Frustrations of a novice masters student

I hadn't realized I would experience academic conflict and strife in dealing with 3 different advisors’ ideas about what I should be doing and how I should approach it and what theories I should use or not – who do I listen to? Who prevails? Whose ideas are brighter than the others? Who should I send things to first, who will send them back fastest, who do I believe? What do I actually think? There are so many considerations as you wrap your mind around various aspects of the thesis, and this is part of the stuff they don’t teach you about.
Each of my excellent advisors have different learning, teaching, mentoring, editing styles and personalities – but I get along with all of them really well. PW is very scientific, (all about the APA!) and key to my relationship with the organization, the latter of which was the entire point and seeing as he got me to where I am today, perfect. DK – although official professorial-type and complimentary about writing, does (in a good way) force me to do my own work (as befits a masters student) by general, not specific, references to what needs to be fixed – and I’m certain he feels he has probably said the same thing to me before (may well have done but it’s new crap he’s critiquing in the meantime). Although time delays between time zones and our busy schedules mean turn around times for each of us are not ideal. RK – well I live in mock fear of sending material to him as despite his keenness about my topic (as likely for everyone – very good champion and booster) has been hard-ass on others I have heard so then does it put me further behind??? Time is ticking faster now but according to my schedule if I only get to interviews in March I should still be OK. That being said, I still need to get a lot of writing and researching done in what’s left of February if I’m to keep on track.

Another frustration is not actually having my own home university library with accordant masters’ privileges. When I was a student in a grad program at SFU we had books delivered to the downtown library from the main library within 48 hours, free copying and couriering of journal articles when they were unavailable online, and term-long loans of books unless recalled by another grad student. Now I have only “community” level privileges which is the same as anyone off the street – so regular 7, 14, or 28 day library loans but no rush orders and no power of recall. So now I depend on friends still in that same SFU program or those at UBC in grad programs to get me books with a longer loan time. Much of our work, thank goodness, is done online and the RRU electronic journals system is quite good, but sometimes you just need an actual book. I am better off than students in more remote locations, physically far from any university library, but still the frustration is there. And the one time I took books out from RRU they had a short return time PLUS had to be shipped back to Victoria, so that was not a worthwhile exercise. Note to other RRU students: find some grad student friends in your hometown university, you'll be glad you did!

Thesis Schedule

Well here's the next steps in the Masters plan, amazing and quite frightening to think this massive work is due a brief 15 weeks from now.

Proposed Timeline (Sunday evening deadlines):

Week of:

Feb 6 – finish PW revisions, sort out sample, re-draft survey statements into questions, revise question order for better flow, notes on methodology papers, read fuzzy logic paper – summarize like RK says existing articles, hopefully receive and complete DK revisions

Feb 13 – initial discussions with sample participants, prepare invitation letters and consent forms, draft new abstract (150 words – what, why, purpose, methodology, paradigm, key findings, conclusions, need), enter title in PATTS, Refworks all docs to date, longer detailed outline

Feb 20 – introduction – background (what, why, outline theoretical framework, context), article review and summary (3)

Feb 27 – statement of research problem/opportunity, research questions (whys), study limitations/delimitations, need or significance

March 6 – interviews, researcher perspective (coming clean on biases), article review and summary (3), transcription, study conduct

March 13 – interviews, transcription, research methodology details (data collection, participants, site, data analysis, reliability and validity), article review and summary (3)

March 20 – interviews, transcription

March 27 – comparison of survey results to interviews, coding, clean up anything not finished yet

April 3 – results and findings, outcome – descriptive first then specific to research questions, think about tables and figures

April 10 - follow up to interviews, transcriptions, results and findings

April 17 – discussion and conclusions re findings – hear the voice, summary of study, findings, interpretation of data, conclusion, implications, recommendations, need for future research

April 24 – write/edit

May 1 – write/edit

May 8 – write/edit, APA, references

May 15 HAND IN DRAFT

(with exception of deadline, likely subject to (ongoing) revision)

Time:thesis vs. time:sleep

I can’t believe the last time I posted was 10 days ago. Now there’s a case of where did the time go. However this is what I had planned to post on Saturday, February 4th. I'm certainly finding there is some kind of relationship - as yet not statistically analysed - between time-thesis and time-sleep:

I’ve passed an interesting 24 hours – where of course, nothing was accomplished (yet! yet!) towards my thesis, even less towards being well-rested, but interesting personal reflections nonetheless. I lay awake last night in familiar territory under less familiar conditions…should have been tired, was tired, but couldn’t sleep. Heard things, listened for things, thought things, didn’t sleep. Checked my cellphone for the time regularly enough to know I wasn’t sleeping. Probably should have cut my losses and turned the light on to read. Many hours passed where each minute seemed long and the hours longer. Wasn't home so no chance of domestic diversions. Of course, morning came too quickly. I estimate I may have had 90 minutes or maybe a couple of hours of restless sleep. Not helpful with the kind of schedule I need to keep – no time to catch up on that. Fine, the day passed in a flurry of early madness and late afternoon napping. Then movie and dinner with a friend, where time passes so quickly as topics are raised, discussed, discarded, branched out from – and all too soon it’s time to return to our respective homes for bedtime again. Better luck sleeping tonight hopefully.