21 June 2007

Stupid, Stupid, Stupid

For the last week or so I've been plugging along on chapter 2. Fifteen rather shoddy pages were written fairly easily. And then I made the mistake of reading my director's comments on the chapter 1 revision. ahhhhh

It's not that the comments were that bad; it's that I didn't understand some of them. This makes me doubt my entire ability to finish this stupid project--which is ridiculous, because I 've seen a lot worse dissertations than the one I'm about to (not) write.

This happened last time. I should know better than to read the comments. They intrigued me at first. "oh, good point!," I thought. But the more I think about them, the more I think that the project I think I'm doing is not the project that she thinks I should be doing.

So yesterday I totally procrastinated and read a novel- Housekeeping. (It's not bad, but sometimes the language seems overwrought and out of place). Today is our anniversary and all I want to do is go shopping and have a fabulous lunch with the Hubby while Little Man is in day care.

Yuck- why can't I get over this??

2 comments:

mgm said...

Because it's personal. Not that your director sees it that way. It's professional to her, but our work is personal and hard to return to once we're made to feel it isn't good enough (not that it isn't).

I'm in the same boat. I am convinced that what I am doing isn't original, especially after The Advisor told me two days ago that someone will probably ask me in job interviews how this project is any different than others before it.

I know that this is something we all have to work up an answer to, but it made me want to throw the proverbial towel in.

Lisa Dunick said...

You're absolutely right. And even though I knew it was only another draft, even the best comments shoot you right down...