Spirits and attitudes remain solidly high as I begin day 5. My only real crisis right now is how the hell I am going to cut 4000 words out of the first paper.Yes, being non-verbose has never been a shortcoming of mine. After vomiting over 15,000 words onto the page in the first two days I've managed to reel it in to about 12,000 so the trend appears to be in the right direction.
I had a meeting with my supervisor yesterday and we were discussing how the process of writing this exam has been for me so far this week and I told her that it's been interesting really thinking about the questions and trying to figure out what the committee actually means by them. She responded "I'm not sure any of us on the committee actually know what we mean either." Awesome right?? With the weight of providing specific responses to the questions lifted, today I feel ready to get CRAZY.
I've also been debating with myself whether I should leave in some of the "funny" and the unintentional colloquialisms that emerged during the first initial vomit on day 1 and day 2. I think that I'm an adequate enough academic writer that the "funny" can actually be pulled off because there is actual substance throughout. I feel relatively confident they won't fail me and kick me out of my PhD for using the phrase "but oh-so-tasty" when referring to the junk available for students to purchase in schools.
As far as I can tell thus far, being a bit hermit-y is kind of my jam when I'm being really productive. Probably if I were just watching netflix for 21 days straight by myself I might feel some craving to be around other humans...and I loves me some netflix.
Bonuses to writing comprehensive exams so far:
1) It's a solid excuse for staying at home and not being sociable which would otherwise appear as unhealthy
2) I have spent no money this week
3) I love reading and writing and learning
4) I've allowed' myself certain junky comfort foods that I otherwise try to avoid (Miss Vikis and skittles)
Challenges to writing comprehensive exams so far:
1) a little something I call "finger overexertion". The etiology of this short-term disorder is typing for more than six hours straight. The symptoms include clunky typing techniques where your fingers feel like they are tripping over keys, misspelling of the same word over and over again as you constantly miss one leter due to exhaustion.
2) "chair sores"
3) having really important library books checked out that keep getting recalled by the library because some ass-clown has requested them...I mean, why the heck do other people need books about mixed-methods research during the holiday, right??? I've decided to bite the bullet and not bring them back until I am done with them-- which brings me to my next challenge...
4) library fines
Writing tip #1:
To avoid lame-duck syndrome (occurs when you work from the top of a document to the bottom and by the time you get to those last couple paragraphs you are being redundant and unoriginal) I like to undertake the writing process in a table of three columns, one column contains the points you want to make, then the adjacent cell in the adjacent column is the full paragraph on that point you want to make, and the third adjacent cell in the column adjacent to that column is just for notes about what needs to be done on that paragraph. This allows me to jump from top to bottom working on just individual cells (which contain like one paragraph about one point) and then the unoriginality and redundancy, as well as the really good stuff, is dispersed throughout the entire document rather than just all the good stuff at the beginning.
I had a meeting with my supervisor yesterday and we were discussing how the process of writing this exam has been for me so far this week and I told her that it's been interesting really thinking about the questions and trying to figure out what the committee actually means by them. She responded "I'm not sure any of us on the committee actually know what we mean either." Awesome right?? With the weight of providing specific responses to the questions lifted, today I feel ready to get CRAZY.
I've also been debating with myself whether I should leave in some of the "funny" and the unintentional colloquialisms that emerged during the first initial vomit on day 1 and day 2. I think that I'm an adequate enough academic writer that the "funny" can actually be pulled off because there is actual substance throughout. I feel relatively confident they won't fail me and kick me out of my PhD for using the phrase "but oh-so-tasty" when referring to the junk available for students to purchase in schools.
As far as I can tell thus far, being a bit hermit-y is kind of my jam when I'm being really productive. Probably if I were just watching netflix for 21 days straight by myself I might feel some craving to be around other humans...and I loves me some netflix.
Bonuses to writing comprehensive exams so far:
1) It's a solid excuse for staying at home and not being sociable which would otherwise appear as unhealthy
2) I have spent no money this week
3) I love reading and writing and learning
4) I've allowed' myself certain junky comfort foods that I otherwise try to avoid (Miss Vikis and skittles)
Challenges to writing comprehensive exams so far:
1) a little something I call "finger overexertion". The etiology of this short-term disorder is typing for more than six hours straight. The symptoms include clunky typing techniques where your fingers feel like they are tripping over keys, misspelling of the same word over and over again as you constantly miss one leter due to exhaustion.
2) "chair sores"
3) having really important library books checked out that keep getting recalled by the library because some ass-clown has requested them...I mean, why the heck do other people need books about mixed-methods research during the holiday, right??? I've decided to bite the bullet and not bring them back until I am done with them-- which brings me to my next challenge...
4) library fines
Writing tip #1:
To avoid lame-duck syndrome (occurs when you work from the top of a document to the bottom and by the time you get to those last couple paragraphs you are being redundant and unoriginal) I like to undertake the writing process in a table of three columns, one column contains the points you want to make, then the adjacent cell in the adjacent column is the full paragraph on that point you want to make, and the third adjacent cell in the column adjacent to that column is just for notes about what needs to be done on that paragraph. This allows me to jump from top to bottom working on just individual cells (which contain like one paragraph about one point) and then the unoriginality and redundancy, as well as the really good stuff, is dispersed throughout the entire document rather than just all the good stuff at the beginning.
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