Hello future general exam participant! In this guide, you'll find a brief introduction, followed by an articulation of my own strengths/weaknesses that I'm calling my "founding assumptions". I then offer a guide to the documents in the directory with brief comments for use, my timeline with my strategic plan for preparation, my strategy for taking the exam itself, and my strategy for the defense. =============== Introduction =============== This is a short guide to the docs in this folder and my overall approach to the process. Please feel free to reach out if you want to talk about the process: I learned so much from others on my way to getting here, and would appreciate the opportunity to return the favor as a way of maintaining cosmic balance :). I had a couple of strategic ideas and an operational plan going into the exam, but arriving at them was a result of three factors. Call these my foundational assumptions about myself. If none of these sound useful or familiar, my guide might not be much help. ========================== My Founding Assumptions ========================== #1 Fear, uncertainty, dread. I was terrified of the general exam, no joke. I know what failure feels like and I've choked on exams before. I did not want to do so again. Being creative and expressive and thoughtful on a tight deadline is hard. I knew I would need to manage all my emotions in order to do well. #2 7P: [ proper prior preparation prevents piss poor performance ]. I learned this from a matrons of the American Legion, but it originates apparently with the British Army. I am ok with grinding, grinding, grinding to be ready for something. #3 Plan the work, work the plan. I have a background in the management of complex projects, so that's where I reached for solutions. This should not be mistaken for self-discipline. I prefer chaos and I have a particular aversion to being told what to do. To compensate, I tell myself what to do, and I'm rather strict. =============== Documents List =============== 1 - My Reading List -- "Kaylea Champion General Exam List.docx" 2 - My day to day tracking spreadsheet. I kept track of target dates for completion and recorded actual completion dates. I also color coded whether I was on track or falling behind my pace. "Reading Status Tracker.xlsx" 3 - The questions -- "Kaylea Champion General Exam.pdf" 4 - My answers (warts and all....) -- "KayleaChampion_GenEx_**" and my Underproduction paper used as a substitute for one question. 5 - My prep for the defense -- "Defense Guide.xlsx" Basic Timeline =============== Here's what I did: -- Dec: take a real holiday break. Sacrifices are coming. -- Jan to mid Feb: -- figure out a committee. I got an interesting GSR and had one committee member not at UW, this was good. -- list development . skim back through everything I ever read and weigh what part of it I think is part of my future dissertation plans. . try not to collapse in fear at the prospect. . remind self it's just a list of 'my' good stuff that I want to use. . prep the list in something easy for collaboration -- I did Google Docs. . organize the works into useful orders by themes and subthemes. . reasonableness check: if I read 6 items or a book per day, will I be done by my target of late May? I used Google sheets with fill-down formulas. . up to date Zotero + all the refs ready to go, broken down by the same theme categories as the docs for easy navigation. + a 'supergroup' with everything in a single folder, this for a two-click bibliography production process. + I did not want to play with APA or LaTeX quirks on the day of! . meet with committee members & revise list -- self-check with test runs . confirm: can I comfortably read the amount, per day, that I'm planning to? . iterate: my work capacity, the list, and committee feedback as needed -- explain and re-explain to household/family what was going to be required -- mid Feb: List approved, time to roll. Schedule is tight. Spring break did not happen. -- mid Feb-mid-May . read all the things. . take all the notes. I read while at my desk most of the time; much as I'd rather stretch out or be leisurely I wanted to be able to take notes as I read. . think of a few questions I could answer. dream of answering them. hope to be asked them. . try to get ahead of schedule. Holidays kill reading time. Look ahead to what might slow me down and pick up the pace. . grind hard when I fall behind. I learned that 12 articles in a day can be done but nothing else will get done that day. Brain too full. . let yourself have some clever ideas about the words flowing past on the page. Write down those too. -- mid May: be scheduled -- end of May: take exam -- early June: celebrate Particular strategic elements in the above: * Anticipate that future me will be stressed. Iron out as many possible consequences of that stress in advance. * Remember that I'm trying to develop my own ideas not just prep to reiterate other people's work. . Push myself to ask new questions of what I'm reading. That means time not-reading is important even though it's hard to find that time. Wish I'd done better here. . Theories usually have a set of associated gambits one can use to apply them and push for new thoughts. Think about those as I'm reading the theories themselves. Some examples: - If I'm using Ostrom, it matters what the 'good' is, how the community is bounded and governed, etc -- there are design principles, so how do they apply? - If I'm using Marwell and Oliver, it matters how action is organized, who's doing the organizing, what the good is like, and what the resulting production function is like. - If I'm using Benkler, I should think about how this organizing scheme compares to others and whether there are new classes of efficiencies. * Use familiar tech that supports future use/reuse. Nothing fancy: I know how to be productive in Zotero and Overleaf. I wish I'd had Writefull to clean up my spelling/grammar. * If it's not written down, I didn't really read it. I wrote summaries of everything I read. Some of those summaries were not awesome, but I knew I would not have the recall if I didn't have the notes. * If it doesn't have a page number in my notes, I'm never going to find it again. Quotes always need page numbers next to them. Exam Days Strategies ========================== -- The big opportunity here is that 4 people I chose will now read as much as 13,000 words of my writing. That's incredible. How can I make the best use of this gift? -- Marathon not sprint. Being kinder to myself earlier in the race will let me push hard at the end as needed. -- Set a minimum pace and don't fall behind. Put at least 1 question to bed per day before I put myself to bed. -- Be ready to make constant trade-offs and cut myself off early if I'm going down a rabbit hole. Keep watching the time. There's only so far I can go into a topic before I run out of time. Better to express a decent idea clearly than to express a slightly better idea that I then run out of time trying to articulate. -- My goals: . pass . demonstrate mastery . prime a great group of people to support my future ambitions . get words on paper that might be useful later -- In-text goals: . have a sentence that says 'In this essay I will.....' (and then do it). . strike a conservative balance between my newish ideas and demonstrations of synthesis . make tables and figures if I need them -- Previous day: get all my breakfast, snack, lunch foods, and easy dinners lined up. I went to TJ's for my favorites. -- Reality hits the day-of -- I figured an ideal schedule is 8 hrs writing and 4 hrs revising/planning per day so that I can have 4 hrs break/personal time and 8 hrs sleep. The exam I got had 2 parts to each question, approximately equal word count per part. That meant I needed to try to execute each of the six pieces piece in a block of four hours. -- Split the days up, my three days went something like this: Day 1: Hours 1:4 -- Read/re-read all questions and instructions. Spew an outline of each response into each document for each question. Hours 5:8 -- Write half of question 1 Hours 9:10 -- Break Hours 11:14 -- Write 2nd half of question 1 Hours 15:16 -- Re-read, revise. Have many random ideas for question 3. Spew them on paper to get them out of my brain so I can focus. Hours 17:24 -- Sleep Day 2: Hours 1:2 -- Serious strategizing about Question 2. It's harder. Make a plan. Hours 3:8 -- Work on Q2. Hours 9:10 -- Break Hours 11:18 -- More Q2. Grind grind grind. Don't give up. Need to have this answered before I sleep. Hours 19:24 -- Sleep Day 3: Hours 1:8 -- Question 3. Hour 9 -- Break. Hours 10:19 -- Revise. Re-read. Say, I think I will be done in one more hour. Be wrong. Keep going. Hour 20 -- Read/re-read all questions and instructions. Upload all things to Canvas. Email copies to Heather. * fin * Defense Strategies =================== 1 - Don't look at what I wrote for 3 days. 2 - Re-read everything. Try not to cringe at the typos. 3 - Make notes on each answer in a spreadsheet for easy reference during the defense. Pluses, deltas (i.e. coulda shoulda woulda), and follow-up questions in case I get the opportunity to ask the committee to reflect on them. 4 - Get real sleep the night before, do what I need to do to be ready to engage. 5 - Anticipate a structure like this: - Say hello then step out of the room. - Back in when summoned. - Per-question discussion. Everyone takes turns. - Step out again. - Back in when summoned. - Freedom. PS: I hope this helps a reader as much as it helped the writer. Feel free to grab me if you want to talk. --Kaylea