... but I think I might be getting somewhere on my dissertation proposal. After weeks of agonizing anxiety over my apparently insurmountable methodological issues on establishing chronological control, I just sat my ass down and forced myself to read over my proposal draft and the comments my prof had made on it. This is a scary, SCARY thing, to confront such a highly imperfect representation of your self-made aspirations, the tangible measure of your self-worth as a blossoming academic, the sum of your educational background, the bar for your future career. It's so scary that every time I looked at the 10-page document this past month, I said to myself, "Nahhhhh.... I can't right now. I'll tackle it soon, just not now."
My proposal matters much more to me than to anyone else; it's the same with any student whose thesis looms in the near future. This is partly why I am so scared of it: because how can I convince anyone else that they should care enough to lend me some advice or assistance (or god forbid, funding)?
But, having run out of excuses, I did it today, and (as happened before, and will happen again) on reading through it, I realized it's not so bad, and even got a bunch more ideas on how to get at what I am trying to analyze. More to the point, I thought of how to break down the problem I want to research into its different bits and am forming a plan for how to tackle them one at a time.
The first and most important step in my plan is remembering to breathe.
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