Dissertation Compression

I am applying for a Dissertation of the Year award through a professional association of which I am a member. It was DC's idea, which in itself was pretty flattering.

It's due June 1, and DC technically needs to submit it on my behalf. That means I need to get it to her this week. "It" is a 15-page abstract of my over-200-page dissertation. Yes folks, that means that over 185 pages of my dissertation was just a bunch of hogwash. It will only take 15 to apply for a prestigious award I probably won't win. Isn't that funny?

I'm not in the least bit stressed about it. OK, let me rephrase that. I'm not in the least bit stressed about whether or not I win the award (I'm just a tad bit stressed about getting the application done on time). If I do, it will be a wonderful, and completely unexpected occurrence. If I don't, no big whoop. I will come out of this process with a condensed version of the dissertation out of which I can hopefully spin off a couple of articles or at least a decent conference presentation. I'll spend the next few days working on it, but no more, and out of it should come something usable.

I'm glad to be back into that academic side of my brain again. This semester at work has pretty much kicked my ass, but it's not been academic ass. It's been administrative ass. Administrative ass is not nearly as fun.

OK, back to getting my academic ass in gear.