Struggle... wait... struggle... wait

Struggling through dissertation revisions.

This whole doctoral degree thing-y has sure been a long haul. Most of the time it hasn't felt bad, but the last half year has been extremely frustrating.

Part of that frustration is my difficulty in making sense of what I'm trying to say. So the revisions continue, ad infinitum it seems, and I see the product of those labours. But they're labours nonetheless.

Most of my frustration comes from the slow pace at which I'm getting chapter revision suggestions however. One reader was fabulously quick. Another surprisingly slow. And another (not unsurprisingly) even slower yet. Which means we're going on six months of waiting.

Did I mention I'm not good at waiting?

The auto industry puzzling? Naaah...

Question: Why is it that car commercials these days seem to focus almost exclusively on gadgets? You can change the colour of your cupholders, talk to your CD player to choose which song to listen to, or call someone by pressing buttons on your steering wheel.

All wonderful little things.

But why are these the main selling points in ads today? What happened to discussions of fuel efficiency or safety or even cost? The primary purpose of the automobile is still its mobility, no? So why is it the perks that suddenly seem more important?

Holiday leftovers

Usually holiday leftovers consist of turkey and stuffing, but in my case, the leftovers consist of editing work that needs to be done.

I finally have feedback from one of my readers at least and can begin editing the dissertation draft in earnest. But I've been away from it for so long that it seems almost unreal to return to it. Remembering what I was doing is a task that seems to be much more difficult than it should be.

But the holidays were good and the end of last term (and December more generally) seemed hectic, so it was good to relax and do very little writing. But now it is time to get back to it. I'm still waiting for one reader's comments, but idealistically, I'm hoping that a full edit before those comments might make them more manageable, and might actually anticipate some of those final comments.

Here's to a new year and the hope that I'll add three letters to the end of my name!