Dissertation, Schmissertation. Not Really.

I received feedback on my dissertation proposal today, and I have some revisions to make. I feel pretty confident that I can get them finished by next Monday night and send Debbie a draft by Tuesday morning at the latest. I actually think I am going to enjoy this dissertation process because the most difficult thing about writing, for me, is knowing what to revise. I can look at my drafts and recognize that there is not enough of some ideas, too much of other ideas, and some ideas missing, but I can’t pinpoint what those ideas are. I can write all day about most topics, but without a second person looking through what I’ve written, I have a difficult time deciphering where to go from there. It was liberating today to have someone else essentially say , “You have some good stuff here, but you really need to work on organization and clarification. I know that you know what you are talking about, but your reader doesn’t necessarily know that you know what you are talking. Nor can your reader read between the lines. You must be very explicit.” I sort of already felt like I was writing for children in my level of explicitness, but apparently I wasn’t. See, that is why everyone needs someone else to look at their drafts: it never hurts to get a second opinion.

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It was my goal to start swimming again this week, but I think it will have to wait until next week. Apparently, next week is the week for exercise to begin, since I also begin my mini-training on Tuesday. It isn’t as if I haven’t been running, but on Tuesday, I really have to step it up because I want to run this beast; I don’t want to walk it for the fourth time. Between running and the cross-training of swimming, I hope to get in good enough shape to finish without walking, but if I have to walk a bit, no one will die from it.

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Finally, I was invited by a friend to go watch a Blackford girls basketball game and was delightfully surprised to learn upon my arrival that they were playing against Burris. About halfway through the game I realized two reasons to be even more thrilled about working there than I was before. The first reason has to do with the level of fitness of the Burris players. They really were running the Bruins up and down the court pretty well. I think their fitness level is a real tribute to our PE teacher and their level of commitment to their subject. Secondly, I was impressed at the level of sportsmanship the girls showed. Because the reffing was so horrible—probably the worst I have seen at a high school game in a long time—the Burris girls could have easily been poor sports, but they weren’t. Instead they held their heads high, and continued to play hard until the end of the game. At one point one of Burris’s girls was on the bottom of a pile of players and she ended up being the one called for the foul. It was pretty obvious that the referees either didn’t know what the heck they were doing, or were helping Blackford win. At any rate, I say Burris out-classed Blackford, so they were the real winners. And, I have to add that the Blackford girls were good sports as well, but the officiating was simply bad.

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I am thankful for girls’ sports.

Food: banana, granola bar, milk, juice, sloppy jane with cheese, grapefruit, veganhead, decaf coffee, peanut brittle, two peanut-butter cookies, popcorn

Exercise: dog walking, bike transporting