sillypunk's posterous

I have been having some thoughts about how I'm going to keep track of my work, given that I am doing it part time and working full time.  I figured one way to keep thinking about things more broadly, rather than getting mired in millions of details (which is bound to happen with a history PhD) is do an informal report once a week or every two weeks to basically tell you what I've found out.  I think this will help me make sure I'm consistently doing something every week whether reading a book, articles or at the archives.  Also, one of the things I never really liked doing in undergrad was writing book reviews. I hear this is quite a staple of academia, so I better get used to it.  I'm hoping if anyone is even vaguely interested they'll ask me some questions and maybe think in different ways.  The other good thing is that when I have to get a gist of what I've been doing - presto! A record!  I could perhaps just keep my own record and hide it in some file somewhere but I feel like inflicting the history of secularism on all of you.  I wonder how much my focus will wander from my original topic?

The other thing I need to do is create a file structure to save everything and when I start researching/writing keep proper citations.  I'm really shit at that when I actually start writing and then have to spend AGES fixing my citations.  I usually put a book/page number but when you have 150 references to go through at the end of it all, it's more than a bit irritating!  I've never actually used anything other that Word or in the old days Word Perfect to write so I wonder if I should find some other sort of software to keep me more organized.   If anyone has any suggestions that would be great.  Note that I am doing a history PhD rather than something sciency!

I had intended to spend the last two weeks researching but this cold has really kicked the shit out of me.  Even just cleaning the flat wears me out.  I think there is some light at the end of the tunnel though (maybe, hopefully, oh god please be light).  However, I've got a job now so I'll have to work on it during weekends/evenings like usual.  Perhaps at the end of this contract, I'll take a couple weeks off between jobs and dig in the archives.

Theoretically, I haven't been accepted yet though all indications seem green lit. I'm rather excited about all this, even though I'm still full of this blasted cold.  I hope I don't cough my way through this interview tomorrow!  It's been a crazy couple weeks since I got back from Canada.  I've spent most of the time being horrible ill, coughing, unable to hear half the time, sneezing, congested and generally miserable interspersed with getting a new job (five month contract but really good pay) and getting ready to start my PhD.  I imagine both the job and the PhD are going to be challenging so I hope I get healthy quick so I'll be ready for them both.