Eyes wide open all the time

Finding a title for this, the last blog post of my sociology career, was the most difficult thing I've ever done on the internet. You can see that I've copped out by just choosing a versatile line from a favourite song. Finding something that's sufficiently meaningful without being ludicrous is way beyond me.

So I got an A in SOSC 318, and it's all over forever.

In order to make this post look less pathetic in length, here is a list of all my SOSC grades right back to when I was a first year who hadn't heard of the Enlightenment. Note that there are exactly two courses at each level. This is the minimum required to get a SOSC major, meaning that SOSC is the only one of my majors for which I haven't done loads of extra stuff.

Code	Title	Trimester	Grade
SOSC 111	Sociology: Foundations and Concepts	1/2004	A-
SOSC 112	NZ: Sociological Perspectives	2/2004	A+
SOSC 205	Sociology of Religion	2/2005	B+
SOSC 214	Special Topic (Globalisation and its Discontents)	2/2005	A
SOSC 303	Sociology of Deviance	1/2006	A
SOSC 318	Social Movements and the State	1/2008	A

I suppose I should have called this The Last Post, shouldn't I?

Temptation's page flies

I got an A+ for Essay 2. Really I was only expecting an A, so this is a nice surprise. Now I'll almost certainly get an A for the course.

Sandra's comments on the essay were mostly of the yeah-well-I-would-have-done-that-if-I-had-5000-words-to-fill variety, although she also pointed out some places where I could have linked my empirical work more strongly with existing theory.

All the stupid things I said

The analysis of the previous post wasn't quite correct, because I totally forgot to include the completion component of the journal. The 79% to 90% for content only accounts for 10% of my course grade - I also got 67% for completion (another 10% of the course grade). The effect is that my true average is currently 74% to 79% (not 76% to 82%), or 7 grade points (not 7.3). The conclusion, that I won't get an A+ for the course, still holds.

Let's do the math

On Friday I picked up my sixth and last journal, which got an A. My average journal grade (weighted by the number of articles in each journal) is therefore between 79% and 90%, or between 7.8 and 8.4 grade points - crudely, it's an A. After throwing in my first essay I'm averaging 76% to 82%, or 7.3 grade points, an A- for the whole course.

Far be it from me to guess how sociology lecturers really average across letter grades (especially given that they may have recorded actual percentage marks that we know nothing about), but basically, if I get an A in the last essay then I'll probably get an A for the course. If I get an A+ for the last essay then I'll definitely get an A for the course. It's pretty unlikely at this juncture that I'll get an A+ for the whole course - I don't think they scale internally assessed work that much.

The bright lights have faded too soon

On Wednesday I proofread the essay, on Thursday I gave it to my sister to shorten my more Hardyesque sentences (Thomas, not Godfrey), and on Friday I made the corrections and handed it in. Charles had his door open as I went past, so we had a nice chat about things in general. He was there in my first year of sociology, and there he was again in my last. He'll most likely be the one to mark this final essay.

The CTU never did get back to me with corrections of their own. I'll send them a final copy when I get my grade back.

Find that you're missing what others thought you had all the time

First draft finished @ 3335 words (111%, again). The conclusion may be a bit intense, language-wise, for the rest of the essay. I've sent it to the CTU to have a look at and now I'm going to forget about it for a few days. Re-reading it after a break will be far more useful than doing so now (it's not due for a week yet).

Today I finally picked up journals 4 and 5 from the school office. I got an A for one and "A/A+" for the other, meaning I'm back to an approximate A average. After journal 6 comes back (handed in today with only two articles) I'll put a complete marks analysis here to try and work out what my grade will really be.

The worst part of composing in OpenOffice is the typos that must be found and corrected manually. Does anyone else know how to make the dictionary work on a Mac?

The only thing that's real

Another 1100 words today, meaning I've got 300 words left (600 if I take the extra 10%, as I usually do). The political section is finished and the cultural section half done. I'm almost certainly going to omit the results section. Around the middle of the day I had some confusion about my structure, but it sorted itself out after I reordered a few paragraphs, and now I know almost exactly where I'm going and what I will find when I get there.

I discovered another short article in the book of readings, so I might even get another journal entry done tonight.

Today was the last lecture I will ever attend in a sociology course. It was pretty awesome - Sandra gave us biscuits and cheese, did a practice run for presenting her latest paper to a conference next month (original research just for us!) then let us argue for the last half hour. I'm not that happy about never doing SOSC ever again, but insofar as it had to end some way, that was a good way for it to end.

The chosen few who will judge the many

Another article read and journaled. Another 1000 words written. I've done what's necessary for terms on the journal, but if I can do one more article by Friday then I'll get a round number of course marks for completion (there's one course mark per three articles, so I'm on 6²/₃). There are a maximum of 10 course marks to be got, but I'm far more interested in the essay right now. Even if I wasn't, I still wouldn't be able to read another seven articles by Friday.

Essay progress:

• 1600 words
• 55% of word count
• Narrative section complete (including the Kelsey part)
• Political section started
• Outline consolidated by combining points 2/3, points 4/5, and points 6/7 into three sections rather than six
• Contemplating whether to remove final section, given that I'm
  1. Meant to be looking at claims made, not results achieved
  2. Almost certainly going over the word limit

I'm learning an awful lot from this essay - not least that my country has some rather shocking things in its past that it's tried so hard to bury in these last 20 years. It's also enlightening to see how people communicated en masse before email. They wrote stuff on bits of paper and (I suspect) sent it down the phone lines!

Ain't no headlights on the road tonight

Today I wrote 600 words, about half of which was introduction. (I always try not to write the introduction first, but I just can't get going without it. Invariably I throw it out and write a new one when the rest of the essay is finished.) I got as far as the start of the narrative section, but then I needed Kelsey for some hard data, and because it's heavy I'm not carrying it around with me. The plan was to write the whole Kelsey section tonight, but that got hijacked by a tension headache making it difficult to read.

The last MATH assignment is in, meaning the only non-essay thing left on the list is one more journal article. I've chosen another short one so it shouldn't be too difficult to get that done.

Couldn't buy an eyeful of sleep

Today I knocked 1.5 things off my to-do list. I read and journaled one articled (it was a short one, and interesting too), and my MATH lecturer decided not to give us an assignment next week after all. In a very short time the only thing remaining on that list will be the essay!

Did I ever tell you the story about cowboys and midgets?

From CTU Circular 1991/65, Resolution of Affiliates Meeting, 18 April 1991:

THIS SPECIAL MEETING AUTHORISES THE NEW NATIONAL EXECUTIVE to explore the feasibility of, and if realistic to initiate:

• ...
• the organisation of a "Business Roundtable Experimental Test". The activity would be built on the BRT premise that workers were living beyond their means and consuming too much. To see if the austerity route to economic recovery would work in one specific case, workers could stop consuming the products of one leading BRT company for six weeks, and see if this helped the company become more export focused and more internationally competitive.

There's only one thing better than paging through interesting unpublished records, and that's coming across passages in them that make you laugh. It's even more awesome when you're laughing for the same reason that the original authors would have laughed when they wrote it - sharing a joke across the decades.

I have an outline. Concerningly, it has nine sections including the bookends. Each section in the body (except the first) is derived from a key area of theory we've looked at during the course:

1. Narrative
2. Evidence of awareness of political opportunity structure
3. Evidence of organisational resource mobilisation
4. Evidence of awareness of shared identity
5. Evidence of use of cultural resources
6. Evidence of impact on wider culture of society
7. Evidence of impact on policy

There is, in fact, evidence of all of these things in the material I've collected. Writing it should be fun if I'm able to spend enough time on it. I'm using Kelsey (The New Zealand Experiment) as my key source for contextual material, which should be even more fun.

Work it harder, make it better

Things that I must do before or around the end of the trimester, with dates:

• Two MATH assignments (27 May and 3 June)
• Two SOSC journal entries (30 May)
• One 3000-word SOSC essay (6 June)

Due to family commitments, I won't really have any time to do anything after 30 May. That makes things seem more urgent than they are.

You just want to be on the side that's winning

Today I started earnestly going through my research in detail, extracting themes and ideas for the essay. My method for keeping myself focused on this involves tricking my brain into thinking I'm earning $12 an hour for it - entering the title, date and subject of each circular into a spreadsheet like I would normally do in a summer job. Apart from the motivational aspect of this, the list will probably be quite handy in those "where on earth did I read that good quote?" situations later.

Today I learned, to my amazement, that the CTU signed a "growth agreement" with the government in 1990 to the effect that they wouldn't ask for wage increases if the government would try to control inflation. If it had lasted to become operative, this agreement would have gone down as the biggest sellout in New Zealand union history. (A change of government and the Employment Contracts Act soon meant that unions had other things on their minds.) In order to have thought that the Growth Agreement was a good idea, the unions must have swallowed the neoliberal rhetoric on the evils of inflation hook, line and sinker. Furthermore, they must also have believed the part about inflation being the fault of workers with too much bargaining power, and the part about productivity gains being the only way to justify wage increases.

They sold the agreement to their members with claims that lower inflation would lead to lower interest rates, so by helping the government to control inflation they were really helping workers. From here that looks like a remarkably thin excuse. The experience of years of neoliberalism has taught us that unions must stick to their own game if they're to achieve anything at all. Even back then, the unionists must have realised the enormity of what they were giving up in exchange for so little. I can only conclude that they must have been very afraid of something to agree to such a deal - and one year later, their fears were realised with the passing of the ECA. As it turned out, not even handing over the best of their power to the government could save them in those dark days.

Do you, Mister Jones?

On Friday I handed in only two articles for my journal, meaning I still have two to go before I make terms. If I do three more I'll get exactly seven course marks for completion (of a possible 10, which would correspond to 12 more articles). The final journal submission is in two weeks' time, during which period I also intend to write the bulk of the second essay.

The course is coming to an end in a rather slow and uninteresting manner.

Three weeks, I'm going insane

I picked up my photocopied material on Thursday, but other than that I've had nothing SOSC-related to blog about. The penultimate journal submission is on Friday. If I hand in four articles in this fortnight, I will have made terms for the course (20 articles). Doing another 10 articles, as I originally intended, will only be worth 3¹/₃ course marks. I'm not sure if this is worth having or not.

That's why they call me Mr Fahrenheit

The following wonderful things have happened to me in the last 48 hours:

• Finished all my essay research a day early. (It only took three more hours - my total photocopying bill will now be $50.)
• Found out that the due date for the essay is extended from May 28 to June 6.
• Was told I can write my essay based on the seven years of data available (it's supposed to be 10 years' worth).
• Got an A- for essay 1. (Sandra's comments can be summed up as "good, but uninspired".)
• Got 97% on a math test.
• Received notice that two very desirable employers would like to interview me for a summer job.

In many ways, life is pretty sweet right now.

You were right, it was perfect

I struck gold. It was exhausting.

The files contain every memorandum sent from CTU head office to the affiliated unions from the very beginning. There are notices of meeting and financial matters and job ads and minutes and conference-related things, but there are also resolutions, statements, press releases, discussion papers, manuals, guidelines, reports...

It's exactly what I was hoping for. It's more than I was hoping for. This morning I spent four and a half hours in the reading room at the Alexander Turnbull, and next week I'll have to do at least that much again. It takes around an hour to page through one folder, note the numbers of all the interesting circulars, select the four or five most relevant, mark them for copying and record them on the copy request form. It's pretty labour-intensive stuff, and I don't even get any benefit until at least Wednesday (photocopying must be labour-intensive too).

Today I incurred a photocopying bill of $28, which covers 1988-1991. Just as well I give myself a vastly inflated "study-related" budget every year.

The journal? Handed it in with only four articles. Filled with delusions of catching up after I've finished researching.

There are so many roads left

Now's no time to be blogging. For some reason I've decided to download a couple of huge updates over dialup, and my connection might present fair competition for my cat climbing up stairs after too much chewing of her catnip cushion. It's a good incentive to stop blogging and get back to my journal, which I can't finish tomorrow morning as planned, because I need to spend tomorrow morning at the National Library again.

The librarians were very helpful today. There wasn't a lot of material from the CTU in the main collection, so one of them helped me do a search of the unpublished material in the Alexander Turnbull Library. This turned up what could be archive gold - a hundred or more cartons full of CTU papers of all shapes and sizes, dating from 1988 to the present. All, however, are closed for 20 years after their latest date, except by application in writing to the head of the CTU. As I said before, I don't have time for that.

The other thing of interest at the Alexander Turnbull was a series of 11 folders labelled "CTU circulars", also dating from 1988 to the present. No one had a clue what was in these, so I requested the first three. There wasn't time to wait for them to arrive today. I'm going back to look at them first thing tomorrow. If I arrive when the library opens, I'll have just under half an hour to decide whether I need to see the other seven - otherwise I'll have to wait until the next request time at 11 am.

It's all getting rather complex.

If the first three folders do in fact contain CTU newsletters of any variety, I'm well in luck and can continue with my original train of thought (just what were the unions doing in the late 80s and early 90s while various governments trampled all over their constituents?). The problem then will be selecting a representative sample (Sandra suggests four from each year) while resisting the urge to read every single issue.

If the folders don't contain anything of interest, I can go with the 1990s policy documents on the CTU website. (Sandra says they're sufficient in the way of sources - only one type of source is required.) They may not cover exactly the period I wanted to look at, but they'll be interesting nonetheless.

Other things: one of the CTU staff members has offered to look over a draft of my essay. (That means I'll have to try to finish it early!) Essay 1 is due back on Monday, and I'm anxious about it. In today's lecture we tried to characterise the success or failure of social movements, and concluded that, like most things in social science, it's really hard to do.

One flash of light

The CTU were very prompt in responding to my email enquiry, although they were at pains to point out that their job is to represent workers, not answer the questions of students. The gist of what they said is that they don't have much of an archive, and anyway it's only accessible by written application (which I don't have time for), and the PSA has a much better library and have I thought of trying the National Library?

To this last, of course, the answer is of course. I'm going there tomorrow morning. If they can't help me, I'll switch the focus of my research to the 228 policy documents (dated 1997-2008) that are publicly available on the CTU website. That time period is recent enough that it should be easier to get my hands on examples of other types of material, and then I'll have plenty to go on with.

Before I set my world on fire

Being that there are three days remaining until the next journal submission, and that I've now read five articles and journaled one, I've pretty much given up on the plan to submit ten articles this time and subsequently return to four each fortnight. I could probably have told you at the start of the trimester that this would happen, but I always hold onto such delusions until the last possible moment.

I shouldn't have any trouble, if I'm a little bit dedicated and careful, submitting journal entries for six articles on Friday. That would mean that I need to do another six at each of the two remaining submissions in order to make it to 30 overall. That's a bit tighter than I'd like, but it's achievable.

The third journal came back yesterday. I got an "A-/A", which takes my average mark to A exactly. This is good - I'd hate for my grade in this course to reflect my enjoyment of it.

Yes, I have started work on the second essay already. Aren't you proud of me? Don't be - it's due in less than a month and I only started today. All three questions for this essay are empirical ones, and I'd guess that most of the class will be with me in choosing the following question:

Trace the claims‐making of a social movement or interest group in New Zealand over one decade using the collective’s own newsletters, pamphlets, publications, and press releases.

Inspired by an article in the book of readings, I'm intending to look at the Council of Trade Unions. So far I've ascertained that they have just over ten years of policy documents available on their website, and that the VUW library has nothing useful at all. I suspect the National Archives will be the best source of actual newsletters and so forth. This will be something new - I've never used the National Archives before.

Things to ask Sandra about this essay:

1. Any suggestions about sources?
2. Ten years is a long time and will most likely represent over 500 separate publications. What size sample should we use?
3. Mix of media? Newsletters and press releases, or just one of those?