chapter 5!
To my great relief, I hit my schedule target for completing Chapter Five of my dissertation.
During semester break, I went to Kansas City, where I was happy to spend three weeks with Terry -- and to see 4-month-old grandson Drew several times. (Terry and I went to Tucson over Thanksgiving, and we enjoyed seeing one-year-old and just-starting-to-walk grandson Elliott.) Terry's one-bedroom apartment is twice as big as my Sioux City efficiency -- which meant (as Terry quickly observed) that I had plenty of room to spread out all my documents for my dissertation as well as for preparing my two spring semester syllabi.
By the time I headed back to Sioux City on January 8 (with a day of visiting Harlan customers in Columbus, Nebraska along the way), I had only about five hours work remaining on the first draft. As usual, I got critical feedback from my advisor, Norm Yetman. Then, this weekend, I made the required revisions. Earlier this evening, I e-mailed the revised chapter to Norm and also to the other two core members of my committee, Xiao-huang Yin and Ted Wilson. (The other two commitee members don't have to do any reading until I am finished with the enitre dissertation.)
My next schedule milestone is Chapter Six, the final chapter. My target is to complete the first draft by the end of February. I have tentatively set April 23 as a defense date. Besides writing first and second drafts of Chapter Six, I'll need to do the same for the Conclusion (which will be a mini-chapter, if I have time).
-- Norty