Saturday, October 29, 2011

Finally! We're good to go!

I feel like this has been coming for years. I sent another draft of my thesis proposal to my dad. He wrote back:

I've read the proposal. Barring a few errors, it sounds okay. I will read it again before Monday to see if any further fine-tuning can be done.

HURRAH! This is high praise, and means that on Monday (when I work myself into the ground 'fine-tuning') I can send it off to my potential supervisor to get more editing before it's submitted. Then I wait to find out if I'm allowed to go ahead. The joy of hoop jumping.

A few people have tried to put me off, telling me horror stories about how hard research is.

To them I say "Shut-up. I'm a librarian, and I know other librarians." Thanks to my colleagues I have access to records and primary sources that I would never have even dreamed of. Plus, now that a few of the super-smart people know about my interest, they keep coming up with helpful items. It's rad, because they're always on target. I haven't had anything that's useless to me. And none of them even bothered to conduct a reference interview. Unless they did it without me noticing...

Anyway, things that I must do include:

1. Write the bibliography as I go. Also, I must cite things properly. This always seems to be my downfall. I make lousy notes, then freak out months later.

2. Make good use of my time. I have hour long lunch breaks. That's a lot of time that gets wasted. Plus, when I get home I tend to watch Mr G play his guitar (I know, it's weird). I should probably stop doing that.

3. Set a reasonable target. A certain number of words per day. That's how I got through my undergrad, and that's how I'll deal with this.

I am so madly excited that I'm going to explode!

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