Thursday, November 1, 2007

Multi-tasking

2 hours writing, 1 hour emailing, 1 hour travel prep, page count = 143

A lighter day in terms of dissertation work, as I focused on a volunteer project and my job search. Finding the balance between the sustained effort I'll need to complete the dissertation and the periodic but consistent effort I'll need to conduct a successful job search will definitely be a challenge in the coming weeks. I had a great meeting with a colleague with whom I'm working on a volunteer project, and she was kind enough to offer a referral to an interesting job opportunity, so that was productive.

In terms of writing, I've found myself having a hard time this week engaging with the mountain of material I brought back from the field, so I decided to take a different tack, and re-engaged with the earlier chapters of the manuscript, in an effort to get them up to speed in advance of my presentation. I'm happy to report that I now have decent first or second drafts of the introduction and the first three chapters. I think what will be most helpful for my presentation on Monday will be to share some of the basic insights gleaned from the new fieldwork and to get advice on how to incorporate them into the overall narrative. That should set me up well for the writing process over the next four weeks, when I intend to complete drafts of the remaining three chapters and the conclusion.

Ana María, my research assistant in Bogotá, reports that the work is going well in terms of constructing the database of Medellín police service records from the 1940s. Interestingly, she's not seeing a lot of transfers, and yet one of the other databases I'm constructing, as I mentioned earlier this week, is about comisiones de orden público, in which police and soldiers are assigned to certain municipalities. Ana María verified that transfers are distinct from comisiones, and perhaps the latter just aren't noted on their service records; we'll see.

Tomorrow morning I'm headed off to San Francisco, so my next posting will be from the West Coast. Looking forward to a good trip!

1 comment:

Michael Negron said...

Safe travels and best of luck with your upcoming presentation and time with your colleagues in San Francisco.

Agree with your approach - if you are "not feeling it" when it comes to writing, good idea to use time to organize, gather data, reach out to folks, etc. Appears you are track and I believe you will be energized by your time in San Francisco. Also, I can "hear" in your postings that you do a good job with your overall lens - you zoom in when needed, and pull take the focus to gain a view of the big picture.

Talk soon,
Michael