Natchez, Mississippi is good for my soul

Hello, dear readers! I am just back from a week in Natchez for the Historic Natchez Conference and feel amazing! Natchez is good for my very soul. I can’t really explain it… Mississippi is still backwards in so many ways…politically and economically for sure… But it does my heart good to be there. I feel such a connection to this place. Maybe it’s all of the history I have studied there. Maybe it’s the people… I don’t know. I only know it makes me happy.

The conference presentation went off perfectly. I am usually such a wreck when I have to speak in public. This time a calmness came over me that I can’t really explain. Perhaps Dr Jenkins was with me, bringing me good luck. I was honored to have Mrs Ruth Ellen Calhoun, the owner of Elgin, Dr Jenkins home, and Mrs Gail Jenkins Healey, Dr Jenkins’ great great grand daughter in the audience to hear me speak. Also in the audience was Dr Ron Davis, who started the Natchez program at CSUN. To get compliments from Dr Davis is high praise indeed. I was thrilled to have him there. Many Natchez program alums were there to cheer us on as well. This group has become family to me in so many ways. My dear, dear friend Cai was there, sitting in the back so I could focus on her and tell my story to her if I got too flustered. She and I ran around to the cemetery and had great fun while I was in town. There is nothing quite like having friends who get you and understand why running around the cemetery is great fun for you! My fellow presenters… Cheryl, Kashia and Terra were a great source of support as well. Then there is DrJoyce Broussard who has always been a great support to me over all these years… Now that I am done, I can enjoy her friendship on a different level than student and professor to which I very much look forward!

As far as the thesis goes, my friends, it is DONE!! I get signatures next week and do my final upload to grad studies. I cannot begin to express how good it feels to be done!

Ahhh, now that I am home, I am already beginning to miss Natchez. I have been invited by Mrs Calhoun to come stay at Elgin and research the papers she has at Eric home. What an honor! A book on Dr Jenkins will be in the works. So stay tuned my friends, this story is far from over!

Draft Uploaded

Hello my friends! Bet you thought I had fallen off the face of the earth. Not so!! It has been a crazy couple of months getting this thesis ready to upload. Just two minutes ago I hit the “submit” button and it is all out of my hands for now. I look forward to a couple of weeks minus this stress.

In other news… my paper for the Historic Natchez conference is all set to go. I just need to practice. Off to Mississippi next Wednesday. Woo Hoo!!!!

Stay tuned. More to come very soon!

The Plague Too Close to Home

With twelve days left til my self imposed thesis deadline, I am starting to panic a little,  I have managed to get very little done over the last week as I have been visited by “the plague.”  A little too close for this medical historian, I must say.  In actuality I have had bronchitis for the last week and have been coughing my head off and sleeping instead of writing.  I have one chapter left to write as well as my introduction and conclusion.  This is all possible in the next twelve days if I put my nose to the grindstone.  I will attempt to the best of my ability to get this last little bit done within the time limit I have given myself.  If, however, Dr B receives it a couple of days late, so be it.

And so, I venture forth tomorrow morning to complete the last chapter.  Hopefully I will be able to write next week that all has been completed and celebration is commencing.  Stick with me my friends.  The end is in sight!!

The End is Near

Hello my friends!  It has been forever since I last posted.  Need I say more than life has just been crazy.  The holidays were super busy, but great… well, with the exception of Jeff and I both being sick over the New Year holiday.  As far as my thesis writing goes… ugh… I have been alternately freaking out, crying, freaking out some more  and procrastinating terribly.  In the midst of freaking out, I have been getting other aspects of my life in order.  Jeff and I started getting healthy just after Thanksgiving.  We started working with a Herbalife wellness coach… thank you Matt!!  So far, in the last eight weeks, Jeff has lost ten pounds and I have lost nearly twenty.  I have also dropped my cholesterol and triglyceride numbers by forty points each.  Those of you who have interacted closely with me for the last three years know just how much pain I have been in between my knee problems and my fibromyalgia.  Since beginning the Herbalife program, my pain is almost non-existent.  This in itself is miraculous.  So, now with the health aspect of my life taken firmly in hand, I have been able to focus on writing a little more in the last week.  I attended the first session of Dr. B’s Southern History Colloquium this last Thursday night and had a chance to sit down and talk with her beforehand.  I was more than a little upset with myself that I did not have a completed draft ready for her before now and nervous about seeing her.  She, as usual, was nothing but supportive and helpful.  I made a deal with her that by February 14th, when the class meets again, I will have a completed draft ready to hand to her.  With about three weeks to finish up, I finally feel like the end is near.  I sat on Wednesday last week and cranked out about twelve pages of Chapter 5, which has been troubling me for some time.  I am not sure it is the most beautiful text I have ever written, but I have a start on it.  To have the draft completed in the next three weeks I have to finish up Chapter 5, write Chapter 2 and craft an introduction and conclusion to the thesis as a whole.  I think this is certainly attainable.  I just have to manage my time wisely.  Tomorrow will be spent finishing up chapter 5.  The rest of the week will be spent on Chapter 2.  That will give me more than a week to write my intro and conclusion and then spend some time checking over my footnotes to make sure they are all in good shape.  The end, dear readers, can not come too soon.  This project has outworn its welcome in my head.  I need to finish and move on to other exciting projects.  More on that to come!  Thank you for sticking with me through this long process!  Onward to Chapter 5! 

The Light at the End of the Tunnel Beckons

I am sitting here on this rainy Sunday morning….a little too early because the cat was sure she had to eat NOW… in a very good mood.  As I think I wrote last, I was in a panic over my thesis a little over a week ago.  I was working on my fifth chapter when I realized I might not be able to prove the ultimate argument of my whole thesis.  I tore my files apart looking for a list of just about ten names that were the clincher to everything…the clincher to several years of painstaking research, years of travel to Mississippi (not that the trips were painful in any way), years of analyzing data and reading every book I could lay my hands on published about yellow fever since the 1820s.  Yes, that is quite a few works.  They don’t call me the disease queen for nothing! 

Anyway… my dear friend who lives in Natchez took time out of her weekend to go to the Historic Natchez Foundation for me yesterday and get that ever important list of names.  I spent an hour or so last night perusing the Census records from 1850 and 1860 for these all important men.  In my excitement I found exactly what I was looking for. They all were exactly what I thought they were… Natchez merchants.  Just that small word made everything fall into place.  And so, this week will be spent crafting chapter five.  I still have to put together chapter two on the Natchez doctors, but that one will practically write itself.  I don’t know how to express how happy I am to have that light at the end of the tunnel shining a little brighter today. 

Now I can enjoy going to brunch and to the movies with my girls today knowing that tomorrow I can begin to really get closer to the end. 

On That Procrastination Train Again!! Someone Push Me Off Please!

I am so close to being done with my thesis, I can almost taste it.  Why then do I go through these periods of inactivity?  I can make a lot of excuses and try to convince you, dear reader, that I have just been too busy to put pen to paper in the last two weeks, but they would all be hollow excuses.  I have been busy, but not too busy to work.  I have to say that I have been sucked in to this election in a very bad way,  I find myself watching the new all afternoon and evening on some days…often yelling at the television like a crazy person!  I have got to pry myself away and get some work done.  Not only work on my thesis, but work on cleaning my house! The holidays are fast approaching and I just feel like I need to face them with a cleaner house.

Time management is the thing I need to work on most this week.  My goal is to get a little writing and a little cleaning done every day this week.  Then I can run off Saturday to the Civil War Reenactment in Moorpark and truly enjoy myself.  Whitnie and Maggie… I promise I will not drill the poor doctor at the medical tent about Civil War medicine and yellow fever this year!

So, back to work this week!  No excuses.  I have two chapters still left to write…probably between twenty and thirty pages.  This is not that difficult.  I just need to get up off my butt and get back to work.  In addition to that approximated thirty pages, I have to tackle my introduction and conclusion.  Both will be entirely contingent on what these two chapters actually end up being.  So, one thing at a time.  Plan for today… a few pages and a dent in the mess that is my kitchen.  Wish me luck!! 

 

 

 

 

Red Tape is a Pain in the Tuckus

Ahh, dear reader, I am back again after too long away.  I have been trying to get my ducks in a row today and it has been one stress after another.  As you know if you have been keeping up with my ramblings, I have a fifth chapter to write and have been pushed out another semester.  I have, over the last two weeks,been reading books on Natchez economics in the 1850s, trying to piece together an end to this thesis.  Now, know that I am a social historian and economics confound me.  I am getting there however.  Thank you Kashia for your wonderful recommendations of books and articles that might help me!

Today I tried to get all of my paperwork squared away.  As the morning started, all was well with the world.  Dr Horowitz signed off on my Culminating Experience paperwork (for those of you who are not from CSUN, this course is an extension so I can work on and submit my thesis and therefore very important).  Off to grad studies to get them to sign off on my paperwork…first snag!!!! Because I was not enrolled for the last two semesters I was told I have to complete my thesis this semester…we already know that is not happening… or be enrolled in a class this semester…hello??? its already mid-term… or perhaps have to reapply in the fall of 2013 because they are not accepting students for the spring…. panic ensues!!!

Thank goodness for Cheryl  Wilkinson who has come along on this little trip to basically hold my hand through it all.  If not for her, I probably would have plopped down right then and cried.  But alas, my friends, there was one more possibility… the very nice woman at grad studies offered to call Admissions and Records and see if they would extend my “leave of absence” to next semester because I had surgery last semester…blah, blah, blah… therefore negating all other possibilities and putting me in good standing.  hold breath for an hour….

Yippee! When we walked back up to the history department to see if Dr Horowitz would take pity on me, we got the word that my leave has been extended!  Everything is back on track and all is good with the world again.

So, back to work on chapters two and five tomorrow.  Wednesday is regular writing day and I hope to get quite a bit accomplished!  Have a happy week, my friends and I will be back to you soon with more updates!

 

Ah, Natchez, I miss you

 

 

It has been far too long since I was last in Natchez.  It is my peaceful place and I miss it.  Peaceful?  How on earth could running around researching like crazy be peaceful, you ask, dear reader?  It just is.  I feel such a connection to Natchez as a place.  I can barely explain it.  The very first time I went there on a research trip, I fell in love.  I felt such a connection to my story.  Dr. Jenkins has been with me since the very beginning, silently watching over my shoulder.

So, now as I get closer and closer to the end of telling my story…the story of Yellow Fever in this great city, I feel a little sad.  I want so much to go back soon.  To sit on the front porch of Dr Jenkins house, Elgin. To smell the azaleas and magnolias blooming…  To roam the town’s streets which look, in many ways, like they have not changed since the 19th century.  To sit in the Historic Natchez Foundation or the archives at LSU or Jackson and smell the aged, musty documents that weave this tale.  Yes, my friends, I am feeling the need for a visit soon.

This week at our weekly writing date, I will delve into the economics of 1850s Natchez.  Now, I know very little about economics, but it must be done!  Dr. B sprung this new fifth chapter on me and I must venture forth!  I am hoping it will be the glue that holds all of my argument together.  So, while I dig through numbers and figures, I will be thinking of Natchez and dreaming I am there.

The Light at the End of the Tunnel Just Got Further Away

So, my faithful readers, I had my meeting with Dr Broussard this afternoon about the progress on my thesis.  It was fabulous to see her.   I guess the last time I saw her was back in May.  Let me tell you that sitting in her office is a little like therapy. She is without a doubt the best person I ever could have hoped for as a thesis adviser.  She is sort of mom figure to all of her grad students.

Anyway, back to the meeting… I went in very proud of the 50+ pages I have written in the last couple of months and thinking I only had one more chapter to go…well, it looks like I have at the very least two more chapters to crank out…and I have to make sure they all flow well.  She said that i should definitely be proud of all that I have accomplished, but that I had more work to do!  Bottom line… I will not be graduating in December as originally planned.  It is now the plan to have a draft to her in November, have until February or March to do revisions and then graduate in May.

I am not going to lie, I am a little disappointed that this will not be over in December.  However, having the extra time does take a little pressure off of me.  I still have to have these two chapters done as soon as possible, so all of the pressure is not gone!  That is alright I guess.  I do work better under pressure…or so my piano teacher always used to tell me.

What does all of this mean?  It means that you, my reader get to read about my thesis a little bit longer than planned!  It means that Maggie doesn’t get my undivided attention for the novel until this thing is written. It means that writing dates are all the more important to get me closer to the finish line.  I hope you will stick it out with me.  🙂

Procrastination Train

Somebody stop this train!  I need to get off now!  I have had a horrible week or so of procrastination.  I am so close to being done with my thesis, I really can’t afford to let this pesky little demon trip me up!!!

Today was meant to be a day of work, but ended up being a do-nothingish day.  I twisted my left knee coming down the stairs this morning and spent the majority of the day on the couch in pain.  Thank goodness for pain meds is all I can say.  I also spent the afternoon catching up on shows on the dvr and watching Farscape and Dr. Who on Netflix.  All I need is to get sucked into another series!!! Procrastination made easy. 
Tomorrow is writing day this week.  I have big plans to get things accomplished.  I did finish editing the third draft of chapter one of our novel.  I will get those edits entered into the computer tomorrow as well as get cracking on chapter two of the thesis.  There is plenty to do and fueled by my favorite latte (cinnamon and raspberry) I should be very productive tomorrow. 

My mom is busy proofreading the three chapters I have done.  I also sent those chapters to my dear friend Michael to get a fresh opinion on them.  I trust Michael implicitly with my work and know his input will be most helpful. 

In the middle of all of this work, I am trying to get ready for the wrap party for Jeff’s new movie, Wreck It Ralph.  I found a gorgeous black velvet dress… Very 1930s… And great shoes.  Bought a new bag today for the ensemble.  I love having a reason to get dressed up like this.  It brings out my inner 30s movie star!! Michael will be proud! 

And so, off to bed!  I venture forth tomorrow with productiveness in mind.  Hopefully in a week or so I will be able to report another chapter completed.  I will take all the well wishes I can get, so please, my friends, think happy thoughts for me and send good vibes that I can get off of this train and that it doesn’t run over me!