Chapter 1, Perhaps?

With the step back, I've looked over two of the documents that Dr. S gave me as guides for this process:  Chapter 1 of a dissertation (called a proposal) and the entire dissertation done by a previous student - not at ISM but another university.  The latter was approved/accepted, and given that Dr. S forwarded it, presumably a good example of what I'm supposed to do myself.

Observations:

1. Chapter 1 is really the Dissertation Proposal in text form (rather than the outline I submitted last month).
2. Though the Proposal requires five research problems, the accepted dissertation just has one.  The Chapter 1 proposal just has two.

For those PhD students from a traditional doctoral program reading this, you're probably thinking, "well, duh," but understand that I rarely actually meet any of my professors and converse with most only through email.  Mine is a European doctoral program where things are much more of a "do-it-yourself" nature.  That's fairly dangerous for someone like me who "suffers" from something called an "Unrelenting Standards Life Trap."  The propensity to spin one's wheels and waste time is more reality than fantasy.

And one other observation:  I think my the research problems and hypothesis are a bit "off."  So I'm rearranging the proposal into Chapter 1 and addressing that.  Seeing 80% of Chapter 1 come together (less the research problem[s] right now) is encouraging.  The rest of the week will be devoted to working on better articulating the research problems.