| Jan. 13th, 2007 @ 07:33 pm Restarting? |
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Current Location: Kitchen, at home
Current Mood:  hopeful
Current Music: Car commercial
Well, I'm starting to like the idea of getting into LiveJournal again, keeping track of my life and letting other people know what's going on with me. Actually I'll probably fall back into not updating at all once the semester starts because I get so anxious that I barely have time for ... well, anything I want to do. But perhaps that which is prompting me to write now will continue to spur me throughout the next few months, namely procrastination. My goal this nearly five-week winter break has been to make astonishing progress on my thesis, and it's not been going so well. My mom told me that if I just work eight hours a day, that's all I can do, but I find I cannot even do that -- I'm lucky to get up to four, and two is more common, although I certainly spend ALL my waking hours stressed out about it. However, I have been able to adjust my goals, not just to meet time demands but in accordance with changing ideas about what my thesis should encompass, and I think I'm basically on track, even if I can never get up to eight hours a day of work. To wit:
Within the next week my goal is to have finished as much of my lit review as I can do at this point. Now, this is a little tricky because I'm not exactly sure what a lit review is supposed to look like, or if I've really done enough reading for it, but I can't imagine doing much more research. There are just a few theoretical areas left where I need to do some serious reading, including for the principal argument, but I just need to get through a few good, key articles that I have to accomplish that. I also haven't done enough reading for the Chiapas section, but I'm seriously considering scrapping the Chiapas section altogether to simplify the mental hoops I have to jump through to keep my argument coherent. But that means I couldn't really talk about the Zapatistas as I would like to, but maybe that's okay. I'm just going to leave Chiapas alone for awhile and decide in a few weeks.
So for the lit review I now have a very lengthy outline that includes the arguments of many writers and quotes from all of them. I just have to turn it into a real paper with summaries of what they're saying instead of just lengthy excerpts, so that will be some work but I will have it all done by the time I go back to school, which is two Mondays from now, the 22nd.
Then my next goal is to have the PRINCIPAL ARGUMENT CHAPTER written by Feb. 1. I will have to do some additional reading but most of it I will have already done for the lit review, so mostly it will just be writing. It'll be tricky to do during the first week of so of school with shopping period and seeing people and getting all the clubs running again and all that, which is why I'm angry with myself that I've been so bad at taking advantage of all this time I've had with NO obligations. I just don't maintain my focus. I think, though, that if I set a rule for myself of two hours a day at a minimum then that will keep me going at school. I've started using a timer on my computer that I start and stop whenever I'm working so that I can really keep track of how much I'm doing, and that helps me push though when I want to stop. I think it's a good rule for school, too, and I think it will get me through what I need to do.
Anyway, after the principal argument chapter is done I will have only one chapter left to write. I'm still a little unsure of what it will contain, but I know it will talk about the impact of usos y costumbres on social movements. I may make the whole thing a somewhat speculative chapter about uyc's effect on social movements, democratization, and development, drawing heavily on the readings I've done for support. I will finish that by the end of February, since I will probably have to do some more reading for it (although again, a lot has been done for the lit review). Then I will have until March 20 to write my intro and conclusion and do FIX the whole thing according to the suggestions of my advisor, as well as make sure the whole paper is logically consistent and makes a real argument. I keep fearing that I've lost the point of my whole thesis as I'm reading, I keep losing track of what I'm trying to demonstrate. But the readings I'm doing now for the principal argument are helping me a lot.
I simply cannot wait for my thesis to be over. It's all I think about, yet I do not feel productive or like I'm making satisfactory progress. It's certainly all my fault, nothing is stopping me from working harder but myself. April will be wonderful, as I will be only taking two classes. To give myself a break I decided to just go for three credits, and one of them is the thesis, so when I'm done with that, I'm done to two classes. I'm planning to take things that look really interesting so that when for the first time I will be able to do all the reading I will actually WANT to do it.
The other thing I'm working on is exercising more. Since Christmas I have walked four miles on the treadmill in the basement almost every day (while watching movies!) and I am losing weight as a result. This does make me happy, because even though I'm not overweight, I did put on 10-15 lbs in Mexico that I haven't just naturally shed, and I feel that that's not really part of me and I want it to go away. I'm hoping to get rid of a couple more pounds before going back to school, and then I'd like to cut down on exercising to just a few days a week. It'll be harder to incorporate into my routine at school, but I think it'll help me feeling good and healthy. Plus with only two classes, I'm looking forward to having much more control over my time; I will have to plan carefully, though, to make sure I don't totally piss it away, as I am doing now as I write in this journal and watch Bridge Jones's Diary. After the movie, off to exercise, and then call Will, and then work till 2 am.
Anyway, thanks for bearing with me as I outline my hopes and plans for the next few weeks and months. I hope to keep on doing this, if only to give myself a chance to reflect, even if no one's reading my journal anymore! |
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