As I continued to write, review and amend the first draft of my thesis, I felt like I had been submerged into darkness in a sea of paperwork, ideas and worries, feeling there was no way out.  These thoughts were manifested in my inability to sleep and the vivid dreams I had when I did manage to nod off.

After publishing Part 1 of this post, I completed writing the thematic sections (five themes times three chapters) and began to allocate most of the writing done to date physically into the three substantive electronic chapters of my thesis:

Chapter 2 – Reflection on Action

Chapter 3 – Reflection on Being

Chapter 4 – Reflection on Being and Action

This was a challenging task, and trying to conceptualise and keep track of where everything was, proved very difficult.  As a result of this process, I also made decisions to change the position of lots of sections as the structure and narrative began to take shape.  After a few days work, it became clear that now was the time to electronically move everything I had done into one document, sort out the referencing and adopt the University style required for the thesis.  At the end of this process, it felt like darkness was turning to light once more, and the consolidated document was beginning to look like a thesis.

I now have a very long list of things to do before I submit this First Draft to my supervisors, although I feel like I have broken the back of the work.  Of course, I still have fourteen months to go and lots to do.  I will spend my final year rewriting, enhancing and developing the draft, refining my voice, tightening up the style, improving the flow and of course, producing lots of practice, over a nine month period, to provide better images to support the narrative.

I will also work on selecting, processing and printing my images alongside working on the size, scope and design for the handmade book I plan to produce alongside my thesis.  I also have many more blogs to write on the trials and tribulations of being a PhD student