Yikes - Another chapter almost there and the finish line is nearer than I thought

A rainy view

The photo is a cheat I have not looked out of my window often enough to take a photo this weekend but it has at times been quite wet and I felt a picture of rain was appropriate although I took this one years ago.

The first piece of news if you have missed it just under a fortnight ago I got an email from my supervisor. This is highly unusual to start with, we tend to communicate only at supervisions but that is partly me. I have been sending him stuff. Anyway the email said that he was making "minor corrections" and that we should book a supervision.  This was a double panic. Firstly I had a supervision booked for the start of next month. Secondly my supervisor only does minor corrections on the draft before supervision! I thought I was a draft before that. So an exchange of emails and I seem to be submitting earlier than I was expecting.

However working in between has been frustrating. I got a cold last weekend and colds mess with my brain. I also decided it was time to do some examiner stalking as my examiner has written on a topic loosely related to the chapter that I am writing. I read the book and it does raise an interesting question but I am not quite sure how to deal with it in the chapter. I was also supposed to go to a study day in Birmingham. My brain did not come back until the Monday indeed most of the weekend I was doing the stare at screen and try to recall what I was doing. Everything I had written felt too hard to read and complete gibberish. Having a cold is a good way to loose all faith in your ability to write a thesis. However on the Monday my brain clicked and I started sorting out the structure for the last substantive chapter. The thing I had not realised is that I had started dumping everything I could not bear to get rid of into this chapter. Having realised that it was time to start cutting.

Thus I really started editing this weekend and indeed those scissors were necessary as there are whole sections I rewrote from scratch. Not so much using the theory as getting the data stuff into a form where I could use it. The major thing was I needed to put into the chapter a section on how historically the tradition had sort to answer the questions "Do I belong?". Surprisingly this time through I have got to the end of the last substantive chapter and I actually feel I have got to an end of the journey and all I need to do now is actually look around and find out where I have arrived because as with all journeys your destination is never in reality the place that you imagined however well you know it. With a thesis you really do not know where you are going to arrive it maybe to be where you started out at the beginning or it maybe somewhere completely different. I need time to look around the landscape. I have for a long time been too involved in the process of traveling.

Admittedly I did not get the chapter on Belonging off to my supervisor and it will take another full day to do it. It needs proofing which in this case involves working with Grammarly to actually check that what I send to my supervisors is actually in something approaching correct English. I do have proof readers who will check the final version but putting through Grammarly means that they have chance to see where I am going wrong. Then I have to put in citations which are in as notes at present. I have learnt this takes a day.