As most of you who read this blog (yes, all 3 of you) know, I am now in thesis writing mode. Today was my first day, and I told my gracious, witty, and oh so kind advisor Greg (yup, that was me sucking up) that I would try to blog regularly about my progress.

Thanks to Jorge (yay Jorge!) I now have a plan of attack. I came to the lab today with a framework of my thesis. The general structure, chapters, paragaphs, topics etc that my thesis will cover and the order. So I spent most of today going further with this and outlining the message I wanted to convey in each paragraph and writing up general notes. I started with my Background chapter (made sense), currently on the topic of Web Accessibility.

I also found that I did quite a bit of reading, or re-reading if you will.  And I think this will continue for the next while.  Quite a bit of time has passed since I first started researching my topic, and with the conducting and analysis of my research study, staying up on the topics took a backseat.  So now I guess I must review everything so that it’s fresh in my head and I can start writing about it.  Thank goodness for Delicious tagging!

What I am also finding helpful is the final project from Steve‘s class last year.  We had to design an empirical study and write-up a conference-style paper about that study.  Most of us used our research topics, and although mine wasn’t fully fleshed out yet a lot of it is still applicable to my final result.  I’ve been able to look back at it to figure out where I want to go with my write-up.  I also took a look at this over the wknd when writing up my framework.

I’m not really sure what to blog about aside from that. Should I post up the pages of notes I wrote out today? I don’t think I feel good about that, I mean I don’t exactly keep a serious face on (if ever) when I write these posts, but that doesn’t mean I want you all reading my nonsensical notes.

I heard through the grapevine that when Aran was writing his thesis he would post up the drafts even though they weren’t all shiny and glossy. That is a level of transparency that I am comfortable with, so when I have a working draft I will be sure to do so.

Aside from that, my plan is to work Monday-Friday approx 8-6 and keep the wknds for sanity. The first time in 3 years where I will only have one full-time job instead of both work and school! I allowed myself access to social media at lunch…but am seriously going to have to limit that in the weeks ahead. And I plan to meticulously track my progress so I don’t sway too far from my goal.  Ok this starting to sound like a journal entry instead of a blog-post…you may want to unsubscribe now, as in a couple of weeks these posts may just be long-winded rants of thesis writing frustration…but hey, I’m staying positive!

Oh, also, it was very hard to resist the hilarity and charm of Jono today…I hope you can all appreciate how focused I am going to *try* to be!