Monday, June 3, 2013

Dissertation-alooza, Day One!

And so it begins!


My dissertation writing re-visioning of Lollapalooza is now on stage and ready for the first act!  As you can see, the fans are demanding .... wait for it .... to know my methodology!  I can't leave the fans waiting so I better get crackin' at that revising and writing.

OK.  My attempt at being funny is not working!  But I do have good news!

Today was a good day.  I got up early with Jim, took the dog out for a walk, and then checked email and got my desk in order to start working once I got back from my yoga class.  Yep, I went to yoga before dissertating and that seemed to help a bit.  I had not been to hot yoga (I go to a studio over in Edwardsville) for four months so I knew this morning was going to be a tough class (for those who don't know, this is a pretty physical class in a 95 degree room for 90 minutes).  And it was.  Of course, I had the bad luck to get Jeremy for my first class back (one of the toughest teachers).  But it really wasn't as bad as I had been imagining on the drive there.  Yoga not only helps my back feel better, but it forces me to concentrate on one thing (instead of my head going a million miles a minute).

Once I got home, I grabbed some lunch and got down to business.  Today's goal?  Make more sense out of Chapter 3, the dreaded methodology.  So here was the big problem.  I have a lot of the actual text already written but the parts are not in an order appropriate for a dissertation.  Here is what I need to do: Start with an introduction that talks about my research question, my actual method, and why that method works for this particular research question.  I will then need to follow up with sections on my research setting, participants, data collection, data analysis, and then a conclusion of sorts (go back to my rationale).  Today, I worked on teasing out the research setting.  My take on this is complicated because it is important for me to talk about the community (Granite City), the institution (SWIC), my campus in particular, and FYC at SWIC in general.  If you are keeping count, that is a lot of stuff to manage!

But I think I made some progress (and I am not even done yet since I am still here working, hoping to get a little bit more work done before I give it up for the day).  I basically opened up my original document and then a new document, cutting and pasting the parts that will work for the research setting section.  So I don't repeat, I am highlighting anything I take out of the original text.  Hopefully, this method will keep me organized in terms of what I have used (honestly, at this point, things are starting to sound the same!).

See you all on the flip side!


2 comments:

  1. Writing really needs more focus and concentration. I think only those people who are mature enough can handle dissertation writing on themselves.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Writing research and grant proposals is one of the most difficult -- and unavoidable -- requirements of graduate study in the

    ReplyDelete

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