meet the minimum number of participants (10) through these methods.
4. Artifacts for the artifact analysis component will be selected, not based on the sustained, systematic observation of affinity space ethnography as originally described, but based on the responses of participants during the information horizon interview. Historical artifacts may be more prevalent than current artifacts, as most conventions are being postponed or canceled and cosplayers may not be working as intensely to meet cosplay deadlines.
5. There will be no participant observation.

First, some cute things my kid said.

He was talking about flushing the toilet and said that the contents go to the “water landfill.”

Also, I don’t like poop jokes, but he does. He asked if he could tell me a pee joke. I said, “No, I don’t like those either.” He said, “Why don’t you like waste jokes?”

So cute.

It’s the end of week three of social distancing over here, and we’re still relatively okay with each other as a family. M. is doing normal three-year-old stuff, W. and I aren’t sleeping well but at different times of night (he stays up late, I wake up and can’t get back to sleep). I’ve moved from anxiety into depression but am combatting it with as much sunlight as I can and it seems to be helping.

I had a week full of video calls: one with some Bronzer friends (the first two guests on my still-not-available-yet Buffy podcast, not especially coincidentally), with my BFF from middle and high school (that’s a link to her photography portfolio with a picture she took of M. when he was 6 days old). It was so lovely to see her face and chat, and I hope to do it again soon. I did Quarantine Book Club with Austin Kleon. I used Marco Polo to wish another friend’s cat well and was rewarded with a video of said cat making amazing cat sounds.

Today I did a video call with my advisor and another committee member, and we made a game plan that has soothed my concerns about being able to complete my research. It involves revising my methods some and scaling back the scope of the study. As my advisor said, “Would it be cool to do what you said you were going to do? Yes. But you can’t.” Eyes on the prize: me graduated in 2021.

I’ve been reading a lot online (I always read more articles when I spend less time on social media), adding to my ever growing pile of books I’m reading, enjoying watching Picard, and often having chocolate oatmeal for breakfast with a bit of peanut butter added. (It’s like having a no-bake cookie for breakfast; highly recommend.)

With that, let me recommend some online reading you might find fun or valuable.

Supporting Independent Bookstores

McSweeney’s has some thoughts and some advice on how you can help independent bookstores. I don’t have a ton of money to throw around, but I did buy myself and my kid books from our local independent bookstore, which is having their distributor ship the books directly to me.

One way you can support those independent bookstores is by buying books for your book clubs, which are apparently flourishing right now.

Funny Stuff

Speaking of McSweeney’s, their funny stuff often hits exactly the right spot for me. Witness:

• I Know There Is a Pandemic, but I Am Leaving You for Bob Ross - A friend told me that ASMR videos always help her when she has a migraine. They didn’t do anything for me, but when I started poking around in the broader ASMR world I found the suggestion of watching Bob Ross, and he DOES help my migraines. I’m not leaving W. for him, but if I had a partner like the (I sure hope imaginary) narrator of this does, I might, in spite of his being dead.
• Self-Isolation or Graduate School? - In case you missed it when I shared it earlier. Comedy gold, if you are in its very narrow target audience.
• Frog and Toad Are Self-Quarantined Friends is perfect and beautiful, and now M. doesn’t want to play regular Frog and Toad, he wants to play Quarantine!Frog and Toad.

But they aren’t the only ones! Vulture brings it with If I Wrote a Coronavirus Episode. The 30 Rock, Brooklyn Nine-Nine, andYou’re the Worst offerings are perfect and oh my goodness Jane the Virgin actually filmed part of theirs. Will this prompt me to write fanfiction? Very possibly, because I’m sad that New Girl wasn’t in there.

Scary Stuff

Skip this section if you don’t want to read scary pandemic thoughts, but I found these pieces really helpful.

• How the Pandemic Will End(The Atlantic)
• The Four Possible Timelines for Life Returning to Normal(The Atlantic)
• It’s the End and Nothing Feels Fine Apocalypse/zombie scholar and my new post-ac hero Kelly J. Baker talks about how this thing that feels like an apocalypse is very different from the apocalypse stories we tell ourselves.

Cut Yourself a Break

Okay, that’s enough scary, here’s some posts to convince you to give yourself some grace.

• I Can’t Write About the Pandemic, But I Can’t Write About Anything Else “…avoid thinking like a careerist… Use your creative time to escape the zeitgeist… write the book that you most need to write.”
• Against Productivity in a Pandemic “This is not a time to optimize or stoically pretend nothing has changed… This is a time to sustain.” “We do not tend to see maintenance and care as productive…” - Jenny Odell in How to Do Nothing I’ve been thinking more about maintenance and care since I read How to Do Nothing last summer, and I think right now especially it is where our focus should be. Which brings me to…
• Why You Should Ignore All That Coronavirus-Inspired Productivity Pressure This is a brilliant map, especially for academics, for how to get through this time. I am taking it to heart fully; once I get my revised research plans in place, I’m going to get some of my home stuff sorted out before trying to get back to work. I will be reading and re-reading and re-reading again this piece over the coming weeks.
• Now Is the Perfect Time to Lower the Parenting Bar Sometimes I do elaborate activities with my kid. It’s usually to keep me from being bored. The rest of the time, we’re reading or he’s playing while I rest. Sometimes we watch TV, but I try to save it for when I need it. “Unlike the running joke that every working parent, single parent, or stay-at-home parent has uttered at some point, that ‘everyone was alive’ at the end of the day, that is actually the real job we all have right now. Trying to keep people alive. Even people we don’t know and can’t see, at the end of the day, every day, until this thing is done.”

Poetry

April is National Poetry Month. I highly recommend signing up for the Poem-a-Day newsletter from Poets.org. I’ll probably start listening to The Slowdown and watching Patrick Stewart read sonnets, too.

• The Function of Humor in the Neighborhood “I wrote this poem in response to criticism that my work is ‘too funny to be taken seriously.’ I wanted to explain that I am writing in a Jewish tradition where nothing is more serious than humor.” - Allison Pitinii Davis This resonated so strongly with me. It also reminded me of that old Mel Brooks quote: “Tragedy is when I cut my finger. Comedy is when you fall into an open sewer and die.”
• Things to Do in the Belly of the Whale”Be thankful that you are here, swallowed with all hope, where you can rest and wait.“ This is a great reminder for those of us who are privileged enough to be in a situation where we can rest and wait.
• Probably you should check out my friend Kit’s Instagram because he is writing a haiku a day and just… well, go get to know him that way. You won’t regret it.

What pandemic?

This post about Jessica Drew Spider-Woman’s costume (and Batgirl too) speaks much of what’s in my heart. As I’ve been planning cosplays, I’ve been thinking about both the extent to which I feel like playing up my sexiness (I don’t, not in cosplay, really) and also what’s comfortable (hint: not most superhero costumes, especially the ones for women). The awesome moto Spider-Woman costume here is one of my planned cosplays for whenever I can cosplay somewhere. (Still need to put together gloves and glasses.) I was so excited when I learned there would be a new Spider-Woman book, because I’ve been missing her, and so sad when I saw what her next costume will look like. Seems like with every iteration, it gets closer and closer to being less like spandex and more like body paint. I don’t mind unrealistic proportions. I do prefer outfits that look easy to fight in, though.

Until next time!

• All you have to do this month is allow for things to feel uncertain.
• Now is a good time to construct a solid home inside yourself so that you stop looking for a home in everyone else.
• Now is the time to find beauty in what’s cracked or broken.
• Resist delusional thinking when it comes to productivity.

This is part two of a series in which I’m writing up how Austin Kleon’s work particularly relevant for scholars, researchers, and academics. For a quick overview of his book Steal Like an Artist, you can watch Kleon’s TED talk.

You can find the previous post in this series here.

2. Don’t wait until you know who you are to get started. Kleon argues that it is in the act of making stuff that you discover who you are. This is true for research and academic writing, as well. It’s possible that this applies mostly to early career scholars, but I think scholars have the opportunity to reinvent themselves many times in a career, so it can apply more broadly.

Don’t wait until you have a research design to start thinking and writing about a topic. If there’s something you’re interested in, go ahead and start reading in that area. Write up your reading notes. They will come in handy when you’re ready to design your research.

Don’t wait until you have a narrow field of expertise to conduct a study. My first study was on the leadership practices of school librarians. My second was on school library preparation program’s special education courses. My dissertation is about the information literacy practices of cosplayers. These are not all related at all, but I learned different things during each one. (Or, in the case of my dissertation, am still learning.) The first study used a survey methodology, the second content analysis, the third ethnographic methods. I also conducted two small-scale studies for my coursework. If I waited to find my one true calling until I started designing studies, I probably never would have designed any studies. (I’ve actually designed many more than I’ve completed; maybe I’ll use those designs eventually. I really like designing studies. I’ve thought about hiring myself out as a sort of “research best friend” to talk people through their study design process.)

Kleon encourages creatives to copy their heroes. Scholars can copy - but not plagiarize - the work of others in a variety of ways. My favorite is to apply someone else’s research methods to a new population or scenario, adding on something extra to make the study uniquely mine. For my Master’s paper, I copied Daniella Smith’s methods, using the Leadership Practices Inventory. Dr. Smith used this to measure the self-perceived leadership practices of preservice school librarians, people who were training as school librarians but were not yet employed as such. I used the same instrument to measure the self-perceived leadership practices of National Board Certified school librarians - school librarians with at least three years of professional school library experience who had submitted to a rigorous certification program. This is a very different population, but I used the same instrument. I also added a second instrument, which I had developed to measure school librarians’ ability to implement professional guidelines, then investigated the relationship between leadership and that ability. I copied, but it was not a perfect copy. (And as Kleon points out, it never can be - in the case of research, something about your settings or materials or analysis is bound to be different.)

For my dissertation, I am building on the methods of Dr. Crystle Martin’s dissertation, using her interview and online artifact analysis methods with cosplayers. She used these methods with World of Warcraft players. Again, a different population. I also, in my original design, added face-to-face observation - something that built on her work but made it my own. (In the wake of COVID-19, I am sadly not sure how much face-to-face observation I will be able to do. We’ll see.)

Next time: Write the book you want to read.