Week 14

The last week of pre-thesis! I guess this means I am halfway there? The week started by watching the rest of my classmates final presentations. They have all come really far in their work and its impressive to see where a lot of my classmates are at with their projects. It’s especially impressive the ones who have been doing prototypes and art during this semester. I can’t imagine creating art while being back inperson for the first time.

For me this week honestly was spent mostly writing. I don’t have a ton to talk about during this blog post because of that. I have never written anything like this dissertation before so I had a really hard time figureing out how to start and the format of the thesis. I feel as if I didn’t do that literature review correctly? I treated it a lot like a paper or essay that I have written in the past where I build up to my opinions as I move through my literature. I honestly used the literature more to prove my points and thoughts than to analyze them. I don’t know if that is because of the sources that I read or just thoroughly not understanding what a literature review actually is.

I also struggled to get my first chapter, my introduction chapter, to the designated word count of 2000 words. I got to 1500 and just ran out of things to talk about since I didn't want to be repetitive in the rest of my dissertation. Eventually though I did end up hitting 2000 words. That felt like a huge accomplishment. However, I wasn't able to go to the writing workshop that happened so I feel like I am just a bit lost in how to edit or even how to cite within a literature review. I really wish that it had been recorded since I had class and couldn't make it so that felt pretty unfair at the time and definitely feels like I am going into writing this with less knowledge than my peers even though they tried to fill me in the best that they could.

Overall, I got a lot done this semester and feel like I am in a good place going into the new year! I am excited to continue my primary research and see what comes out of it!