I haven’t done much of anything lately, aside from the bare necessities of life, other than work toward a version of my dissertation that will be ready for the external examiners.
It has been very hard for me not to have final control over the document, which I have had in every other context since leaving the government.
I suppose the PhD dissertation is the pinacle of scrutiny for a piece of writing — totally different from all the research papers I have written during the program, which just get a grade and some comments from one person. It’s weird for me to have authorship and responsibility for the content of a document, but not the final say about what I can actually put in it and how. I know this is all to make it conform to the norms and standards of a particular and esoteric style of writing, but it’s still a command structure that I keep grating against.
No doubt, the way I keep bumping up against this approach partly explains the delays and frustration on all sides.
