A Very Thesis Weekend

Katie D.

February 5, 2012 - 7:49 PM

This was a high-productivity weekend. Pretty much start to finish, I was taking care of a whole lineup of tasks. I was pet sitting for a friend, which meant I was staying in someone else's house, and getting work done in a real dining room and outside my little apartment. Somehow I think that helped me focus.

I've got over twenty pages drafted for my thesis. It's a start. It's far from halfway finished, even. But I've gotten past the dreaded starting place, and have really launched into my work. It feels good.

I'm discussing Honduran immigration and the impact this has on migrants and their families. I don't want to write in too much detail here because I've been writing and writing and writing about it, and I just can't seem to blog about it on top of all the thesising. But suffice it to say I'm dealing with some pretty complex and depressing aspects of immigration law and economic pressures, based on my research this summer. I've been going back through my interviews, and doing some transcripting (which takes forever) and translating (which is also tedious, but quicker).

All told, I wrote eight pages this weekend. Plus I annotated three interviews, which will facilitate the writing I'll be doing in the next couple of weeks.

This coming Wednesday is the halfway point of the term. It's sneaking up awfully fast: we're already winding down the winter and will be arriving at graduation before we even know it. What I have to do in these next couple of weeks is to really put pedal to the metal and go after this thesis work. I know from my undergraduate thesis that I'm in for a ton of writing, and months of compromised concentration as I try to slog through the whole process. I imagine this thesis will be roughly 75 pages. While this isn't enormous compared with a PhD dissertation (or compared with my undergraduate effort, although that was a very different project), those 75 pages represent the best of independent research on the student level, and will be part of my permanent academic record from here on out. So it matters. And it sure absorbs a lot of head space.

So this weekend I spread out, grabbed some snacks and tea, and got down to work. I worked on other homework, work-work, and internship work as well. I wrote a couple of letters and called my grandmothers. I walked the dog, and made sure he got a good amount of attention every time I needed a writing break.

Now, with the weekend winding down, I'm feeling an odd mix of accomplishment and let down. After all that work, I'm feeling now that it's all possible and I can keep taking these big working afternoons to finish the thesis. But I also know that the secret to a project like this is to tackle it each and every day, even if it's just in little chunks. Which doesn't diminish the work done these past two days, but does mean I need to discipline myself to start again tomorrow.

Oof. No rest for the weary. So there it is: the consuming background work to my "normal weeks." At least this weekend included a dog! Whenever I could pry myself off my computer screen, we were out enjoying the beautiful blue skies.

So full speed ahead! On to week five: the halfway point.