On saying thank you

I look forward to Thanksgiving all semester each fall term. It has always been a much needed time to write term papers, catch up on reading, take a break from teaching and even fit in a day to relax. This year's holiday hasn't been as productive as years past. Last week, I had food poisoning and spent a lot of time in bed. Returning to work was difficult and I lacked motivation all week. Usually I watch movies, drink tea and knit when I'm sick, but this time, I couldn't even sit up. It seems that my subconscience is telling me that I missed out on a few days of relaxation and it would be better to sit around knitting and baking than dissertating. That's great for my subconscience, but not for my dissertation progress. Especially since the last time I met with Indy, he said we need to start thinking about a summer graduation instead of a spring one. Well, I thought about it, and I don't like the idea, so work, work, work I must. But how do I ignore the ingredients in my pantry that I bought in the pre-Thanksgiving grocery sales?!?! And how do I ignore the cute, fluffy bunnies running around my house? (We're bunny-sitting for the weekend). The short answer is, I don't. But that doesn't mean I can't make progress either.

With all the talk of being grateful and giving thanks, I decided to write my acknowledgements section today. It seemed early, since I still don't have a 5th member on my committee and I'm sure that more people will help  me as I continue to work on Geraldine, but I'm glad I worked on it today. It's tough to write a thank you that's big enough to express how I really feel and doesn't give away too much personal information. After all, I do hope that a lot of people will read Geraldine, not just my committee members. It took about an hour, but I mangaged to write an acknowledgements section under two pages, and I think I thanked everyone I needed to. If not, I have a list in my office with names and reasons that I started over the summer, knowing that I would forget someone. Boy am I glad I got that out of the way now instead of waiting until April or May.

I re-read my methods chapter and am still pleased with what I wrote two weeks ago. I added to it and started thinking about whether or not I will need to run statistical analyses of my data. Good thing there's someone on my committee that works with stats. Indy said that I should be done with my methods and theoretical background sections by the start of spring semester (end of January). I aim to be done with both by the end of fall semester (in three weeks). I opened my rough draft of the theoretical background chapter on Wednesday, but I haven't read it yet.... :0(  Good thing there are still 2 more days to go before Monday. I also spent time working on my database this week. So far, the appendices for Geraldine are 139 pages. That might be longer than the content of all the chapters.

Now that I think about it, I did a lot this week. Time to stop feeling guilty and start playing with bunnies.