Didn't give up. . . might still live

Well, pursuant to my last post, I have indeed been running around getting things organized. Top of the list was visas, second was flights. Flights were particularly exorbitant because we were traveling over Easter weekend, though we seem to have mitigated that by flying out on the Saturday. Next on the list is a hotel to stay at when we arrive at 1:30 am. Once again, because it is Easter weekend, I am finding that any place reasonably priced is totally booked up, making this difficult. NOrmally, we'd just sort it out once we arrived, but since this is such a short trip and because I have a number of research goals I need to accomplish, I can't afford to have a slow or tired start. So I'm still looking to find some place that I"m happy with.

In other news, I had a meeting with one of my supervisors this morning, and we spent a good deal of time brainstorming over the various things we could do to measure smell ourselves. I think we may have gone a bit overboard, but I foresee some sniffing in my future!

Life!! Ack!!

Well, life has taken over.  The past week has been really stressful for me - mostly because I've been feeling overwhelmed.  As a result, I've been making use of the tried and tested method of a to-do list to keep track of things and reduce my stress level.  I find that when I write the list of things down it means that I can focus on doing something without worrying that I'll remember to do the other things.

That being said, I am slowly starting to feel back in control of my life because I have:

Prepared and given the 4 lectures I needed to

Prepared and printed the poster for the poster day next Friday

Taken care of some admin things for grants

Called the Syrian Embassy

Gotten a handle on a timetable for my research trip

Met with my supervisors

I still need to:

Plan and book research trip

Including: apply for visas, book flights, ensure grant payment

Work in office

Poster day (Fri)

Practical teaching (2 Fridays)

Work on thesis (any spare moment)

Go to Stonehenge (Fri/Sat)

Go hiking (next Sat/Sun)

Sleep - presumably

All this to say, life is busy and I'm running around quite a bit

Writing again

Well, I don't know what it is, but I've actually gotten some writing done the past two days.  I had a meeting with my supervisor yesterday, which means that I can now edit the section he had been reading.  Which also means that I am steadfastly ignoring that particular section and am full steam ahead writing a terrible first draft about space syntax and phenomenology.  It's unfocussed, scattered, and totally crappy. 

It's getting longer though, and for a first draft that's all that matters.  

I also have the motivational factor of working on a shiny new computer, and well, you have to take advantage of wanting to work on a shiny new computer while it lasts!  Because soon, the shiny new computer will become just the computer, and it won't be neato at all.

Ah well. 

Back to work.

Transition

I am currently in the downtime between submitting a draft chapter to my supervisors and meeting with them to discuss their opinions. This time, the gap between submission and meeting is going to be almost two weeks, and I'm finding it hard to get moving on something new. And there are many things to be doing. I could be working on getting my theory chapter written, I could be combing the literature for all the published sources of the next site I'll be focussing on as a case study, I could be preparing the 4 lectures I'll be giving over the next two weeks, or I could be preparing my poster that has to be given at a mandatory university poster day for research students.

Instead, I'm floating around reading articles aimlessly, generating new ideas for things I could do to my poor abused sites, and generally feeling overwhelmed by all the things I *could* be doing. Of course, once I've met with my supervisors, that list of things to do will increase as they give me edits to do and advice on the next things to focus on.

Bah

Alright, time for a plan. This weekend I will prep the lectures. Today and next week I will start organizing my theory chapter and get writing. Everything else can wait for a while.

PhD Update

Well, had a meeting with one of my supervisors today.  He's been really busy, so I haven't seen much of him, so the first bit of the meeting was just chatting about life and how we've been.  I then told him about the case study I've been working on now and some of the problems I've encountered.  

We then went on to discuss some of the methodological problems that I've been having that he can directly help with.  I'm not sure how soon it will be resolved, but I feel like I"m getting closer.

The biggest thing that we discussed was how to handle the next background section I need to write.  I need to write about the methodological and theoretical context of my work, which means tackling the entire corpus of theory concerning the social nature of architecture and the archaeology of architecture.  He had some good suggestions on how to structure my work, which gives me the direction I need to get started.  Hopefully it won't take me too long!

Helpful colleagues

Thank goodness for people around me who have experience in the field. The problem I was having with inconsistent publications a couple of days ago has been solved since I found out that Experienced Fellow Grad Student had actually dug at the site in question and had in fact excavated the exact building I was interested in! I could have kissed him!

He couldn't solve my weird publication problems, as they are indeed weird, but he could tell me what exactly was found where and describe things for me in more detail than I was getting.

Hurray!

Drowning in Articles

I am a year and a half into my PhD and am coming to the end of writing my background chapter.  For an archaeologist, this means writing about the historical context of my research and the current state of knowledge about the time period.  I have been tackling this in thematic chunks and my material has been organized in these sections.  Now I'm starting to integrate these sections by writing the more specific contextual sections and I'm finding that my filing system is starting to break down.  I'm spending too much time trying to find a particular article as stuff is spread across the themes.

I think I need to reorganize my articles and take a close inventory of what I have and where it is.  I use EndNote and am very diligent about entering reference information.  I would like to try keeping better track of where each article is in my system and whether I have printed it off or if I've moved it into a thematic collection for some purpose. 

I think the best system for me to adopt will be an alphabetical system by the first author's last name.  I have avoided this in the past since often sets of authors write together multiple times about similar things but alternate who the first author is.  This can make it difficult to keep track of all resources on a particular topic, but clearly keeping things by topic is no longer working.  I guess I'll have to give it a try and give myself permission to redo it if it isn't better.

Now, I have a filing cabinet in my office in the department that I can use, but I intend to work from home when I move in June.  At that point, I will need to devise a filing system to use there, but in the mean time, I can use the hanging files in my office.

I guess I will be spreading my paper out on the floor sometime soon and alphabetizing and cross-referencing it in EndNote.  I'll be sure to take some pictures of the before, during, and after and keep you updated on the progress.

How do other people keep track of articles and resources?