My bittersweet goodbye to sociology

I submitted my dissertation three days ago. Officially, I am a doctor starting from April 8th. The whole dissertation is posted at http://www.songhuaweb.com/SonghuaDissertation.pdf. It is password protected. Yes, upon request, I am emailing one of my readers the password.

Now I am back to starbucks, working on my chapter 5. Why? Well, my adviser suggested that we develop this chapter into a journal paper, and I completely agree with his assessment. I will give him a manuscript some time next week, and we will go from there. After finishing dissertation, my next goal in sociology is to put my name on one of the motherf*&ker journals. And when sociology transforms itself into my hobby by default, writing seems to be easier. The I-don't-care attitude is liberating to me, and I think I will write better this way. And this coming Thursday, I will going to present my paper about China's socialist revolution in a sociological conference in Oakland. That probably will be my sweet goodbye to academic conferences, which I hate very much.

Ironically, that sums up my problems (if I have any:-): the lack of commitment. Throughout my life, I do things mostly out of a motivation to prove that I can be good at anything if I want to. Writing in high school is the start, as I was tired of being labeled as math genius. Joining drama club followed, as I wanted to escape the stereotype of book-smart. Modern dance and exercising were two more, as I wanted to shake off my self-insecurity of physical attractiveness. Pursuing a job is yet another, just so to prove to everyone that I can get a high-paid job wanted by anyone. I have a stubborn tendency not to commit, not to specialize, and to explore everything and say, "look, ma, I can do this!" (From an evolutionary point of view, being a generalist will better weather environmental changes than being a specialist. That partly explains why I have adapted so well from high school to college, from my hometown to California).

These days I try to bike to my company every day. My company will donate 5 dollars to a charity of my choice every time I bike to work. It is easy to be a good person this way. My company also give 50 dollars for cubicle decoration. Look what I get: a dartboard, a hola loop, and a kid's shooting gun. And that's only 25 dollars.

College basketball: Right now I am number 1 in my office pool. Believe it or not, I get all final four right. Now I have a good chance to get some money out of my lucky guesses.

In the next couple of weeks, I am going to start and finish one new series called "My Crush," which will chronicle my various crushes on girls since I was a kid. That will be fun, and now my skin is thick enough to toss it all out.