The day after writing my previous blog was the day that I received feedback from my doctoral supervisor about the latest version of my thesis. I was quite proud of that version and so was somewhat surprised when I noticed the quantity and quality of remarks. I spent a few hours on Friday briefly going over the remarks then creating a new section on biases and fallacies by collecting material which was scattered around the thesis (the status quo bias, selection bias, confirmation bias, halo effect - I know them all). I shall have to add to this section some material about how the biases were mitigated. On Saturday I thought about writing a program which would store the various issues which my supervisor had found, along with the progress of my handling these issues. For some reason, I didn't turn these thoughts into a program.
Sunday found me sitting at the kitchen table with two computers, one of which is connected to work and the other to Microsoft Teams (for video conferencing). I had about four hours of concentrated work on Sunday after which I turned to 'standby mode'; I decided to use the time in order to write the supervision program. At first this started very badly: normally I take an existing program and adapt it to what I need, but this time there seemed to be so much that needed to be changed that it seemed easier to start from scratch. Throughout the day I worked on the program, getting it to the state that I could enter data then see what problems remained with the program. I thought it best to record all the supervisor's feedback before starting to change things.
This morning I carried on like the day before: a few hours of concentrated work (including a video meeting with six other people) then standby. In the down time, I continued entering the supervisor's comment into the program, and in doing so discovered a few things that needed improving. After I finished, I counted how many issues there are: 42! Of these, 18 are flagged, meaning that I need to talk to the supervisor about them. I'm sure there have never been so many issues, especially since I thought that the previous version was good. Some of these issues are solved easily - move one section from where it is currently to a different chapter, change a section's title, etc - whereas some (all of the flagged issues) are more demanding. I added two paragraphs on ontology and constructivism: tomorrow I will continue with this.
Just after 4 pm, I downed tools and took the dog for a 4 km walk. This went a bit faster than yesterday's walk which means that I'm getting fit again. All this sitting around at home isn't good for one's health; I found myself on Sunday eating a biscuit or a slice of bread every time I made myself a cup of tea, which is once an hour. Today I resolved to do something about this and so I sliced a red pepper, like I used to do when I didn't work at home, and munched on the slices contentedly throughout the day. I'm pleased to say that I ate only one biscuit today and that was at 5 pm, after returning home from the long walk.
The next few days promise to be more of the same: devoting time to work (I'm still in full employment, being paid my regular wage and so my employers expect that I work as hard at home as I did when not at home) and spending my down time reading academic papers and writing about them.
One spanner in the works is that I found a copy of the 2015 biography of John Le Carré (né David Cornwell) which I find extremely interesting, especially the parts of his childhood which appear in his novels. I knew that 'A perfect spy' had a great deal of autobiography, but there are plenty of other episodes in his life which crop up in his books. The school in 'Tinker Tailor' is very reminiscent of Cornwell's primary school; a description of Cornwell's father 'always waiting for someone [a jailor] to open doors for him' pops up in Charlie's description of her father in 'The little drummer girl', etc.
Morale is high, although I miss my grand-daughters. On Saturday we were sent a video of grand-daughter #2 taking her first walk (hurray!) but apparently she's lazy and hasn't repeated this feat. Her sister is bored and wants to go back to kindergarten. We're not allowed to see them as children are likely to infect their grandparents - this is a country wide injunction.
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