Cafe Reviews for the Dissertation Writer, Volume 1

So my friend/labmate/classmate and I met the other night for a dissertation-figure-making date at a cafe near campus.  We're both hoping to defend next spring, so we're looking to have our 6 month meetings in the next few weeks.  The 6 month meeting is meant to be a chance to assemble your committee a few to several months before you intend to defend, to update them on your research progress and make sure they think your plan and timeline are feasible.  It's pretty standard to have an outline of your dissertation, and tell your committee members what work you have left to do, but the Queen also expects us to have more or less all of our figures done, too.

Working by myself I can find plenty of things to distract me (the only time I'll gladly do ALL the dishes!), so working with somebody some of the time is probably a good idea.  Getting out of the house also gets me away from those tempting dishes and other distractions, and getting away from the office gets me away from the temptation to chat with people all day and from all the random people asking me to do stuff.

Since I'm pretty sure I'll be testing out every cafe (and maybe some bars? I could write with a beer just as well as with a cup of tea right? maybe?) in the area, I thought it could be fun to do little mini reviews.

We had our first figure-making date at Cafe Luce, right by campus, on a Tuesday evening.

Pros of Cafe Luce:

• Reasonably quiet, most other people were working too
• Tables were big enough for 2 people to work (or lots of space for me to spread out by myself!)
• Background music wasn't stuff I know, so it wasn't distracting
• Cozy
• Within walking distance of home and office
• Real dishes!
• Local business
• Free wifi

Cons (and there weren't many, other places have a lot of live up to):

• Not very big, I could see having trouble getting a table (There only 1 available indoors when I got there.  There were a bunch of tables outside, but it's getting pretty chilly to be sitting outside after dark now.)
• Pretty much zero food after the morning rush, just a handful of croissants wrapped up from the morning.  This wasn't a problem this time, though I could certainly see it being a problem in the future.

Stay tuned for the next installment of Cafe Reviews for the Dissertation Writer!