Day 55: 5/25/2018
I decided to give myself a break today after the third supervision meeting. Seriously, I did not think much about my research until half an hour ago. Still, let me make it clear that even though I have not done much for the study itself like reading or writing, I did some side jobs (small tasks) I have to finish anyway.
This morning I got up to the rain in York after a long break of spring sun for many consecutive days. I deliberately set the alarm an hour and a half than the usual time. So, I woke up feeling refreshed and much better. After having a shower, I had breakfast and got ready for the Educational Research Group (ERG).
In the afternoon, I did not feel like diving into reading yet. Thus, I decided to do some small tasks like making a few less priority phone calls, searching and requesting books recommended by Dr. Jan, my supervisor.
I plan to start planning and working tomorrow morning by listening to the audio of the meeting. That should give me some clear tangible goals to work on in the next five weeks.
Let us recap the third supervision meeting a bit! Here are key points my supervisor and I discussed yesterday:
1. There is a good progress on contacting potential participants of my study.
2. The data collection should take place from June-October 2019 which is over a year from now. This is not too late since it is critical for me to receive sufficient training before taking a role as a trainer or coach on dialogic teaching. Therefore, the rest of this year will be allocated for reading, research proposal, and literature review write up. Plus, I have to read extensively to ‘review the available literature’ or ‘to (really) understand the field’. The next step is then to write a literature review. Although it may sound similar to the review of literature, this is much deeper as it requires me to read more critically that I have to be able to evaluate the current literature and identify research gaps. This needs to be selective and critical in nature.
3. The proposed headings for my literature review is fine. There were some recommended modification and readings to do.
4. The data collection schedule needs some minor modifications.
5. The only work I have to submit in the next meeting is the revised research proposal, which later will be developed to be used as a research plan “to sell” it with the potential participants (to quote Dr. Jan).
Towards the end of the meeting, we discussed other minor points and the plan for the next year. Dr. Jan also talked about a gathering she will host and her phd students and their spouses are invited. I truly feel that she is trying her best to create a good relationship with her PhD students not only because of this invitation but also the way she always listens to me and my ideas are never useless to her. I can feel that she genuinely cares about me and her other PhD students. This has become my energy and willingness not to let her down and be disappointed. I want to make her proud of me one day.
I spent an hour going for a run in the evening. I first planned to run for 8 kilometers but ended up finishing only 6 kilometers with some walking in the last part. It could be that it was an hour past my dinner time that I suddently felt tired and lack of energy. However, I made it home safe and cooked myself some dinner.
(I took a break from writing and talked to P’Gluay a bit after he came home from work).
I start working again tomorrow. It is going to be fun-filled work! :)
Research Related Notes:
It is always okay to try out new ideas or strategies and make mistakes. This is an essential part of ‘learning’.
5/26/2018 12.33 am.
