Personal Blogs

My goal today is to cut down the word count to 60,000 and to write the abstract.

Can I do it?

Best.

*** Note: This blog post may be of interest mainly to PG students in the writing-up stages ***

I like the sound of this: "Final corrections". It means I have received feedback from my supervisors (in record time; how good of them) and I now have to make the final changes as suggested by them and submit.

My deadline to submit final version of the thesis is 31st Oct, but I'm planning to submit as early as possible before then. It's been recommended to me to avoid the last minute rush and deluge of submissions which could affect my exam date.

It's been so good to breathe for the last two weeks as my supervisors were getting through my final draft. But now it's time to make the final push in terms of writing up and then, time to prepare the viva carefully.

I'm really enjoying these final stages of the EdD. These are sunny days, after some dark spells left behind during the last three years.

Best wishes to all.

*** Note: This blog post may be of interest mainly to PG students in the writing-up stages ***

I apologise to anyone who might have been following my countdown to the submission of my final draft. It is unlikely but just in case.

I just put my head down and got on with the job. No time for distractions or much reflection.

But I come back having done most of the job. The thesis is finished now. Complete. I can say that for the first time. It keeps stubbornly at 70,000 words, so what's left in these last few days is chopping (down to the required 60,000 words) and fixing minor issues.

I feel much better about all the chapters now, including the first and the last, which kept me wondering last time I wrote. Feedback from my supervisors has been great in this regard.

And I managed to muster the energy and the motivation by doing exercise (running) in the last few days. It really helped.

Target is still submitting the final draft of the thesis next Tuesday 18th Sep 2012.

Best of luck to everyone.

*** Note: This blog post may be of interest mainly to PG students in the writing-up stages ***

I submitted PR 12 today. Next, it's the whole thing, the final draft, on 19th Sept.

I've only got a couple of weeks to fix a million things. Aaah! But I'll do it. Somehow I'll do it!

I'm not too happy with what I submitted today. It was chapter 8, conclusions. But I wanted my conclusions to be much more about the analysis and interpretation chapters, with some heavy artillery. It didn't turn out this way. I run out of time cutting down words and summarising all the previous articles and I couldn't complete everything in time.

Anyway, let's not think about that. The important thing is that I submit something better on 19th, and especially on 31st October, which is the final submission date, the definitive one.

Time to go to sleep now. I must increase my sleeping time and resume exercise to feel better about the whole things in this coming two weeks.

:/

*** Note: This blog post may be of interest mainly to PG students in the writing-up stages ***

Start of the day

Day 8. Not good. I was exhausted from not sleeping and translating into the small hours for the last two weeks. I couldn't really perform well. I was falling asleep. But I managed to do some chopping.

End of the day

Exhausted. Let's hope tomorrow is a better day.

Comments

Although I'm beginning to do some serious cuts to chapter 5 I am also beginning to worry that reducing the thesis to 60,000 might be harder than I thought.

*** Note: This blog post may be of interest mainly to PG students in the writing-up stages ***

Start of the day

Day 6. Still not getting much sleep (it was household chores yesterday that kept me up till 2am because my wife was preparing a job interview). But I'm feeling fine, thank God for the coffee. Today I had a message from one of my supervisors reminding me about deadlines. It was good to be forced to reflect on how little time I have left. I have to meet a 3rd Sept deadline to submit the whole thesis (including the now missing chapter 8: conclusions). And then meet a 17th Sept one to submit the final draft of the thesis. There are still a lot of changes to be made but I'm confident that I can meet both deadlines. It'll then be a question of waiting for feedback to come back from my supervisors and then making the final changes before submitting the thesis on 31st Oct (or earlier, if I can, to make sure my viva is arranged in time without any problems). I think I'll be increasingly relieved after meeting each of these three deadlines, but I'll be specially relieved once I've done my viva exam in December. Next Christmas might be a good one!

End of the day

I had to finish earlier today (12pm) because I have to take my wife to her job interview. But tomorrow I'd like to make a lot of progress with chapter 5 (finish it, perhaps) and continue with chapter 6 (Thu), chapter 7 (Fri) and chapter 8 (Sat and Sun) before submitting PR12 on Mon 3rd Sept.

Comments

Cut, cut, cut!

*** Note: This blog post may be of interest mainly to PG students in the writing-up stages ***

Start of the day

Day 4. That means I should be working on the massive 40,000-word long chapter 4. I will. But first, I must write the summary of chapter 3, the conclusion section.

End of the day

I realised I made a mistake in thinking that chapter 4 was the big analysis chapter. It isn't. Chapter 4 is the methodology chapter. It's quite well-written because it was recently completely rewritten, so there's little editing to do. But I have had to spend a long time fixing the format of tables and figures. I've decided to have any large figures or tables on a horizontal page and on one page only, not running on for several pages because it looks awful. But this means I'm having to cut down words and use 10pt font and single-spacing to achieve this. I hope the examiners don't mind. I haven't finished writing the summary of this chapter but it shouldn't take me long once the format is fixed. I'd love to have time to work on chapter 5, the analysis over the weekend but I'm afraid this won't be possible because I've got several translations and social commitments. Oh well... I'll do it on Monday.

Comments

Today I had an idea. Wouldn't it be nice to have a little piece of software where a PG student and the supervisors could track the changes suggested and made to the thesis? It wouldn't be an app because it has to be used on a big screen and typing a lot of text. But it could work for PC and Mac. Just an idea...

*** Note: This blog post may be of interest mainly to PG students in the writing-up stages ***

Start of the day

This is the start of Day 2 of my review work. I'm excited about the prospect of being able to submit my thesis before the deadline, as suggested by one of my supervisors. Let's plough on. It's chapter 2 today.

End of the day

I didn't manage to complete chapter 2 yesterday. I must catch up today.

Comments

I find it confusing that I've been suffering from a tendency to procrastinate and bouts of lethargy recently, especially this year. Somehow I find it hard to motivate myself. I'm not sure what it is. It could be the fear of actually having to face the conclusion of the doctorate. It could be the fact that my work has been so disrupted that I gave up thinking I could actually work on my thesis consistently and continually. It could be a bit of burn-out from having to deal with so many other responsibilities at the same time while having little time for fun things. I must make a point of doing 'fun' things every day, at least one a day, to break out of this unpleasant cycle.

 

 

*** Note: This blog post may be of interest mainly to PG students in the writing-up stages ***

Start of the day

This is the start of Day 2 of my review work. I'm excited about the prospect of being able to submit my thesis before the deadline, as suggested by one of my supervisors. Let's plough on. It's chapter 2 today.

End of the day

[pending]

Comments

I find it confusing that I've been suffering from a tendency to procrastinate and bouts of lethargy recently, especially this year. Somehow I find it hard to motivate myself. I'm not sure what it is. It could be the fear of actually having to face the conclusion of the doctorate. It could be the fact that my work has been so disrupted that I gave up thinking I could actually work on my thesis consistently and continually. It could be a bit of burn-out from having to deal with so many other responsibilities at the same time while having little time for fun things. I must make a point of doing 'fun' things every day, at least one a day, to break out of this unpleasant cycle.

 

* Warning: This post might only be relevant to postgraduate students writing up their thesis *

I was struggling with the way to quote data in the thesis.

Eventually, I liked the way Poehner (2008) presents his data, ie by assigning line numbers to data excerpts.

My problem then was whether line numbers should be consecutive (ie, run on through the different excerpts used) or start the count at number 1 every time I quote data.

I started off with a compromise: if the data comes from the same source (I have several sources, as you may do too) and follows on chronologically, then I use consecutive numbering. If not, I start the count from 1 with the new quote of data.

But this became confusing. I have now decided to have consecutive numbering within any given section of the thesis, regardless of the source or time stamp of the data. It looks neater and it avoids confusion, for the reader and for me.

Perhaps I can get away with this as long as I justify it somewhere in the thesis (where?).

Best wishes to everyone who is writing up.