One year ago last August, I packed my bags and started on a year of dissertation research. By my count, I have been to 20 cities in the last 12 months. I have visited them by plane, car, or bus, and in almost all of them I have entered archives in the pursuit of dusty 18th-century primary sources.
I was prepared for a few of those activities: lots of driving, many hours of reading documents, and living the life of a scholar on the move. But I was much less prepared for dealing with housing issues, working out travel plans, or figuring out what I needed to do to function on a day-to-day level. The logistics invariably led to some surprises during my year on the road.
Finding short-term housing in each city was perhaps the biggest hurdle. Web sites such as SabbaticalHomes have been very useful; other graduate students I know use AcademicHomes or Airbnb. In Raleigh, N.C., my adviser knew a professor who knew a grad student, and she was kind enough to let me stay with her free (I made sure to ply her with a dozen fresh bagels from New York in gratitude).
Craigslist has proved unexpectedly reliable in a few cities, but I've still endured some decidedly odd experiences. There was the time in Philadelphia when my potential landlord came to the door in his bathrobe and showed me an apartment still occupied by the current tenants—who happened to be in bed as we came in, because the landlord hadn't told them he was showing the apartment.
Or the time in Boston, where I'd arranged to have the apartment keys mailed to me because the apartment owner was going to be in India when I arrived. Imagine, dear reader, your flustered author: Her bags are halfway unpacked on the landing of her fourth-floor walk-up; she is digging through a suitcase, trying to find a copy of her lease; and she is on the phone with a locksmith company, trying to persuade it to come and change the locks because the door is stuck and won't open. (The company agreed to come and change the locks provided that I could show a lease.)
My quest for temporary housing has taught me the benefits of flexibility. I learned that if housing proves difficult to find, exhaust all options before plunging into panic mode. The good news is that if my career in academe fails, I now have a backup plan for robbing strangers' apartments with the assistance of unsuspecting locksmiths.
With my housing difficulties settled, I had to figure out how to get to and from the archives. I spent a good portion of November and December relying on my GPS as I drove around North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia. Public transportation was easiest to use in New York and Washington. In Boston and Philadelphia I walked to most places, but I had to remember to pack snow boots. Driving in Los Angeles necessitated learning the best times to get on I-10. (Hint: It's never a good time to get on I-10, but 9 a.m. is better than 9:30, and if it's afternoon rush hour you should just abandon all hope.) Biking in Ottawa was particularly memorable, especially when my brakes stopped working and I pitched headfirst into the bike shed at the end of a long, rainy day.
The independence of my research road tour was a mixed bag of enjoyment and reflection. It was, of course, very lonely at times. For several months this year, my boyfriend and I managed to be in the same cities, doing research at the same archives, because we applied for and won the same grants and fellowships. Having a roommate made the housing search less stressful, and he understood the need to do research all day and relax at night.
I'm not sure how relaxing it was to keep losing to him at Scrabble, but I will confess that it was he who managed to open that stupid stuck door in Boston, thus rendering the arrival of the locksmith company unnecessary. And when the electric company decided to set up outside at 11 p.m. and drill until 6 a.m., it was good to have someone laugh at my attempt to sleep in the bathtub with a pillow over my head. For future reference, that strategy does not work, even if you are only 5 feet 1 inch tall.
My boyfriend and I both knew that, as graduate students on the research and writing trails, our time together was necessarily ephemeral. The long periods apart meant that our other friendships were equally important. Especially when I was moving around, I had to remind myself to keep in touch with friends.
In Williamsburg, Va., a college friend and her roommate fed me copious amounts of homemade Hungarian food. I tried to grab meals with my graduate-school colleagues whenever I made it back to Austin, Tex. Some archives have organized weekly lunches, where I met other researchers and we talked about our work. I wrote e-mails to friends who were away on research in Kolkata, Edinburgh, or Salt Lake City, and I commiserated and rejoiced about the day's finds with historians on Twitter (#twitterstorians). Again, try hard to maintain your friendships, no matter how distant they might seem.
Whether I was on my own for the month or traveling with company, I found that it was also essential to establish a routine. It wasn't necessarily the same in each city, but once I got somewhere new I tried to stick to a certain schedule of research, writing, exercise, and downtime. It gave some structure to a month that otherwise would have passed too quickly.
Before I left Austin, more than one of my committee members encouraged me to try to write something—anything—every day. My research routine determined, in part, the times when I wrote; if the archives opened later in the day, I tried to get some writing done in the morning. I used to be a night owl, but gone now are the nights when I would go to sleep at 4 a.m. That sort of behavior wasn't conducive to getting to the archives before they closed for the day.
I've come to realize that it's essential for me to draw a sharp line between my work time and my time off. Sometimes that compartmentalization is impossible: When insomnia kicks in and I can't stop thinking about the newest grant proposal I'm working on, I'll get up and hack away at it.
When I can help it, though, I try to institute mandatory unwinding time. I've decided it's fine to make myself a drink to mark the moment when I'm finished with the day's work. I call it "Home From the Archives, Done for the Night," and this month it's homemade blackberry and lavender syrup with gin, mint, and grapefruit juice. If you ever find me passing on the purchase of an $8-$12 bottle of Grenache, you should probably call the authorities, because some poor sap has stolen my identity.
It's OK to give in to the spontaneous day off or well-deserved vacation in between cities. If you've been doing research for three months straight, if the airlines are having a sale, and if you and your boyfriend want to go to Paris, walk everywhere, and eat cheese and baguettes all week like the money-saving-grad-students-on-vacation that you are, that's fine, too. This dissertation thing is a distance race, not a sprint, and it's good to know you've got the wherewithal to finish.
Staying active has been as important as making sure I have the time to relax, especially when I've just spent a week in Paris, beginning each day with the requisite almond croissant. Although I've joked about buying a pair of "research pants" in the event of weight gain, I have tried to exercise when it's been warm out and there's been a place to run. I biked to the archives in Ottawa, tried to do a lot of walking on my days off in London, and dodged tourists and let the sheep baa at me as I jogged the streets of Colonial Williamsburg.
One cautionary note: Know your jogging and biking routes well. That way you won't get lost at dusk in rural Bucks County, Pa., and a very nice older woman named Grace won't have to bike alongside you very, very slowly as she patiently guides you in the right direction you need to jog in order to reach home. Thanks again, Grace!
Over the course of a year, I feel as if I have lived through the acknowledgments section of what will become my first book. I've accumulated a list of libraries and research institutions that have offered me financial assistance, and I've got a set of friends and new acquaintances to thank for their help. I've learned how to locate housing during even the most last-minute of circumstances, and realized that much planning goes into commuting and traveling. The combination of independent peregrination—getting myself from archive to archive and city to city—and leaning on others for research tips, writing feedback, and moral support has made me a better scholar.
This September, I moved to Philadelphia for the year, so I will get to enjoy being a bit less mobile. But I wouldn't dream of trading the coming year for my year of research on the road.
