Weeks three and four of thesis progress have been long indeed. They have been mixed with feelings of elation and hopelessness. Week three didn’t feature as many hours as I had hoped to put into research, however I did manage to get some high quality work done, or at least what I consider high quality. Week four has been a mixture of long hours and lower productivity. There is only so much time you can spend absorbing microfilm information. If only knowledge could be acquired intravenously, and I could inject it directly into my blood stream, and though some magical osmosis process, absorb it straight into my brain. In Hypothetically in phrenological terms, if the aptitude to manifest phrenological specific information was a faculty of my brain, then I’m quite sure my phrenological faculty would consume much of the surface area of my cranium.
I’ve been experimenting with note taking techniques and have come to be a bit of a fan of a modified version of the Cornell Method. I have been taking my notes directly on to my laptop’s word processor which is a first for me – I used to go from source to handwritten notes, handwritten notes to my word processor. Taking notes in this new fashion, and through this new fangdangled method, has doubled my productivity as well as my ability to absorb the important parts of the sources.
“Mum knows best—
I’ve followed my supervisor’s advice and only worked on primary sources, and developed my own ideas. While it would seem that some of my ideas and beliefs regarding phrenology in 19th century America are similar to those already written, there are some I think I can claim as my own. My supervisor was right – it is pretty exciting finding these new perspectives. Over the weekend I hope to produce a revised abstract and draft introduction for my supervisor to review. Quite a bit of work to complete, so no going out for me.
Also, I’ve just stumbled across a piece of freeware software called “Notalonâ€. It is a little application that assists in organising notes via the Cornell method. You can have a look at it here.
Well, week four will see me end with about 30 hours of thesis research work clocked up. I’ve been keeping an excel spreadsheet documenting the hours spent on work, and I seem to be averaging about 20 hours a week, which is fairly good I suppose. Its not going to let up until submission time though. I have some concerts coming up as well as well as a heavier paid workload. God bless the invention of coffee and sugar.
Leave a Reply