Back Dissertatin' - Update #7

All right, I know it took me way to long to go back to work and to blog about the dissertation again. I can't believe my last update was in April, followed by two huge meldowns! I need to get my act back together, don't I?

Well, but then, many things happened since May when I last worked in earnest and had a meeting with my advisor and one committee member:

1) I was very unhappy with the meeting because the committee member's comments about the dissertation made even more real what I already knew -- that, in sum, the feedback my advisor gives me is useless. I mean, sure, it's useful for a clean text, with no punctuation errors and grammar mistakes (he's big on these things), but useless when it comes to pointing out repetitions, redundances, lack of clarity, organization, etc. I was very angry, particularly because I know the problem is with him and I think that just talking to him about it won't help change the way he reads my work (and other students, I'm sure). He confessed that "he can't see the forest for the trees" - but usually he makes it sound like it's my fault, because I make many mistakes, when now I'm sure it isn't - the problem is with him, if he can't read past the little errors sprinkled throughout the piece, then he's just a plain bad reader (in an advising sense). Am I wrong here?
I thought about writing angry emails, etc, but I did nothing of the sort. I just took my time and cooled off. Now I know that once his "cleared" versions of my chapters get to the other committee members I'll be in for some "very heavy" feedback, and I guess I'm OK with it for now. I just want to finish, that's all.

2) We all got sick with a terrible the flu and, in addition, I started having my digestive system (we guess liver and gall-bladder) problems more often (this week I'm better, but last week I felt sick during the morning for 3 days in a row).

3) My brother and SIL visited for a week before heading to China and my parents were away for 10 days on "vacation".

Now, my parents will return to Brazil in less than a month and I have basically 3 weeks to "finish" the dissertation - that is, the early drafts of all chapters. I already have completed drafts of chapters 1 and 2, and part of chapater 3. I have decided to work on chapters 4-6, which have my "corpus analysis," or the quantitative part of the dissertation where I need to collect and analyze all the data.

I'm happy to report that I turned in a full draft of chapter 6 to my advisor today! I have learned to make graphs and charts in Excell on my own and they look really nice. Now I have to change my sidebar to include the new deadlines and I can even cross the first one, YAY!


Exciting News:
Last, but not least, remember the conference I presented at in April? I have been nominated for a prize for the best graduate student paper presented. I hope I can win, it'll be a great boost to my confidence! Can nomination for prizes be included in CVs or only if the prize is actually won?