I’ve been a bit sluggish re dissertation work. The Tepo conference, exciting, fun, and intellectually stimulating as it was, also distracted me a bit from the diss. Maybe it was a necessary distration, but…
The diss workshop is back in session, and I’m going in the second meeting of this month next Tuesday. The draft that I sent to the group, however, is no longer the most up-to-date draft since I met my advisor yesterday who gave me lots of helpful suggestions. We said I’d give her a new draft in less than a week (and a half, as I added on).
I’ve been struggling with the feeling that my project is not solid enough. (I’m pretty sure that my committee’s scrutinizing inquiries during the field exam helped with this. Such as the formidable AK confessing at the end of everything, “**, I was kind of skeptical when you first started on this, but now it seems like you have a dissertation topic.”: Um, what? you were skeptical in the beginning? Why didn’t you say anything?) But having met with my advisor, I’m much happier and relieved. I think she said the most positive thing I’ve heard up to this point about the dissertation. She said she sees the potential of what I’m doing to completely change the way we think about the minority subject (wow!) and that I should think about my level of intervention at the level of a book that is pretty much field-defining in my field.
So that was great. I hope she wasn’t just talking up the project. But then, of course, there’s a lot of work to be done. Just for the proposal, it seems like I’d have to go through a couple more drafts. Sigh. My advisor also noticed that I’m a reviser when it comes to writing. I have no problem with going back and revising (or, rewiriting is more like it) what I’ve written (i.e., I don’t have that strong of an attachment to what I’ve written. At least not so strong that I would refuse to change it to make it better communicate my ideas). And I acknowledge that I benefit from (often multiple) revisions. I just hope it doesn’t amount to my committee asking me to revise everything I write fifteen times.
I’m finally going through the congressional documents around the 1965 Elementary and Secondary Education Act of which the bilingual education act was an offshoot. My advisor has asked me to do this since I was reading for the field, but I’ve put if off and relied on secondary sources. Now there’s no way of avoiding going in. And it’s actually fun at the moment . . .
