Rant – one week to go

Disclaimer: I’m not actually as angry or frustrated as the following words may come across. I’ve just been storing them up for a while.

I friggin hate APA style and that useless and expensive and did I mention, useless publication manual but am determined to have the cleanest APA’d manuscript EVER. Honestly the irony of a publication-style manual that has no effective index, page numbers that don’t match up, and all references are completely non-intuitive – WTF? Refworks is a godsend in terms of the basic citing and reference list but try to find out how to, for instance, quote the title of an article in your text – I dare you to find out where that is in the 5th edition. Not to mention it’s constantly outdated and has no idea on how to deal with electronic references (not helpful for an online learning masters) or anything non-American (like Canadian government documents). There is a niche market out there for an actual human being who can throroughly and accurately APA-check a manuscript, for sure.

I did realize a couple of things as I researched this weekend – in the early 1990s I saw a movie, that I have now determined through the power of google, wikipedia, and IMDB to be Beautiful Dreamers, that was about Walt Whitman. I remember enjoying the movie, learning something, but had forgotten at all about it until a Whitman quote came up in one of my journal articles. He had some profound environmental things to say through his writing and poetry – Bartleby’s quotations was also helpful.

I also used the power of google to see what I could find out about one of my earliest environmental education influences – the EE coordinator for our school district when I was in primary school. Well what do you know, she exists on the internet (don’t we all) and after some sleuthing on my part (suitable as Sunday was Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s birthday, also according to google) she has responded to my email! I had finally realized after many months of reflection since starting this Masters that a lot of my early influences were attributed to her and a few other teachers, and I wanted to thank her. My research into significant life experiences (SLE) also reminded me of the time I spent outdoors as a kid, messing about in forests, creeks, on beaches, islands and in parks and yards. It was good times, and here I am, trying to get other kids equally involved in their local nature.

Well I’ve reached the point of abandonment of any planned schedule for this thesis – just on a last minute tear now…crazy late hours balanced by sleeping in to get the requisite 6 hours required for functionality; daylight dallying then nighttime production. I almost finished the literature review this weekend – just need to do a bit more on government sources. Then “just” the huge research analysis, discussion and conclusions – HA, here I go. It’s never going to be done by the end of May, but might be reasonable for mid-June as I must take the first week off for a work training course. There must be a lesson here somewhere. Onwards again…another hour left in my evening.