Mission Control – writing a Harvard thesis

Harvard said it cleared my thesis and had sent it to ProQuest/UMI in late June. Turns out they didn’t. I encourage anyone who wants to use this service to follow-up with the ALM program office. They were none too swift about this. And, despite assurances that our final grades would be up June 3 (final for the program) they weren’t. When I called in late July about getting the transcript (they send at the end of the year), they assured me it was in process. Still haven’t seen my official final grade for my thesis or a transcript and it’s Oct. 1. Fair warning.

This blog is now officially “closed”. No further posts as the thesis is done and I have graduated. : )

Consider following on with the new blog, International Security – news and commentary on military, defense, and foreign policy topics.

I submitted my thesis to ProQuest today. It takes a bit of preparation. Not just a “point and click” process. Next step – it goes to the Harvard ALM office for approval and then into ProQuest. Given how picky ProQ is about the submission format, it won’t surprise me if there’s a glitch in the process.

Regardless, a big step! I chose the “traditional publishing” option — that means if all goes well and it gets uploaded into ProQ, I could actually get a royalty check in my hand for all my research efforts. That would be cool.

Graduation was wonderful! My family and I had a great time yesterday. The weather was beautiful. It was a gas walking around in the regalia getting lots of smiles and congratulations!

The diploma ceremony in the A.R.T. was exciting and fun. The champagne reception preceding it was quite nice.  Afterwards, Peter O’Malley and his crew (Sarah and Kerry) did a good job of getting everyone lined up by number to form the processional into the theater for the diploma ceremony.  Standing in the lobby waiting to go in as the ceremony officially began took a while but there was lively conversation and gossip tidbits to keep us occupied.  From the food and drink in the lobby and courtyard area, talking to fellow students about our thesis experiences in the program while standing in the procession line, to the class photo afterwards — it was just great! What’s not to like?

The diploma itself is big. It comes in a lovely bright red/crimson envelope. It’s not really possible to look at it until the whole thing is over (the seating is too tight to open it). Later, when I did get my first glance, I discovered it was accompanied by a certificate for academic achievement – Dean’s List (GPA of 3.8+). I had no idea they had the formal recognition. Bonus!

To cap off the day,  we had dinner at the Harvard Club of Boston – again, simply marvelous.

Now I have to get used to saying, “I’m a Harvard alum“.

Below is a shot of the stage with Dean Shinagel speaking.

I went to the Coop today to pick up my graduation regalia. It was very quiet. For the many times I’ve been in the textbook annex, I’ve never seen part of it blocked off for the regalia: aisles and aisles of cubbies with small plastic bags in alpha order.

A singular joy — getting your Harvard graduation regalia. Bought a couple of t-shirts after picking it up and got a big “congratulations” at the checkout counter.

: )

I am pleased to see that the ALM program is creating this new concentration in international relations. When I began the program over four years ago, I started with the idea of focusing on foreign policy which led me to international security as my main interest. Yet, the concentration was a broad-based generic “government” program and it took several years to build a solid IS transcript.

Here’s the description on the ALM website:

international relations has a fresh appeal because of the many critical worldwide issues that now confront us. This burgeoning field studies relationships among the world’s governments, political economies, laws, and multinational corporations, as well as global issues such as poverty, genocide, and the environment. Certain to appeal to new master’s degree candidates, this unique offering at Harvard will also be of interest to those employed in various Washington offices, military personnel, and students taking government courses.

Associate Dean and Director of the ALM Program Schopf explained the new concentrations

are being structured as liberal arts fields and not as professional programs. As such, they will engage with history, theory, criticism, and current research topics within an interdisciplinary context.

This is a crucial distinction!  The liberal arts foundation is fine but if one is thinking of the degree as a career move, the applied element is important. You don’t get it in this degree. One small way to fill that void: special events and lunch talks at Belfer, the Carr Center, and Shorenstein at HKS. It’s not the same as doing policy memos or analysis but it’s a good way to learn more about current issues and meet people. This also requires an additional time commitment; most of the Belfer events are mid-day or during the afternoon.

So far, there is no separate “IR” concentration in the list so I looked at the “government” course listings (but I suppose they’ll pull from other pertinent concentrations).  I don’t see any new courses being offered along with this new concentration yet.  Wonder if they are going to beef the listings up a bit or just expect students to put things together based on current offerings?  If it’s the latter, uh oh. One particular problem some degree students may face if they don’t check the “fine print” is they will build a nice IR transcript but not have enough “Harvard instructors” (HI) to graduate (8 out of your 10 courses must be HI).  Ironically, the current IR course is taught by David Rezvani — he is not an HI now (he was when I took it). Several courses in the 2009-2010 catalog are IR-centric but they aren’t taught by HI instructors (e.g., International Organizations, The Future of War, Globalization and Terrorism).

Along with dropping certificate programs, adding new master’s degree concentrations is a good way to enhance the credibility of the division overall.  The division seems to be waking up from a somewhat sleepy role on campus. Kudos.  Harvard offers several paths to a degree in government: the Kennedy School, the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences’ Ph.D. in government, and this ALM degree. These new concentrations are a smart move.

I picked up my first round of format comments from Dr. O. yesterday.  He included a cover letter, the standard “proofreader’s marks” sheet (which he also puts in his feedback at the Proposal level), and the complete hard cc of my original submission.

The good news: not too much to do.  Here’s the rundown:

1. a few formatting corrections, for instance, I had chapter and section titles in bold — that’s a no-no; some key words in italics for emphasis — again, no. I have to put the subheadings in each chapter into the TOC (in spite of the fact that my TD didn’t care either way). How I cited the PBS Frontline show in the footnotes was not consistent. The page numbers in the whole document were on the top (right) as the ALM manual requires — except for that darn front matter section — for that the roman numerals should be on the bottom (centered). Ugh.

2. Overall, I had done all the spacing requirements throughout the document correctly and that was not easy on Word 2007.  I learned after the fact that Word 07 doesn’t default to “single spacing” which makes it hard to know exactly how many spaces you’ve got between things. (Trick: you have to “force” single spacing by selecting “no spacing” in the window  that usually says “normal” in the toolbar).  My advice: stick with Word 2003.

3. grammar: my Word program puts in the wrong kind of quotes (straight/neutered vs. curly) so I had to fix a few of those (could have checked my original better; this is something I knew from my Proposal). I hadn’t put commas after some clauses (usually with dates); I used contractions in a few places.

4. Don’t use “ibid”. Put the cite in with specific info, shortened is ok.

5. In spite of the fact that I’ve seen this occur in published theses at Grossman, you can’t leave a subheading at the bottom of a page without at least a line of text underneath it.

6. I cited a lot of newspaper stories; Chicago Manual says you do not have to list these in the biblio if they are in footnotes (I am using CMS’ footnotes/biblio style). Dr. O lets you cite these in a couple of ways in fnotes, just be consistent throughout, e.g., “July 5, 2005, 3″ OR “5 July, 2005, 3″.

7. I have three photos in the body which my TD really liked (she wanted a way to show that these private security guards are armed more heavily than mall security) and the photos have captions. When I changed one footnote from “ibid” to a fuller cite, it separated the caption from a photo in the body above and put it on the next page! Ugh.  Still have to figure that out since the photos were perfectly aligned with the text; moving the following paragraph up and the photo down is not as good.

8. I have one pesky footnote separator line that goes all the way across the page. Ugh. This really pisses me off. Dr. O. has included instructions on getting rid of that – I’ll see how helpful it is this afternoon.

Since I am handing in hard copies to Dr. O. and to the bindery for binding, I can actually print the front matter as separate documents/pages which will make moving the roman numeral page numbers to the bottom easier and I can leave the rest of the document alone (which is paginated perfectly). May do that if trying to correct the pagination doesn’t work the first couple of times I try to do it as a whole document.

Wells Bindery in Waltham (does these Harvard theses all the time) says it needs 3 weeks to do a regular binding (about $30/copy) and prices go up the faster you need it. We have to have our bound copy in to the ALM Office by May 15 so I am trying to get Dr. O’s final sign-off by next Friday, April 17.

A short quiz, brought to you by Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, celebrating Women’s History Month.

Just received the ALM packet on Commencement. There will be two tickets for the morning program in the Yard, two tickets for the actual diploma ceremony at Loeb/ART, and four tix for the afternoon back in the Yard.

Two tickets for the diploma ceremony? Are you kidding? That’s ridiculous. For the morning program, family/guests can either go to the Yard (8,000 tix but only 6,000 seats) or view it from either the Science Center or Sanders Theatre – no tickets required and better seating.

My spouse, nephew, his pregnant wife, and my brother are coming for the day. The latter three from out-of-state. My nephew’s wife will be 7 months pregnant at that point and I don’t want her to have to “hang out” somewhere during the diploma ceremony (there’s no “viewing” anywhere else).

If anyone has ONE extra ticket they aren’t using…. : )

Good video interview on Danger Room with former Army Ranger, Craig Mullaney, about his new book – The Unforgiving Minute – A Soldier’s Education - on his time in Afghanistan.