Starting Submission Proof and Tough Decisions

Raindrops from the storm this afternoon

Well I am further on than I thought I would be although not as far as I hoped at times this weekend. However my brain has declared that it is not going to do any more tonight thank you. In particular it is not going to do any more complex thinking about how different parts of my thesis link together.

I am also beginning to get the process of submitting under control. I have now found out that I belong to a class which allows me to submit my thesis (and I have until 31st August but I want it in before Easter). I have also discovered that my mail account at Birmingham was full. This was why I was getting emails in my GMail box saying an Outlook account was full. It made no sense to me at all until I looked on a tablet and realised they were redirected from my Birmingham account. I have it set up to automatically redirect to my GMail account so I do not miss anything and as I never use that account apart from receiving email from Birmingham it never occurred to me that it might be full. So this morning the first half hour was spent deleting email that I had read when forwarded to me.

However proofing is interesting. There are more changes than I would like despite everyone assuring me that it is just proof reading. Also I am 2.5k over my word limit. Now there are two ways of dealing with this. Firstly to go through the whole thesis and remove bits that are embellishments. I have to be careful as if I do too much it ends up loosing cohesion.  The second is to loose specific bits. I have identified one bit that can go and would take me just under the limit. It adds something to thesis but not much as most of the argument is established in the previous section. This just demonstrates that the process happens within as well as external to the premises. I need to think about it.

Anyway with 5.5 chapters in proof I am on track for finishing proofing the chapters next weekend and sorting this out so I have a final text. Then I can start collating everything and working through that to get it into a final form.

A lo-ong weekend on thesis

Part of a local bench

Well this has been a long drawn out weekend working on thesis. It started on Thursday, and I really go back into work tomorrow. Two of the days were thesis days from work. These will be some of the last I ever do. I now have the text largely in proof! It is weird. This whole afternoon I have felt as if something very scary, but very exciting was happening. Now that I am actually pretty close the relief of having a proof version of the thesis text is like bubbles of champagne running through my veins.

It has not been easy even this weekend. I had a friends marriage go through major ructions and the husband ended up briefly sleeping on my floor for one night. I had a migraine at the start of the weekend, and I have had a mild infection or hayfever so did not go over to my parents.

Thursday and Friday only slow progress was made although I got the Worship chapter into proof. Saturday I tackled the Methodology chapter and I can see why my supervisor thought it was good. It was by far the easiest of all the chapters to refine into proof. However in the last three days I have struggled with the introduction and the conclusion. These are the shortest chapters of the thesis, yet they have taken more time and effort than some of the longer chapters which I was doing in a day and a half each,and these, at about the same length when put together, were took three.

However I still have to write the abstract, sort the appendices, put the text together and format it in the right form for the thesis and so on. I have a little time over the next three weeks to put these final touches in.