Strains and stresses at the final stages

I strain forward to prepare a final full draft for checking. I go through chapter by chapter, day by day, marking changes in the hard copy, adding new relevant reading, cutting, shuffling, organising, formatting, printing revised drafts, re-reading...

This pre-submission work is hard, with no limits since the dissertation can never be polished enough. I wonder all the time what the markers will make of it. Coherence and criticality are my standards as I sweep through the text. Every word counts to make the whole coherent and critical.

I lose heart, feel tired, worry about other things, sleep, do another stint, want to stop, keep going.

I strain forward to prepare a final draft.

Final stages of EdD

As I reach the final stages of the EdD I feel frightened, excited, proud, stretched, determined. My supervisor has very high expectations of me as she has of all her tutees. She is thorough, demanding, exacting, committed, supportive.

Other people support me on my EdD journey, the other students (now my friends), my line manager at work, my husband and wider family, my supervisor. People are important along the road. People shape my learning.

This is the final lap of a journey and the beginning of a new one. The process of gaining an EdD confers a new identity, a deeper self awareness, a sense of pride, and humility. Pride in having reached this stage and humility in the face of other, more experienced researchers such as my supervisor.

I am mapping out my calendar for the summer, breaking down the work into chunks, planning backwards from the hand in date, considering how I will manage my work commitments, getting ready. It is like a period of Advent, a time for preparations, thinking, doing, getting ready, excitement, solitary meditation.

The final stages of the EdD are here. I am looking forward.

Love's labours not lost

Writing crystallises my thinking into a meaningful text.  It forces the disparate strands of study to come together, take shape, achieve coherence, present a whole.  I have just printed the first full draft of my thesis.  This allows me to view it from the outside, as a reader would.  I can handle it as an object, see it, finger it, critique it, question it, feel proud about it, feel the need to change it, take notes about it, worry about it, pause on it, stop.  I can weigh it as an object, number it, measure it critically, view it from a distance, put it in a drawer.  I can pass it to someone else or keep it hidden for longer.
Writing a thesis is a labour of love, about love, a labour I love and do not love. It is a labour not lost.

Views and reviews for learning

I have transplanted myself to a house that I know, away from routines, close to memories, a space for striving and racing forward with my writing. This is a space for spreading out, making a mess, re-reading the literature, exploring new literature, re-thinking, re-positioning, destabilising what I thought I had contained.

A literature review is always in flux, expanding, with new openings and possible beginnings. I am attempting to link my readings to my thesis, draw the strands together, make my meaning clear, return from tangential wanderings back to the core, the centre piece, the thesis.

Writing a literature review is a complex, messy, enlightening, humbling, necessary process of learning.

On tools and toil

This is a picture of some of the physical tools I use for my writing.  I use old and new technologies to support the writing process.  My writing and my thinking go hand in hand.  Writing leads to thinking, and thinking leads to writing. I print frequently, re-read drafts, edit on paper, transfer edits to computer files, print, do some indoor or outdoor jobs as a distraction, count up my words, think, continue...  It is useful for me to have uninterrupted time to make progress.

I put a lot of effort and toil into my studies, and everything I do.  Writing is work. Let us honour it!

Persuasive writing

Reflections after reading an article by Norman Denzin

When I read a confirming article I feel as if I have just heard a good sermon.  I am re-charged, re-invigorated, re-fired.  When I connect with an author in a reading, I go through a sort of spiritual experience.  Denzin builds up an argument piece by piece to what reads to me like loud, declamatory phrases: “We must create a new narrative, a narrative of passion and commitment, a narrative that teaches others that ways of knowing are always already partial, moral, and political.” (Denzin, 2011, p.654) There is a pause, I sense.  I feel moved. 

The line of argument is strong and comforting.  I concur.  Yes, I say to myself. It echoes my thinking and introduces new ideas.  Perhaps I belong to a minority community of qualitative inquirers who defend their beliefs to the world beyond their circle, to the world of audits, outcomes and evidence.  Solidarity in a postpositivist world.

Blogs to document the research process

This blog serves as a documentary record of my research process.  As Riessman (2008) proposes, it is important to keep "a diary, a log, of decisions and inferences made during the course of a research project" (p.191).  As I near the end of the research process, my self-confidence wanes, especially since I have chosen to analyse and present the data in diverse and individual ways, according to my own response to each story.  Riessman warns that some academic audiences might expect more than poetry, for example.  This blog serves as a piece of my shield.  With Riessman I concur that "we have to take responsibility for the validity of our interpretive conclusions, and document how we arrived at them" (p.199).

Step by step
     Declare it
Stop and turn
     Don't hide it
Piece by piece
     Keep going
You can do it
     You can do it

Riessman, C.K. (2008) Narrative Methods for the Human Sciences. Los Angeles, USA: Sage.