Since the last time I updated, the first week was quite productive, and the second week terribly unproductive. Three meetings, and some more research work for my second chapter. I haven’t been doing very much writing new stuff; much of it had been incorporating feedback from one of my supervisors about the style of formalization the paper I’m writing should have, and discussing with my other supervisor about the structure of my introduction. Little done in terms of number of words, but hopefully a fair lift in the article quality.
The difficult thing about editing stuff is that (at least for me) it is easy to feel like I’m just stuck in one place forever and ever - getting an objective measure of how much progress I’ve actually made that can convince my self doubting mind seems nigh impossible.
For the coming weeks, I have an upgrade meeting coming up in a few weeks time that is intended to check that I’m on track for finishing my phd. For this I need one to two draft chapters written, a cover letter introducing my research, a list of “training"a planned structure of the thesis, and a concrete time plan for the coming year. I also got a poster accepted to a conference in July, so that needs to be written as well. I do tend to be able to work towards deadlines quite well, so that should move the word count upwards somewhat.
Current status:
Summary: 774 words, rough sketch.
Introduction: 800 words, rough draft.
Chapter 1: 837 words, rough structure draft.
Chapter 2:5206 words,revised 1 time since last time.
Chapter 3:300 words, outline in place, research to do.
Chapter 4: 0 words.
Chapter 5: 0 words.
Bibliography:0 words.
Appendix: 0 words.
Total: 7345/50000 words. 472 more since last blog.
Average words per day needed until 01/04/2014: 126.
lördag 27 april 2013
tisdag 9 april 2013
356 days to go: countdown to thesis submission
I am currently registered as a PhD student, funded by a EU project to research novel statistical methods for analysing test results on the presence of pathogens in wildlife. I have been trying to do this for the last two years, and in a little less than one year my funding runs out (my last quarterly payment is on 31st of December 2013, and 1st of April 2014 marks the end of my third year).
Hm... That sounds scary.
In order to help produce a neat, 50k word package of novel research by that date, I have decided to start documenting my progress on a weekly basis. This is both so that I can get a nice carrot of "wohoo! look how much I've got done in the last week", and a stick of risking publically admitting any woefully meager posts the times I fall prey to my all-too-common tendencies of plenty of procrastination.
So! Here goes. A rule of thumb for a UK thesis seems to be 50 000 words, and somewhere between 60 and 300 pages. This is a sketch of my thesis structure together with how much, or little, I have completed on each chapter and section thus far:
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How to count bugs in wild animals:
Some statistical methods for wildlife disease surveillance
[Note: This is a non-approved, silly title that most likely is very far from the final one]
Contents
Foreword
Current word count: 91
Current status: Dreamy visualisation of when I can afford to thank everyone for my finished, wonderful thesis.
Summary
Current word count: 200
Current status: random scribbles
Introduction
Current word count: 482
Current status: start of a rough structure
Chapter 1:
A review of statistical methods used in wildlife disease surveillance
Current word count: 800
Current status: Rough structure draft, and some structured reading done
Chapter 2:
Recovering dynamic trends from multiple test data
Current word count: 5000 words
Current status: Journal article in the final rounds (i.e. five more or so) of review before submission.
Deadline: Submission before summer, i.e before end of May.
Chapter 3.
Correlation and causation in multi-pathogen arrays
Current word count: 300
Current status: First research phase
Deadlines: Preliminary first report due in two weeks, Chapter draft by September 1st.
Chapter 4: ?
[Another method chapter, the content of which depending on data and what seems like a logical expansion].
Current word count: 0
Current status: Not started
Deadlines: Chapter Draft finished by Dec 1st.
Chapter 5:
Statistical results from the WildTech project
Current word count: 0
Current status: Not started
Deadlines: Chapter draft finished by Jan 1st.
Bibliography
Appendix
Total: 6873/50000 words.
Average words per day needed until 01/04/2014: 118
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