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I've been talking to my committee chair - talking is a strong word for it, really, so - I've emailed my committee chair a few times, and I eventually got an email back suggesting that I go ahead and send in whatever I've got in the way of a draft today. Yeah, so, I did that and sent along, for good measure, reams of my more coherant notes towards the draft as well. I was supposed to have something in the way of a complete rough by now, towards a finished draft on the 28th, and it's clear to me that this isn't actually going to happen.
I've been working in good faith - I haven't expected to finish in time, but I've been giving it my best effort. I hear stories of people, like... writing for 10 hours at a time, dashing off copy after copy. I saw a friend write thirty pages in two days... I'm not quite sure how that happens. I read, I take notes for hours, I draft, try to synthasize and formulate ideas, but it's tough. There's a lot of great, important material out there, but I'm doing a lot of this from scratch. I started writing only as summer semester started, being completely emotionally unable to do anything but focus on immediate class requirements and teaching two section in the Spring. On one hand, these are excuses, but on the other, it's my situation. Not a single class that was available directly worked with my thesis, or even with my body of literary knowledge. There wasn't a feminist literature grad class available to me, no science fiction, no gender studies - thank god for the diaspora lit class, at least, and the 501 and 502 lit theories. The other one - transatlantic publishing - just ended up being more Victorian lit wank.
So, I sent it in, but I kind of included in my email that I think this is going to continue to drag on into the Fall. I don't think that's a bad thing - it costs me almost nothing, and prolonges both my access to university resources and how long I have until I have to start making payments on my considerable debt. The only downside of extending my thesis writing into the Fall semester is that I don't look quite as good since I've missed a deadline, but there isn't actually anyone who thought I was going to be able to knock out a crisp, clean copy of a graduate thesis in a month and a half, in any kind of serious way.
I've been working in good faith - I haven't expected to finish in time, but I've been giving it my best effort. I hear stories of people, like... writing for 10 hours at a time, dashing off copy after copy. I saw a friend write thirty pages in two days... I'm not quite sure how that happens. I read, I take notes for hours, I draft, try to synthasize and formulate ideas, but it's tough. There's a lot of great, important material out there, but I'm doing a lot of this from scratch. I started writing only as summer semester started, being completely emotionally unable to do anything but focus on immediate class requirements and teaching two section in the Spring. On one hand, these are excuses, but on the other, it's my situation. Not a single class that was available directly worked with my thesis, or even with my body of literary knowledge. There wasn't a feminist literature grad class available to me, no science fiction, no gender studies - thank god for the diaspora lit class, at least, and the 501 and 502 lit theories. The other one - transatlantic publishing - just ended up being more Victorian lit wank.
So, I sent it in, but I kind of included in my email that I think this is going to continue to drag on into the Fall. I don't think that's a bad thing - it costs me almost nothing, and prolonges both my access to university resources and how long I have until I have to start making payments on my considerable debt. The only downside of extending my thesis writing into the Fall semester is that I don't look quite as good since I've missed a deadline, but there isn't actually anyone who thought I was going to be able to knock out a crisp, clean copy of a graduate thesis in a month and a half, in any kind of serious way.