I was surprised to find out the item I own the most of is finger cymbals; my guess was I’d have more sweat pants. I don’t play them all that often but also am not big on dancing with props.

Does anyone else inventory their dance items? What do you own the most of?

Details, including how to register, are here. I’ve heard very good things about Kay, so I’m definitely looking forward to this!

The show is good variety of performances (Middle Eastern dance, Flamenco, Salsa, and others) and is for a great cause. For more information, click here.

The workshop, which was hosted by Amity of NH, focused on Egyptian technique and meleya leff. The Egyptian technique section required the use of very small muscles and a softer, internal look. It was quite exhausting. Outi is a precise teacher and really wanted us to get the feel of the technique, not just something that kind of looked like it. Due to the smaller size of the workshop (20something people?), Outi could go around to look at what everyone was doing.

The meleya leff portion of the workshop was a lot of fun; you could tell Outi loves this. She taught three different wraps and some ways I hadn’t thought about using the meleya. Nepenthe and I were the only ones in the room with some familiarity in doing meleya leff, leaving wondering if Outi would’ve taught something different had participants had more familiarity. Regardless, I did learn quite a bit.

I recommend checking out Outi if you get a chance. Also, I recommend attending an Amity of NH/Raq-on event. The studio is clean, fairly spacious, and Amity is a great, welcoming host.

I’m posting about her blog because not only do I enjoy reading about what it’s like to be in Egypt, to study dance, generally check out Egypt, and work on her store, but also the candor and detail are lovely. It is comforting to see even a dancer of Aurel’s caliber having fears about her dance. Of course, it’s equally exciting to see her succeed and enjoy herself there.

The survey is kind of a census of the New England belly dance community. Please fill it out when you get a chance. The survey is open to anyone who identifies as a belly dancer, regardless of style, level, and involvement in the community. The goal for the survey is to inform event organizers, teachers, etc. who lives here, what these people want, etc.

Results will be published on Belly Dance New England . If you respond before 15 March 2012, you can be entered into a raffle for $25.

The survey is located here

The perks are money and time; college is ghastly expensive and continues to rise in cost. If you attend school away from home, living expenses are not trivial, particularly in a city like Boston. Time- it is nice to finish early and have extra time for one’s career.

However, what about the experience? Although I tend to think the idea of college as an experiential thing for people to do is not a wise decision (it is an expensive experience), I began thinking about the idea of the college experience and what acceleration does to it. If you want to look at things as strictly a career experience or preparation for your career, you are losing time for internships and really soaking in knowledge. A concern with me is that I may not in principle have the knowledge or wisdom of someone who has marinated in the literature for years and years. You can conceivably pile on experiences, although that will likely lead to stress and experiences that may not be as rich.

Looking at the broader picture of experience, having the time to talk with others and just relax is nothing to discount. People say it’s the people and the fun in life that matters more so than the grades. I think both are important, but to tell you the truth, a friend of mine from undergraduate and I were reminiscing about college. It wasn’t about research (we were both physics majors) or things we academically excelled at; it was the time we spent with people. One of my friends’ favorite memories was a 100% social thing we did with the professors.

Then again, who knows? Time doesn’t guarantee anything such as good experiences. For me, I feel like I am doing a pretty good job of keeping myself viable with the research (and my research interests began much before I started my doctoral program) though extra time would be nice. However, I also cannot discount the whole pragmatic side of things which is grant money isn’t available for more than 4 years for me, and I’ve used up two by end of this semester.

I suppose it’s really about weighing one’s options, balancing stress and work, and being pragmatic but kind to oneself. For myself, I’ve been scaling back in other aspects that maybe are hobby or just not a priority. I hope the student doesn’t stress out too much and either figures out how to really balance things or makes shrewd decisions on what is most important.

When looking for software to ease dissertation writing, I stumbled upon Scrivener. So far, I really enjoy it as an alternative to Word or Pages (the Mac equivalent). I type my notes for class and consequentially, I either end up with a lot of Word documents or a never-ending, scrolling Word document that is cumbersome to use. Scrivener creates “projects” where I can easily organize my notes and label the contents of the subfile.

In the screenshot below, I have notes that I’ve taken. Each index card can be labeled so the contents of each page are clear. I can either click on the files under “Draft” to access each file or click on the corkboard. This feature is already pretty nice for organizing schoolnotes; this will probably be a time saver for dissertation notes.

A screenshot of the Scrivener Corkboard. These index cards can be clicked on and will take you to my notes for that day.

In terms of actually typing in the document, it’s similar to Word for me. Some key features a friend has noted enjoying is being able to enter a full screen mode that blacks out everything but the page you are writing. That’s handy for those who get easily distracted.

I haven’t even unpacked all of Scrivener’s features, but I’m already impressed and very much considering a conversion to Scrivener. Some particular features I’m eager to try are the exporting functions. Besides Word, Scrivener can export to LaTeX, which is typesetting software. Although I am not obligated to use LaTeX for my dissertation, LaTeX has some valuable features (namely, with figures) and produces professional, good-looking documents. I plan on using it. Exporting to LaTeX is not trivial, and I have had friends tell me that the formatting becomes messy if you type in Word and copy-paste into a the LaTeX compiler. If Scrivener can really create LaTeX files, particularly with maintaining the formatting, I’ll be really sold. Right now, for a $45 piece of software, I’m already quite impressed.

There is a learning curve, but it isn’t too extreme. In any case, the creators of Scrivener offer a very generous free trial; you receive 30 days of actual use, meaning that if you only use Scrivener once every week, you can use it for 30 weeks. I think this software has multiple uses beyond academic; I could see it being very handy for organizing dance notes, choreographing, etc.

During my dissertation proposal writing class, we talked about using Dropbox. Dropbox is a free cloud file sharing, and it is a great asset. With the issues regarding MegaUpload being shutdown for illegal file-sharing, there is speculation that something like Dropbox could be also shutdown. Some believe that it is unlikely, as Dropbox is different than MegaUpload.

I tend to err on the side of caution and keep dissertation files in multiple places. While I didn’t foresee this one, I do this because you never know. The security and little bit of extra work is worth it.

I sent a note to my dissertation group, because I know some people who only use Dropbox and don’t have other places for them. Things happen that we don’t expect and while we can’t prepare ourselves in life for every possibility, backing up one’s files in multiple places is one we should do. It’s easy, fairly inexpensive, and takes very little time. The mental security is also worth it.

However, I have never participated in something like this, so it’s the blind leading the blind. Granted, I think I may be the only person in the group who has written a master’s thesis, but that was in physics and had other issues. Also, I had no support group and my lab was quite small.

While I think the group is a good idea (as do others, including professors), I was hoping someone out on there on the internet has some ideas. Perhaps the group will develop organically but I’d like to have some ideas and plans to keep the group healthy and active. I’ve been reading a bit about the importance of cohorts and given we have nothing resembling a cohort at the education school, it would be quite nice to have one.

Have you ever started a dissertation support group? What did you find successful?