A diversion (for One Billion Rising)

I've just been taking a break from my paper on perspective shifting in interrogatives (3,127 words in, approximately 3,000 words of waffle) to pop down to the One Billion Rising event on campus.

Eve Ensler's One Billion Rising campaign is named after the one in three women who have, currently do, or will experience violence against them in some form during their lives. So to keep them in mind, and start to set other people's minds thinking on it, today - Valentine's Day - has been at least in part reappropriated from Hallmark for events to get people talking, thinking, and most of all, DANCING.

First came the fem-cakes....

Then came the dancing! Very brave
Linguistics MA student Petya got everyone
up and belly-dancing...

...then we were wowed by some seriously hot rumba

Oh-so-sadly, I didn't get any pictures of my dodgy shape-throwing to share with you. Consider this my Valentine's gift to each of you.

What I did turn my hand to though, and I will nervously share, is a few thoughts on that huge, great, pink elephant in the collective room at the moment - say it quietly - feminism. People (not just women) seem to be embracing it and abandoning it in equal measure at the moment, with both apathy and a LOT of 'pathy going around. So here's my attempt to get my head round it.

What is feminism?

It has no code, no doctrine
No great (or Greer) leader
It has no secret handshakes
No uniform - dungarees NOT excepted - 
Not even a gender restriction.

If you don't want to be a feminIST
or associate with decades of tired, conflicting baggage

Be a femophile
Like women, love women
Learn all about them and try to speak to them in their language

Be a fem-fan
Support women, cheer them on,
Elevate them to a higher league and rejoice in their successes as if they were your own

Be a Femian, a Femlim, a Femdu, or a Few
Believe in women, have faith in them
Trust them with your earthly happiness

And maybe you'll find
You too
Are a feminist after all.

A work in progress. In all senses.

Filling the Diary (and Baby's First Glasses)

As I mentioned a couple of posts ago, I'm a girl who needs a framework to get anything done. Leave me deadline-less and I will happily read novels until I go blind (more on that below!), preferably in a good hot bath until I turn into a prune/get shouted at by housemates, write letters to friends, doodle, make random paper-based objects that will never see the light of day and, in short, get very little done on my seemingly vast uphill climb of a PhD.

I've kickstarted myself by beginning to commit words to paper in possibly the least coherent literature review ever written. I'm now on about 8,000 words - how many of these will make it into the eventual thesis I cannot say, but it's keeping my head clear and on course.

I have, however, found that another way of focusing my mind is to get involved with projects, thereby plumping up the ol' CV and forcing myself to think time management - for example, if I'm in meetings and seminars all day Monday and Wednesday, then I am forced to sit myself down and get working hard on Tuesday, Thursday and Friday.

Here's the things I'm involved in:

• So it's all about conferences in the first year - I'm submitting abstracts and I have already presented a bit, but most interestingly, I'm involved in organising not one, but two conferences for 2013. The first one is PARLAY (Postgraduate Academic Research in Linguistics at York), the first PG conference for general linguistics that York will have hosted in some time, if ever. This will be held in September and is being overseen by the indomitable and impressive Catherine and Emanuela. The second is a librarian-esque Unconference, which I'm organising with a couple of linguists, a computer scientist and the GSA...and we're keeping our heads down and getting on with the organisation at the moment, so more details to follow soon!
• I've signed up to be the new chief editor of the York Papers in Linguistics, whose pages last year contained a short paper by yours truly. We haven't got a lot to do just yet, but it should get busy around summer time, which will prove a pleasant sideline.
• I'm still teaching one seminar group in Introduction to Syntax, which keeps me sane, even if the Friday morning early start has me all fingers and thumbs, breaking chalk and accidentally flinging board rubbers around. I'm also down to cover a couple of Practical Psycholinguistics seminars towards the end of the term, which I'm really excited about.
• For my sins I am the PhD rep for the department, so I sit on the Graduate School Board and the Board of Studies. It's a good insight into the administration required to run a department, and useful to be able to take fellow students' concerns directly into an arena where they can be seen to.
• Aaaaaaand there's an intriguing little side project which will be taking up a bit of time between now and March...I can't say much more yet, but suffice to say I'm a bit blown away by it!

So with all of these commitments filling up my timetable, it leaves me specific times, luckily usually a full day at a time, when I am free and therefore VERY motivated to get on with my own stuff. 

And on a side-note, here's the first piece of physical evidence of the effects of librarianship/postgraduate study...

Baby's first pair of glasses

That's right, they've robbed me of my eyesight. 

That's a little dramatic, actually - with a prescription of -0.75, I'm hardly blind, and I don't even need to wear them to drive or ride my bike. But it was scary how much clearer the world became when I tried them on for the first time yesterday...

Ah well. This new-found clarity should help me see the pathways that the PhD is opening up for me, and to take them with confidence!