I just realised that I missed my ‘T-Minus 1 Month’ post, so I’m quickly putting together this T-Minus 3 Weeks version so that you can see where I’m up to with my thesis writing.
In my last update post I set some aims:
- Literature review – STOP MESSING ABOUT AND WRITE THE BLOODY THING!
- Systematic review – Slot into final thesis structure.
- Qualitative study – Address comments and slot into final thesis structure.
- User-testing study – Address comments and slot into final thesis structure.
- Thesis introduction – Get a first draft written for the beginning of May.
- Thesis conclusions – Get a first draft written for the middle of May.
“I want an entire working thesis draft by the end of May – that’ll give me a month before hand-in to ready through it a million times, tweak things, ensure I haven’t repeated myself a million times, and then make sure that the formatting and referencing is correct.”
Spoiler alert – it’s now Sunday 10th June and I do not have a full draft. I am very nearly there, but certain bits of editing and writing have taken longer than I thought they would.
Anyway, where am I at?
Current word count: 63,966 (that’s the entire document, appendices etc included)
Current page count: 247
Introduction
I’m almost there! Just need to rewrite my thesis-rationale section and this bit is officially off my to do list (for now).
Literature review
DONE. It’s done! Weirdly enough, once I’d gotten over the ridiculous amount of procrastination I did to avoid writing this chapter, it wasn’t so bad. Once I’d got comments back from my supervisors, I actually enjoyed the editing part. Weird.
Systematic review
DONE! This chapter has been written, edited and written a bit more. It is complete.
Qualitative study
NOT DONE. I got comments back from my supervisors a few weeks ago so I need to go through and edit, refine etc etc. This is the chapter that I’m most dreading – it’s a black hole of imposter syndrome and whenever I go back to it I feel like I’m not good enough. Time to get rid of that feeling and get it done!
User testing study
DONE! This chapter has been written, edited and written a bit more. It is complete (for now).
Aims for the next week or so
Looking at that, I don’t actually have that much to do at all. It’s totally doable in the next week or so. Time to knuckle down..
- Thesis rationale – By the time I leave the office today, I’m going to re-write my ‘Thesis rationale’ paragraph, that will mean that the entire thesis introduction section is complete to a standard that I’m happy with.
- Systematic review in context – This is a sort of short bonus chapter that comes after my Systematic Review, and provides information on the other reviews that sit alongside mine. I need to write this. I already have bits of text in various documents so I don’t anticipate this taking a huge amount of time, I’m going to try to get this section done on Monday.
- Qualitative study – This chapter needs a whole lot of editing, which I think will take me 3 or 4 days to complete. I plan on doing this Tuesday-Thursday/Friday.
- Thesis conclusions – Each of my results chapters have their own conclusion sections, so this chapter is about bringing everything together and making recommendations for future work. I have a tonne of ideas for this chapter because I’ve discussed the contents of it with my supervisors a few times already, so I’m hoping that means it won’t take me too long to translate those ideas from my head on to the page. I plan on doing this Friday-Sunday.
I’m then going to try and print out a full version of my thesis (oh my god!) on Sunday afternoon, so that I can go through it on Sunday evening and Monday and ensure that I haven’t missed anything obvious. Tuesday 19th I plan on sending my thesis to my supervisors for one final look over, and then I’ll have time to make any final edits, tweaks etc before I submit on Friday 29th.