Yay, holiday!

I can hardly believe it myself, but I actually handed in my lit review an hour ago. 40 pages of sweat, blood and tears. Honestly, my efforts came closer to writhing than writing the past weeks/months. Now all I need is a Pass (yep, my standards decline by the hour) and get organised again. That is, after my very well earned holiday in Tonga, land of leisure, palmtrees and good food (and dengue mosquitoes, but who cares?). I'll be working on my tan (don't start on the missing ozone layer please!) and on reversing the damage all this stress has done to my body and mind (think heartburn, sleep deprivation, gaining weight, raised blood pressure and knotted up muscles). Being a student is so much easier is you are young, if only because your body can actually cope with the stress when it is 20 years old!

Snails pace

I feel like a snail, trying to run a marathon. And I feel stupid for trying in the first place. What on earth possessed me a year ago???? Was it ambition? Was it temporary insanity? Was it existential angst, fearing for misery in the future without the doctorate (as in no job, no pension, no future)? Was it arrogance? Damned if I know.

Nature

Both my readers complained last week that I have not been writing anything. This is true, I haven't. Starting out I thought I would have lots to write about my research adventure, but doing research is actually a very lonely job. Most of the time I'm stuck by myself in a room with a computer, trying to type something interesting onto the screen. This is a very slow and boring process. I could rant on and on about my supervisory problems, but I don't want to get into a liability suit (or whatever it is called), so that topic is a bit off limits too. Past weeks I've tried to get my enthusiasm back (I was on the verge of chucking the whole thing in), and wandering through nature works better than meandering through the uni. Here's some of the beauty of Oz, so there you go: I'm writing again.


Lorikeets and pidgeon


Autumn in Oz

Embarrassed

Had a totally embarrassing meeting with my supervisor today. Yesterdays email mentioned that my with blood, sweat & tears produced chapter 3 was 'poorly organised'. This I found odd, because among all the different kinds of critique my work gets, poorly organised has (so far) never been one of them. Today I got back a stack of feedback, written on MY VERY FIRST CUT AND PASTE DRAFT FROM 4 WEEKS AGO. No wonder he thought it poorly organised, that was not organised at all. And full of repeats. And mistakes. And lacking lots of content. After apologising extensively for sending the wrong version (while he was muttering things about precious time, and rightfully so), I staggered out of the room with a bright red face.

About half an hour later it dawned on me: I HAD send the final draft, but did not know how to turn of the 'track changes' (which I use to write notes-to-self on how to proceed the next day, etc). So my supervisor got this document, filled to the brim with 4 weeks of tracked changes. Undoubtfully the word 'chaos' must have come to mind. Clicking on the button 'final' instead of 'final with markup' would have solved this, but how was he to know? He must have clicked on 'reject all changes' and so ended up with what was the very first cut & paste version, and then spend lots of time trying to make something of it (a rather heroic effort I'd say).

Although I blame myself for about 99% for this medium disaster (emailing a document with tracked changes turns out to be a rather stupid action), but one thought did occur to me: why did he not realise I would never hand in a piece like that (full of repeating sentences, double paragraph headings, mistakes, etc) and ask for the right version?

Vacuum

Everytime I have finished something (last Thursday a draft of chapter 3, methodology) I end up in this vacuum: an empty feeling. The last adrenaline dripping away, I start feeling really tired and end up doing nothing. Well, not totally nothing. I'm thinking, but that doesn't show. So it looks like I'm doing nothing and it feels like it too, because I don't have anything to show for it at the end of the day. It is like that at the moment. Would this be what they call 'being in limbo'?

Personality DNA

My research is on thinking styles and while reading lots on thinking styles it is unavoidable to read about personality characteristics as well. I came across an intriguing test on your personality. Apparently I am a benevolent experiencer. Who knew?

Benevolent Experiencer

(If you click on the blogtitle you can do your own test.)

Brilliant!

I handed in the first draft of my first chapter, version 13. It 'only' took me about 3 weeks to write these 12 pages. I'm brilliant! Have to write this today, because tomorrow feedback is due to come my way, so that might change my mood ever so slightly. Although I am of course a very mature person, who realises how feedback will help me grow (mostly size-wise, due to stress-as-a-result-from-received-feedback), so I am not worried at all. Absolutely not. I think. Okay, let's be honest here: I'm crap at receiving feedback, even while I teach other people how to feedback or not to feedback, so to speak. Typical case of 'do as I say, not as I do'.