FiMyMaTheMo

 or, "How My Master's Thesis Ruined My Life."


Many of you know that both Rebecca and I had finished the coursework for our respective MAs before we left the US for Korea. We both had also made significant headway on our theses before we shipped out - Rebecca had turned in a full draft of hers, and I had defended my prospectus and been given the green light to finish my analysis (which should have been the easy part). We got on the plane with laptops and backpacks full of data, and plans to finish up and defend in the summer. 


Once we got here, all that changed. We had new jobs to figure out, new foods to try, a new city to explore, and a new language to learn. We left the frozen wastes of Wyoming while it was still wintery and arrived here in time for the full bloom of spring, the season that many consider the most beautiful in Jeonju. We just couldn't sit in front of computers everyday while everything was green and flowering outside. Slowly, we let go of our summer graduation plans, and set our sights on December. 


We established a schedule that called for us to rise each day at 8:00AM and dedicate hours to our theses before working out, showering, and heading in to work at 2:00PM. This meant returning home after work and basically heading straight to bed, which is completely counter to my natural rythms. We were quite dedicated to this schedule for a time, but then we met and befriended other ex-pats in Jeonju, and like us, they got off work late in the evening. Going out for dinner with friends until 1:30AM makes it hard to get up at 8:00AM and generate quality academic writing.


Local friendships led to us becoming more active in the Jeonju internet communitites, which led to volunteering at orphanages, a Dinner in English group, and the final straw - taking a Korean class at Chonbuk University. The class met daily, and moved quite quickly. Eventually, trying to keep up with the new grammar and vocabulary was taking up all of my spare time. Everything else fell off (including posting to this blog), and soon I realized that three weeks had passed without me even looking at my thesis. 


My thesis glares at me from a dark corner of my mind constantly, like an ugly and unloved doll on a dusty shelf. I know that I should fix it up and get it ready to present, but there is always something newer and shinier clamoring for my atention. In the light of my new suroundings and new interests it seems ill-concieved, trivial, unneeded, and broken somehow. Yes - my thesis now lives on the Island of Misfit Toys, and my intended graduation date has slipped away to next May.


Although I have embraced every distraction that has come my way, I have finally realized that my unfinished thesis is sucking all the joy from my life. In my college career I never failed to turn in a paper and I never took an incomplete, so the thesis dragging on feels like a huge failure. I have reached the point where every moment of free time that I spend doing anything else, no matter how important or valid it is, is tainted because the thesis is not done. Everything - volunteering, movies, shopping, hiking, clubbing, literally everything we do for fun - reminds me that I have the debt from a Master's degree, but not the diploma. It is beginning to keep me from sleeping - I have dreams in which I face a committee that demands my paper, but there is nothing in my folder but old bus tickets and empty gimbap wrappers. This must end.


I have several friends who participate in NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) every year. They crank out around fifty or sixty thousand words in 30 days each November. I don't need anywhere near 50K - I'm just about thirty pages from done. Another form of inspiration comes from Jillian Venters of Gothic Charm School (she is inspirational in so many way) who has declared this to be her "Finish the Damn Novel Month." So, to keep myself from descending any further into this pleasureless spiral of avoidance and annoyance, I have declared November to be "Finish My Master's Thesis Month." We shall call it "FiMyMaTheMo."


I am done with Korean class and I am returning to a strict schedule of writing 5 days per week. I will allow myself to play on the weekends only if I have put in the time Monday through Friday. Let this serve as notice to my friends - I will be turning down any new social engagements during the week and staying in my cell until it is done (I am still having midnight pancakes this Tuesday with the cool kids from Junghwasan-Dong because it is already on the calendar - but after that I'm like a nun).

This should allow me to finish the damn thing by December 1st. I will not be able to put together a defense before the university goes on Winter break, but I should be able to corral my committee sometime in January or February. Hopefully by my birthday in March it will all be just an awkward memory.

After that, I will be free again. Food and friends will be guiltless again, and I will enjoy the sleep of the righteous (or at least the sleep of the exhausted teacher, which I heartily deserve). The writing project that Rebecca and I have been discussing can get underway, and perhaps I will finally have time to sign up for Taekwondo or Hapkido classes like I had planned when we first got these jobs. 

Wish me luck, and don't invite me to anything cool for a while...

Weekend in Busan

WARNING: Link to video of crabs possibly doing something NSFW below.

Since Rebecca and I like to pretend that we are dutiful little members of the clerisy, we spent the bulk of our one-week summer vacation locked in our cell working on our theses.  Neither hers - an examination of science fiction through the lens of 18th Century sentimentalism - nor mine - a discussion of rare instances of legally exempted felonies - are exactly driving us to write night and day.  I fact, I am so tired of my topic that I had to bribe myself with the promise of retail therapy in another city just to drag my fingers to the keys.  We agreed to spend the weekdays in Jeonju writing and editing, then give ourselves an out-of-town adventure on the weekend before returning to work.

Our original plan was to hit Itaewon, the famous shopping district of Seoul. Unfortunately, the day before our planed departure, Seoul was hit with over 17 inches of rain (440 mm) in two days, and looked like this:

With over 40 dead, and billions of ₩on in damages, we thought it best to head elsewhere. Our friend in Seoul, Eunhyoung, who had offered to act as our tour guide while we were there, agreed to reschedule with us.

Then began the search for a new destination. We decided that since it has been quite hot and humid, a trip to the beach was in order - but which beach? Living on a peninsula means there are plenty to choose from, and the entire country is just slightly larger than the state of Indiana, so everywhere is within a half-day bus ride.

Not knowing that it was the first weekend of a major beach holiday in Korea, we opted for the booked solid city of Busan. Busan's Haeundae beach is quite famous, and the area around it feels a bit like a combination of Las Vegas and Santa Monica. We worked on the web for a couple hours to find a hotel and then buy bus tickets for an early Saturday departure.

After a false start caused by dogsitting arrangements that fell through, we finally got on the bus around 12:50. We slept for most of the bus ride, then I fell asleep again during the ₩20,000 cab ride to the hotel. After a quick shower and change of clothes, we headed out into the city armed only with a subway map.

We did so much in the next 24 hours that I can't really keep it straight in my head. There was the underground markets, dinner, fancy fountain with dancing water in Lotte Departent Store, several subway rides, and a quick trip to the foreigner district where they sell clothes in the freakishly large (by Korean standards) sizes I require. This area used to be known as "Texas Street" back when there were tons of GIs in Busan (it is also where one will encounter Russian prostitutes vying with Thai, Filipino, and local girls for business). After that, we took off our shoes and walked on the beach, strolled through the live seafood market, got lost in a construction zone, and eventually found an amazing little restaurant facing the water with cheap desserts and expensive drinks that was still hopping around 1:00am. I figure we walked about 5 or 6 miles that night.

The next day we headed back to the beach in the daylight. Koreans do the whole beach thing quite a bit differently. As you will see in the photo dump below, they carry their irrational fear of the sun right down to the shoreline. I spent my teen years in a beach community, and I have never seen 1) so many umbrellas, and 2) so many fully clothed people on a beach in summer.

We went to the Busan Aquarium, which was quite nice, and blessedly air conditioned. Here is where I acidentally videoed large crabs fighting... or possibly engaged in the act of making more crabs... I'm just not much of an authority on crabs (See video here. I am including this link mostly because the audio gives a pretty accurate portrayal of our relationship and the kind of conversations we have on a daily basis).

For our final act in Busan, we opted for the ultimate in terrible tourist behavior - we ate at TGI Fridays. We actually like to eat at Western chain restaurants to see how they stack up to their counterparts back home. As usual, the Korean version was an amalgam of East and West that improved on the original. Yes, they had the usual TGI Friday's drink specials and fattening dishes, but they were all slightly tweaked to be more Asian in flavor, and served by adorable girls in tiny skirts, knee-socks, and cat, mouse, or bunny ears. Much more entertaining than your ordinary happy hour basket of wings.

I attempted to make some sense of these pictures, and arrange them artfully within the text of the post, but Blogger was bent on frustrating my layout. Instead, you are getting a raw dump, straight from the iPhone. Enjoy!

 

4.12.11 We Have Arrived

We have arrived safely. We left Fort Collins at 4:30AM on Sunday, the 10th. It's now 12:23AM on Tuesday the 12th. This picture of Friday sums up perfectly how we all feel. We are going to bed now...