Chapter 5/ Chapter 6 Update

If you look back at my last entry, I had high hopes for the days off during the Thanksgiving holiday.  And here I am on the other side of those days off with ... well, I am thinking not exactly bad news but not exactly good news either.  The goal -- if my dear readers might remember -- was to complete Chapter 5 (the Analysis Chapter!) and then I would be left with just one more section to write, Chapter 6 (Conclusion!).  And as far as pages are concerned, I guess I was shooting for about 2 twenty page papers (one twenty page chapter for each of these two remaining sections).

What I have right now is about 16 pages of Chapter 5 and about 20 pages of Chapter 6.  My unhappiness is simply in the fact that I wanted to be done with the analysis -- I wanted this section to be off my back 100%!  And it's not!  If I thought writing that darn methodology chapter was hard, I had no idea what was coming with these darn results!  But tonight I did a lot of brainstorming (which students do I want to mention?  Which sentences that they wrote?  What patterns to they fall into?) and I guess I just need to sit down over the next couple of days and just pound this out. I have a bunch of sub-sections (I guess you could call them?) but I am struggling with how to order all this information.  And I don't sound "smart" as I am walking through and explaining my interpretation -- that is probably one of the "monkeys on my back" right now that I need to get rid of.  It is so hard to write when you hear this whispered voice saying, "You are stupid -- they are going to hate this."

By the time, I attack  the conclusion I think it will be fine -- I have been dumping sections that I thought at the time were analysis into the conclusion (that is how that chapter just started growing and growing!).

OK, break over -- back to playing with the analysis ..... ugh ......