Grumpy's Thesis writing diary

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Inspired by Lara and Jojo who did this on here a few years ago now.

Been struggling with motivation recently. This forum has been a great source of support and at least kept me away from Netflix when having a low day. The aim of this thread is to make myself accountable to a daily report of my progress whether anyone reads it or not. It seems like others have found this process useful :)

My agreed deadline for a full draft is 31st August. At the moment I have almost 3 of 8 chapters drafted.

The deadline for my current chapter is 22nd April. The following chapter deadline is 16th May, the following the 30th June, 31st July and finally 31st August.

I'm going to start off by posting very brief daily summaries of what I've achieved and if I reached my goal or not. Sounds simply but like I say, I've been struggling and hoping this will help!

GM.

Avatar for Mathcomp

My deadline is also in few months. Good luck!

S

Hey Grumpymule! It is perhaps a good idea to restart the writing thread. I have to write two important chapters conclusion and introduction in a way and also filling gaps, editing & finalising rest of the chapters. I would like to join as well however I wonder if it would impose more pressure on me as I cant not cop up when I am unable to achieve my deadlines. However I so much want to take part in this thread ;) Besides it would be motivational seeing someone going ahead with work.

My today's quota is,
1. to write down the paradigm I employed in the Methodology
2. Analysis of data in Methodology

So good luck to all of us :)

G

Good to see you both here! I didn't know whether or not this thread would attract any interest. Maybe I should have called it just the "thesis writing diary!". Glad to see you both here.

Good luck Mathcomp!

Silverlining - hope you reach your goals today!

Today's goal is

* Finish Lit review section 2.2 (about 500 words)

Reward = a game of squash with a friend :)

GM

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This is a great thread, Grumpy :)

I'm also getting very close to submission - must be done by 1 July. As Grumpy knows I'm currently working on a full draft which I have to send to my supervisors by 8 May.

I'd really like to join in this thread too and hopefully we can all get some motivation and support from each other.

Hope you are all having a good weekend. Speak soon
G

Avatar for Mathcomp

I had an interview today. It was ok and fun!
My goal for today is:

1. Write down the main proof
2. send the proof to my supervisor for confirmation

S

Hi Everyone,

I was lost in the galaxy of literature yesterday and today morning. I was unable to write anything :( but it indeed has opened up my intellectual horizons.

So today's aim remain same as the yesterday's.

Good luck to all.

P.S. Grumpymule, thanks for allowing us to contribute in your thesis writing thread :)

G

Happy(?!) Monday everyone ;)

Hope you're all doing well and had good weekends. What are we all up to this week?

I'm working on my full draft and today's focus is the Lit Review. I'm hoping to have all the major edits and alterations done on that section by the end of today. Fingers crossed!

Good luck everyone! =D

G

Morning everyone!

Also ended up reading lots yesterday though I prefer silverlinings "lost in a galaxy of literature" I might have to use that in future.

I have a 2 hour meeting this morning and a then my (penultimate!) piece of data collection this afternoon. That's 4 hours out of my day so have set a modest goal to finish section 2.2 of my lit review. (300 words)

Hope you all have a productive day!

I

Oooh, can I join the thread please?

I have finally officially been told my absolute deadline is 5th January (I applied for a 6 month extension based on severe illness during the PhD but it was only granted last week). So I'd love to join this "finishing up" thread :-) A couple of my good friends are getting married abroad at the end of December so I want to have submitted before Uni shuts down so my personal submit deadline is Christmas Eve.

I want my first draft and all experiments (bar 1 which I can't do until October) written up by September because that's when I start my new full time job. Agh.

Anyways, for today I plan to completely write up the results for my descriptive and inferential stats for one of my experiments. And then, if there's time, go back and rework the analysis procedures description section.

Have a great day one and all :-)

G

Welcome Spiral! Of course you can join in!

Congrats on getting your extension and you've got a job lined up too! Well done!

Good luck with your writing today. Keep us updated with how you're progressing =D

G

How did everyone get on yesterday? I didn't quite finish everything I wanted to do on my LitReview, but nearly. I'm moving onto the major edits for my background section today. Wish me luck! :)

I

Thanks glowworm :-) I've been very lucky on the job front, I'm currently working for my department as a Teaching Fellow part time, but my contract ends soon so I was put on redeployment list (as I was being made redundant) and I've got a really awesome full time Teaching Fellow post in a completely different department lined up for 2 years from September. I'm super excited, and uber lucky :-)

Unfortunately, yesterday actually ended up as a massive fail. Developed a migraine after I posted and spent most of the day in bed and achieved very little. Although, the plumber did come and fix my boiler so I have hot water again. Whoop :-)

I've got a teaching-focused day today so not going to make any PhD progress either. With 4 hours of teaching and a student supervision meeting there's not much time left, and I really need to get on with marking my assessments. I hate marking. Hands down the worst bit of an academic job. Ugh. So, basically, I'm not going to get anything done today either.

Balancing a job and writing up is actually really hard, who knew?

How did everyone else get on yesterday?

S

Hello Everyone!

Hope everyone is moving ahead :)

@ IntoTheSpiral good to have you as well, well that is upto Grumpymule to decide :), but I hope Grumpymule does not mind. But you have really good span to finish up your thesis. I envy you.

@glowworm: Yes I too was stuck somewhere as my other question running on the forum suggests. I have major doubts about my methodology (I wish my supervisor have warned me but he was not helpful to begin with). So I am trying to hook the ends by setting the strong foundations for the methodology. Too bad for me not to achieve my desired goals even today. But I have absolutely no way to go forth without clarification.

My today's goals are(not being too optimistic):
1. To clarify and support my argument & methodology with solid framework
2. In case I have time left, finishing up the paradigm part of methodology

G

Thanks for joining us Intothespiral! The more the merrier! I hope you get a bit of PhD time today after all that teaching and marking.

Glowworm, hope you managed to make progress on your background edits.

Silverlining, hope you reached your 2 goals too.

OK. So I've had four VERY productive meetings so far this week but the writing has slipped. I've only managed a few hundred words on my chapter and half a conference abstract.

Today's goals:

1) Finish and submit conference abstract.
2) Finish section 2 of the Lit review

GM

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