Self-Imposed Deadline

Today, August 31st, is my self-imposed deadline for getting the revised (and revised again) proposal to Dr. S for his final approval.  I've just done that.  Yay!

This weekend is a long one in North America, so the rest of it is dedicated to a 7-mile run and reading more articles for the literature review - that self-imposed deadline is October 13.  

I'm reminded of a quote I found earlier in the year from Dissertation Research and Success:

You have to throw out all the creative writing strategies you’ve learned since elementary school and become comfortable with the redundancy and specificity necessary in scholarly writing.

It bruises the ego badly.  I can do it, but becoming comfortable with redundancy and specificity is a tough ask!  

Damn the Torpedoes! Full speed ahead!

I turned in my 3rd proposal version yesterday morning, and at 11:30 last night, I heard from Dr. Z that he approved it and to send it along to Dr. S for final approval.  That means that I'm good to go!

I'm traveling this week so I didn't have the wisdom of my proofreader (my hubby) before I sent it, so there were some typos.  Oh well.

I need to do some "deep revisions" of it, but I can send it on to Dr. S when the typos are corrected and when I revise a bit.

Dr. Z is worried that I've come to my conclusions before the research is done.  That's probably true, but I have to tell you:  it's very hard to keep the personal bias out of it.

I was at an academic conference today.  I told a colleague (a doctoral student at the Sorbonne) about my approval and Dr. Z's concern of my bias.  She said:  "Everybody has a conclusion.  It's impossible to be impartial."  She went on to say that most people write their abstracts first before they even get into the study!  Ha!

I just need to figure out how to not have strong language in my literature review and study significance.  But I see the end.  At last!

Milestones

On holiday but still thinking about this dissertation.  I decided to give myself some milestones - which were agreed to by Dr. Z:

My proposed schedule is this:

• Proposal (version 3) submitted to Dr. Z by 20 August
• Proposal approved by Dr. Z and sent to Dr. S for his approval by 31 August
• Chapter 1 (Introduction) completed - 22 September
• Chapter 2 (Lit Review) completed - 13 October
• Chapter 3 (Design and Methods) completed - 3 November
• Chapter 4 (Results) completed - 24 November
• Chapter 5 (Conclusions, Implications, and Recommendations) completed - 15 December

As Dr. Z pointed out, "it mostly hinges on [me] being able to complete it."  True enough.  But I'm certainly going to give it a go.  We planned this holiday around what was supposed to be a celebration of this thing being finished.  I'm so ready for it to be done.