Gotta Have Goals

I'm dog and house sitting this weekend in Bloomington. I really do like dog/house sitting, I have to say. It's a nice change of pace to stay somewhere other than home (use their cable - can you tell I'm missing ours now that it is gone?). Sometimes when dog and/or house sitting, I surprise myself at how much I can actually get accomplished work-wise.

Take this morning, for example. Here I am in a house with several wonderful channels of cable, and I have been locked away in the office working on my diss. My goal today is to draft at least 10 pages. These can be very rough pages; I've allowed myself that at least. But at least it will be something. My Diss Director is sitting on (meaning "reading") my latest (revision #4) Methodology chapter, and so in the mean time, I've decided to get cracking on drafting the Results chapter. It's slow going considering I haven't finished analyzing all of my data from the class I taught in 2005 for which I'm basing my study. But I have starting some analyzing, or at least reading students' work again closely. So far in writing, I'm just working on setting up the part of the chapter where I describe the class situation and the assignments, so I can get away with not doing a whole of of reporting or analyzing. So far, I've typed at least six full double spaced pages. I just hope that it's stuff I'll be able to keep in the chapter once my Director reads a full draft. It's very disconcerting to have written so much only to scrap it and have to write more.

I've set a goal for myself in terms of finishing. I'd really really like to be done and graduate in May. I could always finish over the summer months and then walk at graduation in December of '08, but I'd really like to be done before the end of the summer. One thing I think of as a reward is to give myself a big trip in May once everything is done and before starting a job. England is a place I've always wanted to see; Hawaii too. The latter may be more in my financial realm than the first. Of course, maybe neither one will be financially do-able by next year. I'm trying to save some little by little in the hopes that I really will finish and will be able to take a trip. Gotta have goals! And now back to the Diss.