Going to the library, but only for coffee

I remember doing my undergraduate honors thesis. It was the 2001/2002 school year. I remember the hours I spent in the library - searching the stacks, finding the journal, finding the volume of the journal I needed, looking up the page number, and copying away. I spent so much time and money in the library getting all of those articles. And carrying all of them around with me? Insane. I remember those days that I dedicated a whole Sunday to copying articles. And refilling my OneCard...over and over and over. It was better than trying to find change, however.

Today, getting articles is much easier (and cheaper). I don't even have to go to school to do it. I can link my computer remotely to OhioLink, and download PDF versions of the articles. I also sprung for the full version of Adobe (yay for student discounts!) and can even annotate and highlight the articles right on my computer. I can print them out if i wish (of course) and can even use the printer in the computer lab in the department for free (if i feel like going there, of course). I can have all of the articles I need with me on the computer at all times. I've barely stepped foot in the library at school in all of the years that I've gone there. I've rarely needed to. As an undergrad, I practically lived there. I've spent more time buying coffee at the coffee shop there than getting articles.

As much as I complain about my dissertation, I realize technology has made the process MUCH easier. I can have the article I need in seconds. SECONDS. I often forget how much time, effort and money it took to procure those articles as an undergrad. I can't imagine doing a dissertation that way. I have HUNDREDS of articles for my dissertation (and yes, I've read most of them). I can't imagine doing this process for every article I needed: copy page --> flip journal --> copy page --> turn page --> copy --> flip journal...repeat to infinity.

Ah, it is important to remember that we have it easy.

Writer's guilt: Dissertation edition

Somehow I forgot (at least I think i forgot to write) to write about getting a draft of Chapter II to my advisor. That was last Friday. I'm still waiting to hear back and I am anxious to get started on it. It is odd that I have this strange desire to tackle it head on. I may feel differently after I see the comments, however :-/

I've been reading up as much as I can about policy-capturing and how to analyze policy capturing. I'd tell y'all what it is, but I can't seem to explain it in a way where non-stats people would understand (not that you'd be interested anyway). Hell, I barely understand it. I understand the basic process, but applying it to my study I'm finding really difficult. And analysis - sheesh! There are several ways to analyze the data (once I collect it) but I'm not well-versed in any of them.

I've had 7 graduate statistics classes, yet I don't know how to do this. Awesome, I had to pick a study in which I'm unfamiliar with the methodology. So this has turned the section that is usually easiest to write for me into the hardest. Chapter III is kicking my ass. My way of dealing with this is reading every article and book chapter that has the slightest reference to policy-capturing and the analysis of policy-capturing data. I am doing work, but I have what I call "writer's guilt"

Writer's guilt as how it pertains to the dissertation is the immense amount of guilt that you feel when your dissertation itself - the document - is not being improved or written in for a few days while you figure out how the hell you are going to explain this crap. Even though I am actively working on my dissertation and reading my butt off, I still don't feel like it is real progress because it is not on paper yet. Also, I've been reading things that are only tangentially related to what I'm doing. This very well might be a waste of time, but I've read (and re-read) all of the major articles that deal with policy-capturing in the I/O literature. I've also read a few that are of different disciplines.

So the name of the game is reading, reading and more reading, all whilst feeling incredibly guilty that I'm not producing anything that can be turned in at this point. I *could* take a picture of all of the articles I've read lately, but that would take up a lot of data on an email attachment.

I know I need to give up the writer's guilt and really feel like I'm being productive even though there is no output to show for it. I need to believe that reading is really making progress. I'm certainly spending enough time doing it.

Feeling ok about my dissertation for once

Well, after my last couple post about being discouraged on my dissertation, I am happy to report that I am not so discouraged at the moment. I managed to get another draft of Chapter 1 to my advisor as well as the goals for the semester. He said it looked good and that my goals are doable :-)

Good feedback is always welcome.

My next goal is to get a revision of Chapter 2 to him by next Friday. Chapter 2 is a hot mess, so my goal is to make it less of a hot mess. Not going for perfection here, just improvement. Ok, major improvement. But it is not going to be perfect and I am (mostly) ok with that. Perfectionism is not good for productivity - at least in my case. I feel odd about just doing "well enough", but in actuality, this paper is going to revised so much it is going to be unrecognizable from the first draft when it is all said and done. I can work on polishing it in later drafts.

It is going to be a busy week, that is for sure, but if I can get done what I've set out to do (and I think I can) it will motivate me that much more to tackle Chapter 3 (which is even more a hot mess than Chapter 2).