July 2008 Archives

A few weeks ago I received the relieving news that my master's thesis from the University of Chicago finally passed after several years and several attempts. The approved version was actually a draft and needed some degree of editing for typos, grammar, and a few structural changes. After mulling it over for a while and getting some positive feedback I've decided to post the thesis here with a few explanations.

Last Sunday was the Jewish fast day of Shiva Assar B'Tammuz - the 17th day of the month of Tammuz. In addition to being a fast day, the 17th of Tammuz also marks the beginning of The Three Weeks of mourning leading up to the fast of Tish'a B'av. For these three weeks and the final nine days Jews generally accept some practices of mourning. However, there is much confusion as to what actions are prohibited when.¹ Every year around this time I get a slew of questions as to what is permitted and prohibited during the three weeks and nine days and for some reason I never got around to posting my responses. To correct this oversight, here is my understanding of the laws and customs of the three weeks and nine days.

Well, one bit of good news since the last post is that my recent thesis draft passed as is! I still have some minor changes to make like some silly grammar, spelling, or syntax things,¹ but even so, the professors found it passable "and quite interesting."

Once I get those bugs out of the way I'll consider either posting it or a thoroughly abridged summary.

If you're new to YUTOPIA, I first blogged about this thesis way back on February 25th, 2004, and a few more times since. After a while I just stopped talking about it other to say it was "in progress" and generally let it get in the way of pursuing so many things in life mostly out of guilt and insecurity.

For so long I was afraid to write anything, mostly due to self-imposed pressure of writing a paper solely as an admissions ticket to a PhD program. For most of the time I was working on a topic I didn't choose, didn't really understand, and constantly felt too unqualified and too insecure to write anything. Even if I'd write three sentences, I'd delete two for not being good enough;I knew I could write better and couldn't deal with not producing at the level I thought I ought to have been able. I even used to get panic attacks just by loading up the draft in Word.

There were several factors why things worked this time including:

1. Having a topic I understood
2. Having clear parameters for a research model
3. Growing up a whole lot over the past few years
4. Having an absolute drop-dead deadline
5. Getting laid off at an opportune time
6. Getting over the existential need to get a PhD immediately and living without degrees
7. Dealing with bigger problems, which helps put things in perspective
8. In fact I think it's because at this point nothing was else riding on finishing the paper freed me up to view it as just another independent task

I may think of more later - right now I'm writing on instinct. I definitely feel that I've changed a bit since I've started, daresay even matured. There's also an odd sense of closure. Back in 2003 or so the biggest advocate for me going to Chicago was my then-girlfriend, who got married within a day of me submitting my draft.² I don't know exactly what that means, but I think it's interesting enough to mention.

Minimally there's a lesson here in either tenacity or stupidity. I've had several people - including a therapist - tell me to quit and move on, and perhaps if I were a better economist I'd have just dealt with the sunk costs. I think part of it was the counter-insecurity of admitting failure³ or that deep down I also knew that I do in fact know how to write.

At any rate, having a masters the University of Chicago it may or may not open doors in the future, but right now I don't feel that it has to. That lesson alone is probably worth more than the paper itself.⁴

I would also be remiss if I didn't thank my family and friends who have provided encouragement or even just put up with me struggling with this over the past few years. Also I must also thank the new professors for their constructive guidance and feedback. In fact I received more productive comments from them in the past few months than I've gotten in the previous four years combined.

1. Huge shocker I know.
2. Mazal Tov!!!!
3. Think something like that Simpsons episode where all of Mr. Burns' illnesses cancel each other out.
4. Who knew you could learn something while getting an education?

By now my extended absences from blogging should come as no surprise. I've always held that real life must take precedence over any virtual identity. However, since I did promise an explanation, so here's the scoop.

• Once I got laid off¹ I decided to use the time to remove my longstanding albatross of my U of C thesis. This, I should point out, is no small feat considering that previous attempts at finishing have elicited more panic attacks than paragraphs. At any rate, I managed to hunker down and actually managed to turn in a paper on secularization theories. The only problem was that my then adviser had since left and the new professors in charge thought the thesis was pretty much uninteresting or otherwise insufficient.² After a near rewrite of the entire paper, it still wasn't up to snuff and it was rejected.
• So after basically writing two theses, I had to start from scratch again, but this time in conjunction with the new advisers. Following their suggestions and my own familiarity with the subject. I wrote a new paper dealing with the Conservative teshuvot on homosexuality and e-mailed it in last week.³ Thus, in a span of three months I researched and wrote well over 100 pages worth of thesis, with the last fifty or so in the past month alone.
• In the middle of these theses, I also organized Mt. Sinai's shavuot program and updated my own shiur on taxes and tzeddakah.
• Oh, and I also wrote a piece for the upcoming issue of R. Marc Angel's journal "Conversations" on the topic of "social justice"⁴
• Anticipating burnout, I had planned on attending R. Aryeh Klapper's summer kollel, but we got the dates mixed up and it actually started about two weeks before I had down on my calendar. This actually turned out to be fortuitous because...
• I just found out today that my landlord is not renewing the lease on the apartment in which I am currently subletting. This means on top of being unemployed I also need to move out in about two months.

So yeah, it's been an intense couple of months with neither respite nor resolution imminent. ⁵ Much has been neglected personally - I simply haven't had the time to take care of myself as as I should.⁶ Despite the immediate concerns of job and dwelling, I'm still optimistic in the macro sense that this is yet another instance of being forced out of a comfort zone to grow in some way or another.

There have also been a few changes in the blog itself. I recently ported over all templates to MT4 which as you can see went must better than last time. Aside from some minor cosmetic changes, the significant perk is that commenting with the captcha actually works! This means no more bugs and no more Typekey registration.

Finally, I registered the domain names http://joshyuter.com and http://jewishguitarchords.com for this site and the chords directory respectively. Currently these URL's are only a masked redirect, but this may change in the future.⁷

And that just about covers it. I may try forcing myself to write again more regularly to maintain the outlet, but no promises.

Stay tuned for future developments...

1. Which I later found out to be another casualty of the Bear Stearns buyout.
2. Much of the problem stemmed from the fact that I didn't chose the topic, but it was assigned to me from a faculty adviser. The problem was he left the university and the replacements didn't like the new topic.
3. Advisers are on vacation and won't look at it for another week. If it passes I'll blog a summary.
4. More precisely, my perspective on which I hope to elaborate at some point.
5. Thankfully before I descended fully entered into "woe is me" mode, I found Kathryn Bertine's recent and possibly final installment of her series "So You Wanna Be an Olympian" and found the last section to be particularly helpful.
6. I've even ignored my own 5 year blogoversary!
7. At the rate things are going it's a good thing I don't have a good pun for "Brave New World."