It’s that time of year when students & professors go into stress-mode. That special time between Thanksgiving and Christmas when you’re realizing that you only have a few weeks before the end of the semester. Which is great, but at the same time, extremely frightening. As an ABD student, I don’t often work along the same time frame, since I’m neither teaching nor in coursework. And I live about 100 miles from campus. But like some sort of persistent muscle memory, I still have the feeling like I’m supposed be busy and on deadline — and in some ways I am. I scheduled two talks late into the semester — one at the USC Fisher Museum of Art (above) and one next week on “A Decolonial Approach to Visual Culture.” These talks are not only a good way to disseminate my work to my fellow USC colleagues, but also function as built-in deadlines. Kind of like conference papers or fellowship deadlines.

The next major goal is to write Chapter 2 by the time I’m getting ready to leave for Vietnam. I have about 16 days to get this done, which seems kind of impossible. But I’m talking a draft — nothing perfect. The polishing can be done later. I just feel like if I don’t get all of my thoughts down before my trip, then I’ll forget them and lose some of the momentum that I’ve had over this last semester. Plus, my goal is to finish a draft of the entire dissertation by August 2013, so I have to stay on schedule. Let’s see how that goes!