A respectable piece of work

"What does "ownership" of your writing mean? It means that your writing belongs, for better or worse, to you, and you alone. If you screw up your courage to write, it is essential that your ownership of that writing be respected by your audience - of one or a thousand. Not necessarily agreed with, but respected. Your committee members can decide whether your body of writing constitutes an acceptable dissertation; a publisher or journal editor will decide whether it will reach a wider audience; any reader can like your writing or not, agree with it or not, understand it or not. But it is still yours. You get to decide what you're going to say, how you're going to say it, whom you're going to allow to read it. Other people own their responses to it, but you own the writing." (p. 17)

Okay. My goal is to produce a "respectable" piece of work. And it belongs to me fully. :) Something wonderful happened last Friday! I completed a draft of a journal article for my boss and I submited a draft of a conference paper to the conference administrator. What this technically means is that from today, 1st of June 2014 onwards, I can sort of convert the time I have spent writing articles, to writing of my thesis! :D (Of course, I have other tasks to do alongside this, but at least I can devote part of my time to thesis writing now!) I have put thesis-writing on hold for a couple of months because of the writing and editing of those papers. But you know, as a result of doing those papers, I felt clearer about my research questions.

Just to share... It used to be:

a) How do teachers understand patriotism?
b) How do teachers teach patriotism?

But I want to change them to:

a) How do teachers understand patriotism and teach it?
b) How do teachers perceive the relationship between patriotism and citizenship?
c) How do teachers negotiate the tensions between patriotism and critical thinking?

I'm thinking of approaching the thesis in this tripartite format.  Meaning to have three sections to my literature review. And possibly a chapter each for the findings. And then close it up with discussion and conclusion.

I don't care where this thesis takes me, at the very least, I want to produce a piece of work that will be a joy for both my supervisor and my examiners to read. I am promised at least them as my audience. And they are important to me. So I am going to do my best! :)

Bolker, Joan (1998) Writing your dissertation in fifteen minutes a day: A guide to starting, revising, and finishing your doctoral thesis. New York: Holt