thesisthoughts

When I see that my last post is from the end of August I feel that time is running away from me. We went back to school on the first of September and since then I have been on the run. I have been trying to get up at 4:00 am every morning in order to sit and work on my doctorate. I can’t say that it happens every day and there are days when I do get up but have some urgent assessment or planning to do for school and I do that. Most days I manage to take a few baby steps forward.  

I am working on three different things at once. My ethics application is being read by GP and I already know that there will be many changes made to it. I wanted to get the application in and authorized before starting this years’ courses but I understand now that that was unrealistic. Once I have the forms in, I need to send similar documents to the Israeli Department of Education, to get their approval too.

In the meanwhile, I have started working on the literature review, according to the recommendations in Destination Dissertation by Foss and Waters. I feel as though I am progressing and am enjoying the work so far.

In addition, I started teaching the first of my four professional learning groups yesterday. As part of my big effort to write a lot about my experiences with the groups, I returned to blogging this morning.

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The clock is ticking all the time and I must write a new post, the one I got up to write, about my session yesterday.

The other night I spoke to my thesis supervisor on the phone for the first time. Although we worked together on my thesis for almost a year and he both taught me one unit in the past and helped me publish an article, we have never met and never spoken on the phone. Distance learning is such an interesting phenomenon…

Talking on the phone is so different to email conversations which allow a slower pace, to stop and recollect your thoughts and present questions and answers in an organized fashion. As I have become accustomed to doing all of my professional “talking” in writing, I was quite nervous before the phone rang.

We had an interesting telephone conversation and I managed to gain a lot of interesting points to think about concerning my examiners’ reports and my thesis in general. Probably the most important part of the chat was that we began to discuss the where to from here??? questions.

It is now clear that the time has come to make the big decision about continuing my study as a doctoral student. If I’m going to do it there seems that there isn’t much point in waiting. My workload isn’t going to get any lighter in the near future. The framework will help me find the time for pursuing the journey I feel I must continue.

Decisions, decisions….

I’m off to the swimming pool for my last day of lifesaving duty. Autumn is well and truly here and it really is too cool to go into the water. Maybe I’ll be able to sit there alone for an hour or two to continue work on the article I am trying to edit.

Free images from: http://www.everystockphoto.com/photo.php?imageId=167861 and  http://www.everystockphoto.com/photo.php?imageId=251940