Moving Forward: Comprehensive Exams Finally Slated

I hate looking at my calendar and having the same feeling every time I notice that the month has passed me by… “wow – October already!?” … soon it will be November – Christmas… 2010! … Sometimes I get so wrapped up in thinking about how fast time is going by, I cannot imagine making plans that don’t feel are done already. That changed last week when I (finally) confirmed the dates for my comprehensive exams. I submit my papers (Proposal and secondary field of research paper) on Monday – tomorrow. Then I have a month and a half of painstaking waiting while my committee (whom I have never met) reads my work and conjures up questions to challenge my text. November 20th, I receive said questions on my proposal and have 7 days to write 20 pages of a clear, hopefully concise rebuttal/response. I get 3 days grace, then on December 1st, and handed my second set of questions on my secondary research paper and have 48 hours to write a response. All this to be followed by a 2 hour oral defense slated for December 10th. Giving these dates – I am both paralyzed with how fast I know it will all pass, and how far away it all seems. If all goes well, I will be a PhD Candidate by the time my annual Holiday party rolls around (unofficially slated for the 12th of Dec. this year).

Summer Update

My month in eastern Canada has been steadily improving. What began as some sort of bad Canadian knock-off of monsoon season, is turning out to be a moderate comparison to the fun in the sun summers I remember – at least the sun is making an appearance, and the summer clothes I packed are finally being used. I have just under 2 weeks of holiday left, heading back to the city the first weekend in August. I only hope mother nature does not decide to give me the sweltering temperatures I have been whining for all month.

On the work front, I finally submitted a (relative) final draft of my indexicality paper (while perhaps contestable, I love this write up on indexicality)  for my secondary comprehensive exam that I have been droning on about for the last few months. I am surprised at its final form, so far away from the original paper, but much better for it I believe. The 10 second spiel is basically the cyclical (and changing) nature of indexicality in film and videogames and the role Martin Lefebvre’s ‘imaginary museum’ plays in the process of understanding both context and meaning in relationship to physical materiality of the depicted images. It is not as developed as I would have liked it to be, but the restrictions of the secondary exam (~ 3,750  wrds) limited my argument to an foundational level. Regardless, I am actually quite pleased with it, and think that with some more work, it could be developed into a worthy journal article.

With that submitted, I am onto the rest of my to-do list. Several reviews for an upcoming conference, and then full steam ahead on our piece for the Women in Games stream at DiGRA. With my co-author relatively secluded on a sandy island for most of the month of August, the writing process will certainly be interesting.

Finally, while I have not been very active on the intellectual blogging front, there have been many great game studies posts over at the TAG Blog.

Full Circle

Sometimes the research and the writing process has nothing to do with actually reading and writing, but rather, letting things stew in the back of your mind while you do other things. This is a hard process to accept – especially in the world of deadlines and other people’s schedules. However, I am happy to say that my indexicality paper has finally come full circle, and, while a tad late on the delivery, is ready to be taken seriously, and written. Essentially, I had to completely abandon the original text to even get back to it. I had torn it apart to its bare bones, barely recognizable to its original source, but after etching out a whole new outline, doing some more reading on (what was originally) peripheral topics, I realize the whole problem that I was having was that I was trying to work with someone else’s words, and not wholly my own ideas; using the wrong literature really. Once I realized this, I had come to the conclusion that in doing so, I was actually approaching my whole research question wrong; I was thinking about indexicality as something concrete – related to the materiality of the object; when in actuality (for the overall argument I was trying to make in the first place), it is really about its referentiality. Thinking of it this way makes more sense to what I am trying to say (will share that at a later date, since its all still in the writing stage), and helps me move away from concepts of indexicality traditionally used in film studies (often to make a case against digital media).

So – while it took longer than I wanted it to – I am happy to say that the “thought process” did it’s job. Now for the tediousness of writing it again!

Back to Indexicality

I have been working on my secondary comprehensive exam paper/topic again . Again might not be the right word. It started out as a paper on figural meaning and its relationship to indexicality through the process of one’s imaginary museum (Lefebvre), but for the allocated length of the paper, it was way too much. I had tried to simply cut out the section on the imaginary museum – which left me with a paper on figural meaning and its relationship to the indexical, but then I was left with a conceptual gaping hole. After a meeting with my advisor, we both agreed that the section on the figural felt tacked on and incomplete. So, we decided to nix the figural altogether, and reinsert the section on the imaginary museum. However, after trying to rewrite sufficient transitions to make the paper the least bit comprehensive (ha!), I realized that the imaginary museum made little sense in my overall argument without the backbone (weak as it may have been) of the figural.

So It was time to go back to the outline writing stage again (thnx Shan) even though I already have over 8k words written, chopped to bits and reassembled multiple times…; in the end, I am left with a paper on the shifting (conceptual) boundaries of indexicality across medium (photo/film/videogames). While the idea of meaning making and memory is completely lost (will save it for another time), for the first time in a few months, I actually feel pretty good about the direction it is heading and the readings I have (re)selected. Now, here’s to crossing my fingers that I get a legible draft done by Saturday (advisor imposed deadline)!

APA Style Guide Update – 2009

Thank you to the Association of Internet Researchers mailing list (and to Debashis ‘Deb’ Aikat, Ph. D., Associate Professor and Media Futurist
School of Journalism and Mass Communication at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill for posting it to the list), there will be a “6th” edition of the APA guidelines – which will include the following:

Key to the “sixth edition” of APA style is a Web presence. On July 1, 2009, APA will launch a fully revamped website featuring tutorials, sample papers, frequently asked questions, an APA Style blog, and
other resources about APA Style.

The sixth edition of APA Style offers new and expanded instruction on publication ethics, statistics, journal article reporting standards, electronic reference formats, and formats for tables and figures.

Some select features include:
~~ “new ethics guidance on such topics as determining authorship and terms of collaboration, duplicate publication, plagiarism and self-plagiarism, disguising of participants, validity of instrumentation, and making data available to others for verification;”

~~ “significantly expanded content on the electronic presentation of data to help readers understand the purpose of each kind of display and choose the best match for communicating the results of the investigation, with new examples for a variety of data displays, including electrophysiological and biological data;”

~~ “consolidated information on all aspects of reference citations, with an expanded discussion of electronic sources emphasizing the role of the digital object identifier (DOI) as a reliable way to locate information;”

~~ “simplified APA heading style to make it more conducive to electronic publication;”

~~ “new guidelines for reporting inferential statistics and a significantly revised table of statistical abbreviations;”

See more details at http://books.apa.org/books.cfm?id=4200066

Random Dissertation Thoughts

I had my first full-on thesis proposal/comprehensive exam meeting on Thursday. All in all, it went relatively well. Ok – to be honest, it was a lot better than I had expected, and only have some minor tweaking on my actual proposal, and a decent-sized (but very doable) edit on my secondary comp paper. One of the things I thought I had squared away was my ‘research method’, as methods is something that I have an interest in; probably drilled into me by all my methods courses [and a few others] that always challenged us on why the methods we are choosing are necessarily the best ones to get the research task at hand done. Justification of method indeed.

So, for my doctoral research, I am working with a theoretical framework that I developed in my MA which attempts to define the necessary relationships that occur in order for a “hybrid” identity to be formed (an identity that belongs neither wholly to the player, nor the player-character on screen, but an identity that exists between them that is developed through the gameplay and other elements). I am now using this framework as a template to evaluate the process of identity construction in various genres of video games that are necessarily distinct from MMO’s. One of the goals here is to evaluate in which ways my framework (developped through mmorpg play/study) changes based on the type of game being played (and all the things that go with it), which ultimately leads to varying processes and forms of identity. I will not get into the “why” just yet, but that being said, I had chosen my research methods quite stringently, based on my sociological training of course.

Since my work relies heavily on my pre-existing framework, the analysis will be based on both the framework and personal gameplay experience (of character development, player choices etc) along with more technical elements (game design elements). One thing I never thought of though, coming out of sociology – is to record all of my gameplay. However, my advisor (from a cinema department) uses recorded gameplay extensively – and it makes sense for the research/work that he does. I just never thought about using it myself. At first, I could not imagine what use it would be other than to document the fact that I did it, and on some levels, the “play experience” analysis will not be ‘obvious’ through the recording. However, the more I think about it – the more I am thinking about anthropology and not film studies [perhaps a mental block ... perhaps lack knowing any better]; the more I think that it could be an interesting project on a personal level to record my gameplay, to track the development of expertise through gameplay, and how that influences my framework (something I hadn’t even thought of as part of my overall project).

To be honest, the more I think about it, the more excited I am! If only I can get through the next week (conference prep, out of town company and a heavy workload at EA), I am really excited to start working on this!! (Always a good thing when it comes to your dissertation ).

Oh – and for my colleagues who already record their gameplay, any equipment suggestions (brand, etc.) I know I need a dvd recorder, but any suggestions from those in the know would be great!

The Merry Month of May

One more month until summer holidays begin, and I can be back near the ocean. Until then, my work calendar is looking a bit crowded. Work at EA has increased significantly for the next little while as several games are moving speedily along in their development. Instead of my 1 – 2x a week, this week I am there 4x (was almost 5, but there was a conflict in my schedule). While I am excited with what we are doing, it is starting to bite into my academic schedule in ways I had not originally foreseen when I took it on.

CGSA is fast approaching. Have to get our paper and presentation squared away. I am excited with how it is shaping up and hope that it goes over well. While girls and games is not my usual research niche, there are a few things that I have quietly grappled with over the years about the existing literature and market, and this research is finally allowing me to deal with it head on. The work we submitted to DiGRA (fingers crossed) follows the same theme, but with a more analytical approach and deeper ethnography. Two things I have missed tremendously over the last two years.

I am trying to work through the papers for my comprehensive exams, which have been delayed due to a myriad of factors. I feel as though I have been working in a bubble for the last two months. It is hard to know if you are remotely on the right track when you work alone (and from home). While I lament my situation, I know that it is the ’solitary’ nature of the PhD – or so I have been told by many senior academics from a wide range of institutions and generations. So, I trudge on, dangerously straddling the line of being confident in what I am doing and feeling lost at sea. Regardless, as I always say, it will not last forever! My comps will get done, and I will get to move on from this point soon enough (keeping with the theme of time flying).

On a personal note, my daughter graduates high school in June and there is a lot of preperation with prom stuff, grad ceremony planning, grad class trip planning and the grad party afterward. When they are young, it is so hard to imagine that they will be so big and independent. Now that it’s here, I am both amazed and stunned; proud and sad that we are here.

Step in the Right Direction

I am two pages shy of submitting my dissertation proposal. It seems like forever that I have been working on it – falling in and out of love with my research topic and direction – being this close to finalizing it feels right. I know that there will inevitably be feedback from my advisor and some changes to the overall proposal, but after spending this much time with it (too long to share), I am starting to feel comfortable with what I have put down, in black and white. I see not only a direction, but a solid framework to forge ahead with. With my chapter outlines almost finished, I am eager to get to the “fieldwork – of course, I have to defend my proposal (both in writing and then orally) before I can get too far ahead in terms of actual work, but as the sun peeps out of the foreboding clouds (it has been raining for days), I think that the step has been taken, a solid, heavy step in the right direction.

The Perils of Editing

I am doing some editing work, and so, have been spending many hours learning the rules behind the things I write instinctually, so that changes can (or cannot) be made. What one learns quite quickly in editing, is that there is rarely any hard and fast rules that govern grammar and punctuation with an iron fist. So, I have been spending much of my time trying to find multiple sources to either confirm or contradict what my desktop guides say (I work from an APA guide and a Grammar Desk Reference – checked against various reliable, online sources). In dealing with the conundrum that is the using of the word ‘comprise’, I stumbled upon this candid explanation of the debate at hand. Quite worth the read if you’ve ever had to defend your choice.

Writing Rituals

So, I have been sitting in front of my laptop for the last few days, working on my thesis proposal, typing a word here, a phrase there (I am about 1/4 of a way through being finished …). I have been trying to think of ways to get myself into that super-fiend-work-mode that I find myself in when confronted with a hard deadline and being three steps behind. I am trying to avoid that ulcer inducing work mode (that got me this far, but still, I don’t think I can sustain it for my PhD), so i got to thinkin’ – what work rituals do I usually perform to get it going? I know that good conversations with colleagues always gets me motivated to work (however, the bus ride home usually takes a bit of wind out of my sails); sometimes going over my reading notes that I took to prepare for the particular project helps and I usually have to clean my office so all is neat and tidy (since my ideas are messy and all over the place). But what I would like to know is, what other rituals do people have to get themselves deep into work mode? I cannot imagine (or at least hope) that not everyone is naturally motivated and inspired 24/7 as needed – so please – share any tips or tricks you might have.