Tuesday check-in

[forthwritten]

How do Tuesdays work for people?

Anyway - what have you done recently that you're pleased with? What new problem are you bashing your head against? What are your aims for the week ahead? Did you do anything fun over the weekend, or were you, like me, in chapter lockdown mode in preparation for meeting your supervisor? I note that my rats were rather annoyed at being neglected in favour of my thesis and promptly ate part of Illness As Metaphor because I foolishly left it on top of their cage.

Comments

[trouble]

I've been very productive on the research side for the past two days, but today was so awful in the archives that three researchers (including myself) complained about the noise levels and two (including myself) left. I was about ready to punch people I was so tense. I'm glad my adviser isn't expecting to hear from me till next week.

It's kinda sad, because I was thisclose to being done with the Annual Reports and moving on to something more interesting for tomorrow. Ah well.

[teej]

that happened to me in my university library on friday - was all geared up to get lots done but had to leave as there was too. much. noise. so frustrating!

[trouble]

I just cannot work when the noise levels get too high. I'm thinking of investing in a set of noise-cancelling headphones because on top of not being able to work I end up incredibly tense and irritable.

[teej]

well, i've written a few thousand words over the last week, as i've got a meeting with my supervisor on friday and i've got to send her stuff beforehand. although i'm not very happy with what came out at all, it was literally a case of staring at the screen for hours, giving up, then coming back to it over and over and just having to force the words out. usually meeting with my supervisor is really positive though, in helping me focus and get inspiration and remind myself why i'm doing this... fingers crossed this is what will happen this time too!

[trouble]

*crosses fingers for you* I'm so sorry the writing has been so hard!

[teej]

thank you! yeah, my ability to write tends to fluctuate along with my general mood.

[forthwritten]

I wrote about a thousand words for Chapter 4 and started working out the raw frequency vs normalisation issue. It turned out that I'd calculated normalised frequencies in an odd way but still arrived at the right figures (yay?). I found a good definition for one of the measures I'm using, which clarifies some things.

I had a meeting with my supervisor yesterday and now I know where I'm going with the rest of that chapter (investigation of other collocates and a focused case study). I also need to read up a lot more on critical discourse analysis and work out how to apply it.

[luciente]

I've started writing up the chapter I've been planning for the last month, and somehow what I felt in the planning stage was an interesting, original, well-supported argument has turned into a barely comprehensible bog of theoretical wank. Does this happen to anyone else? Something that you thought was awesome in the planning stage coming out utterly rubbish when you try and actually write it up?

[trouble]

Yes. My adviser just tells me to get words on a page and worry about the stupid shit later, but my adviser wins awards for her articles and I don't.

[liseuse]

I've been carrying on writing a piece of ridiculousness that is only required because of university administration, but takes a ridiculously long time to complete. I really want to get it finished this week because I am so so so sick of seeing it.