itrytobe | Entries tagged with the work

ik heb het 98% aan mijn scriptiebegeleider te danken dat ik ooit mijn masterscriptie heb afgerond en gehaald (en de overige 2% aan de scriptiecoordinator die me naar hem toestuurde). hij heeft praktisch mijn onderwerp voor me gekozen omdat ik geparalyseerd was door keuzestress, hij heeft om de week met me afgesproken om me te motiveren om aan het werk te blijven, hij heeft me halverwege het jaar (toen ik eigenlijk al bijna klaar had willen zijn maar ten onder ging aan de stress) bevolen om minstens drie weken lang helemaal niet aan mijn scriptie te denken. volgens mij had hij ook echt wel door dat ik geen fuck uitvoerde tussen onze afspraken in, behalve steeds het weekend voor de afspraak, maar hij heeft er nooit iets direct over gezegd. ik ben hem eeuwig dankbaar voor zijn mateloze geduld en diepe betrokkenheid.

Current Mood: grateful
Current Location: student city

i passed my thesis and got a good grade!

it occurred to me that i might know be one of the world's foremost experts on nonbinary french. Alpheratz and Florence Ashley are the big two, of course, and Julie Abbou has also done a lot with neutral french. and obviously i'm only talking about the academic world now; i'm certain there are plenty of people in more informal queer communities qui s'y connaissent beaucoup mieux que moi.

(but i'm really not sure about that claim. it sounds incredibly fake. i kind of feel that if i qualify as a leading expert on nonbinary french, then that makes anyone who reads my thesis an expert too.)

thesis is yeetsus

that's all

slow and steady wins the race, but even slow and unsteady may get you to the finish line eventually

(this is a post about my thesis)

why the fuck did i agree to finish a first draft of the Work in Eurovision week. i'm bouncing off the walls from hype, i can't concentrate on anything

Current Music: Achille Lauro - "Stripper"

i'm writing the Work in English, but as it's situated in a French context, i tend to think about French a lot when writing it, and worry that i accidentally switch to writing in French instead. that hasn't happened yet though.

but now i'm writing the abstract (i hate everything lol) — i did the English one first, and then a French version, basically just for fun. and oh my goodness it feels good to write academic French again, it's so much fun! it's the first time in two years that i've had the occasion to let loose all the fancy words and constructions i want and i love it

(why didn't i write my thesis in French, come to think of it? it's not required by my MA programme (contrary to my BA), so the default is English, but i don't think there is any rule stopping me from picking any of the languages of the faculty's Department of European Languages and Cultures. i mean, my supervisor's French is maybe not quite good enough to grade an Entire Thesis in French, but i could have... chosen a different supervisor? but i did pick a supervisor first, and then, with his help, a topic.)

there is finally an end in sight with the Work! i have more or less written the conclusion and agreed with my supervisor on a schedule for the first draft and final version. this time i think i'll actually stick to it. so now i need to write the introduction and do a bunch of edits and– oh, heck, it'll need a title as well... anyway there's an end in sight but every bit of progress is a struggle

Current Mood: tired

mon conseiller de mémoire me donne rendez-vous toutes les deux semaines. cela veut dire qu'en pratique, je galère un peu tous les deux week-ends pour que j'aie quelque chose à lui envoyer, mais je ne fais rien l'autre temps. je viens de lui balancer encore un chapitre incomplet alors j'ai maintenant un prétexte pour ne plus penser à la Galère avant mardi. est-ce que :

je me couche aussi tôt que possible (ce qui n'est plus très tôt à l'heure où nous en sommes) parce que je souffre de sleepy bitch disease ;
je veille à tard pour lire, puisque je n'ai pas eu autant de temps pour la lecture que je l'aimerais ?

deux souhaits opposés...

Current Mood: tired
Current Music: Bloodywood - "Zanjeero Se"

i know i keep saying this, but the Methodology draft that i handed in to my supervisor is complete crap and felt very incomplete. but he says "it's really very good" and he basically has no remarks, so what the actual FUCK? i can't fucking handle this lol

(also, i handed it in on Friday evening as agreed upon, and started my mail with "I hope you had a good weekend". my supervisor thanked me for explicitly not expecting him to work during the weekend. i like cultivating a good relationship with teachers)

i got me a big surprise when i opened my survey software this morning and saw that i'd received 128 responses already (143 by now). that is so much holy shit. am i going to have to deactivate it in a few days? i know my supervisor said that it's a topic that people are going to find interesting and i'll receive lots of responses but i didn't believe him. joke's on me lol

for once in my Fucking life i receive lots of data, and it's qualitative. i hate everything.

(as

sylvanauctor put it: "that sounds like one of the extremely specific punishments in Dante's Inferno")

i find i'm kind of entering the zone where all i talk about to anyone who'll listen is uni stuff, like it's starting to [i swear there's like. a perfect word for this. but maybe not in english, beheersen seems good actually] me. it sucks but it's also satisfying in a way? like i'm stressed and tired, but it feels like i'm slightly closer to having "earned the right" to be stressed and tired.

EDIT: take me over, that's the word i was looking for!

people keep asking me what my thesis is about, and EVERY TIME they're like "wow that's so specific" and that's so funny to me because like

of course it's super specific, all the easy topics were taken by the 60s or so, so all of us poor suckers trying to do science in the good year of 2021 have to look for crumbs
not it's not lol, my thesis topic is super unspecific and disturbingly broad because there's not really anything on this subject yet, so i have to do a "fishing expedition"

i live in fear of finding out that someone already has studied my topic, which could happen literally any day, because then my fishing expedition would lose its raison d'être

Current Location: Student City

gougle search how to come up with enough production task prompts to collect a useful quantity of data and word them both vaguely enough that you don't steer the participants too much and clear enough that they understand what to do without coming across as patronising

Current Mood: frustrated

i had a very realistic and detailed dream that one of the french linguistics professors at my faculty was giving me feedback on the Work, particularly on the production tasks portion of the survey i'm designing (which, at the moment, is pretty much the only part of the survey that i haven't really started on...). at the point where i'm at, i'm trying to remember the feedback to see if any of it's useful in real life. that's where i am right now, trying to scavenge insights from a dream.

i have three primary goals for the Work, listed below in order of importance:

fucking graduate finally please let me out of here
make my supervisor's work as easy as possible, please don't hate me
put in the absolute minimum of effort necessary for a passing grade

Current Location: Student City

me: this thesis proposal is shit. it's incoherent and it sucks but maybe it's just acceptable so fuck it i'll just hand it in like this
supervisor: "It looks very good and I think you're exactly where you need to be at this stage. I only had one comment which is not majorly important for a research proposal [...]. That is literally the only thing that struck me; the rest looks good"
me: what the hecking fuck

Current Mood: surprised
Current Location: Student City

i have decided to take Thursdays off from the Work (i.e. my thesis). it would be good to have one day a week when i don't need to worry about the Work and don't feel guilty about not working on it. and who knows, maybe it will even motivate me to work harder on the other days of the week!

i don't have any kind of real-people schedule so i am at complete liberty to choose my day off. i didn't choose Saturday or Sunday because i like to go to the library or book shops on my day off, and going to town in the weekend SUCKS. weekdays are better for that, and i quite like Thursday for some reason. and Tuesday too. don't know why.