Is it a breakthrough? Not yet...

... but I think I might be getting somewhere on my dissertation proposal. After weeks of agonizing anxiety over my apparently insurmountable methodological issues on establishing chronological control, I just sat my ass down and forced myself to read over my proposal draft and the comments my prof had made on it. This is a scary, SCARY thing, to confront such a highly imperfect representation of your self-made aspirations, the tangible measure of your self-worth as a blossoming academic, the sum of your educational background, the bar for your future career. It's so scary that every time I looked at the 10-page document this past month, I said to myself, "Nahhhhh.... I can't right now. I'll tackle it soon, just not now."
My proposal matters much more to me than to anyone else; it's the same with any student whose thesis looms in the near future. This is partly why I am so scared of it: because how can I convince anyone else that they should care enough to lend me some advice or assistance (or god forbid, funding)?
But, having run out of excuses, I did it today, and (as happened before, and will happen again) on reading through it, I realized it's not so bad, and even got a bunch more ideas on how to get at what I am trying to analyze. More to the point, I thought of how to break down the problem I want to research into its different bits and am forming a plan for how to tackle them one at a time.
The first and most important step in my plan is remembering to breathe.

writing exercise

So I want to post things I think about on this blog. I think about school and work a lot... so we'll see if I can make them interesting. It will be good practice for the kind of writing I want to do professionally someday, which is publicly accessible "academic" stuff. So if you're reading this, I welcome comments, critique, or suggestions.
To start off, I am an anthropology PhD student at Michigan State University, with a research emphasis in southern African late prehistoric archaeology. Yes, I have been on digs before. No, I don't own a fedora or a whip, but I do like 3/4 of the Indiana Jones movies. My academic interests range from straight-up anthropological/ archaeological method and theory, to multidisciplinary social scientific collaboration, to public/ academic dialogue-building, to international development, and to anything else that might tie in to these subjects. There are a lot of things that tie in to anthropology, which is part of the reason I haven't given up on it yet.
I consider myself a dedicated student but seek to live a balanced life, which sometimes means sacrificing potential career opportunities for other "real life" commitments. I live in constant fear of walling myself in an ivory tower; I believe I can be a much better, and more relevant, researcher if I integrate things I do for a living with things I live to do.
This has been my first attempt at putting my gradually evolving career manifesto into words. More sure to follow later.