Doctoral resolve, yay!

I had a good supervision meeting yesterday! Meaning they gave me carte blanche to calm the fuck down about analyzing every single deictic and subject/predicate switch in my massive amounts of data. And they gave me a reason I could accept. Because that’s the trouble with me, I reach for perfection and completion, and almost nothing anyone says can make me settle for less, but this time… they succeeded.

So today I’m going to clean the house like a boss and listen to my transcriptions and dictate some analysis on a more general level, and then I’m going to transcribe the relevant parts (because transcribing is like the monster under my bed).

For those who have no idea what the hell I’m on about, I’m on my last year as a doctoral student and struggling to even get up in the morning. The defense is in December, so I sort of have to get a move on with this fourth article, but it’s such a fucking lonely job I’m tearing my hair out. I’ve rekindled an ounce of interest in the subject, but it’s just me and the screen, me and the screen every day, which can really wear you down, especially if you know that whatever you do, someone will think it’s rubbish*.

But today it’ll be me and the dust bunnies, which is a welcome change! Heh. As I see it written down, it actually looks like a good summary of what the PhD student’s life is like.

Anyway, I think better when I’m walking around, so I’m (re)trying that today. I almost know the sound files by heart after listening to them for five years, but hey, maybe today will be the day when I hear something new.

 

*This is not a plea for reassurance. It’s God’s own truth. It’s the fundament of academia: hating other people’s work because they think a category is a theme or vice versa.