Hard Lesson and a Rant

I think one of the hardest lessons there is to learn as a student is that sometimes it is good-necessary to make major cuts in a paper. As I continue to revise (Chapter 1 down, 2-4 to go), I am reminded of how hard this really is. I think that this lesson didn't really hit home until graduate school, and several years into it at that (I'm currently in year 8-wince). With Chapter 1, there was a lot of cutting this time around, but I had plenty to fill it in with. The chapter is now more focused and hopefully sets up the rest of the dissertation much better. Starting with Chapter 2, I am faced with the possibility of cutting out 5 pages with several possibilities for replacement. The problem is that the best of these options would need to be researched and drafted from scratch. We shall see what happens with that.

This morning I was reminded of that someone needs to write a handbook of coffee shop etiquette which would become required reading for anyone who wishes to bring a laptop with them and work on it. A project for after the dissertation is completed perhaps. In my considerable experience in Milwaukee coffee shops, Anodyne is one of the best places to go for just about any reason (caffeine, write-read, hanging out...). One major reason for this preference is that the people who tend to patronize this place understand the as of yet unwritten rules of decent coffee shop behaviour. That said, the jerk who blasted loud music without headphones for almost five minutes while apologizing but doing nothing to lower the volume was an unpleasant reminder that a lot of people lack manners and-or common sense in public situations. If he was going to do that, he should have known he'd be less annoying at the Colectivo down the road (it's a much bigger establishment, so it wouldn't have been so obvious). I know that sometimes the sound comes on louder than anticipated, but what's the point in apologizing for an extended period of time while doing nothing to correct the problem

Aftermath of Chapter 4 1st draft

You'd think that it would be a relief that I got a rough draft of the final full chapter done. But all I can do now is try to work out how long it's going to take me to revise chapter 1 (answer: quite a while), outline the conclusion (aka Chapter 5), and revise chapter 4 when I get it back from readers.  Will this never end?

I remember being told as an undergrad (or maybe was it high school?) that writing the introduction to a paper was the hard part. Not so with Chapter 4. The conclusion was the trouble spot. I think part of the problem is that I was getting tired and I didn't want to just cut-paste-and-thesuarus the introductory paragraphs of the chapter. I justified walking away from it by telling myself that the arguments might change a little bit in editing and revising, so it's ok to leave it for now.

I was reminded how dreadful it can be to go back and look at something that I wrote but haven't looked at in almost a year. Chapter 1 = ouch. I knew it was going to change significantly once 2-4 were mostly done, but still. I should have known from the scare I seem to have given my final reader with the amount of summarizing and periodic sentences used. I'll be happy if I get that all fixed up by Christmas.

With a Chapter 1 rewrite and the likely 2+ rounds of revision on Chapter 4 looming, my holiday season is once again going to be spent behind a computer and/or buried behind piles of library books. And this is the shortest holiday season that's possible. I'm defining 'holiday season' as Thanksgiving week-New Year's. As has been pointed out by newspeople, the time between Thanksgiving and Christmas aka holiday shopping season is as short as it can be this year. At least most of my shopping was done by Oct.8, my last day in the UK.

Now to figure out when to draft and-or cut-paste that cofnerence paper together...