My week wasn't much fun, but it was productive. Since last writing, I contacted the Australian linguist with whom my work overlaps and received a friendly e-mail back with scanned copies of his 1981 BA thesis. Wow. I don't have copies of any papers I wrote as an undergrad, nor would I want anyone to read them! Turns out he's friendly and appreciated the trip down research memory lane. He also answered my questions. To say thank you, I sent him two chapters of Geraldine and a copy of my prelim paper so he could see what kind of loony work I'm up to.
I have overcome the disappointment of discovering my dissertation is no longer unique. I read the 1981 thesis (which was more than 250 pages long not including references) and was amazed by the conclusions. Pure genius (and not just because they're the same conclusions I've been making for the last 5 years). Great explanations, great examples, and great data. My research methods differ and I have slightly different research goals. It turns out I won't have to change that much after all, and I have someone else's work to help establish mine as a legit, and valid piece of linguistic research. Phew!
I completely re-wrote my abstract for a third time and ultimately decided to present a different aspect of my data. We'll see what happens.
I had a typical short encounter with Indi that resulted with me feeling helpless, hopeless, frustrated and full of questions. What else is new. Some exciting phrases he threw out to me were "research slave", "waste of time" and "it will eventually bore you." To top it off, he griped about teaching a short-term class that any TA in my department would have been happy to teach had we been given the chance. And he's using my materials to teach it. Thanks Indi, I love you too.
Despite the roller coaster ride from stress hell this week provided, it's ending on a positive note. I worked in my office last night until 8:30 before coming home only to enjoy dollar tacos and $2 beer at a neighborhood bar with Hubby. I woke up refreshed and determined to start writing my literature review chapter. I've been working non-stop for 8 hours and wrote 7 pages from scratch. I also outlined the rest of the chapter and think I will finish a complete draft by Monday night. I just might make my writing goal for the month after all, but it's going to take a lot of 12+ hour work days. The biggest help in writing this chapter has been my large collection of abstracts that I wrote about every article I read last winter and spring. My annotated bibliography is about 80 pages long and it made it easy to find what I needed to write the chapter. Likewise, the hours I spent entering data into my bibliographic software made it super easy to create the full bibliographic references for the chapter. Since it's a lit review chapter, there are a lot of references. I literally only had to click a button and the program inserted my references for me AND sorted them alphabetically. I still have to proof read it all and make small changes, but it save me a lot of time. What can I say? It pays to be organized and anal. So far, my references make up 4 pages at the end of the chapter. At one point this evening when pressing the button for another reference to magically appear in my Word document, I exclaimed to Hubby, "this is fun!". He didn't respond, but he must have been thinking "Man, you need a life!" Don't worry, Hubby. It's the weekend and I might have some free time for something more exciting, such as riding a Thoroughbred tomorrow morning.
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