Wednesday, March 25, 2009

Approved!

I just received IRB approval today, which means that I (a) can use my survey and (b) can finally submit my thesis proposal to the graduate school. Yay! Submitted a very rough draft of the entire thing today; comments will be emailed to me on Friday while I'm in Blacksburg. Final draft is due to my thesis advisor next Tuesday. Taking a brief opportunity to relax tomorrow for dinner at Kabob Bazaar with friends and coworkers.

Writing schedule for the next week:

Wednesday night (conduct data analysis, outline/rework section on Twitter)
Thursday night (rework lit review; outline conclusion section)
All day Sunday (data analysis; conclusion; edits from advisor)
Monday night (conclusion, introduction, thesis proposal form)

I'm using tonight to catch up on work email and planning for the CCA conference. The next few days are going to be crazy, but I'm excited to attack all this work.

Monday, March 23, 2009

Writing update

The thesis is starting to come together. I'm up to 28 pages of solid material and 10 pages of appendices/references. My intention is to write another 27-37 pages (22-32 of solid material, 5 of back material) before I'm finished, eventually bringing me to 65-75 pages total. Now to figure out how I'm going to get there by next Tuesday ...

Thursday, March 19, 2009

Home stretch, maybe

Still crunch time. Still juggling work, writing, and running. I feel like my (unrealistic) goal is reducing my daily routine to nothing but writing. I'm getting a bit closer since volleyball is finished and I'm postponing most social engagements in favor of staying home and working. This weekend needs to be ultra-productive as I'm leaving town next Thursday.

Did the St. Patrick's Day 8K. Didn't break 40 min; instead, finished in 41:43. Got stuck behind a guy smoking a cigar on the course. Ugh. Labored a bit more than I should have during the second half of the race. My 5K split was pretty slow -- about 27 minutes or so, probably due to all the weaving in and out of traffic I had to do at the beginning of the race.

Now I have four weeks to train for the 10 miler. I'm just looking to finish. And this time I won't have McDonald's at midnight before the race. Or get only five hours of sleep.

OK, enough disjointedness for now. Off to knock more things off my to-do list so I don't have to worry about them when I sit down to write.

Thursday, March 5, 2009

Writing and running (in that order)

Yikes, time is going quickly. I'm still working on my thesis. This is definitely crunch time, as I have about two weeks to submit my first complete draft. This weekend, I'll be working on my thesis in such exotic locations as the reading room of the New York Public Library and ... my desk at home.

Also on tap: a mini-road trip to Blacksburg and Virginia Tech for the spring 2009 College Communicators Association of VA and DC conference at the end of this month (specifically Friday, March 27). There, I'll be doing a series of web critiques along with a colleague from Mary Baldwin College. Immediately afterwards, I'm driving the eight hours to Bloomington for an IU School of Journalism alumni board meeting the next morning. Should be fun.

Oh, and I'll be working on my thesis from both locations.

Running is going pretty well. I did eight miles two weeks in a row and then scaled back down to six miles for my long run last weekend. This Friday, I'm doing a 9 mile run right after work. (This ought to make my legs feel great on the bus ride to New York the next morning.) Shorter runs during the week have suffered, though; I went for my first 5K run in about two weeks today. I'm registered for the George Washington Parkway Classic 10 miler on April 26, which should be a good close-to-halfway-to-Chicago point for me. Also thinking about doing the St. Patrick's Day 8K race for fun. I'm going to miss running during the winter -- I think I'm definitely going to prefer it to running during the summer.