Hear, hear!

Congrats zipidee and I hope you enjoy a well deserved break!

Hey everyone!

I, too, have been a little lazy about checking in but I am still with you and I have been working hard and making a small but purposeful progress each day... I am still keeping myself accountable for initial submission before my 4 year deadline, which is creeping up right around the corner! I am lured by the attractive carrot dangling in front of my eyes and I'm determined to do it right and give it my all.

In terms of work, this week I will be focusing on updating the introduction & conclusion chapters which need to be tweaked due to a slight diversion (or, more accurately, a better focus) reflected in my results section. In the following week I will be working on cull about 15k out of my chapter 4, which had ballooned up to 30k words unbeknownst to me, but after that I will be in full proofing mode to catch out as much of the inconsistencies and grammatical errors in my thesis as I can. I know it won't be perfect like I'd originally hoped but at this point I just want to be done and move on to the next stage of life.

One more month to go now! I am anxious as hell and a little stressed out, but fingers crossed I'll get there in the end!

So more power to everyone on the same grueling journey right up to the finish line. Let's all celebrate and throw a big party when it's all done...

Love
Tane

Congratulations Satchi!!!

Hi everybody,

Checking in again this week although it seems that the whole week is almost disappeared from right under me.

LabPixie - I am so sorry to hear about a break up. I hope you have some good friends around close by to help distract you and support you through this. Perhaps you can also bury yourself in work and get the best results out of it... in any case, take care of yourself and good luck with the tests!

Caterpillar - I am in a complete awe of your determination and ability to balance work AND family! I am entering the last few days of my 4 years and I still feel like I could use another 6 months to work on it if I was able to. I just received an email from my university informing me of my impending deadline and my jaw just about dropped to the ground! Gotta stay motivated and just wrap this puppy up for good!

Trin - would you be surprised if I told you I really spoilt myself and took another 4 days off work to hang out with friends after all of that? I have not progressed much since I last posted about my chapter 5, but after receiving a letter from my university I feel like my ass is on fire and I need to get back to work for real this time! No more holidays for me until it's done I'd say.

Liah - well done on getting so much work done and I hope the main controller design is going well!

50 more days until my deadline! And on that bombshell I'm back to the grind - I'm coming for you, chapter 5, and you'll be all packed up and out the door by the week's end!

xx
Tane

Congrats Dr Vivicov! It's so nice of you to share your story with the rest of us. I am going through a lot of self-doubt and stress piecing together my work over the past 4 years into the last 50 days, as I am counting down to the submission deadline - it's very tough indeed but hearing your story made me feel like there is still hope and things will work out in the end. So thanks again and congratulations on successfully passing the viva!

Hey everybody!

Checking in again and I hope you are having a productive week so far!

Wanderingbit & Trin - yeah I did end up going to the beach which was beautiful and took the rest of the weekend off too! I am so glad I did in retrospect because by taking a little break I was able to see the forest instead of focusing on pruning individual branches off a tree... on Monday I had a bit of a revelation and got really excited scribbling notes on paper and now I feel like my work is finally coming together. As I was walking to the library this morning I reflected on how I felt about my work 6 months ago feeling totally hopeless not knowing when I would finish or how I would be able to wade through all the data I had collected... and 6 months later I feel like I finally know what I'm trying to say and know that if I continue to apply myself everyday I will be done soon.

This week I'm focusing on a subsection of chapter 5, about 2000 words - the rest should come together in another week.

Trin - sounds like you're on a roll and know exactly what you're doing! I hope you got the section out of the way and that your lab work is going well. Caterpillar are you still on target for September deadline? I have two more chapters to rewrite then I'll be tidying up for about a month before hand-in by the end of August. Wanderingbit - a year is plenty of time to get sorted - I ended up revising my work substantially, but if you have support around you, you can survive a few hiccups! My philosophy is to get it right first time for submission so I won't need to revise as much later, which is complicated by the fact that my funding has run out and I really need to get a job soon!

What about the rest of you - Liah, Labpixie, fobbled, Clupea et al?

Tane

How is everyone on this tread doing?

I've ended up only just finishing the to-do list that I posted 3 days ago today... It's a big relief as I can now begin to address the revision of the next chapter, but at the same time I am feeling hugely disappointed in myself that I am now 3 days behind schedule! And my fiance wants to go to the beach tomorrow! As much as I love the idea of some r&r right now, I know I'm going to feel really guilty about not constantly working on my thesis.

What are your strategies for not feeling guilty whenever you're not working?

Congrats Caterpillar! and thanks Liah :) The wedding prep is almost done (though I'm sure I'm forgetting something) so I'll get to do nothing but my thesis for the next month or so...

So far my week is getting off to a good start... started brainstorming the last subsection of a chapter and I'm hoping to be done with this whole chapter by mid-week, then in the second half of the week I'll start rewriting the penultimate chapter - Hooray!

Today I'm tackling the following:

- Structuring the chapter
- Write an overview of what it's about
- Compile my main arguments
- Revisit the coding document then drag and drop some quotes to illustrate the key arguments
- Write up section 4.3.1 in full

Lot's to do still!!!

Hope you all have, are having, or have had a productive day!

Thanks Caterpillar27!!! It's so nice to be part of a motivated peer group working hard towards the same goal in the similar timeframe - it's almost comparable to doing a fun run where the mob mentality will push each other at the same time as giving each other a boost :) Speaking of fun runs I need to lose some extra pounds I've piled on during my PhD which I sadly don't think will happen due to stress and my determination to submit my thesis before the wedding, but that's a story for another thread!!!

I've felt so isolated in my phd journey and having to work away from my home town is just adding to the stress. I've been really naughty today and wasted the whole morning 'window shopping' online for shoes and wedding accessories I can't afford. Oh, but how convenient it is to have such a happy distraction that will pull me away from work, but the longer I 'indulge' in things other than work, the more stressed I get... so... must... focus...

I'm only half way through my goal today, which is to finish the last subsection of chapter 4... I've still got a ton of editing to do but the day is almost gone!!! I am glad today is the summer solstice so I can take advantage of a little extra daylight.

Good luck everyone!

Hey everybody! Let me join in with you too!

I'm due to be submitting in September as well but my plans have been complicated (or enriched?) by the fact that I am also getting married at the end of August. I'm so excited but at the same time nervous as hell.

Today I'm going to edit a subsection on Chapter 4... It's going to be pretty crazy as I have another section in this chapter and 2 whole chapters to completely rewrite after this, before I even get to my conclusion, but I'm going to suck it up and just do it!

Good luck everyone! I'll report back on my progress by the end of the day. xx

Hi Pjlu,

Thanks for sharing your thought process. Indeed it sounds like you made the best decision for your research under the circumstances - new methods like Charmaz's comes with its own risk of not being as well-known as other methodologies. It would be especially worse if the person claiming to use the methodology didn't understand how to apply it to his or her own research, and ultimately that's my greatest fear - that can't convince the reader that I know what I'm talking about, or my research doesn't fit the methodology I used.

Upon rereading Denzin & Lincoln's handbook of qualitative research (4th ed.) they confirmed that there's a revolution within the qualitative research community because of the multiple perspectives on cultures, politics, race, ethnicities and modes of thinking about the world cannot be adequately captured with the extant methodologies developed in the 20th century. My main insecurity in adopting Charmaz's constructivist GT has to do with the baggage that traditional GT brings to its more contemporary (and definitively qualitative) variation. The reason for sticking with it in the end is because it gave me a way to organize and structure the huge amount of data I ended up collecting, to 'trust' in the process to know that the essence of the data via themes and categories can help me to develop a robust theory. And the 'constructivist' element just acknowledges the fact that it is my interpretation and construct.

I also submitted full research proposal at the end of first year - mine ended up changing from my initial version for reasons out of my control, but it was good because it forced me to think about methods and research scope in more depth than I was comfortable with at the time! From what you've described constructivist GT would have addressed #1 and #2 of your concerns, but it seems like you've made the right choice to go with the one you're comfortable with!

Good luck & thanks again for the stimulating discussion!

TM

Hear, hear.

It's quite inspiring to hear from someone who's done a complete rewrite in less than 5 months!

I think a lot of us get caught up in the moment in a roller coaster of emotions that skew our own perception of how much work we've actually done! Staying positive and believing in your work and your ability to do it - once you've got your data, then it's just a matter of finding your voice to tell the story because you've done it!

Keep it up everyone!

What an interesting discussion!

Pjlu: May I ask why you decided to move away from constructivist GT? I'm using this methodology now myself and I've used it to evaluate about 50 semi-structured interviews. Was it because it didn't fit with your particular research area, or was it for different reasons - i.e. didn't suit your research approach, the methods that Charmaz advocated wasn't

Personally I used constructivist GT because it allowed me to use the methods of GT selectively in the interpretation and analysis of my data, rather than employing the traditional GT method from the start to finish as prescribed by Glasser or Strauss/Corbin. The traditional GT theorists maintains that it is a methodology, not a method, but I like to think of it as a method.

Thanks for your thoughts in advance
Tane

Eska - I'm with you! Good luck on your work today!

LabPixie - tell me about others stealing all your time! For me I can exercise some control over how much I let others distract me - I have found that I tend to attract sources of distractions whenever I'm feeling unmotivated to work on my phd, to procrastinate from doing what I need to be doing! At the same time, I think that keeping an interest immediately outside of work helps me stay motivated because it adds another dynamic to my work pattern.

So long as you stay focused on your primary goal - i.e. submitting on time - distractions in moderate amounts can help you progress! If it gets too much though, we need to do something about it... I've burnt myself out one too many times from the inability to say 'no' to people, but I've learnt my lesson and I practice the 4 D's - Do Delay Defer Delete!

Good luck to all!