Week 5

Emily's dissertation is not finished yet.

Pages: Still 6 - but PLUS A NEW KICKASS TITLE I AM SUPER HAPPY ABOUT. I woke up with a start and emailed it to myself in the middle of the night mid-week. My data analysis classes, and some other excellent positive steps forward, are provoking a lot of good mental fizzing.

Pages goal: Who cares. I'm going to write this and what I end up with. It'll be as long as it needs to be, and as elegantly concise as I can muster. I totally got this. 

First full draft goal: January 18th. I'm feeling super confident about this right now, because my 2nd reader supports my plan to start writing up and not worry about collecting any more data. I still have to convince my advisor but I'm confident. 

Defense date: April 5th. I'm so, so ready to be done, but really genuinely feeling good about the process of getting there. But I'm also noticing that I am procrastinating the actual data analysis work a bit - no matter what my title or framework is, I do need to properly prepare and manage my actual data and that has... not so much been happening. Today, again, it was the one thing on my list that didn't get done, and I'd deliberately only given myself one interview to translate. I've been wittering on about doing it all myself bringing me closer to my data but maybe I do need to just pay someone else to crank through it all. 

Week 4

Emily's dissertation is not finished yet.

Pages: 6. I had to write an overview of my research foundations for the data analysis class I'm in and neither writing it, nor talking through it with a review partner in class, was as painful as I was expecting. Turns out I do have a fairly solid grasp of what I'm doing. Good. 

Pages goal: 200... ish. I'm getting more attached to my data again. I revised the draft of a poster presentation I have in for a conference in a few weeks and much as I value the elegance of concise writing, there IS a lot in this research that's worth airing. So maybe the minimalist approach that got me over the hump of starting the semester won't be the end result after all. 

First full draft goal: January 18th. I spent some time looking up sick day legislation, which is going to be necessary to get there. 

Defense date: April 5th. And my beloved academic idol agreed to be the external examiner! Her eyes on this research is going to be the single biggest pressure keeping me on track and committed to excellence and not just getting this over and done with. 

I am so, so ready for "worrying about data collection logistics" not to be my main everyday activity. But as of now, I still genuinely don't know how or if I'm going to pull off another two dozen or so interviews by phone in the next four weeks.