June 6 - Goals

I got 100 pages of my (larger, more text per page) primary source read yesterday, so I'm hoping to get almost all of it done by this afternoon. I had a really great and cohesive idea of where to take this chapter after my reading yesterday, and I'm very excited to get some detailed notes down for the arc of my argument with regards to this text.

Also, I got my computer fixed with a brand new E key (No more "thee" instead of "the"!), so now I don't have to use my old, slow one that froze for an hour yesterday as I tried to send a quick email.

Here's a good final burst of momentum before Friday!

May 30-31/June 3

I'm feeling a lot more confident this week after the success of getting a lot read and annotated last week. Despite having to take my computer in for repairs thanks to a sticky "E" key (every time I'd write "the" it would type "thee"... not fun), I am able to work on my old computer, which, while very slow, does not face the problems of sticky keys.

My goal for this week is to get the paragraphs written with an overview of my primary text, plus an outline of the major themes and points about the primary text that I'm going to address in this chapter.

May 29 Recap

I got about 75 pages read and noted today. However, I realized midway through that I was missing some pages in my PDF of the 1787 edition of my text, and so that led me down a research rabbit-hole of finding a different edition of the text with all the pages. I found another edition (and actually probably the first edition of the text, from 1779), but the numbering of the pages is entirely different from the 1787 edition. I am going to proceed by taking notes from the 1779 edition, and then as one of my "brain-dead" tasks, I'll go back and re-cite the quotes.

Otherwise, I got some good thoughts and ideas to pursue with this chapter.

Goals: Wednesday May 29

My goals for today are to read another 100 pages of my primary source and make notes of connections with my main argument.

Writing Inventory Reflection

In today's session, I managed to read about 100 pages of my primary source and take notes on it, including notes about how this writer feeds into my overall argument for this chapter. I hope to read another 50 or so pages this afternoon.

My Writing inventory responses got me thinking about why I get stuck with my writing. It has to do with a) perfectionism and fear of doing a bad job, (which is honestly not very surprising to me) and b) worrying about finishing and fearing that I'm going to come down to an impossible time crunch at the very end of writing and hate my life so much that I give up in despair, thus fulfilling point A.

The second point is a little more surprising to me because I've always told myself I "work best under pressure." I think the best thing for me to do right now is to schedule my reading days and writing days, and also let myself have actual time off in the afternoons, rather than scheduling eight hours a day of writing. The second thing I'm going to do is to break down each chapter into discrete tasks, rather than "letting the muse guide me" with regard to what sources I look at on a given day. Even if I'm only writing notes, my notes still count as writing. That's what I need to focus on.

Dissertation Camp Goals

Overall Goal for Dissertation Camp:

I want to have a detailed outline of Chapter 1 (I've already written Chapter 2) by the end of the two weeks. I have some reading and note-taking to do still, but after taking a break from my dissertation to write my MFA Thesis for Translation, I need some structured time to work on my dissertation again and get back into it.

Day 1, Tuesday May 28:

My goal for today is to get notes written on my primary text 1.