(no subject)

[chelseagirl]

Really productive meetings with my advisors today, particularly Robert, wherein we mutually agreed that the chapter I've been researching was a leftover from an earlier conception of the dissertation, and that my instinct to instead do a chapter on Trollope and his anti-reformist impulses was a good one. The Walter Scott research won't go entirely to waste, as I'll work it into the introduction, since he's a borderline figure between the 18th and 19th centuries anyway. And I really wasn't jazzed to work on the George Eliot. (I love Middlemarch very much, but Adam Bede just doesn't do much for me, and that was the book that fit the theme . . . )

Robert's take on the job market is that people *ought* to understand that I had to support myself, which is why it's taken so long. David was a bit less supportive; he said the length of completion would be a problem for some places, mostly major research institutions. I told him that without lots of fancy fellowships and with only one (or hopefully two) publications, I was kind of assuming that my search would include liberal arts colleges (where my teaching experience will make up for my slow rate of completion) and good state universities (ditto). He thought that was realistic.

Normal people just get jobs. Life is so complicated on the academic side . . .